Richard Cobden, “England Is a Perfect Paradise for the Aristocracy” (1845–49)

Abstract

The English cotton manufacturer and politician Cobden brilliantly used class analysis to get the protectionist corn laws repealed in 1846. He argued that tariffs and restrictions on imported grain benefited the class of aristocratic land owners at the expense of the class of middle and industrious English people and used his rhetorical skills to rip away “the transparent veil of mystification” which hid how this was accomplished. He also was able to split the landowning class and use threats of further political upheavals to intimidate those who refused to reform the unequal system of taxation, whom he mockingly called “the Noodles and Doodles of the aristocracy.”