ABSTRACT
Richard Cobden was devoted to numerous progressive causes, complaining in 1853 of being 'persecuted to attend meetings on every kind of pursuit – Peace, Ballot, Education, Taxes on Knowledge, Juvenile Delinquency, and Mechanics' Institutes …'. Born in 1804, Cobden came to maturity in a country in which peace activism had just established a foothold. Fear of being thought subversive had prevented the founding of peace associations until Napoleon had been defeated. In the second half of the 1830s, when he began writing on international issues and before he became involved in the Anti-Corn Law League, Cobden may have been a pacifist. Cobden's willingness to cooperate with the new committee (and its principal constituent, the Peace Society) reflected his decision to promote a peace resolution in the House of Commons, and his awareness that his chances of a respectable vote would be helped if the peace movement petitioned parliament in his support.
