ABSTRACT
In the letter that provides this epigraph, the diplomat, Robert Morier, a fellow disciple of Cobden, had credited Louis Mallet with having upheld more perfectly and completely than Cobden did himself, the higher and more ideal side of the Cobdenic creed. Unlike most of his peers in a remarkable generation of senior civil servants, Mallet did not enjoy the advantages of a public school and university education. Self-education could well have been a source of personal sympathy between him and Cobden. Mallet belonged to a long line of Board of Trade officials committed to free trade and to a laissez-faire position on the role of the state in supporting British trade. Bernard Mallet went to some trouble to show that his father's political convictions did not infringe civil service proprieties. Mallet fought his corner fiercely against the Treasury and Foreign Office and later becoming such a persistent spokesman for a proactive approach to free trade.
