ABSTRACT
Richard Cobden has been so long associated with free trade and internationalism that his interest in other issues has often been overlooked. This is particularly true with respect to his important role in the campaign for parliamentary reform. In 1851 the Prime Minister, Lord John Russell, promised a further measure of parliamentary reform and his declaration revived Cobden's enthusiasm for the cause. Cobden's support for democratic reform was often fitful and seldom sustained. This reflected, not his reservations about democracy, but his doubts as to the practicality of effecting it. Cobden was neither a dreamy nor a doctrinaire democrat and he tailored his reform proposals to the mood of the age and to the realities of the parliamentary situation. Consequently his concept of popular government was distinctly Victorian and less fully democratic than that which is generally endorsed today.
