ABSTRACT
The story of how a Cobdenite machine for manufacturing votes, rather thinly camouflaged as an engine of reform and liberation, developed into one half of the Abbey National Building Society, has a certain fascination. He might well have understood, however, why no League for free trade in land was ever formed, and why free trade in land never attracted the missionary zeal and emotional fervour of the original free trade slogan. Cobden's conviction that the 'aristocratic monopoly' was the chief obstacle to the progress of peace and retrenchment, that 'beating down the power of the aristocracy' was a top priority, and that the way forward was 'to attack the land monopoly root and branch both here and in Ireland and Scotland', never wavered. The abiding difficulty for Cobden was, then, to find some means for the effective removal of the 'aristocratic monopoly' without scaring the middle classes.
