ABSTRACT
Richard Cobden’s speech in the House of Commons on 8 July 1842 was his first major speech in Parliament. It was delivered in the course of a debate started on 1 July by Robert Wallace, MP for Greenock, Scotland, on the distress of the country. Sir R. Peel’s defence of his financial policy led Cobden to respond by criticizing the Prime Minister’s position on every point. There is a common expectation among the poor suffering labouring people that machinery is going to be done with, and they refer to the remarks of Sir R. Peel in the newspapers as authority’. These were the natural effects of the observations made by Sir R. Peel. What more natural than that the distressed and suffering people - driven to extremities by their suffering - should take up the opinion of Peel, and attribute to machinery all the miseries which they endured.
