I am no party man in this matter in any degree; and if I have any objection to the motion it is this, that whereas it is a motion to inquire into the manufacturing distress of the country, it should have been a motion to inquire into manufacturing and agricultural distress.

He was therefore deeply disappointed and distressed to find the old feeling of distrust still actively fomented by the press and some of the leading politicians of the country. First publications

In 1835 he publiRichard Cobdend his first pamphlet entitled England Ireland and America by a Manchester Manufacturer. His only son died to Cobden's inexpressible grief at the age of fifteen in 1856.

He has been called "the greatest classical-liberal thinker on international affairs" by historian Ralph Raico. Richard Cobden (3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) was a British manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman associated with John Bright in the formation of the Anti-Corn Law League as well as with the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty.