The idea of defending, as integral parts of our Empire, countries 10,000 miles off, like Australia, which neither pay a shilling to our revenue... nor afford us any exclusive trade... is about as quixotic a specimen of national folly as was ever exhibited.

Richard Cobden

Categorized in : Ideas Country Australia

A newspaper should be the maximum of information, and the minimum of comment.

Richard Cobden

information newspapers should

For every credibility gap there is a gullibility gap.

Richard Cobden

gullibility gaps credibility

Peace will come to earth when the people have more to do with each other and governments less.

Richard Cobden

government earth people

Look not to the politicians; look to yourselves.

Richard Cobden

libertarian liberty looks

The progress of freedom depends more upon the maintenance of peace, the spread of commerce, and the diffusion of education, than upon the labours of cabinets and foreign offices.

Richard Cobden

progress freedom office

The people of the two nations, French and English, must be brought into mutual dependence by the supply of each other's wants. There is no other way of counteracting the antagonism of language and race. It is God's own method of producing an entente cordiale, and no other plan is worth a farthing.

Richard Cobden

two-nations race people

Wars have ever been but another aristocratic mode of plundering and oppressing commerce.

Richard Cobden

commerce war peace

I took the repeal of the Corn Laws as light amusement compared with the difficult task of inducing the priests of all denominations to agree to suffer the people to be educated.

Richard Cobden

light law people

Let it never be forgotten that it is not by means of war that states are rendered fit for the enjoyment of constitutional freedom; on the contrary, whilst terror and bloodshed reign in the land, involving men's minds in the extremities of hopes and fears, there can be no process of thought, no education going on, by which alone can a people be prepared for the enjoyment of rational liberty.

Richard Cobden

men war mean

Treaties of peace, made after war, are entrusted to individuals to negotiate and carry out.

Richard Cobden

individual made war

The landlords are not agriculturists; that is an abuse of terms which has been too long tolerated.

Richard Cobden

abuse term long

Luck relies on chance, labor on character.

Richard Cobden

chance luck character

I confess that for fifteen years my efforts in education, and my hopes of success in establishing a system of national education, have always been associated with the idea of coupling the education of this country with the religious communities which exist.

Richard Cobden

religious country years

You may keep Turkey on the map of Europe, you may call the country by the name of Turkey if you like, but do not think you can keep up the Mahommedan rule in the country.

Richard Cobden

europe country thinking

I've seen the smiling of Fortune beguiling, I've felt all its favours and found its decay; Sweet was its blessing, kind its caressing, But now it is fled, fled far, far away.

Richard Cobden

decay blessing sweet

This great oracle of the East India Company himself admits that, if there is no power vested in the Court of Directors but that of the patronage, there is really no government vested in them at all.

Richard Cobden

india government directors

Luck is always waiting for something to turn up. Labor, with keen eyes and strong will, always turns up something. Luck lies in bed and wishes the postman will bring news of a legacy. Labor turns out at six o'clock and with busy pen or ringing hammer, lays the foundation of a competence. Luck whines. Labor whistles. Luck relies on chance, labor on character.

Richard Cobden

strong work lying

the twelve or fifteen millions in the British Empire, who, while they possess no electoral rights, are yet persuaded they are freemen, and who are mystified into the notion that they are not political bondmen, by that great juggle of the ' English Constitution ' a thing of monopolies, and Church-craft, and sinecures, armorial hocus-pocus, primogeniture, and pageantry!

Richard Cobden

political church rights

the principles of political economy have elevated the working class above the place they ever filled before.

Richard Cobden

political principles class

I believe that the harm which Mill has done to the world by the passage in his book on Political Economy in which he favours the principle of Protection in young communities, has outweighed all the good which may have been caused by his other writings.

Richard Cobden

writing believe book