“…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

Letter to F. Cobden (11 September 1838), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 130.
1830s

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Richard Cobden 56

English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman 1804–1865

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Richard Cobden 56

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