“You have seized upon the most important of our social and political questions in the laws affecting the transfer of land. It is astonishing that the people at large are so tacit in their submission to the perpetuation of the feudal system in this country as it affects the property in land, so long after it has been shattered to pieces in every other country except Russia. The reason is, I suppose, that the great increase of our manufacturing system has given such an expansive system of employment to the population, that the want of land as a field of investment and employment for labour has been comparatively little felt. So long as this prosperity of our manufactures continues, there will be no great outcry against the landed monopoly. If adversity were to fall on the nation, your huge feudal properties would soon be broken up, and along with them the hereditary system of government under which contentedly live and thrive.”

— Richard Cobden

Letter to James White, MP for Brighton (22 November 1857), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden (London: T. Fisher Unwin, 1905), p. 679.
1850s

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Richard Cobden56

English manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman 1804–1865

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