A Nation’s Greatness
Richard Cobden saw Britain’s international standing in terms of peaceful trade rather than military interventions.
1855
Richard Cobden saw Britain’s international standing in terms of peaceful trade rather than military interventions.
1855
In 1855, Cobden urged Parliament to tone down its anti-Russian rhetoric, not out of any fondness for St Petersburg’s domestic or foreign policy but because British influence was better felt in industrial innovation and international trade than in annexing land, toppling governments or rattling the Russian bear’s cage.
abridged
WHAT is the true source of national greatness? The path by which alone modern empires can hope to rise to supreme power and grandeur (would that we could impress this sentiment upon the mind of every statesman in Europe!) is that of labour and improvement.
Those illustrious commanders in the war of improvement, Watt and Arkwright,* with a band of subalterns — the thousand ingenious and practical discoverers who have followed in their train — have, with their armies of artisans, conferred a power and consequence upon England wholly independent of territorial increase.
England, with her steam-engine and spinning frame, has erected the standard of improvement, around which every nation of the world has already prepared to rally; England’s industrious classes, through the energy of their commercial enterprise, are at this moment influencing the civilisation of the whole world, above all, by acquiring and teaching to surrounding nations the beneficent attachment to peace.* Such are the moral effects of improvement in Britain.
abridged
James Watt (1736-1819), who with Matthew Boulton (1728-1809) and William Murdoch (1754-1839) developed the first commercially viable steam engines, and Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-1792), who developed the factory system through his network of mills. See The Hat that Changed the World and Richard Arkwright.
Cobden subscribed to the view that countries whose publics are closely interlinked in trade do not fight one another, a claim borne out by history (first rule of business, do not shoot your customers). Such countries do seem to feel free to fight any country that is not closely allied in trade with them, which rather confirms his theory in an unhappy way. See Peace By Free Trade.
1. What is the author aiming to achieve in writing this?
2. Note any words, devices or turns of phrase that strike you. How do they help the author communicate his ideas more effectively?
3. What impression does this passage make on you? How might you put that impression into words?
Based on The English Critic (1939) by NL Clay, drawing on The New Criticism: A Lecture Delivered at Columbia University, March 9, 1910, by J. E. Spingarn, Professor of Comparative Literature in Columbia University, USA.
Suggest answers to this question. See if you can limit one answer to exactly seven words.
For Cobden, in what does a nation’s greatness lie?