Success Quote by Richard Cobden

Cobden opens by laundering his argument of partisan scent: “I am no party man” is less a confession than a tactical disarmament. In a Parliament wired for faction, he positions himself as a witness for “the country,” not a mouthpiece for a bloc. That stance matters because the debate is ostensibly technocratic - an inquiry into “manufacturing distress” - but Cobden is signaling that the frame is already political. Whoever defines the inquiry defines the blame.

His objection isn’t to investigation; it’s to the selective spotlight. By insisting the motion should cover “manufacturing and agricultural distress,” Cobden is widening the aperture in a way that undercuts convenient narratives. Manufacturing pain can be cast as a problem caused by factories, workers, or cyclical trade. Agricultural distress, in 1840s Britain, drags you toward land, rents, and the tariff regime that protected grain: the Corn Laws. Naming agriculture forces the House to look at the landed interest’s role in national suffering, not just the mills’ misfortunes.

The phrasing is quietly combative. “In any degree” overemphasizes neutrality to make it believable; “whereas” sets up a courtroom-like correction, as if he’s amending a misleading indictment. It’s also an early version of a familiar cultural move: refusing a narrow, urban-industrial crisis story and insisting on the interdependence of sectors. Cobden, the businessman with a moral economist’s instincts, isn’t pleading for sympathy. He’s trying to make the inquiry structurally incapable of exonerating the powerful by omission.