Politics & Power Quote by Richard Cobden

Cobden comes in like a man doing the books and discovering the “two governments” everyone keeps billing him for don’t actually exist on the ledger. The line is a scalpel aimed at a fashionable mid-19th-century debate: should Britain be run as a “double government” (a meaningful partnership between Crown and Parliament, or between executive and legislature), or streamlined into something more coherent? His punch is that the premise is already fraudulent. He can’t “see” the doubleness because, in practice, power is concentrated and responsibility is fogged.

The intent is less abstract constitutional theory than political demystification. Cobden, a businessman and free-trade crusader, distrusted ornate arrangements that let elites claim accountability while avoiding it. Calling the system not “double” is a way of accusing it of being performatively balanced: the monarchy’s dignified authority, the aristocracy’s inherited influence, ministers shielding behind convention. If there are two governments, why does decision-making so often feel like one closed shop?

Subtext: “Stop romanticizing complexity.” Cobden’s rhetorical move is to recast “double government” as a branding exercise, a comforting story the ruling class tells to make concentrated power seem tempered. The phrase “met by this difficulty” sounds polite, even mild; it’s actually a trapdoor. He’s forcing his audience to admit that constitutional language can be an alibi.

Context matters: Cobden operated in an age of reform agitation, industrial expansion, and rising middle-class demands for transparency and representation. His skepticism lands because it treats governance like any other system: if you can’t identify the separate parts and who answers for what, you don’t have balance - you have cover.