Who Was Jane Cobden?

Among libertarians and classical liberals, the
name Richard
Cobden
 (1804–1865) evokes admiration and applause.
His activities — and successes — on behalf of freedom, free
markets, and government retrenchment are legendary. Most famously,
he cofounded — with John
Bright
— the Anti–Corn Law League, which successfully campaigned
for repeal of the import tariffs on grain. Those trade restrictions
had made food expensive for England’s working class while enriching
the landed aristocracy.

But Cobden did not see free trade in a vacuum. He
and Bright linked
that cause with their campaign against war and empire, arguing that
trade among the people of the world was not just beneficial
economically but also conducive to world peace. Unlike other
liberals of his time (and since), Cobden understood that free trade
means trade free of government even when it
pursues allegedly pro-trade policies. As he said (in
one of my favorite Cobden quotations),

They who propose to influence by force the traffic of the world,
forget that affairs of trade, like matters of conscience, change
their very nature if touched by the hand of violence; for as faith,
if forced, would no longer be religion, but hypocrisy, so commerce
becomes robbery if coerced by warlike armaments.

Unfortunately, this brilliant insight has eluded most advocates
of international trade, especially in the United States going back
to its founding, who looked to government to open foreign markets —
by force if necessary.

Cobden’s legacy is much appreciated by libertarians, but one
aspect of it is largely unknown. (I only just learned of it, thanks
to my alert friend Gary Chartier.)
Cobden’s third daughter and fourth child, Emma Jane Catherine
Cobden (later Unwin after she married publisher Thomas Fisher
Unwin), carried on his work. Born in 1851, she was a liberal
activist worthy of her distinguished father.

The Wikipedia article
on Jane Cobden, which I draw on here, relies heavily on two
sources: Anthony Howe’s entry in The Oxford Dictionary of
National Biography 
and Sarah Richardson’s “‘You Know Your
Father’s Heart’: The Cobden Sisterhood and the Legacy of Richard
Cobden” in Re-thinking
Nineteenth-century Liberalism
, edited by Howe and Simon
Morgan (2006).

“From her youth Jane Cobden, together with her sisters, sought
to protect and develop the legacy of her father,” according to
Wikipedia. “She remained committed throughout her life to the
‘Cobdenite’ issues of land reform, peace, and social justice, and
was a consistent advocate for Irish independence from Britain.”

The triplet land reform, peace, and social
justice 
has a left-wing sound today, but that’s because
the modern classical liberal/libertarian movement from the 1930s
onward got sidetracked by an alliance of convenience with the
conservative and nationalist American Right, which, like the
liberals, also opposed the New Deal and (in those days, but alas no
more) militarism. That alliance, which was fortified in the 1950s
due to the common opposition to Soviet communism, had the
unfortunate effect of cutting libertarians off from their true
heritage.

That heritage included a focus on the class conflict and rights
violations inherent in mercantilism (protectionism, corporatism),
 government control of land distribution, and many other state
activities. The libertarian abandonment of some of those concerns
in the second half of the 20th century in effect bequeathed them to
the antimarket Left. Today a growing number of
libertarians
 have reclaimed them.

Jane Cobden was also a prominent voice for extending the vote to
women. Wikipedia says: “The battle for women’s suffrage on equal
terms with men, to which she made her first commitment in 1875, was
her most enduring cause.” Cobden was a member of the Liberal
Party” (which was hardly a libertarian party) and she
“stayed in the Liberal Party, despite her profound disagreement
with its stance on the suffrage issue.” (The Liberals tended
to favor the vote for women but had higher priorities.) The
libertarians of her day, both in England and the United States,
also made women’s legal and social equality a major part of their
agenda. (Some, like the American Lysander Spooner,
thought no one should have the vote because they
opposed government solutions to problems.)

In 1888 Jane Cobden and other Liberal women ran for seats on the
new London County Council. This was a controversial move because up
till then women could not hold office and not everyone interpreted
the Local Government Act of 1888 as permitting it. She and Margaret
Sandhurst won seats in 1899. Sandhurst was disqualified under the
act after a challenge from her defeated rival, but Cobden was not
challenged.

Even so, her position on the council remained precarious,
particularly after an attempt in parliament to legalise women’s
rights to serve as county councillors gained little support. A
provision of the prevailing election law provided that anyone
elected, even improperly, could not be challenged after twelve
months, so on legal advice Cobden refrained from attending council
or committee meetings until February 1890. When the statutory
twelve months elapsed without challenge, she resumed her full range
of duties.

But her problems were not over. A Conservative member took her
to court, arguing she had been illegally elected, that her council
votes were therefore illegal, and thus that she should be severely
fined. The court agreed, but an appeal cut the fine to a nominal
amount. Her allies hoped she would go to jail instead of paying the
fine, but she did not take their advice.

After a further parliamentary attempt to resolve the situation
failed, she sat out the remaining months of her term as a
councillor in silence, neither speaking nor voting, and did not
seek re-election in the 1892 county elections.