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Richard Cobden and the International Peace Congress Movement, 1848–1853

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  10 January 2014

David Nicholls
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Extract

Between 1848 and 1853 a series of major peace congresses was held—in Brussels (1848), Paris (1849), Frankfurt (1850), London (1851), Manchester (1853), and Edinburgh (1853). This midcentury period was one of great confidence and optimism in the likely success of the cause. Indeed, reading the reports of the congresses today, one is struck by the at times naive overoptimism of many delegates. This may in part have been the product of the millenarian atmosphere of the period. However, it has to be said that the congresses were also characterized by a strong sense of the practicality of their proposals and the steady progress toward their goal that implementation of such proposals would achieve. Above all, the efflorescence of the peace movement in the short six years around the midcentury was the product of a class confidence, of a momentary triumphalism that inspired a section of the bourgeoisie to believe that the scourge of war could be eradicated at last.

The nineteenth-century peace movement effectively began with the establishment toward the end of the Napoleonic Wars, independently and virtually simultaneously, of peace societies in the United States and Britain. They were dominated by men of religion, particularly Quakers, and for a quarter of a century their work was essentially that of proselytizing the peace cause through publicity, petitions, and lecture tours. In connection with the last, the London Peace Society sent emissaries on tours of continental Europe in the early 1840s to spread the peace message.

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 30 , Issue 4 , October 1991 , pp. 351 - 376
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1991

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References

1 Tyrrell, A., “Making the Millennium: the Mid-nineteenth Century Peace Movement,” Historical Journal 20, no. 1 (1978): 75–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

2 Schou, A., Histoire de l'internationalisme, vol. 3, Du Congrès de Vienne jusqu'á la Première Guerre Mondiale (Oslo, 1963), p. 98Google Scholar.

3 The Proceedings of the First General Peace Convention: held in London, June 22, 1843, and the two following days (London, 1843)Google Scholar (hereafter cited as the London Convention Proceedings); Pecqueur to Stephen Rigaud, May 13, 1843, in ibid., pp. 91–94; The General Resolutions adopted by the Peace Convention, held in London, June 22, 1843, and the two following days (London, 1843)Google Scholar. Pecqueur's letter also included a proposal for the establishment of “a cosmopolitan police, or armed force, destined to make the law of nations respected,” which went too far for nonresistants at the conference and was therefore ignored. The question of sanctions was never seriously addressed by the midcentury peace movement.

4 van der Linden, W. H., The International Peace Movement, 1815–1874 (Amsterdam, 1987), p. 322Google Scholar. After Brussels, Burritt's League and Richard's London Peace Society came together in the Peace Congress Committee, though the latter preponderated, according to Burritt, by virtue of its members' labor and money. The committee under-took the organization of the subsequent international congresses and served as a practical body within which men who did not want to associate too closely with either the league or the society (such as Cobden) could work. Its records are now held by the International Peace Society, Fellowship House, 3 Browning Street, London. See esp. the “Peace Society Conference Committee Minute Book, 31st October 1848-5th February 1856,” and the “Peace Conference Committee Minute Book, 18th February 1856– 14th October 1859.”

5 Linden, p. 317.

6 Numbers of those in attendance at the congresses, in both peace histories and contemporary accounts, vary, primarily because delegates and visitors are not always clearly distinguished. The following figures give a reasonable approximation of overall (delegate and visitor) attendance: Brussels: Britain, 130; United States, 28; Belgium, Netherlands, France, Italy, and Spain, 142. Paris: Britain, 670; United States, 21; France, 100; Belgium, 20; others, 10. Frankfurt: Britain, 500; United States, 37; “Germany,” less than 50. London: Britain, over 1,000; United States, 60; France, 20; others, 40. The Manchester and Edinburgh conferences were purely British affairs, with about 500 in attendance at Manchester. I have no figure for Edinburgh, but it was probably around 500. Miall sardonically observed of Britons registered to attend at Paris that “the cheap fares attracted not a few who preferred pleasure to business.” See Miall, C. S., Henry Richard, M.P.: A Biography (London, 1889), p. 53Google Scholar.

7 Cobden to Henry Ashworth, quoted in Morley, J., The Life of Richard Cobden (London, 1903), pp. 230–31Google Scholar (Cobden's emphasis). He went on to suggest a prize essay on “Free Trade as the best human means for securing universal and permanent peace.”

8 The Progress of Peace and the Miseries of War, for 1842: being the report of the Manchester and Salford Peace Society, for that year (London and Manchester, [1843])Google Scholar. At the Manchester Congress in 1853, Cobden claimed that it was only when the peace congress agitation began that he had first begun to cooperate with the Peace Society, adding “I have never been myself a subscriber or a member of the Peace Society, strictly so called.” See Herald of Peace (February 1853), p. 179Google Scholar. Either his memory was at fault, or, what is more likely, he was referring here to the London Peace Society. There is a receipt dated May 22, 1849, for Cobden's subscription to the Manchester and Salford Peace Society in the archive collection at Manchester Central Reference Library, M87/4/2/9.

9 Cobden to Sturge, September 16, printed in The Times (September 26, 1848).

10 See Cobden's letters to Richard in Hobson, J. A., Richard Cobden: The International Man (1919; reprint, London, 1968)Google Scholar, passim; and Tyrrell, A., Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party in Early Victorian Britain (London, 1987), pp. 167–69Google Scholar. Cobden also brought his oratorical skills to the service of the movement—his mastery of statistical detail combined with an anecdotal skill that contrasted with the earnest and humorless speeches of many of his fellow campaigners.

11 Cobden to Richard, November 18, 1851, quoted in Hobson, pp. 81–82. The term “pacifist” is used anachronistically throughout this article. It did not come into general use until early in this century. In the nineteenth century, the opponents of war in all circumstances, such as the Quakers, were usually referred to as “nonresistants.”

12 Linden, pp. 150–51.

13 Cobden to G. Combe, April 9, 1849, quoted in Morley, p. 508. The motion was defeated 176–79. The sensible manner in which he presented his case to the House has been fully covered elsewhere (see Phelps, C., The Anglo-American Peace Movement in the Mid-nineteenth Century [New York, 1930], pp. 153–59Google Scholar).

14 According to Linden (n. 4 above), p. 365.

15 Report of the Proceedings of the Second General Peace Congress held in Paris, on the 22nd, 23rd and 24th of August, 1849 (London, 1850), pp. 78–79Google Scholar (hereafter cited as the Paris Report).

16 Cobden, January 18, 1850, quoted in Dawson, W. H., Richard Cobden and Foreign Policy (London, 1926), p. 127Google Scholar.

17 Report of the Proceedings of the Third General Peace Congress, held in Frankfort, on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th August, 1850 (London, 1851), pp. 35–39Google Scholar (hereafter cited as the Frankfort Report); Miall (n. 6 above), p. 75.

18 Frankfort Report, pp. 49–50.

19 Mazzini, G., Life and Writings, 6 vols. (London, 1870), 3:257–58Google Scholar.

20 Report of the Proceedings of the Fourth General Peace Congress, held in Exeter Hall, London, on the 22nd, 23rd, and 24th July, 1851 (London, 1851), p. 54Google Scholar (hereafter cited as the London Report). The shift of the Peace Congress Movement in Cobden's direction can be seen from the summary of the main resolutions carried at the various congresses given in table 1.

21 The French economist Frédéric Bastiat thought Britain should set the example with regard to disarmament and persistently urged this on Cobden, whereas Girardin and Athanase Coquerel had no reservations about France taking the lead. At Brussels, Henry Vincent even suggested that Belgium might initiate the process. The difference was patched over by resolutions referring to general and simultaneous disarmament. Cobden, for his part, was prepared to advocate unilateral disarmament on Britain's part, believing that this would encourage others, especially France, to quickly follow suit. He also pressed the British and French governments to negotiate an agreement on simultaneous disarmament.

22 London Convention Proceedings (n. 3 above), pp. 16–20.

23 Paris Report, pp. 49-52; Frankfort Report, pp. 31–33.

24 Paris Report, p. 28. The speech was by Adolphe de Guéroult. Likewise, Francisque Bouvet told the delegates that “peace cannot exist where a nation is enslaved.” See ibid., pp. 37–40.

25 Cobden to Charles Sumner, quoted in Dawson, p. 134. For the variety of European, especially French, internationalist thought, see Schou (n. 2 above), pp. 101–18; Linden (n. 4 above), chap. 11; and Renouvin, P., L'idée de fédération Européene dans la pensée politique du XIXe siècle (Oxford, 1949)Google Scholar, passim.

26 Report of the Peace Congress at Brussels on the 20th, 21st, and 22nd September, 1848 (London, 1848), pp. 23, 30–32, 39, 43Google Scholar (hereafter cited as the Brussels Report). Sagra published the forbidden speech in a booklet entitled “Utopia of Peace,” which he sent to the Paris Congress. See Linden, p. 356.

27 Paris Report, pp. 30–31.

28 Ibid., pp. 42–43.

29 See, however, the pamphlet by the peace radical and onetime president of the British Teetotal Temperance Society, Buckingham, James Silk, An Earnest Plea for the Reign of Temperance and Peace (London, 1851), pp. 143–44Google Scholar.

30 For example, the contributor of Hugo's biography in the Biographical Dictionary of Modern Peace Leaders, ed. Josephson, H. (Westport, Conn., and London, 1985)Google Scholar, describes the speech as “a turning point in the nineteenth-century movement insofar as it was couched in the progressive language of secular analysis and not the religious homilies of the earlier Anglo-Saxon pacifists” (p. 435). To me it smacks rather of idealism and a secular millenarianism. The hype given to Hugo's speech extends to the claim that he coined the term “United States of Europe.” This is not the case, though he did help to popularize it. His speech was printed as a pamphlet by the World Peace Foundation of Boston at the very moment Europe was plunging into internecine conflict. See Hugo, Victor, The United States of Europe (Boston, 1914)Google Scholar.

31 Hugo, p. 6.

32 The Times (August 27, 1849).

33 Quoted in Hinde, W., Richard Cobden: A Victorian Outsider (New Haven, Conn., and London, 1987), p. 201CrossRefGoogle Scholar. On the whole, though, Cobden was pleased that the “subject of peace has for the first time had its hearing even in France.” See Dawson (n. 16 above), pp. 133–34. Note the sting in that particular tail.

34 Tyrrell, , “Making the Millennium" (n. 1 above), p. 92Google Scholar.

35 Quoted in Linden (n. 4 above), pp. 371–72.

36 Frankfort Report (n. 17 above), pp. 51–54. Ladd's proposal also drew on Jeremy Bentham and James Mill and was a much more limited conception (e.g., excluding powers of intervention) than later schemes. See Hinsley, F. H., Power and the Pursuit of Peace (Cambridge, 1967), p. 94Google Scholar.

37 See Charles Hindley's opening address to the 1843 convention, in London Convention Proceedings (n. 3 above), pp. 3–4; and compare Richard's assertion that the Peace Society “advocates no visionary schemes” (quoted in Brock, P., Pacifism in Europe [Princeton, N.J., 1972], p. 389Google Scholar [emphasis in original]).

38 Edsall, N. C., Richard Cobden: Independent Radical (Cambridge, Mass., and London, 1986), pp. 236–37CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

39 Cobden to G. Combe, July 14, 1846, quoted in Morley (n. 7 above), pp. 230–31 (my emphasis).

40 See Cobden, 's speech at Manchester, “Report of Peace Conference,” Herald of Peace (February 1853), p. 168Google Scholar; and his letter of October 17, 1853: “We are nothing without the ‘Friends.’” (quoted in Hobson [n. 10 above], p. 105). See also his speech at the London Congress in 1851, where he tactfully praised the rational tone of their deliberations (see the London Report [n. 20 above], p. 42).

41 Cobden to Duncan McLaren, September 19, 1853, quoted in Morley, pp. 608–9.

42 Quoted in Bosanquet, H., Free Trade and Peace in the Nineteenth Century (Kristiania [Oslo], 1924), p. 2Google Scholar. Compare John Stuart Mill: “It is commerce which is rapidly rendering war obsolete, by strengthening and multiplying the personal interests which are in natural opposition to it.” See his Principles of Political Economy (London, 1848), p. 582Google Scholar.

43 He was no doubt conscious that the Peace Society regarded free trade as an issue that might lose protectionist sympathizers and divert the movement from its main goal. Cobden believed in the efficacy of the free market—slave-produced products would not be able to compete with those produced by free labor.

44 The English delegation to Paris was advised by their French contacts not to include too many free traders. See Richard's diary, July 10, 1849, quoted in Miall (n. 6 above), p. 46.

45 Phelps (n. 13 above), p. 56; Tolis, P., Elihu Burritt: Crusader for Brotherhood (Hampden, Conn., 1968), p. 197Google Scholar; Beales, A. C. F., The History of Peace (London, 1931), p. 78Google Scholar; Edsall, pp. 250–51. Edsall commented: “beneath the shadow of the Great Exhibition, the peace congress appeared superfluous” (ibid).

46 Cobden to Mrs. Catharine Cobden, August 23, 1850, quoted in Morley, p. 547. Frankfurt was followed up in Britain with two large meetings at Wrexham (November 12) and Birmingham (November 26), while, also in 1850, a new series of the Herald of Peace, the principal organ of the peace movement, was begun, double its previous size to meet an increased demand. See Phelps, pp. 68–69. The Peace Conference Committee had a healthy financial turnover in 1850 of over £4,600 and by the following summer was considering making the congresses annual events. See the “Peace Society Conference Committee Minute Book” (n. 4 above), meetings of November 28, 1850, and June 17, 1851.

47 London Report, pp. 14, 21, 71, 76. Queen Victoria, referring in her diary (May 1, 1851) to the work of her beloved Albert in mounting the exhibition, described it as a “Peace Festival” (quoted in G. B. Henderson, Crimean War Diplomacy and Other Historical Essays [Glasgow, 1947], p. 134). Albert for his part saw its purpose as “strengthening … the bonds of peace and friendship among all the nations of the earth” (quoted in Bosanquet, p. 75). The Peace Conference Committee had asked Cobden to preside at London, but he had declined on the grounds that a literary or scientific figure would be more appropriate than a politician (“Peace Society Conference Committee Minute Book,” meeting of June 28, 1851).

48 See p. 355 above.

49 Cobden to Sturge, October 9, 1851, quoted in Hinde (n. 33 above), p. 220.

50 Jones, Goronwy J., Wales and the Quest for Peace (Cardiff, 1969), p. 26Google Scholar.

51 Phelps, p. 185.

52 The Times (August 27, 1850).

53 Richard Cobden, “1793 and 1853,” The Times (January 28, 29, 1853).

54 The Times, September 28, 1853.

55 Phelps (n. 13 above), p. 171.

56 Cobden's speech at the Manchester Congress, printed in the Herald of Peace (February 1853), p. 180Google Scholar.

57 Quoted in Tyrrell, , Joseph Sturge and the Moral Radical Party (n. 10 above), p. 203Google Scholar; and Morley (n. 7 above), p. 583. See a similarly pessimistic letter that same month from Cobden to Thomas Thomasson, a Bolton manufacturer, quoted in Morley, pp. 595–96.

58 See Cobden's speech at the Manchester Congress, Herald of Peace (February 1853), p. 169.

59 Approximately £8,000 were finally raised. See also Richard's optimistic assessment of the conference, quoted in Miall (n. 6 above), p. 92.

60 Cobden, October 17, 1853, quoted in Hobson (n. 10 above), p. 105.

61 Report of the Proceedings of the Peace Conference at Edinburgh, October 12th and 13th, 1853 (Edinburgh, 1853)Google Scholar, passim (hereafter cited as the Edinburgh Report).

62 Quoted in Edsall (n. 38 above), p. 273. In January 1854 his other principal peace ally, Joseph Sturge, had embarked on a valiant but rather foolhardy mission to Russia in a last desperate bid to persuade the tsar to choose peace.

63 The arguments in support of this statement and those of the next paragraph I have rehearsed at greater length elsewhere. See Nicholls, D., “Fractions of Capital: The Aristocracy, the City and Industry in the Development of Modern British Capitalism,” Social History 13, no. 1 (January 1988): 71–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar, and “A Subordinate Bourgeoisie? The Question of Hegemony in Modern British Capitalist Society,” in The Development of British Capitalist Society: A Marxist Debate, ed. Barker, C. and Nicholls, D. (Manchester, 1988), pp. 47–68Google Scholar.

64 Beales (n. 45 above), pp. 90–91; Lyons, F. S. L., Internationalism in Europe, 1815–1914 (Leyden, 1963), p. 319Google Scholar.

65 See Nicholls, D., “The English Middle Class and the Ideological Significance of Radicalism, 1760–1886,” Journal of British Studies 24, no. 4 (October 1985): 415–33CrossRefGoogle Scholar.

66 Express (September 26, 1848), quoted in Phelps (n. 13 above), p. 20n.

67 Bright's description of the British military establishment as “a gigantic system of outdoor relief for the aristocracy” is perhaps the best-known example of such language. See his speech at Birmingham Town Hall, October 29, 1858, quoted in Trevelyan, G. M., The Life of John Bright (London, 1913), p. 274Google Scholar. The 1843 convention sent an address to the British prime minister, the U.S. president, the kings of Belgium and France, and to other governments; the Paris Congress was followed by a deputation to Louis Napoleon; and the Manchester Congress issued ones to Lords Aberdeen and Clarendon. Cobden disliked this toadying. See his letter to Sturge, January 3, 1854, quoted in Sager, E. W., “The Social Origins of Victorian Pacifism,” Victorian Studies 23 (Winter 1980): 223Google Scholar.

68 Quoted in Dawson (n. 16 above), p. 143.

69 Quoted in The Political Writings of Richard Cobden (London, 1886), pp. 373–74Google Scholar (emphasis in original).

70 London Report (n. 20 above), p. 56.

71 London Convention Proceedings (n. 3 above), p. 29; London Report, pp. 28–29.

72 Speech at Edinburgh Congress, Edinburgh Report (n. 61 above), p. 40. Cobden was not alone in this. See the Quaker banker Sam Gurney's and the Nice banker Jules Avigdor's opposition to war loans (London Report, pp. 61–67).

73 Cobden's speech at the Manchester Congress, Herald of Peace (February 1853), p. 175Google Scholar.

74 Tyrrell, “Making the Millennium” (n. 1 above), p. 88. See also Buckingham's pamphlet, An Earnest Plea (n. 29 above), which was handed out free to visitors to the Great Exhibition.

75 London Convention Proceedings, pp. 4–8; Frankfort Report (n. 17 above), pp. 63–69. Former slaves were invited to the congresses and given special prominence.

76 See, e.g., Brussels Report (n. 26 above), p. 45; Paris Report (n. 15 above), pp. 81–82; Edinburgh Report, p. 32.

77 See the report on the Manchester Congress, Herald of Peace (February 1853), p. 175.

78 London Convention Proceedings, p. 40.

79 The General Resolutions adopted by the Peace Convention (n. 3 above), resolution 4.

80 On the occasion of a trip to the Versailles Palace following the congress. See Morley (n. 7 above), p. 513.

81 Letter from James Clark, August 22, 1850, reprinted in the Friend 66 (November 19, 1926): 1047Google Scholar.

82 When Anne Knight offered herself as a British delegate, the committee resolved that it was “inadvisable” for ladies to be appointed. See the “Peace Society Conference Committee Minute Book” (n. 4 above), meeting of June 28, 1851.

83 Initially, sewing circles were formed to finance the activities of Burritt's League of Universal Brotherhood (Linden [n. 4 above], pp. 348–49). Students of nineteenth-century gender relations will not be at all surprised to learn that a sisterhood operated behind the scenes to finance the public activities of a brotherhood!

84 Jones (n. 50 above), p. 25. See also the role of female European peace activists such as Eugénie Niboyet, editor of the short-lived French pacifist journal La Paix des Deux Mondes, and Frederika Bremer, the Swedish feminist who attempted during the Crimean War to set up a peace alliance of Christian women.

85 Sager (n. 67 above), passim. Sager calculates that, of the delegates to the London Congress, ministers of religion made up the largest single group (22.7 percent), while retailers formed 22.4 percent and manufacturers only 18.5 percent.

86 Ibid., p. 235. Propaganda activity in Lancashire was initiated on the back of the subscription launched at the Manchester Congress and raised and administered by a new, Manchester-based Peace Conference Committee. It was on the recommendation of this committee that the Edinburgh meeting was held and that plans for a European meeting, possibly in Paris, were abandoned. Moreover, Manchester seized the initiative from London in opposing the Crimean War. None of this, of course, prevented the decisive rejection of John Bright by the Manchester electors in 1857. The Manchester peace activities, culminating in the formation of the Peace Conference and Arbitration Society in 1858, lie outside my scope here, but I have dealt with them in “The Manchester Peace Conference of 1853,” Manchester Region History Review 5, no. 1 (April 1991): 11–21Google Scholar.

87 As exemplified by the work of the London Commission of 1853 and the Clarendon Protocol of 1856 (see Phelps [n. 13 above], p. 160; and Henderson [n. 47 above], pp. 146–50).

88 Albeit notwithstanding continuing antipathy in certain influential quarters toward the latter. In a recent TV interview, Margaret Thatcher said: “I do not believe, and I don't believe most of my countrymen believe, in a federation of Europe, in a United States of Europe” (interview in Panorama, BBC TV, November 27, 1989).

89 Nicholls, , “A Subordinate Bourgeoisie?” (n. 63 above), p. 60Google Scholar.