The interior of the Cosmos shopping arcade in Jalpaiguri, West Bengal, India. The outspoken Cobbett declared that London’s tight control of trade within the British empire was lining the pockets of an elite in Westminster and the City while hurting ordinary businesses in India and Britain alike. The City continues to argue for protectionism, monopoly and the European Union’s ‘single market’ today.
SIR William Curtis,* during this debate, expressed his fears that a free trade to India might cause the introduction of political freedom. “If a free trade to India were once allowed, among other exports, they would probably soon have a variety of politicians, who would use their best endeavours to give the Hindus a conception of the Rights of Man.” A most alarming thought, to be sure! His wishes, however, will not be accomplished, I believe; and he may yet live long enough to see men claiming and asserting their rights all over the world. But what a sentiment this is from an Englishman!*
Commerce has, by many writers, been applauded for having produced an extension of knowledge and freedom; but, this man objects to it in that account; he fears that opening of trade may tend to the enlarging of the mind of man; he is afraid that a free intercourse would break the chains of a people! Let us hope, that there are very few assemblages of men in the world where such a sentiment would not have been received with a unanimous exclamation of horror.
William Curtis (1752-1829) was MP for the City of London for twenty-eight years, an Alderman of the City of London, and (so we are told) a drinking-companion of the Prince Regent. Curtis is credited with coining the phrase ‘the three Rs’ to refer to reading, writing and arithmetic. His own origins were humble enough: his father made his fortune manufacturing tack, that is, sea-biscuits.
Six years earlier, London had criminalised the slave trade across the British Empire, a breakthrough moment in civil rights worldwide. Some people were disappointingly slow to put aside prejudice towards peoples and races outside western Europe, but it is uplifting to see that by 1813 such prejudice was so rare that Cobbett could regard it as thoroughly un-English.
Précis
Firebrand William Cobbett expressed his dismay at hearing a fellow MP complain that free trade would teach the people of India to expect the same rights as those demanded by people in Britain. It was, wrote Cobbett, the kind of sentiment that should never be heard in any Parliament, and least of all that of Westminster. (56 / 60 words)
