The Mississippi River at New Orleans in Louisiana, USA. The southern states of the USA broke away from the north after Abraham Lincoln, a Republican, won a general election with a mandate to abolish slavery. Cobden wondered how his own country would have fared, if regional governments had seceded every time the majority of their local residents did not like the result of a nationwide poll.
THEY [the southern states] wanted to consolidate, perpetuate, and extend slavery. But, instead of that, what do they constantly say? ‘Leave us alone; all we want is to be left alone.’
And that is a reason that the Conservative Governments of Europe, and so large a section of the upper middle-class of England, and almost the whole aristocracy, have accepted as a sufficient ground on which to back this insurrection.*
How would they have liked it, if, when Essex and Kent had been beaten on the Corn-law question (and we know Essex gave a united and unanimous vote against us),* Kent and Essex had chosen to set up themselves as an East Anglia right across the mouth of the Thames, as the secessionists have done by Louisiana across the mouth of the Mississippi, and if, when we asked them why they did it, they should reply, ‘We want to be left alone’?
Can any Government be carried on if a portion of the territory, or a section of the people, can at any time secede when beaten at the polls in a peaceful election?
The French Empire, with interests in Mexico and Canada, on balance favoured the Confederacy; the Spanish did much the same. The Prussians and the Russian Empire supported the North. Cobden played a key role in reminding the public of the moral issue of slavery, and increasingly ordinary British people favoured the North.
In 1846, Richard Cobden persuaded the Commons into abolishing protectionist taxes on grain imports, which had been brought in to help Britain’s ailing agriculture industry. However, they sent the price of basic foods sky-rocketing, and cost jobs right across Britain. See our story: The Repeal of the Corn Laws.
Précis
Richard Cobden expressed frustration with Westminster for showing sympathy for the slave-owning States in the American Civil War. He likened the Confederacy to Kent and Essex breaking away from the UK because their own voters did not agree with the repeal of the Corn Laws, claiming that in such a case the attitude of the Commons would be very different. (60 / 60 words)
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