By relinquishing the trade monopoly of our colonies, we shall only give up a miserable privilege against the privilege of trading with the entire world.

Richard Cobden, translated by Frédéric Bastiat
Complete Works, Volume 3, pages 497 to 507 (in French)
Bradford, February 15th, 1850

The Anti-Corn Laws League has reached numerous successes, be it the repeal of the corn laws, the reform of the navigation laws or the reform of tariffs on sugar. It is now time to fight against the colonial regime.

It is clear that the liberals oppose the colonial regime as we could already assess when dealing with the colonisation of Algeria. Richard Cobden says it without any ambiguity: “We need to recognise the right of our colonies to govern themselves” and takes the decolonisation of the United States as proof of success to illustrate how it compares with Canada. Today’s quote insists on the economics aspect of colonisation and strips down the mercantilist argument, which asserts that colonies favour trade while the negative aspect is that it hinders the development of trade with the rest of the world.

Once again, this speech allows us to establish that colonisation is not a quirk of capitalism and the liberals but a wart on the face of the mercantilists. It is unfortunate that decolonisation required one more century and lots of blood baths to be completed but it is no fault of the liberals who had predicted its ineluctability.