"The Blockade Laws are about as rascally an invention as the old Corn Laws. Suppose Tom Sayers lived in a street, and on the opposite side lived a shopkeeper with whom he has been in the habit of dealing. Tom quarrels with his shopkeeper and forthwith sends him a challenge to fight, which is accepted. Tom, being a powerful man, sends word to each and every householder in the street that he is going to fight the shopkeeper, and that until he has finished fighting no person in the street must have any dealings with the shopkeeper. "We have nothing to do with your quarrel," say the inhabitants, "and you have no right to stop our dealings with the shopkeeper"."
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Members of the Parliament of the United KingdomPacifistsAnglicans from the United KingdomBusinesspeople from EnglandRight-libertarians
Original Language: English
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Letter to Henry Asworth (3 September 1864), quoted in John Morley, The Life of Richard Cobden [1879] (1905), p. 916
https://en.wikiquote.org/wiki/Richard_Cobden
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Richard Cobden
(3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) was a British manufacturer and Radical and Liberal statesman, associated with John Bright in the formation of the .
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