His settlement of the railway dispute in 1906 was universally applauded; and the bills he introduced and passed for reorganizing the port of London, dealing with Merchant Shipping, and enforcing the working in England of patents granted there, and so increasing the employment of British labour, were greeted with satisfaction by the tariff-reformers, who congratulated themselves that a Radical free-trader should thus throw over the policy of laisser faire.
Here he was conspicuous as an ardent free-trader and an uncompromising advocate of "States Rights," opposed the protectionist tariff bills of 1824 and 1828, and consistently upheld the doctrine that slavery was a domestic institution and should be dealt with only by the individual states.
Cobden inevitably stands for "Cobdenism," which is a creed largely developed by the modern free-trader in the course of subsequent years.