Never was the military spirit half so rampant in this country since 1815 as at the present time. Look at the news from Rangoon... This makes 5400 persons killed by our ships in the East during the last five years, without our having lost one man by the butcheries. Now give me Free Trade as the recognized policy of all parties in this country, and I will find the best possible argument against these marauding atrocities.

'How Wars are got up in India' (1853), The Political Writings of Richard Cobden (1903), pp. 457-8.