Richard Cobden was a radical politician and the founder, with John Bright, of the Anti-Corn Law League in 1839. He became a Member of Parliament in 1841 and devoted much of his energies to the repeal of the Corn Laws, a cause which the Darby family at Coalbrookdale supported. Cobden was a member of the Royal Commission for the Great Exhibition. As a supporter of free trade and international peace he saw the Exhibition as a means of breaking down national barriers and as 'a triumph of industry, instead of a triumph of arms'. The sculpture features in the 1877 Coalbrookdale Company catalogue (No. 143).