COWEN, JOSEPH (1831-190o), English orator, politician and journalist, son of a Northumberland mine-owner, Sir Joseph Cowen, was educated at Edinburgh university. From an early age he showed rare gifts of eloquence and enthusiasm on behalf of advanced democracy at home and liberty abroad. He sympathized with the Chartists and his close friendship after 1848, "the year of revolutions," with Kossuth, Mazzini, Garibaldi, Herzen, with the Polish exiles and the Irish Nationalists, was the chief influence on his life. He made generous and sometimes daring efforts to help what he thought the righteous conspiracies in Europe and revolts against oppression. Accordingly he was intensely anti tsarist and his subsequent course was, in him, consistent. He entered the House of Commons in 1874 for Newcastle-on-Tyne. His eloquence was impassioned and vivid if too ornate, but his independence soon became disturbing. He caused consternation amongst the Liberals by championing, against Gladstone, Disraeli's policy towards Russia in the Eastern crisis. His differences with the Liberal Party extended to other questions and became irrecon cilable. Though he always called himself a radical he was a strong individualist. He was both an ardent pioneer of Imperial Federation and an advocate of Home Rule for Ireland long before the same position was taken up by Cecil Rhodes. After the Home Rule split in the Liberal Party he retired from parliament, but continued to play an important part in politics through his news paper, The Newcastle Daily Chronicle, which he made famous among provincial journals, and by his strong personal influence in northern England. His non-party orations in this period were his best, and as a journalist his style, unlike his earlier elaborate speaking, was as remarkable for simplicity as for force and phrase. He died on Feb. 18, 1900.
See E. R. Jones, Life and Speeches of J. Cowen (1885) ; W. Duncan, Joseph Cowen (1904) ; Joseph Cowen's Speeches ed. by his daughter (1909).