In the early 1840s he toured the northern English industrial centres and wrote considerably for the Anti-Corn Law League[2] and his observations of the factories of Manchester and Bolton provide a first hand account of the depression at that time.
He published profusely throughout his career, writing on religion, history and a number of biographies, most notably that of Sir Robert Peel.
He was a strong advocate of the professedly non-denominational National School system, and his economic and religious views were heavily influenced by Richard Whately.
Cooke Taylor was on friendly terms with Thomas Davis, whom he respected as a fellow-Trinity graduate, but in 1847-8 he engaged in government-sponsored journalism denouncing the Young Irelanders as communists, and was accused by Charles Gavan Duffy of having been hired to defame his country.
[citation needed] He returned to Ireland for the last two years of his life where he worked as a statistician for the Irish Government before he died of cholera in 1849.