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Corn Laws
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{{short description|19th-century trade restrictions on import food and grain in Great Britain}}{{for|the British-Canadian trading act|Canada Corn Act}}{{Use British English|date=August 2023}}{{Use dmy dates|date=October 2013}}(File:1815 Corn Law, An Act to amend the Laws now in force for regulating the Importation of Corn.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|The 1815 Corn Law, officially "An Act to amend the Laws now in force for regulating the Importation of Corn")The Corn Laws were tariffs and other trade restrictions on imported food and corn enforced in the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. The word corn in British English denoted all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley.WEB,weblink CORN | English meaning - Cambridge Dictionary, The laws were designed to keep corn prices high to favour domestic producers, and represented British mercantilism.{{efn|According to David Cody (English Faculty, Hartwick College), they "were designed to protect English landholders by encouraging the export and limiting the import of corn when prices fell below a fixed point. They were eventually abolished in the face of militant agitation by the Anti-Corn Law League, formed in Manchester in 1839, which maintained that the laws, which amounted to a subsidy, increased industrial costs. After a lengthy campaign, opponents of the law finally got their way in 1846{{mdash}}a significant triumph which was indicative of the new political power of the English middle class."WEB, Cody, D, 1987,weblink Corn Laws, The Victorian Web: literature, history and culture in the age of Victoria, 16 September 2007, }} The Corn Laws blocked the import of cheap corn, initially by simply forbidding importation below a set price, and later by imposing steep import duties, making it too expensive to import it from abroad, even when food supplies were short. The House of Commons passed the corn law bill on 10 March 1815, the House of Lords on 20 March and the bill received royal assent on 23 March 1815.The Corn Laws enhanced the profits and political power associated with land ownership. The laws raised food prices and the costs of living for the British public, and hampered the growth of other British economic sectors, such as manufacturing, by reducing the disposable income of the British public.JOURNAL, Williamson, Jeffrey G, 1990-04-01, The impact of the Corn Laws just prior to repeal, Explorations in Economic History, 27, 2, 123â156, 10.1016/0014-4983(90)90007-L, The laws became the focus of opposition from urban groups who had far less political power than rural areas. The first two years of the Great Famine in Ireland of 1845â1852 forced a resolution because of the urgent need for new food supplies. The Prime Minister, Sir Robert Peel, a Conservative, achieved repeal in 1846 with the support of the Whigs in Parliament, overcoming the opposition of most of his own party.Economic historians see the repeal of the Corn Laws as a decisive shift toward free trade in Britain.JOURNAL, Ronald, Findlay, H, O'Rourke, Kevin, 2003-01-01, Commodity Market Integration, 1500â2000,weblink NBER, 13â64, BOOK,weblink Trade: discovery, mercantilism and technology (Chapter7) â The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain, 175â203, Cambridge Core, en, 2017-06-27, 10.1017/CHOL9780521820363.008, Trade: Discovery, mercantilism and technology, 2004, Harley, C. Knick, 9781139053853, According to one 2021 study, the repeal of the Corn Laws benefitted the bottom 90% of income earners in the United Kingdom economically, while causing income losses for the top 10% of income earners.JOURNAL, Irwin, Douglas A, Chepeliev, Maksym G, 2021, The Economic Consequences of Sir Robert Peel: A Quantitative Assessment of the Repeal of the Corn Laws*,weblink The Economic Journal, 131, 640, 3322â3337, 10.1093/ej/ueab029, 0013-0133, - the content below is remote from Wikipedia
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Origins{{anchor|Corn Act 1772}}
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Opposition{{anchor|Importation Act 1822|Importation of Corn Act 1828}}
{{Further|Anti-Corn Law League}}{{hatnote|This article gives prices in the pre-decimal notation for sterling as used at the time: £x/y/z, y/z, or y/-. For an explanation of this notation, see £sd}}File:1846 - Anti-Corn Law League Meeting.jpg|thumb|upright=1.25|right|A meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League in Exeter HallExeter HallIn 1820, the Merchants' Petition, written by Thomas Tooke, was presented to the House of Commons. The petition demanded free trade and an end to protective tariffs. The Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, who claimed to be in favour of free trade, blocked the petition. He argued, speciously, that complicated restrictions made it difficult to repeal protectionist laws. He added, though, that he believed Britain's economic dominance grew in spite of, not because of, the protectionist system.Hirst, p. 16. In 1821, the President of the Board of Trade, William Huskisson, composed a Commons committee report which recommended a return to the "practically free" trade of the pre-1815 years.{{sfn|Schonhardt-Bailey|2006|p=9}}factoids | |
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Prelude to repeal
In February 1844, the Duke of Richmond initiated the Central Agricultural Protection Society (CAPS, commonly known as the "Anti-League") to campaign in favour of the Corn Laws.In 1844, the agitation subsided as there were fruitful harvests. The situation changed in late 1845 with poor harvests and the Great Famine in Ireland; Britain experienced scarcity and Ireland starvation.Hirst, p. 33. Nevertheless, Ireland continued to export substantial quantities of food to Great Britain despite its domestic privations. The problem in Ireland was not lack of food, but the price of it, which was beyond the reach of the poor.{{sfn|Woodham-Smith|1991|p=165}} Peel argued in Cabinet that tariffs on grain should be rescinded by Order in Council until Parliament assembled to repeal the Corn Laws. His colleagues resisted this. On 22 November 1845 the Whig Leader of the Opposition Lord John Russell announced in an open letter to the electors in the City of London his support for immediate Corn Law repeal and called upon the government to take urgent action to avert famine.The Times (27 November 1845), p. 5.Morley, p. 344.The appearance of Russell's letter spurred Peel and the free-traders in his cabinet to press ahead with repeal measures over the objections of their protectionist colleagues.BOOK, Pearce, Edward, The Diaries of Charles Greville, 2000, 237â238, London, Pimlico, On 4 December 1845, an announcement appeared in The Times that the government had decided to recall Parliament in January 1846 to repeal the Corn Laws. Lord Stanley resigned from the Cabinet in protest. It quickly became clear to Peel that he would not be able to bring most of his own party with him in support of repeal and so on 11 December he resigned as Prime Minister in frustration. The Queen sent for Russell to form a government but, with the Whigs a minority in the Commons, he struggled to assemble the necessary support. Russell offered Cobden the post of Vice-President of the Board of Trade but he refused, preferring to remain an advocate of free trade outside the government. On 21 December Russell informed the Queen that he was unable to accept office. Later that same day Peel agreed to carry on as Prime Minister but, with the majority of his own party opposing his proposals, he was now dependent on the backing of the Whigs to carry repeal.BOOK, Pearce, Edward, The Diaries of Charles Greville, 2000, 238â240, London, Pimlico, After Parliament was recalled the CAPS started a campaign of resistance. In the rural counties the CAPS was practically supplanting the local Conservative associations and in many areas the independent free holding farmers were resisting the most fiercely.Coleman, p. 134.Repeal{{anchor|Importation Act 1846}}
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Motivations
Scholars have advanced several explanations to resolve the puzzle of why Peel made the seemingly irrational decision to sacrifice his government to repeal the Corn Laws, a policy which he had long opposed. Lusztig (1995) argues that his actions were sensible when considered in the context of his concern for preserving aristocratic government and a limited franchise in the face of threats from popular unrest. Peel was concerned primarily with preserving the institutions of government, and he considered reform as an occasional necessary evil to preclude the possibility of much more radical or tumultuous actions. He acted to check the expansion of democracy by ameliorating conditions which could provoke democratic agitation. He also took care to ensure that the concessions would represent no threat to the British constitution.JOURNAL, Michael, Lusztig, Solving Peel's puzzle: Repeal of the Corn Laws and institutional preservation, Comparative Politics, 1994, 27, 1, 393â408, 10.2307/422226, 422226, According to Dartmouth College economic historian Douglas Irwin, Peel was influenced by economic ideas in his shift from protectionism to free trade in agriculture: "Economic ideas, and not the pressure of interests, were central to Peel's conversion to favor repeal of the Corn Laws."JOURNAL, Irwin, Douglas A., 1989-03-01, Political Economy and Peel's Repeal of the Corn Laws, Economics & Politics, en, 1, 1, 41â59, 10.1111/j.1468-0343.1989.tb00004.x, 1468-0343,Effects of repeal
The price of wheat during the two decades after 1850 averaged 52 shillings a quarter.{{sfn|Woodward|1962|p=124}} Llewellyn Woodward argued that the high duty of corn mattered little because when British agriculture suffered from bad harvests, this was also true for foreign harvests and so the price of imported corn without the duty would not have been lower.{{sfn|Woodward|1962|pp=124â125}} However, the threat to British agriculture came about twenty-five years after repeal due to the development of cheaper shipping (both sail and steam), faster and thus cheaper transport by rail and steamboat, and the modernisation of agricultural machinery. The prairie farms of North America were thus able to export vast quantities of cheap grain, as were peasant farms in the Russian Empire with simpler methods but cheaper labour. Every wheat-growing country decided to increase tariffs in reaction to this, except Britain and Belgium.{{sfn|Ensor|1936|pages=115â116}}In 1877, the price of British-grown wheat averaged 56 shillings and 9 pence{{efn|£2/16/9, about £{{inflation|UK|2.8375|1877}} in {{inflation-year|UK}}}} a quarter and for the rest of the 19th century it never reached within 10 shillings of that figure. In 1878 the price fell to 46 shillings and 5 pence. In 1886, the wheat price decreased to 31 shillings a quarter. By 1885, wheat-growing land declined by a million acres (4,000 km2) (28½%) and the barley area had dwindled greatly also. Britain's dependence on imported grain during the 1830s was 2%; during the 1860s it was 24%; during the 1880s it was 45%, (for wheat alone during the 1880s it was 65%.).{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=116}} The 1881 census showed a decline of 92,250 in agricultural labourers in the ten years since 1871, with an increase of 53,496 urban labourers. Many of these had previously been farm workers who migrated to the cities to find employment,{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=117}} despite agricultural labourers' wages being higher than those of Europe.{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=117}} Agriculture's contribution to the national income was about 17% in 1871; by 1911 it was less than 7%.E. J. Feuchtwanger, Democracy and Empire: Britain 1865â1914 (London: Edward Arnold, 1985), p. 116.Robert Ensor wrote that these years witnessed the ruin of British agriculture, "which till then had almost as conspicuously led the world, [and which] was thrown overboard in a storm like an unwanted cargo" due to "the sudden and overwhelming invasion...by American prairie-wheat in the late seventies."{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=115, 117}} Previously, agriculture had employed more people in Britain than any other industry and until 1880 it "retained a kind of headship," with its technology far ahead of most European farming, its cattle breeds superior, its cropping the most scientific and its yields the highest, with high wages leading to higher standard of living for agricultural workers than in comparable European countries.{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=117}} However, after 1877 wages declined and "farmers themselves sank into ever increasing embarrassments; bankruptcies and auctions followed each other; the countryside lost its most respected figures," with those who tended the land with greatest pride and conscience suffering most as the only chance of survival came in lowering standards.{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=118}} "For twenty years," Ensor claimed, "the only chance for any young or enterprising person on the countryside was to get out of it."{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=118}} The decline of agriculture also led to a fall in rural rents, especially in areas with arable land. Consequently, landowners, who until 1880 had been the richest class in the nation, were dethroned from this position. After they lost their economic leadership, the loss of their political leadership followed.{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=119}}The Prime Minister at the time, Disraeli, had once been a staunch upholder of the Corn Laws and had predicted ruin for agriculture if they were repealed.William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860â1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 1242.{{sfn|Blake|1966|p=698}} However, unlike most other European governments, his government did not revive tariffs on imported cereals to save their farms and farmers.{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=54}} Despite calls from landowners to reintroduce the Corn Laws, Disraeli responded by saying that the issue was settled and that protection was impracticable.{{sfn|Blake|1966|p=698}} Ensor said that the difference between Britain and the Continent was due to the latter having conscription; rural men were thought to be the best suited as soldiers. But for Britain, with no conscript army, this did not apply.{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=54}} He also said that Britain staked its future on continuing to be "the workshop of the world," as the leading manufacturing nation.{{sfn|Ensor|1936|page=118}} Robert Blake said that Disraeli was dissuaded from reviving protection due to the urban working class enjoying cheap imported food at a time of industrial depression and rising unemployment. Enfranchised by Disraeli in 1867, working men's votes were crucial in a general election and he did not want to antagonise them.{{sfn|Blake|1966|pp=698â699}}Although proficient farmers on good lands did well, farmers with mediocre skills or marginal lands were at a disadvantage. Many moved to the cities, and unprecedented numbers emigrated. Many emigrants were small under-capitalised grain farmers who were squeezed out by low prices and inability to increase production or adapt to the more complex challenge of raising livestock.JOURNAL, William E. van, Vugt, Running from ruin?: the emigration of British farmers to the U.S.A. in the wake of the repeal of the Corn Laws, Economic History Review, 1988, 41, 3, 411â428, 10.1111/j.1468-0289.1988.tb00473.x, Similar patterns developed in Ireland, where cereal production was labour-intensive. The reduction of grain prices reduced the demand for agricultural labour in Ireland, and reduced the output of barley, oats, and wheat. These changes occurred at the same time that emigration was reducing the labour supply and increasing wage rates to levels too great for arable farmers to sustain.JOURNAL, Kevin, O'Rourke, The repeal of the corn laws and Irish emigration, Explorations in Economic History, 1994, 31, 1, 120â138, 10.1006/exeh.1994.1005, Britain's reliance on imported food led to the danger of it being starved into submission during wartime. In 1914 Britain was dependent on imports for four-fifths of her wheat and 40% of her meat.Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War. Second Edition (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 58. During the First World War, the Germans in their U-boat campaign attempted to take advantage of this by sinking ships importing food into Britain, but they were eventually defeated.Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy and the Second World War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992), p. 14. During the Second World War in the Battle of the Atlantic, Germany tried again to starve Britain into surrender, but again was unsuccessful.Barnett, pp. 575â576.See also
- Canada Corn Act 1843
- Vagrancy Act 1824 - catch-all legislation that criminalised destitution in the UK
Explanatory notes
{{Notelist}}References
{{Reflist|30em}}Further reading
- {{DisraeliRef}}
- Chaloner, W. H. (1968). "The Anti-Corn Law League", History Today 183 pp 196â204.
- Clark, G. Kitson (1951). "The Repeal of the Corn Laws and the Politics of the Forties." Economic History Review 4(1), pp. 1â13. {{Jstor|2591654}}.
- Coleman, B. (1996). "1841â1846", in: Seldon, A. (ed.), How Tory Governments Fall: The Tory Party in Power Since 1783. London: Fontana. {{ISBN|0-00-686366-3}}.
- BOOK, Ensor, Robert, 1936, England, 1870â1914, The Oxford History of England, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 0-19-821705-6, Robert Ensor, registration,weblink .
- Fairlie, S. "The Nineteenth-Century Corn Law Reconsidered". Economic History Review, vol. 18, no. 3, 1965, pp. 562â575. {{Jstor|2592565}}.
- Gash, Norman (1972). Mr Secretary Peel: The Life of Sir Robert Peel to 1830, pp. 562â615.
- Halévy, Elie. Victorian years, 1841â1895 (Vol. 4: A History of the English People) (1961) pp 103â38 on repeal.
- Hilton, Boyd (2008). A Mad, Bad, and Dangerous People?: England 1783â1846, New Oxford History of England, Oxford University Press, {{ISBN|0-19-921891-9}}
- Hirst, F. W. (1925). From Adam Smith to Philip Snowden: A history of free trade in Great Britain. London: T. Fisher Unwin.
- In Our Time podcasts IOT: The Corn Laws 24 October 13
- Lawson-Tancred, Mary (1960). "The Anti-League and the Corn Law Crisis of 1846." Historical Journal 32 pp: 162â183. {{Jstor|3020474}}.
- Morley, J. (1905) The Life of Richard Cobden, 12th ed., London: T. Fisher Unwin, 985 p., republished by London: Routledge/Thoemmes (1995), {{ISBN|0-415-12742-4}}
- BOOK, Schonhardt-Bailey, C, 2006, From the Corn Laws to Free Trade: interests, ideas, and institutions in historical perspective, The MIT Press, 0-262-19543-7, Wuantitative studies of the politics involved.
- Semmel, B. (2004). The Rise of Free Trade Imperialism: classical political economy the empire of free trade and imperialism, 1750â1850, Cambridge University Press, {{ISBN|0-521-54815-2}}
- BOOK, Sutherland, K., Wealth of Nations, Oxford, 2008,
- BOOK, Cecil Woodham-Smith, Woodham-Smith, Cecil, 1991, 1962, The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845â1849, Penguin, 978-0-14-014515-1, The Great Hunger: Ireland 1845â1849,
- BOOK, Llewellyn Woodward, Woodward, E.L., 1962, The Age of Reform, 1815â1870, The Oxford history of England 13, 2nd, Oxford, Clarendon Press, 0-19-821711-0, registration,weblink
Primary and contemporary sources
- Bright, J. and Thorold Rogers, J.E. (eds.) [1870](1908). Speeches on Questions of Public Policy by Richard Cobden, M.P., Vol. 1, London: T. Fisher Unwin, republished as Cobden, R. (1995), London: Routledge/Thoemmes, {{ISBN|0-415-12742-4}}
- BOOK, Spencer, Thomas, s:Speech of the Rev. T. Spencer, of Bath, delivered at the meeting of the Anti-Corn-Law League, at Covent-Garden theatre, London, on June 19, 1844, to an audience of, at least six thousand]], 1844, B. D. Cousins, London, English,
- Taylor, W.C. (1841) Natural History of Society, D. Appleton & Co., New York
- Taylor, W.C. (1842) Notes of a tour in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire: in a series of letters, London: Duncan & Malcolm.
- Taylor, W.C. (1844) Factories and the Factory System, Jeremiah How, London
- weblink" title="web.archive.org/web/20180903060536weblink">The "Hungry Forties", an analysis of the Chrononym
- BOOK, Vivian, Hussey, Hussey Vivian, 1st Baron Vivian, s:Speech of Sir Hussey Vivian, Bart. M.P. on the Corn Laws, Thursday March 14, 1839, Speech of Sir Hussey Vivian]], 1839, Ridgways, London, 1, English,
External links
{{EB1911 poster|Corn Laws}}- "The Corn Law Debate" with primary sources
- William Cobbett & The Corn Laws- UK Parliament- Living Heritage
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