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Corn Laws

From Wikipedia, in a visual modern way
Importation Act 1815
Act of Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Long titleAn Act to amend the Laws now in force for regulating the Importation of Corn.
Citation55 Geo 3 c 26
Dates
Royal assent23 March 1815
Other legislation
Amended byImportation Act 1822
Repealed byImportation Act 1846
Status: Repealed
Text of statute as originally enacted
For the British-Canadian trading act, see Canada Corn Act.
The 1815 Corn Law, officially "An Act to amend the Laws now in force for regulating the Importation of Corn"
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 denotes all cereal grains, including wheat, oats and barley. They were designed to keep corn prices high to favour domestic producers, and represented British mercantilism.[a] 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.[2]

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 1845–1852 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.[3][4] 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.[5]

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Tariff

Tariff

A tariff is a tax imposed by the government of a country or by a supranational union on imports or exports of goods. Besides being a source of revenue for the government, import duties can also be a form of regulation of foreign trade and policy that taxes foreign products to encourage or safeguard domestic industry. Protective tariffs are among the most widely used instruments of protectionism, along with import quotas and export quotas and other non-tariff barriers to trade.

Trade restriction

Trade restriction

A trade restriction is an artificial restriction on the trade of goods and/or services between two or more countries. It is the byproduct of protectionism. However, the term is controversial because what one part may see as a trade restriction another may see as a way to protect consumers from inferior, harmful or dangerous products.

Grain

Grain

A grain is a small, hard, dry fruit (caryopsis) – with or without an attached hull layer – harvested for human or animal consumption. A grain crop is a grain-producing plant. The two main types of commercial grain crops are cereals and legumes.

British English

British English

British English is, according to Oxford Dictionaries, "English as used in Great Britain, as distinct from that used elsewhere". More narrowly, it can refer specifically to the English language in England, or, more broadly, to the collective dialects of English throughout the British Isles taken as a single umbrella variety, for instance additionally incorporating Scottish English, Welsh English, and Northern Irish English. Tom McArthur in the Oxford Guide to World English acknowledges that British English shares "all the ambiguities and tensions [with] the word 'British' and as a result can be used and interpreted in two ways, more broadly or more narrowly, within a range of blurring and ambiguity".

Oat

Oat

The oat, sometimes called the common oat, is a species of cereal grain grown for its seed, which is known by the same name. While oats are suitable for human consumption as oatmeal and rolled oats, one of the most common uses is as livestock feed. Oats are a nutrient-rich food associated with lower blood cholesterol when consumed regularly.

Barley

Barley

Barley, a member of the grass family, is a major cereal grain grown in temperate climates globally. It was one of the first cultivated grains, particularly in Eurasia as early as 10,000 years ago. Globally 70% of barley production is used as animal fodder, while 30% as a source of fermentable material for beer and certain distilled beverages, and as a component of various foods. It is used in soups and stews, and in barley bread of various cultures. Barley grains are commonly made into malt in a traditional and ancient method of preparation.

Mercantilism

Mercantilism

Mercantilism is an economic policy that is designed to maximize the exports and minimize the imports for an economy. It promotes imperialism, colonialism, tariffs and subsidies on traded goods to achieve that goal.

Food prices

Food prices

Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices affect producers and consumers of food.

Great Famine (Ireland)

Great Famine (Ireland)

The Great Famine, also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or simply the Famine and outside Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis which subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole. With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was dominant, the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as an Drochshaol, literally translated as "the bad life". The worst year of the period was 1847, which became known as "Black '47". During the Great Hunger, roughly 1 million people died and more than 1 million fled the country, causing the country's population to fall by 20–25% between 1841 and 1871. Between 1845 and 1855, at least 2.1 million people left Ireland, primarily on packet ships but also on steamboats and barques—one of the greatest exoduses from a single island in history.

Robert Peel

Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1834–1835) and twice as Home Secretary. He is regarded as the father of modern British policing, owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service. Peel was one of the founders of the modern Conservative Party.

Tories (British political party)

Tories (British political party)

The Tories were a loosely organised political faction and later a political party, in the Parliaments of England, Scotland, Ireland, Great Britain and the United Kingdom. They first emerged during the 1679 Exclusion Crisis, when they opposed Whig efforts to exclude James, Duke of York from the succession on the grounds of his Catholicism. Despite their fervent opposition to state-sponsored Catholicism, Tories opposed exclusion in the belief inheritance based on birth was the foundation of a stable society.

Free trade

Free trade

Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold economically liberal positions, while economic nationalist and left-wing political parties generally support protectionism, the opposite of free trade.

Origins

As a staple of life, as well as an important commodity of trade, corn and its traffic was long the subject of debate and of government regulation – the Tudors legislating against speculating in corn, and the Stuarts introducing import and export controls.[6] Import had been regulated as early as 1670;[7] and in 1689 traders were provided bounties for exporting rye, malt and wheat (all classified as corn at the time, the same commodities being taxed when imported into England).[8] In 1773, "An act to regulate the importation and exportation of corn" (13 Geo. III, c. 43) repealed Elizabethan controls on grain speculation; but also shut off exports and allowed imports when the price was above 48 shillings[b] per quarter[c] (thus compromising to allow for interests of producers and consumers alike).[7][10] The issue however remained one of public debate (by figures such as Edmund Burke) into the 1790s;[11] and amendments to the 1773 Act, favouring agricultural producers, were made in both 1791 and 1804.[12]

In 1813, a House of Commons Committee recommended excluding foreign-grown corn until the price of domestically grown corn exceeded 80 shillings[d] per quarter (8 bushels),[13] or the equivalent in 2004 prices of around £1,102 per tonne of wheat.[e] The political economist Thomas Malthus believed this to be a fair price, and that it would be dangerous for Britain to rely on imported corn because lower prices would reduce labourers' wages, and manufacturers would lose out due to the decrease of purchasing power of landlords and farmers.[15]

With the advent of peace when the Napoleonic Wars ended in 1815, corn prices decreased, and the Tory government of Lord Liverpool passed the 1815 Corn Law (officially An Act to amend the Laws now in force for regulating the Importation of Corn, or the Importation Act 1815, 55 Geo. III c. 26)[16] to keep bread prices high. This resulted in serious rioting in London.[17]

In 1816, the Year Without a Summer (caused by the 1815 eruption of Mount Tambora in Indonesia) caused famine by disastrously reducing crop yields. Reduced standard of living and food shortages due to poor harvests led to riots.[18] But the ceiling price of 80 shillings a quarter for domestic grain was so high that, between 1815 and 1848, it was never reached. David Ricardo, however, espoused free trade so that Britain could use its capital and population to its comparative advantage.[15]

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Export subsidy

Export subsidy

Export subsidy is a government policy to encourage export of goods and discourage sale of goods on the domestic market through direct payments, low-cost loans, tax relief for exporters, or government-financed international advertising. An export subsidy reduces the price paid by foreign importers, which means domestic consumers pay more than foreign consumers. The World Trade Organization (WTO) prohibits most subsidies directly linked to the volume of exports, except for LDCs. Incentives are given by the government of a country to exporters to encourage export of goods.

Rye

Rye

Rye is a grass grown extensively as a grain, a cover crop and a forage crop. It is a member of the tribe Triticeae and is closely related to both wheat (Triticum) and barley. Rye grain is used for flour, bread, beer, crispbread, some whiskeys, some vodkas, and animal fodder. It can also be eaten whole, either as boiled rye berries or by being rolled, similar to rolled oats.

Malt

Malt

Malt is germinated cereal grain that has been made to germinate by soaking in water and is then halted from germinating further by drying with hot air, a process known as "malting". Malted grain is used to make beer, whisky, malted milk, malt vinegar, confections such as Maltesers and Whoppers, flavored drinks such as Horlicks, Ovaltine, and Milo, and some baked goods, such as malt loaf, bagels, and Rich Tea biscuits. Malted grain that has been ground into a coarse meal is known as "sweet meal".

Shilling

Shilling

The shilling is a historical coin, and the name of a unit of modern currencies formerly used in the United Kingdom, Australia, New Zealand, other British Commonwealth countries and Ireland, where they were generally equivalent to 12 pence or one-twentieth of a pound before being phased out during 1960's and 1970's.

Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke

Edmund Burke was an Anglo-Irish statesman, economist, and philosopher. Born in Dublin, Burke served as a member of Parliament (MP) between 1766 and 1794 in the House of Commons of Great Britain with the Whig Party.

Bushel

Bushel

A bushel is an imperial and US customary unit of volume based upon an earlier measure of dry capacity. The old bushel is equal to 2 kennings (obsolete), 4 pecks, or 8 dry gallons, and was used mostly for agricultural products, such as wheat. In modern usage, the volume is nominal, with bushels denoting a mass defined differently for each commodity.

Tonne

Tonne

The tonne is a unit of mass equal to 1000 kilograms. It is a non-SI unit accepted for use with SI. It is also referred to as a metric ton to distinguish it from the non-metric units of the short ton, and the long ton. It is equivalent to approximately 2204.6 pounds, 1.102 short tons, and 0.984 long tons. The official SI unit is the megagram, a less common way to express the same mass.

Napoleonic Wars

Napoleonic Wars

The Napoleonic Wars (1803–1815) were a series of conflicts fought between the First French Empire under Napoleon (1804–1815), and a fluctuating array of European coalitions. The wars originated in political forces arising from the French Revolution (1789–1799) and from the French Revolutionary Wars (1792–1802), and produced a period of French domination of Continental Europe. There were seven Napoleonic Wars, five named after the coalitions that fought Napoleon, plus two named for their respective theatres: (i) the War of the Third Coalition (1803–1806), (ii) the War of the Fourth Coalition (1806–1807), (iii) the War of the Fifth Coalition (1809), (iv) the War of the Sixth Coalition (1813–1814), (v) the War of the Seventh Coalition (1815), (vi) the Peninsular War (1807–1814), and (vii) the French invasion of Russia (1812).

Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool

Robert Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool

Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool, was a British Tory statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1812 to 1827. He also held many other important cabinet offices such as Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies. He was also a member of the House of Lords and served as leader.

1815 eruption of Mount Tambora

1815 eruption of Mount Tambora

Mount Tambora is a volcano on the island of Sumbawa in present-day Indonesia, then part of the Dutch East Indies, and its 1815 eruption was the most powerful volcanic eruption in recorded human history. This volcanic explosivity index (VEI) 7 eruption ejected 160–213 cubic kilometres (38–51 cu mi) of material into the atmosphere, and was the most recent confirmed VEI-7 eruption.

David Ricardo

David Ricardo

David Ricardo was a British political economist. He was one of the most influential of the classical economists along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith and James Mill. Ricardo was also a politician, and a member of the Parliament of Great Britain and Ireland.

Free trade

Free trade

Free trade is a trade policy that does not restrict imports or exports. In government, free trade is predominantly advocated by political parties that hold economically liberal positions, while economic nationalist and left-wing political parties generally support protectionism, the opposite of free trade.

Opposition

Further information: Anti-Corn Law League
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
A meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League in Exeter Hall in London in 1846
A meeting of the Anti-Corn Law League in Exeter Hall in London in 1846

In 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.[19] 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.[20]

The Importation Act 1822 decreed that corn could be imported when the price of domestically harvested corn rose to 80/- (£4) per quarter but that the import of corn would again be prohibited when the price fell to 70/- per quarter. After this Act was passed, the corn price never rose to 80/- until 1828. In 1827, the landlords rejected Huskisson's proposals for a sliding scale, and during the next year Huskisson and the new Prime Minister, the Duke of Wellington, devised a new sliding scale for the Importation of Corn Act 1828 whereby, when domestic corn was 52/- (£2/12/0)[f] per quarter or less, the duty would be 34/8 (£1/14/8),[g] and when the price increased to 73/- (£3/13/0),[h] the duty decreased to one shilling.[21][i]

Robert Peel became Conservative Prime Minister in 1841, and his government succeeded in repealing the tariffs.
Robert Peel became Conservative Prime Minister in 1841, and his government succeeded in repealing the tariffs.

The Whig governments, in power for most of the years between 1830 and 1841, decided not to repeal the Corn Laws. However the Liberal Whig MP Charles Pelham Villiers proposed motions for repeal in the House of Commons every year from 1837 to 1845. In 1842, the majority against repeal was 303; by 1845 this had fallen to 132. Although he had spoken against repeal until 1845, Robert Peel voted in favour in 1846. In 1853, when Villiers was made a Privy Counsellor, The Times stated that "it was Mr Charles Villiers who practically originated the Free Trade movement."

In 1838, Villiers spoke at a meeting of 5,000 "working-class men" in Manchester. In 1840, under Villiers' direction, the Committee on Import Duties published a blue book examining the effects of the Corn Laws. Tens of thousands of copies were printed in pamphlet form by the Anti-Corn Law League, founded in 1838. The report was quoted in the major newspapers, reprinted in America, and published in an abridged form by The Spectator.

In the 1841 election, Sir Robert Peel became Prime Minister and Richard Cobden, a major proponent of free trade, was elected for the first time. Peel had studied the works of Adam Smith, David Hume and David Ricardo, and proclaimed in 1839: "I have read all that has been written by the gravest authorities on political economy on the subject of rent, wages, taxes, tithes."[22] He voted against repeal each year from 1837 to 1845. In 1842, in response to the Blue book published by Villiers' 1840 Committee on Import Duties, Peel offered a concession by modifying the sliding scale. He reduced the maximum duty to 20/- if the price were to fall to 51/- or less. In 1842,[21] Peel's fellow-Conservative Monckton Milnes said, at the time of this concession, that Villiers was "the solitary Robinson Crusoe sitting on the rock of Corn Law repeal".

According to historian Asa Briggs, the Anti-Corn Law League was a large, nationwide middle-class moral crusade with a Utopian vision; its leading advocate Richard Cobden promised that repeal would settle four great problems simultaneously:

First, it would guarantee the prosperity of the manufacturer by affording him outlets for his products. Second, it would relieve the Condition of England question by cheapening the price of food and ensuring more regular employment. Third, it would make English agriculture more efficient by stimulating demand for its products in urban and industrial areas. Fourth, it would introduce through mutually advantageous international trade a new era of international fellowship and peace. The only barrier to these four beneficent solutions was the ignorant self-interest of the landlords, the "bread-taxing oligarchy, unprincipled, unfeeling, rapacious and plundering."[23]

The landlords claimed that manufacturers like Cobden wanted cheap food so that they could reduce wages and thus maximise their profits, an opinion shared by socialist Chartists. Karl Marx[24] said: "The campaign for the abolition of the Corn Laws had begun and the workers' help was needed. The advocates of repeal therefore promised, not only a Big Loaf (which was to be doubled in size) but also the passing of the Ten Hours Bill" (to reduce working hours). In 1876, Thomas Carlyle commented on John Bright, co-founder of the League along with Cobden: "as for that party, Bright, Cobden and Co., 'Cheap and Nasty' was their watchword. It was folly to suppose good things were to be had cheap. The nation had been deluded."[25]

The Anti-Corn Law League was agitating peacefully for repeal. They funded writers like William Cooke Taylor to travel the manufacturing regions of northern England to research their cause.[26] Taylor published a number of books as an Anti-Corn Law propagandist, most notably, The Natural History of Society (1841), Notes of a tour in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire (1842), and Factories and the Factory System (1844). Cobden and the rest of the Anti-Corn Law League believed that cheap food meant greater real wages and Cobden praised a speech by a working man who said:

When provisions are high, the people have so much to pay for them that they have little or nothing left to buy clothes with; and when they have little to buy clothes with, there are few clothes sold; and when there are few clothes sold, there are too many to sell, they are very cheap; and when they are very cheap, there cannot be much paid for making them: and that, consequently, the manufacturing working man's wages are reduced, the mills are shut up, business is ruined, and general distress is spread through the country. But when, as now, the working man has the said 25s left in his pocket, he buys more clothing with it (ay, and other articles of comfort too), and that increases the demand for them, and the greater the demand ... makes them rise in price, and the rising price enables the working man to get higher wages and the masters better profits. This, therefore, is the way I prove that high provisions make lower wages, and cheap provisions make higher wages.[27]

The magazine The Economist was founded in September 1843 by politician James Wilson with help from the Anti-Corn Law League; his son-in-law Walter Bagehot later became its editor.

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Anti-Corn Law League

Anti-Corn Law League

The Anti-Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britian aimed at the abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners’ interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a time when factory-owners were trying to cut wages. The League was a middle-class nationwide organisation that held many well-attended rallies on the premise that a crusade was needed to convince parliament to repeal the corn laws. Its long-term goals included the removal of feudal privileges, which it denounced as impeding progress, lowering economic well-being, and restricting freedom. The League play little role in the final act in 1846 when Sir Robert Peel led the successful battle for repeal. However, its experience provided a model that was widely adopted in Britain and other democratic nations to demonstrate the organisation of a political pressure group with the popular base.

Pound sterling

Pound sterling

Sterling is the currency of the United Kingdom and nine of its associated territories. The pound is the main unit of sterling, and the word "pound" is also used to refer to the British currency generally, often qualified in international contexts as the British pound or the pound sterling.

Exeter Hall

Exeter Hall

Exeter Hall was a large public meeting place on the north side of the Strand in central London, opposite where the Savoy Hotel now stands. From 1831 until 1907 Exeter Hall was the venue for many great gatherings by promoters of human betterment, most notably the anti-slavery movement.

Thomas Tooke

Thomas Tooke

Thomas Tooke was an English economist known for writing on money and economic statistics. After Tooke's death the Statistical Society endowed the Tooke Chair of economics at King's College London, and a Tooke Prize.

President of the Board of Trade

President of the Board of Trade

The President of the Board of Trade is head of the Board of Trade. This is a committee of the Privy Council of the United Kingdom, first established as a temporary committee of inquiry in the 17th century, that evolved gradually into a government department with a diverse range of functions. The current holder of the post is Kemi Badenoch, who is concurrently the Secretary of State for Business and Trade.

William Huskisson

William Huskisson

William Huskisson was a British statesman, financier, and Member of Parliament for several constituencies, including Liverpool.

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

Prime Minister of the United Kingdom

The prime minister of the United Kingdom is the head of government of the United Kingdom. The prime minister advises the sovereign on the exercise of much of the royal prerogative, chairs the Cabinet and selects its ministers. As modern prime ministers hold office by virtue of their ability to command the confidence of the House of Commons, they sit as members of Parliament.

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington

Arthur Wellesley, 1st Duke of Wellington, was an Anglo-Irish soldier and Tory statesman who was one of the leading military and political figures of 19th-century Britain, serving twice as prime minister of the United Kingdom. He is among the commanders who won and ended the Napoleonic Wars when the Seventh Coalition defeated Napoleon at the Battle of Waterloo in 1815.

Robert Peel

Robert Peel

Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served twice as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom simultaneously serving as Chancellor of the Exchequer (1834–1835) and twice as Home Secretary. He is regarded as the father of modern British policing, owing to his founding of the Metropolitan Police Service. Peel was one of the founders of the modern Conservative Party.

Charles Pelham Villiers

Charles Pelham Villiers

Charles Pelham Villiers was a British lawyer and politician from the aristocratic Villiers family. He sat in the House of Commons for 63 years, from 1835 to 1898, making him the longest-serving Member of Parliament (MP). He also holds the distinction of the oldest candidate to win a parliamentary seat, at 93. He was a radical and reformer who often collaborated with John Bright and had a noteworthy effect in the leadership of the Anti-Corn Law League, until its repeal in 1846. Lord Palmerston appointed him to the cabinet as president of the Poor-Law Board in 1859. His Public Works Act of 1863 opened job-creating schemes in public health projects. He progressed numerous other reforms, most notably the Metropolitan Poor Act of 1867. Florence Nightingale helped him formulate the reform, in particular, ensure professionalisation of nursing as part of the poor law regime, the workhouses of which erected public infirmaries under an Act of the same year. His political importance was overshadowed by his brother, the Earl of Clarendon, and undercut by the hostility of Gladstone.

The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times, which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1966. In general, the political position of The Times is considered to be centre-right.

The Spectator

The Spectator

The Spectator is a weekly British newsmagazine on politics, culture, and current affairs. It was first published in July 1828, making it the oldest surviving weekly magazine in the world.

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.[28] 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.[29] 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.[30][31]

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.[32] 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.[31] 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.[33]

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.[34]

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Charles Gordon-Lennox, 5th Duke of Richmond

Charles Gordon-Lennox, 5th Duke of Richmond

Charles Gordon-Lennox, 5th Duke of Richmond,, of Goodwood House near Chichester in West Sussex, was a British peer, soldier and prominent Conservative politician.

Central Agricultural Protection Society

Central Agricultural Protection Society

The Central Agricultural Protection Society was a British pressure group formed in February 1844 under the leadership of the Duke of Richmond (president) and the Duke of Buckingham and Chandos (vice-president) in order to campaign in favour of the retention of the Corn Laws.

Great Famine (Ireland)

Great Famine (Ireland)

The Great Famine, also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or simply the Famine and outside Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis which subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole. With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was dominant, the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as an Drochshaol, literally translated as "the bad life". The worst year of the period was 1847, which became known as "Black '47". During the Great Hunger, roughly 1 million people died and more than 1 million fled the country, causing the country's population to fall by 20–25% between 1841 and 1871. Between 1845 and 1855, at least 2.1 million people left Ireland, primarily on packet ships but also on steamboats and barques—one of the greatest exoduses from a single island in history.

Cabinet of the United Kingdom

Cabinet of the United Kingdom

The Cabinet of the United Kingdom is the senior decision-making body of His Majesty's Government. A committee of the Privy Council, it is chaired by the prime minister and its members include secretaries of state and other senior ministers.

Order in Council

Order in Council

An Order-in-Council is a type of legislation in many countries, especially the Commonwealth realms. In the United Kingdom this legislation is formally made in the name of the monarch by and with the advice and consent of the Privy Council (King-in-Council), but in other countries the terminology may vary. The term should not be confused with Order of Council, which is made in the name of the Council without royal assent.Mans is. znnsms

Parliament of the United Kingdom

Parliament of the United Kingdom

The Parliament of the United Kingdom is the supreme legislative body of the United Kingdom, the Crown Dependencies and the British Overseas Territories. It meets at the Palace of Westminster, London. It alone possesses legislative supremacy and thereby ultimate power over all other political bodies in the UK and the overseas territories. Parliament is bicameral but has three parts, consisting of the sovereign (King-in-Parliament), the House of Lords, and the House of Commons. In theory, power is officially vested in the King-in-Parliament. However, the Crown normally acts on the advice of the prime minister, and the powers of the House of Lords are limited to only delaying legislation; thus power is de facto vested in the House of Commons.

Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom)

Leader of the Opposition (United Kingdom)

The Leader of His Majesty's Most Loyal Opposition, more commonly referred to as the Leader of the Opposition, is the person who leads the Official Opposition in the United Kingdom. The position is seen as the shadow head of government of the United Kingdom.

City of London (UK Parliament constituency)

City of London (UK Parliament constituency)

The City of London was a United Kingdom Parliamentary constituency. It was a constituency of the House of Commons of the Parliament of England then of the Parliament of Great Britain from 1707 to 1800 and of the Parliament of the United Kingdom from 1801 to 1950.

The Times

The Times

The Times is a British daily national newspaper based in London. It began in 1785 under the title The Daily Universal Register, adopting its current name on 1 January 1788. The Times and its sister paper The Sunday Times are published by Times Newspapers, since 1981 a subsidiary of News UK, in turn wholly owned by News Corp. The Times and The Sunday Times, which do not share editorial staff, were founded independently and have only had common ownership since 1966. In general, the political position of The Times is considered to be centre-right.

Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby

Edward Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby

Edward George Geoffrey Smith-Stanley, 14th Earl of Derby,, known before 1834 as Edward Stanley, and from 1834 to 1851 as Lord Stanley) was a British statesman, three-time Prime Minister of the United Kingdom and, to date, the longest-serving leader of the Conservative Party. He was a scion of one of Britain's oldest, wealthiest and most powerful families. He is one of only four British prime ministers to have three or more separate periods in office. However, his ministries each lasted less than two years and totalled three years and 280 days. Derby introduced the state education system in Ireland, and reformed Parliament.

Queen Victoria

Queen Victoria

Victoria was Queen of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland from 20 June 1837 until her death in 1901. Her reign of 63 years and 216 days was longer than that of any previous British monarch and is known as the Victorian era. It was a period of industrial, political, scientific, and military change within the United Kingdom, and was marked by a great expansion of the British Empire. In 1876, the British Parliament voted to grant her the additional title of Empress of India.

Counties of the United Kingdom

Counties of the United Kingdom

The counties of the United Kingdom are subnational divisions of the United Kingdom, used for the purposes of administrative, geographical and political demarcation. The older term, shire is historically equivalent to county. By the Middle Ages, county had become established as the unit of local government, at least in England. By the early 17th century, all of England, Wales, Scotland, and Ireland had been separated into counties. In Scotland shire was the only term used until after the Act of Union 1707.

Repeal

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In 1845 and 1846, the first two years of Great Famine in Ireland, there was a disastrous fall in food supplies. Prime Minister Peel called for repeal despite the opposition of most of his Conservative Party. The Anti-Corn Law League played a minor role in the passage of legislation—it had paved the way through its agitation but was now on the sidelines.[35] On 27 January 1846, Peel gave his government's plan. He said that the Corn Laws would be abolished on 1 February 1849 after three years of gradual reductions of the tariff, leaving only a 1 shilling duty per quarter.[36] Benjamin Disraeli and Lord George Bentinck emerged as the most forceful opponents of repeal in parliamentary debates, arguing that repeal would weaken landowners socially and politically and therefore destroy the "territorial constitution" of Britain by empowering commercial interests.[37]

On the third reading of Peel's Bill of Repeal (Importation Act 1846) on 15 May, Members of Parliament (MPs) voted 327 votes to 229 (a majority of 98) to repeal the Corn Laws. On 25 June the Duke of Wellington persuaded the House of Lords to pass it. On that same night Peel's Irish Coercion Bill was defeated in the Commons by 292 to 219 by "a combination of Whigs, Radicals, and Tory protectionists."[38] The latter defeat forced Peel to resign as Prime Minister. In his resignation speech he attributed the success of repeal to Cobden:

In reference to our proposing these measures, I have no wish to rob any person of the credit which is justly due to him for them. But I may say that neither the gentlemen sitting on the benches opposite, nor myself, nor the gentlemen sitting round me—I say that neither of us are the parties who are strictly entitled to the merit. There has been a combination of parties, and that combination of parties together with the influence of the Government, has led to the ultimate success of the measures. But, Sir, there is a name which ought to be associated with the success of these measures: it is not the name of the noble Lord, the member for London, neither is it my name. Sir, the name which ought to be, and which will be associated with the success of these measures is the name of a man who, acting, I believe, from pure and disinterested motives, has advocated their cause with untiring energy, and by appeals to reason, expressed by an eloquence, the more to be admired because it was unaffected and unadorned—the name which ought to be and will be associated with the success of these measures is the name of Richard Cobden. Without scruple, Sir, I attribute the success of these measures to him.[39]

As a result, the Conservative Party divided and the Whigs formed a government with Russell as PM. Those Conservatives who were loyal to Peel were known as the Peelites and included the Earl of Aberdeen and William Ewart Gladstone. In 1859, the Peelites merged with the Whigs and the Radicals to form the Liberal Party. Disraeli became overall Conservative leader in 1868, although, when Prime Minister, he did not attempt to reintroduce protectionism.

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Wikisource

Wikisource

Wikisource is an online digital library of free-content textual sources on a wiki, operated by the Wikimedia Foundation. Wikisource is the name of the project as a whole and the name for each instance of that project ; multiple Wikisources make up the overall project of Wikisource. The project's aim is to host all forms of free text, in many languages, and translations. Originally conceived as an archive to store useful or important historical texts, it has expanded to become a general-content library. The project officially began on November 24, 2003 under the name Project Sourceberg, a play on the famous Project Gutenberg. The name Wikisource was adopted later that year and it received its own domain name.

Great Famine (Ireland)

Great Famine (Ireland)

The Great Famine, also known within Ireland as the Great Hunger or simply the Famine and outside Ireland as the Irish Potato Famine, was a period of starvation and disease in Ireland from 1845 to 1852 that constituted a historical social crisis which subsequently had a major impact on Irish society and history as a whole. With the most severely affected areas in the west and south of Ireland, where the Irish language was dominant, the period was contemporaneously known in Irish as an Drochshaol, literally translated as "the bad life". The worst year of the period was 1847, which became known as "Black '47". During the Great Hunger, roughly 1 million people died and more than 1 million fled the country, causing the country's population to fall by 20–25% between 1841 and 1871. Between 1845 and 1855, at least 2.1 million people left Ireland, primarily on packet ships but also on steamboats and barques—one of the greatest exoduses from a single island in history.

Lord George Bentinck

Lord George Bentinck

Lord William George Frederick Cavendish-Scott-Bentinck, better known as Lord George Bentinck, was an English Conservative politician and racehorse owner noted for his role in unseating Sir Robert Peel over the Corn Laws.

Reading (legislature)

Reading (legislature)

A reading of a bill is a stage of debate on the bill held by a general body of a legislature.

Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)

Member of Parliament (United Kingdom)

In the United Kingdom, a Member of Parliament (MP) is an individual elected to serve in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom.

House of Lords

House of Lords

The House of Lords, also known as the House of Peers, is the upper house of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. Membership is by appointment, heredity or official function. Like the House of Commons, it meets in the Palace of Westminster in London, England.

Radicals (UK)

Radicals (UK)

The Radicals were a loose parliamentary political grouping in Great Britain and Ireland in the early to mid-19th century who drew on earlier ideas of radicalism and helped to transform the Whigs into the Liberal Party.

Richard Cobden

Richard Cobden

Richard Cobden was an English Radical and Liberal politician, manufacturer, and a campaigner for free trade and peace. He was associated with the Anti-Corn Law League and the Cobden–Chevalier Treaty.

Peelite

Peelite

The Peelites were a breakaway dissident political faction of the British Conservative Party from 1846 to 1859. Initially led by Robert Peel, the former Prime Minister and Conservative Party leader in 1846, the Peelites supported free trade whilst the bulk of the Conservative Party remained protectionist. The Peelites later merged with the Whigs and Radicals to form the Liberal Party in 1859.

George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen

George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen

George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen,, styled Lord Haddo from 1791 to 1801, was a British statesman, diplomat and landowner, successively a Tory, Conservative and Peelite politician and specialist in foreign affairs. He served as Prime Minister from 1852 until 1855 in a coalition between the Whigs and Peelites, with Radical and Irish support. The Aberdeen ministry was filled with powerful and talented politicians, whom Aberdeen was largely unable to control and direct. Despite his trying to avoid this happening, it took Britain into the Crimean War, and fell when its conduct became unpopular, after which Aberdeen retired from politics.

William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone

William Ewart Gladstone was a British statesman and Liberal politician. In a career lasting over 60 years, he served for 12 years as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom, spread over four non-consecutive terms beginning in 1868 and ending in 1894. He also served as Chancellor of the Exchequer four times, for over 12 years.

Liberal Party (UK)

Liberal Party (UK)

The Liberal Party was one of the two major political parties in the United Kingdom, along with the Conservative Party, in the 19th and early 20th centuries. Beginning as an alliance of Whigs, free trade–supporting Peelites and reformist Radicals in the 1850s, by the end of the 19th century it had formed four governments under William Gladstone. Despite being divided over the issue of Irish Home Rule, the party returned to government in 1905 and won a landslide victory in the 1906 general election.

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.[40]

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."[41]

Effects of repeal

The price of wheat during the two decades after 1850 averaged 52 shillings a quarter.[42] 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.[43] 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.[44]

In 1877, the price of British-grown wheat averaged 56 shillings and 9 pence[j] 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%.).[45] 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,[46] despite agricultural labourers' wages being higher than those of Europe.[46] Agriculture's contribution to the national income was about 17% in 1871; by 1911 it was less than 7%.[47]

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."[48] 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.[46] 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.[49] "For twenty years," Ensor claimed, "the only chance for any young or enterprising person on the countryside was to get out of it."[49] 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.[50]

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.[51][52] However, unlike most other European governments, his government did not revive tariffs on imported cereals to save their farms and farmers.[53] Despite calls from landowners to reintroduce the Corn Laws, Disraeli responded by saying that the issue was settled and that protection was impracticable.[52] 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.[53] He also said that Britain staked its future on continuing to be "the workshop of the world," as the leading manufacturing nation.[49] 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.[54]

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.[55]

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.[56]

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.[57] 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.[58] During the Second World War in the Battle of the Atlantic, Germany tried again to starve Britain into surrender, but again was unsuccessful.[59]

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Llewellyn Woodward

Llewellyn Woodward

Sir Ernest Llewellyn Woodward, FBA (1890–1971) was a British historian. He was educated at Merchant Taylors' School and Corpus Christi College, Oxford, and after the First World War became a lecturer in Modern History and fellow of All Souls College from 1919 to 1944 and a fellow at New College from 1922 to 1939. Later he was Montague Burton Professor of International Relations (1944–1947) and then Professor of Modern History at Oxford. He later taught at Princeton University in the United States (1951–1962).

Prairie

Prairie

Prairies are ecosystems considered part of the temperate grasslands, savannas, and shrublands biome by ecologists, based on similar temperate climates, moderate rainfall, and a composition of grasses, herbs, and shrubs, rather than trees, as the dominant vegetation type. Temperate grassland regions include the Pampas of Argentina, Brazil and Uruguay, and the steppe of Ukraine, Russia and Kazakhstan. Lands typically referred to as "prairie" tend to be in North America. The term encompasses the area referred to as the Interior Lowlands of Canada, the United States, and Mexico, which includes all of the Great Plains as well as the wetter, hillier land to the east.

Russian Empire

Russian Empire

The Russian Empire was an empire and the final period of the Russian monarchy from 1721 to 1917, ruling across large parts of Eurasia. It succeeded the Tsardom of Russia following the Treaty of Nystad, which ended the Great Northern War. The rise of the Russian Empire coincided with the decline of neighbouring rival powers: the Swedish Empire, the Polish–Lithuanian Commonwealth, Qajar Iran, the Ottoman Empire, and Qing China. It also held colonies in North America between 1799 and 1867. Covering an area of approximately 22,800,000 square kilometres (8,800,000 sq mi), it remains the third-largest empire in history, surpassed only by the British Empire and the Mongol Empire; it ruled over a population of 125.6 million people per the 1897 Russian census, the only census carried out during the entire imperial period. Owing to its geographic extent across three continents at its peak, it featured great ethnic, linguistic, religious, and economic diversity.

Belgium

Belgium

Belgium, officially the Kingdom of Belgium, is a country in Northwestern Europe. The country is bordered by the Netherlands to the north, Germany to the east, Luxembourg to the southeast, France to the southwest, and the North Sea to the northwest. It covers an area of 30,528 km2 (11,787 sq mi) and has a population of more than 11.5 million, making it the 22nd most densely populated country in the world and the 6th most densely populated country in Europe, with a density of 376/km2 (970/sq mi). Belgium is part of an area known as the Low Countries, historically a somewhat larger region than the Benelux group of states, as it also included parts of northern France. The capital and largest city is Brussels; other major cities are Antwerp, Ghent, Charleroi, Liège, Bruges, Namur, and Leuven.

Census in the United Kingdom

Census in the United Kingdom

Coincident full censuses have taken place in the different jurisdictions of the United Kingdom every ten years since 1801, with the exceptions of 1941, Ireland in 1921/Northern Ireland in 1931, and Scotland in 2021. In addition to providing detailed information about national demographics, the results of the census play an important part in the calculation of resource allocation to regional and local service providers by the UK government.

Robert Ensor

Robert Ensor

Sir Robert Charles Kirkwood Ensor was a British writer, poet, journalist, liberal intellectual and historian. He is best known for England: 1870-1914 (1936), a volume in the Oxford History of England series edited by George Clark.

Robert Blake, Baron Blake

Robert Blake, Baron Blake

Robert Norman William Blake, Baron Blake,, was an English historian and peer. He is best known for his 1966 biography of Benjamin Disraeli, and for The Conservative Party from Peel to Churchill, which grew out of his 1968 Ford lectures.

World War I

World War I

World War I or the First World War, often abbreviated as WWI, was one of the deadliest global conflicts in history. It was fought between two coalitions, the Allies and the Central Powers. Fighting occurred throughout Europe, the Middle East, Africa, the Pacific, and parts of Asia. An estimated 9 million soldiers were killed in combat, plus another 23 million wounded, while 5 million civilians died as a result of military action, hunger, and disease. Millions more died as a result of genocide, while the 1918 Spanish flu pandemic was exacerbated by the movement of combatants during the war.

Atlantic U-boat campaign of World War I

Atlantic U-boat campaign of World War I

The Atlantic U-boat campaign of World War I was the prolonged naval conflict between German submarines and the Allied navies in Atlantic waters—the seas around the British Isles, the North Sea and the coast of France.

World War II

World War II

World War II or the Second World War, often abbreviated as WWII or WW2, was a global conflict that lasted from 1939 to 1945. The vast majority of the world's countries, including all of the great powers, fought as part of two opposing military alliances: the Allies and the Axis. Many participants threw their economic, industrial, and scientific capabilities behind this total war, blurring the distinction between civilian and military resources. Aircraft played a major role, enabling the strategic bombing of population centres and the delivery of the only two nuclear weapons ever used in war.

Battle of the Atlantic

Battle of the Atlantic

The Battle of the Atlantic, the longest continuous military campaign in World War II, ran from 1939 to the defeat of Nazi Germany in 1945, covering a major part of the naval history of World War II. At its core was the Allied naval blockade of Germany, announced the day after the declaration of war, and Germany's subsequent counter-blockade. The campaign peaked from mid-1940 through to the end of 1943.

Source: "Corn Laws", Wikipedia, Wikimedia Foundation, (2023, March 22nd), https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Corn_Laws.

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Further Reading

Robert Peel

United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland

Charles Pelham Villiers

Richard Cobden

Anti-Corn Law League

1852 United Kingdom general election

Sir James Graham, 2nd Baronet

Lord George Bentinck

Second Peel ministry

Commercial treaty

Chronology of the Great Famine

Great Recoinage of 1816

Henry Ashworth (nonconformist)

History of taxation in the United Kingdom
See also
Notes
  1. ^ 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—a significant triumph which was indicative of the new political power of the English middle class."[1]
  2. ^ About £324 today
  3. ^ A 'quarter' was a unit of volume rather than of weight but a 'quarter of wheat' weighed about 224 kg (494 lb). (The density of wheat is 0.770,[9] and a quarter by volume (64 gallons) equates to 291 litres, multiplied by 0.770 gives 224 kg).
  4. ^ or £4, about £280 today, Inflation between 1775 and 1815 was substantial, so 80s in 1813 was actually worth less than 44s in 1773.
  5. ^ Price comparisons between this period and modern times are mainly based on the work of economists Henry Phelps Brown and Sheila Hopkins, published in 2004.[14] For comparison, international wheat prices from 2010 to 2018 have been in the range of £100–£225 per tonne. (Where a value given in this article is preceded by the word 'about', this indicates that the modern equivalent value has been arrived at by reference to the general index of consumer prices rather than a specific index for grains). £1,102 in 2004 is about £1,800 today.
  6. ^ about £237 in 2021
  7. ^ about £158 in 2021
  8. ^ about £333 in 2021
  9. ^ about £5 in 2021
  10. ^ £2/16/9, about £284 in 2021
References
  1. ^ Cody, D (1987). "Corn Laws". The Victorian Web: literature, history and culture in the age of Victoria. Retrieved 16 September 2007.
  2. ^ Williamson, Jeffrey G (1 April 1990). "The impact of the Corn Laws just prior to repeal". Explorations in Economic History. 27 (2): 123–156. doi:10.1016/0014-4983(90)90007-L.
  3. ^ Ronald, Findlay; H, O'Rourke, Kevin (1 January 2003). "Commodity Market Integration, 1500–2000". NBER: 13–64.
  4. ^ Harley, C. Knick (2004). "Trade: Discovery, mercantilism and technology". Trade: discovery, mercantilism and technology (Chapter7) – The Cambridge Economic History of Modern Britain. Cambridge Core. pp. 175–203. doi:10.1017/CHOL9780521820363.008. ISBN 9781139053853. Retrieved 27 June 2017.
  5. ^ Irwin, Douglas A; Chepeliev, Maksym G (2021). "The Economic Consequences of Sir Robert Peel: A Quantitative Assessment of the Repeal of the Corn Laws*". The Economic Journal. 131 (640): 3322–3337. doi:10.1093/ej/ueab029. ISSN 0013-0133.
  6. ^ Sutherland 2008, pp. 535, 552.
  7. ^ a b Sutherland 2008, p. 543.
  8. ^ Stevenson, John (1987). Fletcher, Anthony (ed.). Order and disorder in early modern England. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 230–231. ISBN 9780521349321.
  9. ^ "Bulk densities of some common food products". engineeringtoolbox.com. Retrieved 19 January 2020.
  10. ^ MacPherson, David (1805). Annals of Commerce, Manufactures, Fisheries, and Navigation with Brief Notices of the Arts and Sciences Connected with Them: Containing the Commercial Transactions of the British Empire and Other Countries, Volume III. London: Nichols and Son. pp. 537–538.
  11. ^ Sutherland 2008, pp. 554–555.
  12. ^ The corn laws
  13. ^ de Morgan, Augustus (1830). The Elements of Arithmetic (1st ed.). London: Taylor. p. 100. OCLC 22852767.
  14. ^ O'Donoghue, Jim; Goulding, Louise (March 2004). "Consumer Price Inflation since 1750". Economic Trends (604): 38.
  15. ^ a b Woodward 1962, p. 61.
  16. ^ Sir Thomas Edlyne Tomlins; John Raithby; Nicholas Simons; Charles Dacres Bevan; Sir George Kettilby Rickards (1816). The statutes of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Ireland. Printed by G. Eyre and A. Strahan, printers to the King. pp. 50–51.
  17. ^ Hirst, p. 15.
  18. ^ "Littleport's hunger riots: Descendants mark 200th anniversary". BBC News. 28 May 2016. Retrieved 28 May 2016. including the Ely and Littleport riots of 1816
  19. ^ Hirst, p. 16.
  20. ^ Schonhardt-Bailey 2006, p. 9.
  21. ^ a b Schonhardt-Bailey 2006, p. 10.
  22. ^ Semmel, p. 143.
  23. ^ Asa Briggs, The Making of Modern England 1783–1867: The Age of Improvement (1959) p 314
  24. ^ Marx, Chapter X, 'The Working Day'
  25. ^ Wilson, David Alec; MacArthur, David Wilson (1934). Carlyle in Old Age. London. p. 386.
  26. ^ The Gentleman's Magazine, 1850, pp. 94–6.
  27. ^ Bright and Thorold Rogers, p. 129.
  28. ^ Hirst, p. 33.
  29. ^ Woodham-Smith 1991, p. 165.
  30. ^ The Times (27 November 1845), p. 5.
  31. ^ a b Morley, p. 344.
  32. ^ Pearce, Edward (2000). The Diaries of Charles Greville. London: Pimlico. pp. 237–238.
  33. ^ Pearce, Edward (2000). The Diaries of Charles Greville. London: Pimlico. pp. 238–240.
  34. ^ Coleman, p. 134.
  35. ^ Mary Lawson-Tancred, "The Anti-League and the Corn Law Crisis of 1846." Historical Journal (1960) 3#2 pp: 162–183. in JSTOR
  36. ^ Hirst, p. 35.
  37. ^ Coleman, p. 135–136.
  38. ^ Schonhardt-Bailey 2006, p. 239.
  39. ^ Morley, p. 388.
  40. ^ Lusztig, Michael (1994). "Solving Peel's puzzle: Repeal of the Corn Laws and institutional preservation". Comparative Politics. 27 (1): 393–408. doi:10.2307/422226. JSTOR 422226.
  41. ^ Irwin, Douglas A. (1 March 1989). "Political Economy and Peel's Repeal of the Corn Laws". Economics & Politics. 1 (1): 41–59. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0343.1989.tb00004.x. ISSN 1468-0343.
  42. ^ Woodward 1962, p. 124.
  43. ^ Woodward 1962, pp. 124–125.
  44. ^ Ensor 1936, pp. 115–116.
  45. ^ Ensor 1936, p. 116.
  46. ^ a b c Ensor 1936, p. 117.
  47. ^ E. J. Feuchtwanger, Democracy and Empire: Britain 1865–1914 (London: Edward Arnold, 1985), p. 116.
  48. ^ Ensor 1936, p. 115, 117.
  49. ^ a b c Ensor 1936, p. 118.
  50. ^ Ensor 1936, p. 119.
  51. ^ William Flavelle Monypenny and George Earle Buckle, The Life of Benjamin Disraeli, Earl of Beaconsfield. Volume II. 1860–1881 (London: John Murray, 1929), p. 1242.
  52. ^ a b Blake 1966, p. 698.
  53. ^ a b Ensor 1936, p. 54.
  54. ^ Blake 1966, pp. 698–699.
  55. ^ Vugt, William E. van (1988). "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. 41 (3): 411–428. doi:10.1111/j.1468-0289.1988.tb00473.x.
  56. ^ O'Rourke, Kevin (1994). "The repeal of the corn laws and Irish emigration". Explorations in Economic History. 31 (1): 120–138. doi:10.1006/exeh.1994.1005.
  57. ^ Arthur Marwick, The Deluge: British Society and the First World War. Second Edition (London: Macmillan, 1991), p. 58.
  58. ^ Correlli Barnett, Engage the Enemy More Closely: The Royal Navy and the Second World War (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1992), p. 14.
  59. ^ Barnett, pp. 575–576.
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