Corn Laws

Corn Laws. First passed in 1815, these were always a controversial measure of agricultural protection. Britain's fast-growing population was making the country a food importer rather than exporter as before. The French wars had forced up domestic prices and encouraged agricultural investment, so there was fear of a post-war collapse of prices. Despite protests in some cities, Parliament passed a Corn Law that prohibited the importation of wheat until the domestic price reached 80 shillings a quarter. (Other cereals had similar provisions.) The 1820s still suffered agricultural depression despite a high ceiling for corn prices in years of poor harvests. In 1828 a sliding scale was introduced, which meant that duties would reduce as prices rose and vice versa. Despite this trend to easier importation, the Corn Laws soon came under fierce attack from the Anti-Corn Law League centred in the Lancashire cotton industry, which blamed recurrent industrial depressions on agricultural protection. It was also attacked as a system and symbol of aristocratic privilege. Under pressure the Whig government proposed to move to a fixed duty in 1841 but lost the election to the largely protectionist Conservatives. Peel, alarmed by the industrial crisis of 1842 and fearing the conjunction of high food prices with league agitation and mass unemployment, concluded that political stability required a sacrifice of the Corn Laws. Using the Irish potato famine of 1845 as an excuse, he proposed total repeal. This betrayal of party commitments and the landed interest produced a revolt of Conservative backbenchers and the farmers, led by the Central Agricultural Protection Society. Though Peel carried repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 with full effect from 1849, he split his party into a free-trading minority and a protectionist majority. Only in 1852 did the latter abandon the idea of protection. Other free-trade measures followed and Corn Law repeal came to be seen as symbolizing the triumph of liberal and free-trading ideas. The main effect of repeal was delayed until the 1870s when cheap transatlantic grain flooded in and produced both sharp falls in food prices and acute agricultural depression. The United Kingdom was unusual among advanced countries in abandoning agricultural protection.

Bruce Coleman