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How the Corn Laws sparked a 19th-century political civil crisis
In the 1840s, Britain was pitched into a huge political battle over the price of bread. The Corn Law crisis triggered a bitter civil war in the Tory party – and, writes Stephen Bates, threatened
thousands with starvation
For 30 years in the first half of the 19th century, Britain was obsessed with the price of bread. Waves of unrest swept the country as bad harvests, food shortages and dire living conditions stalked the poorest in society. Calls for parliamentary reform grew ever more insistent as citizens demanded that politicians be more responsive to their hardships. The first modern pressure groups – among them the Chartists – hounded the government regularly.
At the heart of this political and social turbulence was a growing row over the cost of food – an imbroglio we now know as the Corn Law crisis. On one side of the argument stood those who argued for strict tariffs on the import of foreign cereals into Britain; on the other were those who contended that such restrictions were bad for the economy and bad for those at the bottom of the nation’s social ladder.
When the two sides clashed in the 1840s, what followed was a parliamentary battle every bit as divisive as the struggle over Brexit, and a Tory civil war so bitter that it kept the party out of majority power for nearly 30 years. In 1845, the Tory home secretary James Graham wrote: “We have lost the slight hold which we ever possessed over the hearts and feelings of our followers.” He was thinking of the Tory backbenchers, but his words could have been echoed 175 years later in our own time.
A slump in prices
family for a couple of days, surged to more than a shilling in 1817. This came at a time when cotton spinners had seen their earnings halved to about 12 shillings a week and farm labourers earned only seven shillings. The consequences for the poor could be catastrophic. It is hardly surprising that there was a direct correlation between price rises and a surge of political agitation during the four years following the end of the war.
Meanwhile, as the industrial revolution made Britain the most dynamic economy in the world, calls for the removal of tariffs to benefit trade were growing louder. Free trade was becoming the period’s dominant economic theory: its proponents argued it would boost economic output, stimulate employment for a growing population and lead to happier workers. Increased international trade would, it was confidently predicted, improve international peace and harmony.
There had been import restrictions on cereals for centuries, intended to stabilise prices and prevent commodity speculation. But it wasn’t until the end of the Napoleonic Wars that the government introduced restrictions intended to exclude foreign cereals altogether – by passing the 1815 Corn Law. With prices slumping following war with France, farmers and landowners were anxious to protect their harvests, even if it made the most staple food dearer for workers and their families. While there was a case for making British agriculture self-sufficient, and improving yields through more efficient farming, the landowning lobby was by far the most important in parliament and it demanded protection.
The 1815 Corn Law prohibited grain imports until domestic prices reached 80 shillings a quarter (a quarter being 480lbs or about a fifth of a tonne) – which they never did in the 30 years of its operation. When harvests were poor, as they were for several years in the aftermath of the war, bread prices rose. A four-pound loaf, which could feed a
A baker kneads dough, 1823. The price of bread surged following a series of bad harvests
Agriculture would have to become more efficient to meet demand, and if food was cheaper, wages could be lowered.
By the time Sir Robert Peel was returned to power as prime minister in 1841 with a sizeable Tory majority over the Whigs, he accepted this argument. The first party leader to come from a manufacturing rather than a landed background, Peel was the dominant figure in his party and in the Commons.
Immensely wealthy from his family’s calico printing business, Peel was not only intellectually distinguished but had been in government service on and off as a minister for 30 years. His had been a professional political career, not an exercise in dilettantism. He was stiff and formal – famously described by Daniel O’Connell as having a smile like the silver plate on a coffin lid – and he regarded his backbench colleagues with disdain. They did not understand the economic arguments, not studying them diligently as he did. “How can those who spend their time in hunting and shooting and eating and drinking know what are the motives of those… who have access to the best information and have no other object under Heaven but to… answer the general interests of all classes?” he wrote to his wife, Julia, in 1845. In his view, as in the hunting field, “heads see, but tails follow”. This was a metaphor, he reasoned, such backbenchers ought to understand.
In return, many Tories viewed Peel with suspicion. He had ratted once, changing his mind from being a firm opponent of Catholic emancipation – ‘Orange Peel’ – to accepting
The Corn Law crisis sparked a Tory civil war so bitter that it kept the party out of majority power for 30 years