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The Anti-Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed at the abolition of the unpopular
Corn Laws
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 wer ...
, 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 played 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.
Corn Laws
The Corn Laws were taxes on imported grain introduced in 1815, and designed to keep prices high for cereal producers in Great Britain. The laws indeed did raise
food prices
Food prices refer to the average price level for food across countries, regions and on a global scale. Food prices have an impact on producers and consumers of food.
Price levels depend on the food production process, including food marketing ...
, and became the focus of opposition from urban groups who had less political power than rural Britain. The corn laws initially prohibited foreign corn completely from being imported at below 80s a quarter, a process replaced by a sliding scale in 1828. Such import duties still made it expensive for anyone to import grain from other countries, even when food supplies were short. The laws were supported by
Conservative
Conservatism is a cultural, social, and political philosophy that seeks to promote and to preserve traditional institutions, practices, and values. The central tenets of conservatism may vary in relation to the culture and civilization in ...
(and
Whig) landowners, and opposed by urban industrialists and workers. The League was responsible for turning public and elite opinion against the laws. It was a large, nationwide middle-class moral crusade with a utopian vision. Its leading advocate
Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden (3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) 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.
As a you ...
, according to historian
Asa Briggs
Asa Briggs, Baron Briggs (7 May 1921 – 15 March 2016) was an English historian. He was a leading specialist on the Victorian era, and the foremost historian of broadcasting in Britain. Briggs achieved international recognition during his lon ...
, 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
The Condition-of-England question was a debate in the Victorian era over the issue of the English working-class during the Industrial Revolution. It was first proposed by Thomas Carlyle in his essay ''Chartism'' (1839). After assessing Chartism ...
' 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.'
The League
The first Anti-Corn Law Association was set up in London in 1836; but it was not until 1838 that the nationwide League, combining all such local associations, was founded, with
Richard Cobden
Richard Cobden (3 June 1804 – 2 April 1865) 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.
As a you ...
and
John Bright
John Bright (16 November 1811 – 27 March 1889) was a British Radical and Liberal statesman, one of the greatest orators of his generation and a promoter of free trade policies.
A Quaker, Bright is most famous for battling the Corn La ...
among its leaders. Cobden was the chief strategist; Bright was its great orator. A representative activist was
Thomas Perronet Thompson
Thomas Perronet Thompson (1783–1869) was a British Parliamentarian, a governor of Sierra Leone and a radical reformer. He became prominent in 1830s and 1840s as a leading activist in the Anti-Corn Law League. He specialized in the grass-root ...
, who specialized in the grass-roots mobilisation of opinion through pamphlets, newspaper articles, correspondence, speeches, and endless local planning meetings. The League was based in Manchester and had support from numerous industrialists, especially in the textile industry.
The League borrowed many of the tactics first developed by the anti-slavery crusaders, while also attempting to replicate its mantle of moral reform. Among these were the use of emotionally charged meetings and closely argued tracts: nine million were distributed by a staff of 800 in 1843 alone. The League also used its financial strength and campaign resources to defeat protectionists at by-elections by enfranchising League supporters through giving them a 40 shilling freehold: the strategy certainly alarmed the
Tories
A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. The ...
, but was expensive and led to numerous defeats, which the League blamed on the tyrannical power of the landlords. One of the most nationally visible efforts came in the 1843 election in Salisbury. Its candidate was defeated and it was unable to convince voters regarding free trade. The political parties in the 1830s targeted bigger cities for more support on 'free trade'. However, the League did learn lessons that helped to transform its political tactics. It learned to concentrate on elections where there was a good expectation of victory.
Nevertheless, the League had a restricted capability for contesting electoral seats, and its role in the final act of 1846 was largely that of creating a favourable climate of opinion. 1845 saw
Lord John Russell
John Russell, 1st Earl Russell, (18 August 1792 – 28 May 1878), known by his courtesy title Lord John Russell before 1861, was a British Whig and Liberal statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 1846 to 1852 and a ...
, the Whig leader, declare for complete repeal of the corn duty as the only way to satisfy the League; while the Tory leader, Sir
Robert Peel, had also been privately won over by Cobden's reasoning to the league's way of thinking. When the crunch came, Peel put through a (staggered) repeal through Parliament without a general election, to the applause of Cobden and Bright.
The League then prepared to dissolve itself. The Tory victory of 1852 saw preparations to revive the League, however, in order to keep a watching brief on Protectionist forces; and it was only after
Disraeli
Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl of Beaconsfield, (21 December 1804 – 19 April 1881) was a British statesman and Conservative Party (UK), Conservative politician who twice served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom. He played a centr ...
’s 1852 budget that Cobden felt able to write to
George Wilson: “The Budget has finally closed the controversy with Protection... The League may be dissolved when you like”. Many of its members thereafter continued their political activism in the
Liberal Party
The Liberal Party is any of many political parties around the world. The meaning of ''liberal'' varies around the world, ranging from liberal conservatism on the right to social liberalism on the left.
__TOC__ Active liberal parties
This is a li ...
, with the goal of establishing a fully free-trade economy.
W.H. Chaloner argues that the repeal in 1846 marked a major turning point, making free trade the national policy into the 20th century, and demonstrating the power of "Manchester-school" industrial interests over protectionist agricultural interests. He says repeal stabilized wheat prices in the 1850s and 1860s; however other technical developments caused the fall of wheat prices from 1870 to 1894.
Model for other lobbying organisations
The League marked the emergence of the first powerful national lobbying group into politics, one with a centralized office, consistency of purpose, rich funding, very strong local and national organization, and single-minded dedicated leaders. It elected men to Parliament. Many of its procedures were innovative, while others were borrowed from the anti-slavery movement. It became the model for later reform movements.
The model of the League led to the formation of the Lancashire Public School Association to campaign for free, locally financed and controlled secular education in Lancashire. It later became the National Public School Association. It had little success because national secular education, was a divisive issue even among the radical groups. However, it did help convert the Liberal Party from its laissez-faire philosophy to that of a more interventionist character.
Historian A. C. Howe argues:
:Although historians remain divided on the impact of the league on Peel's decision to abandon the corn laws it was undoubtedly, in appearance, the most successful of nineteenth-century single-issue pressure groups, in its ability to generate enthusiasm, support, and unparalleled financial backing. Although its potential was not realized, it had shown the capacity for an extra-parliamentary middle-class organization to reshape politics so as to reflect the anti-aristocratic objectives of a determined band of entrepreneurial politicians.
:It remained the model for many diverse pressure groups, for example the United Kingdom Alliance, the National Educational League, the Navy League, the Tenant League in Ireland, and the National Society in Piedmont, as well as those specifically related to free trade, including the Edwardian Tariff Reform League and Free Trade Union, and in the 1950s S. W. Alexander's Anti-Dear Food League. It also inspired imitators in France, Germany, the Low Countries, Spain, and the United States. The league had only temporarily reshaped the landscape of parliamentary politics but it had helped create a vibrant popular attachment to free trade within British political culture that would last well into the twentieth century.
Critics
*
Thomas Carlyle
Thomas Carlyle (4 December 17955 February 1881) was a Scottish essayist, historian and philosopher. A leading writer of the Victorian era, he exerted a profound influence on 19th-century art, literature and philosophy.
Born in Ecclefechan, Dum ...
declined invitations to lend support for the league, despite his opposition to the Corn Laws. He wrote to
Thomas Ballantyne in January 1840: "the abrogation of the Corn-Laws seems to be the cause of the Middle Classes and manufacturing Capitalists still ''more'' than it is that of the Lower Classes,—whose wretched social situation, however it might be alleviated for a few years, could in no wise, as I think, be ''cured'' thereby, nor even, without other provisoes, be put more decisively on the way towards cure".
*
R. S. Surtees satirized the league in his 1845 novel,
Hillingdon Hall. His cockney protagonist refers to “the ‘umbuggery of its ways...strong symptoms of utilitarian self-interest”; while a roguish actor is shown being couched as a paid lecturer for the League: “you have nothing to do but repeat the same old story over and over again…. Whatever is wrong, lay it to the corn tax. If a man can’t pay his Christmas bills, attribute it to the bread tax”.
[R S Surtees, ''Hillingdon Hall'' (Stroud 2006) pp. 39, 44–47]
See also
*
Manchester Liberalism
Manchester Liberalism (also called the Manchester School, Manchester Capitalism and Manchesterism) comprises the political, economic and social movements of the 19th century that originated in Manchester, England. Led by Richard Cobden and John ...
*
Canada Corn Act
*
Meat riots
The Meat riot (Spanish: ''Huelga de la carne''), in the Chilean capital Santiago in October 1905, was a violent riot that originated from a demonstration against the tariffs applied to the cattle imports from Argentina. Primeros movimientos soc ...
Notes
Further reading
Scholarly studies
* Ausubel, Herman. ''John Bright: Victorian Reformer'' (1966), a standard scholarly biography
online* Briggs, Asa. ''The Making of Modern England 1783–1867: The Age of Improvement'' (1959) pp. 312–325, short interpretive history
online* Briggs, Asa. "Cobden and Bright" ''History Today'' (Aug 1957) 7#8 pp. 496–503.
* Chaloner, W. H. "The Anti-Corn Law League," ''History Today'' (1968) 18#3 pp. 196–204
* Edsall, Nicholas C. ''Richard Cobden, independent radical'' (Harvard University Press, 1986)
* Evans, Eric J. "The politics of pressure: II The Anti-Corn-Law League." in ''The Forging of the Modern State'' (Routledge, 2014). 371–380.
* Gilbert, R. A. "John Bright's contribution to the Anti‐Corn Law League." ''Western Speech'' (1970) 34#1 pp. 16–20.
* Halévy, Elie. ''Victorian years, 1841–1895'' (Vol. 4) (Barnes & Noble, 1961) pp. 3–150; narrative history
* Hinde, Wendy. ''Richard Cobden: A Victorian Outsider'' (Yale University Press, 1987.)
*
Howe, Anthony. ''Free Trade and Liberal England. 1846–1946'' (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1997).
* Lawson-Tancred, Mary. "The Anti-League and the Corn Law Crisis of 1846". ''Historical Journal'' (1960) 3#2 pp. 162–183.
* McCord, Norman: ''The Anti-Corn Law League 1838–1846''. (Allen & Unwin, 1958)
* Miller, Henry. "The Anti-Corn Law Campaign." in ''Campaigning for Change'' (2017): 55–66
online
* Mosse, George L. "The Anti-League: 1844–1846." ''Economic History Review'' (1947) 17#2 pp. 134–142
in JSTOR the organized opposition to the League
* Pickering, Paul A and Alex Tyrrell. ''The people's bread, a history of the Anti-Corn Law League''. (Leicester University Press, 2000, )
* Prentice, Archibald. ''History of the Anti-Corn Law League'' (Routledge, 2013)
* Smith, George Barnett. ''The Life and Speeches of the Right Honourable John Bright, MP'' (1881
online* Spall, Richard Francis Spall Jr. "Free Trade, Foreign Relations, and the Anti-Corn-Law League," ''International History Review'' 10#3 (1988), pp. 405–43
online*
* Trentmann, Frank. ''Free Trade Nation. Commerce, Consumption, and Civil Society in Modern Britain'' (Oxford University Press, 2008).
Historiography
* Loades, David Michael, ed. ''Reader's guide to British history'' (Fitzroy Dearborn Publishers, 2003) vol 1. pp. 56–57, 185–186, 283–284
Contemporary publications
* Ashworth, Henry: ''Recollections of Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League'', 2 editions, London 1876 and 1881
* Bright, John: ''Speeches of John Bright, M.P., on the American Question.'' With an introduction by
Frank Moore.
ith a portrait. Boston: Little, Brown & Co., 1865.
* Leech, H. J. (ed.): ''The public letters of the Right Hon. John Bright''. London: Low, Marston & Co., 1895. Reprint New York: Kraus Reprint, 1969.
*
Prentice, Archibald: ''History of the Anti-Corn Law League''. London: Cash. 1853, 2 vol.; 2. ed. with a new introduction. by W. H. Chaloner. (London: Cass. 1968. and New York: Kelley. )
*
Rogers, Thorold (ed.): ''Speeches on Questions of Public Policy, by John Bright, M.P.''. 1868.
*
Rogers, Thorold (ed.): ''Public Addresses''. 1879.
* Archibald Philipp Primrose (Earl of Rosebery): ''Lord Rosebery's Speech on the Anti-Corn Law League and Free Trade, Manchester 1897''. London: Cobden Club, 1898.
*
Smith, George Barnett: ''The Life and Speeches of the Right Hon. John Bright, M.P.'', 2 vols., 1881.
*
Vince, Charles: ''John Bright'' (1898); ''Speeches on Parliamentary Reform by John Bright, M.P.'', revised by Himself (1866).
External links
The Online Library of Liberty Liberty Fund
Liberty Fund, Inc. is an American private educational foundation headquartered in Carmel, founded by Pierre F. Goodrich. Through publishing, conferences, and educational resources, the operating mandate of the Liberty Fund was set forth in an un ...
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Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League
{{Authority control
1838 establishments in the United Kingdom
19th century in the United Kingdom
Economic history of the United Kingdom