1845] ANTI-CORN-LAW LEAGUE 131 But London had meetings, and otherwise advanced the cause. proved unsuited to its exertions, and the headquarters of the agitation had been removed to Manchester, where in 1838 a petition in favour of the repeal of all corn duties had been adopted by a large majority in the Chamber of Commerce. The Corn Law reformers appeared to be undertaking an almost hopeless task. The large majority of Parliament, both Whig and Tory, were connected with the land, yearly motions against the Corn Laws were thrown out by overwhelming majorities, and the opposition of the working men themselves, at that time engaged in their Chartist movements under the leadership of Feargus O'Connor, presented a still further difficulty. But they persisted, and in 1839 changed the Association into the Anti-Corn-Law League, with a regular organisation centred in Manchester. Cobden, Bright, Potter, Wilson, and others carried on the work indefatigably. Twice a day for six years the Council met in Market Street, Manchester, to transact the business of the League. Tracts and pamphlets poured over the country. Lecturers went from town to town and village to village. An enormous hall was erected in Manchester. Lord John Russell's proposal in 1841 for a low fixed duty gave them further encouragement, nor could they doubt, when this plan was rejected, and Sir Robert Peel began his alterations in the tariff, that their arguments were making way. The agitation was redoubled. A vast free-trade bazaar in Manchester in 1842 produced £10,000. A body of Anti-Corn-Law delegates watched the proceedings of Parliament in London. Enormous meetings were held in Drury Lane Theatre, and in the open air at Bedford, Maidstone, and Carlisle. It was determined to rent Covent Garden Theatre for fifty nights, and to raise £100,000, and at length The Times, which had constantly opposed the agitation, was compelled to confess that the "League was a great fact." Important adhesions were of frequent occurrence; and, gaining confidence in their success, the League turned its attention towards the next election, strained every effort to get free-trade voters upon the register, and to induce those interested in their cause to invest in 40s. freeholds, and to claim their vote for the county. The pecuniary history of the League was thus strikingly narrated by Mr. Bright : "In the year 1839 we first asked for subscriptions, and £5000 was given. In 1840 we asked for more, and between £7000 and £8000 was subscribed. In 1841 we held the great Conference at Manchester at which upwards of 700 ministers of religion attended. In 1842 we had our great bazaar in Manchester from which £10,000 was real ised. In 1843 we asked for £50,000 and got it. In 1844 we called for £100,000, and between £80,000 and £90,000 has been paid in, besides what will be received from the bazaar to be held in May. This year is yet young, but we have not been idle. We have asked our free-trade friends in the northern counties to convert some of their property, so as to be able to defend their right and properties at the hustings. This has been done, and it now appears that, at the recommendation of the Council of the League, our friends in Lancashire, Cheshire, and Yorkshire have invested a sum of not less than £250,000 in the purchase of county qualifications. Besides all this, we shall have our great bazaar in May." Peel's conversion to the League. A movement so vigorous, so constantly on the increase, was exactly calculated to influence Sir Robert Peel. To his mind, already wavering, was presented the problem of the approaching famine in Ireland. The distress was not confined to that country; it was visible also in Scotland, and to some degree in England. In other parts of Europe the disease had made its appearance. Belgium, Russia, and Holland had already closed their ports to exportation, with a view of retaining their food supply, and had relaxed for the time the stringency of their import duties. It might seem that the adoption of some such measures were more imperatively called for in Ireland than elsewhere. For side by side with the blighted potato there had grown an unusually large crop of corn of which thousands of quarters were weekly exported to the English market. The rent-paying crop was good, and was sold; the food crop had disappeared. Peel's thoughts were however turned in a different direction. The remedial measure which suggested itself to him was to lower the price of corn by remission of the protective duties. But Peel felt, and felt truly, that to relax the Corn Laws was practically to abolish them. In the first place it was a confession that the arrangements of his sliding-scale failed upon the first pressure; and secondly, in the face of the growing power of the League, a restoration of the duties would be impossible. A Cabinet was summoned on the 1st of November to discuss the question, and there the Prime Minister laid before his colleagues his own view of the matter. It became evident that there were serious differences of opinion, and the Cabinet was adjourned till the 6th. It was then proposed to suspend by Order of Council the duties on importation of grain, to summon Parliament immediately on the 27th to sanction the Order, and to declare the intention of the Government to modify the Corn Law in the next Opposition of the Cabinet. Nov. 6. 1845] FREE-TRADE VICTORY 133 session. Three Ministers only-Lord Aberdeen, Sir James Graham, and Mr. Sidney Herbert-supported these propositions. It might have been better if Peel had at once resigned. He determined however, in the hope that his opponents might change their minds, to await the next Cabinet on the 25th of November. Meanwhile, in concert with Sir James Graham and Mr. Goulburn, he authorised a very large purchase of Indian corn for the temporary supply of the immediate wants of Ireland. The energetic measures which he had contemplated were allowed to sleep. Russell's free-trade. The unusual brief activity of the Cabinet, followed by some weeks of inaction, was interpreted rightly by the leader of the Opposition, Lord John Russell, then in Edinburgh; and manifesto on on the 22d of November he published a famous letter to his constituents in London confessing that he was a convert to freetrade. He declared that "the struggle to make bread scarce and dear, when it is clear that part at least of the additional price goes to increase rent, is a struggle deeply injurious to an aristocracy which (this quarrel once removed) is strong in property, strong in the construction of our legislature, strong in opinion, strong in ancient associations, and the memory of immortal services. . . . Let us then unite," he continued, "and put an end to a system which has been proved to be the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter divisions among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among the people." It was plain therefore that the Whig party was determined to support an entire abolition of the Corn Laws. Dec. 5, 1845. At the next Cabinet, Peel adhered to the views he had lately announced. Several discussions took place. It appeared Peel resigns. that the greater part of his colleagues were either convinced by his arguments, or, as in the case of the Duke of Wellington, regarded the maintenance of the Conservative party as all-important, but that Lord Stanley and the Duke of Buccleuch refused to support him. Determined not to undertake so important a question, and one which implied so grave a change of opinion on his own part, with a weakened and divided Cabinet, Sir Robert Peel thought it better to resign, and leave the repeal of the Corn Laws to be carried out by his Whig opponents. Lord John Russell was summoned Russell fails Ministry. to form a Ministry. He believed that he had succeeded, to form a when the objections of Lord Grey to serve if Lord Palmerston was given the Foreign Office broke up his combinations, and compelled him to decline the duty of forming a Government. There remained no alternative but to bring into office either the Conservatives or the Radical free-traders. It might have been possible for a Conservative Government to have been formed upon the grounds of protection, with Lord Stanley at its head. The Queen did not send for Lord Stanley, but Peel appears to have ascertained that none of his former colleagues would undertake the duties of Premier. The choice lay between himself and the Radicals. It was almost impossible to hesitate, and Peel consented to resume office on the clear understanding that he intended to propose free-trade. There seemed every likelihood that the Prime Minister was returning to office with unexampled power. There seemed no probability of a strongly organised opposition. Though the Tories might differ from their chief on the great point at issue, they had felt so deeply injured by Lord John Russell's letter that there was little likelihood of their joining him in opposition. Such members of the Cabinet as still clung to protection had, by the mere act of taking office, deprived themselves of the power of vindicating their opinions strongly. Thus the Premier might have expected the support of his old partisans, though grudgingly given, and the full approbation of the Whigs and free-trade Liberals upon the point on which his mind was fixed. But the session, which promised to be so peaceful, proved to be one of the most tumultuous and eventful on record. Lord George Bentinck, a man who had been eighteen years in Parliament office. Dec. 20. without making an important speech, but who was gifted with much courage and with considerable ability, especially for figures (an ability probably increased by his large dealings on the turf), appeared suddenly as the leader of a new party, the protectionists. At his elbow was Disraeli, who now found that opportunity for which he had long waited of taking a prominent part in Parliamentary warfare. He was too much of an adventurer to be recognised by the important country gentlemen as their chief. But while the noble birth, good presence, and high courage of Bentinck made him admirable as a leader of an aristocratic Opposition, the fire, the venom, and the acute Parliamentary tactics were supplied by his less distinguished henchman. Peel returns to Jan. 22, 1846. The speech from the throne indicated the introduction of further Queen's Speech. removal of protective duties, words which were well understood to mean the repeal of the Corn Laws. Sir Robert Peel in fact intended to effect their repeal in such a manner that it should be a part of the general system of free-trade, avoiding the appearance of a direct assault upon the agricultural interest. 1846] CORN LAW BILL 135 The allusions in the speech were interpreted by the mover of the Address, and still further by the Prime Minister, while explaining his conduct in the late crisis. The leader of the Opposition followed his example, and explained the part he had himself played. A bitter speech of Disraeli, reviewing the conduct of the Prime Minister, likening it in its treachery to that of the Turkish Pasha who, when sent out with a fleet against Mehemet Ali, had joined him with all his ships-showed the temper which Sir Robert Peel's conduct had roused in his former friends, and fitly began the struggle which was to occupy the greater part of the session. The Address was, however, carried in both Houses without a division. Peel's financial The ground was thus left clear for Sir Robert Peel to explain at length, on the 27th of January, the financial measures which he contemplated. He rested his action, firstly, on proposals. the abstract principle that protective duties are in themselves injurious, and can be defended only on some special ground of national interest or individual justice; and, secondly, on the actual experience of the last three years. During that time he had largely modified the tariff, and remitted nearly all duties upon raw materials. The remission had been successful; there had been an increase in production and in the revenue, a greater demand for labour, more comfort and peace among the people. In this course he meant to continue. On the remaining raw materials, which were only two, tallow and timber, he intended to make a considerable reduction, and to extend the same principle to manufactured goods and to corn. All duties on the coarser articles of wool, linen, and cotton manufacture were to be withdrawn, those on finer quality reduced, and on silk (the favourite subject of the illicit traffic of the smuggler) the duty was to be reduced from 30 to 15 per cent. A large number of other articles were to be subjected to the same process. The exhortation which the Prime Minister addressed to the manufacturers to throw no obstacle in the way of these changes, though they might seem to affect their interests, was, no doubt, rather illusory; they were chiefly freetraders, and not likely to oppose measures carrying with them the removal of the Corn Laws. It was in this that the Proposed importance of the change really lay. Determined to Repeal of the repeal those laws, the Prime Minister did not, however, think it advisable to do so at once. He proposed that in February 1849, oats, barley, rye, and wheat should be admitted at a merely nominal duty, and that during the interval there should be a continuation of a sliding-scale, falling from 10s. when wheat was under Corn Laws. |