Anti-Corn Law Research Articles

<sc>Paul A. Pickering</sc> and <sc>Alex Tyrrell</sc>. <italic>The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League</italic>. New York: Continuum. 2000. Pp. x, 304. $45.00

Paul A. Pickering and Alex Tyrrell. The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League. New York: Continuum. 2000. Pp. x, 304. $45.00 Get access Pickering Paul A. and Tyrrell Alex. The People's Bread: A History of the Anti-Corn Law League. New York: Continuum. 2000. Pp. x, 304. $45.00. Eric Jones Eric Jones Melbourne Business School and University of Reading Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar The American Historical Review, Volume 106, Issue 5, December 2001, Pages 1875–1876, https://doi.org/10.1086/ahr/106.5.1875 Published: 01 December 2001

Property Rights in Pheasants: Landlords, Farmers and the Game Laws, 1860–80

The deference shown by English tenant farmers to their landlords was the despair of English radicals in the nineteenth century. This was especially the case for Cobden and Bright, the leaders of the Anti-Corn Law League. As firm believers in Ricardo's theory of rent, according to which only landowners gained from the Corn Laws, they felt that tenant-farmers should have been the natural allies of the League. Unfortunately, they proved unable to convince farmers of this logic. Their attempts to drive a wedge between landlord and tenant remained unavailing – until 1845, when John Bright raised the question of the game laws in the Commons. The select committee that followed tapped a rich vein of farmer resentment and hostility, one that led nowhere at the time but remained to be exploited for the next forty years.

Jamie L. Bronstein. Land Reform and Working Class Experience in Britain and the United States, 1800-1862. Stanford, Calif.: Stanford University Press. 1999. Pp. viii, 372. $55.00. ISBN 0-8047-3451-8.

Land Reform and Working-Class Experience in Britain and the United States,1800-1862. By Jamie L. Bronstein. (Stanford: Stanford University Press, 1999. Pp. viii, 372. $55.00.) American historians have long needed a new treatment of the antebellum land reform movement, one informed by modem concerns about class and culture and which could supplement, if not replace, Helene Zahler's classic monograph of 1941, Eastern Workingmen and National Land Policy,18291862. In this carefully wrought study Jamie Bronstein provides that and something more: a distinctive contribution to the growing literature on the transatlantic dimensions of nineteenth-century reform. Land Reform and Working-Class Experience focuses on three organizations: the American National Reform movement, whose heroic founder George Henry Evans pushed for homestead exemption, land limitation, and distribution of public lands in the West; the Chartist Land Co-operative Company, a joint-stock scheme promoted by the flamboyant Irish M.P., Feargus O'Connor, to set up workers' agricultural villages in the English countryside; and the Potters' Joint-Stock Emigration Company, a more prosaic group that organized resettlement of British artisans on the Wisconsin frontier. Bronstein traces these groups' origins, rhetoric, and development in seven chapters which are organized topically and documented scrupulously. Why Were There Working-Class Land Reform Movements in Britain and America? the Introduction asks (1). Framed this way, Bronstein's analysis stresses broad commonalities over specific differences. All three groups drew upon a common discourse of natural rights, agrarianism (variously defined), and producerist values inherited from Thomas Paine, Thomas Jefferson, and Thomas Skidmore; in the Britons' case this was flavored with a dash of Tory paternalism borrowed from groups like the Labourer's Friend Society. On both sides of the Atlantic, land reformers' rhetoric invoked the virtue of farming, the menace of factories, and the value of unalienated labor by working men presiding over traditional homes. The movement's leaders rallied working-class support through itinerant lectures and the press, mainly O'Connor's National Reformer, Evans's various newspapers, and sympathetic reform journals that clipped them. And they differentiated land reform from contemporary crusades that were more middle class in orientation: abolitionism in the United States and the Anti-Corn Law League in Britain. On this last question-the class basis of reform-Bronstein's nuanced response is one of the book's strongest contributions. Like Frances Early, Jama Lazerow, and this reviewer, Bronstein rejects Norman Ware's still-- influential interpretation that land reformers, cooperationists, and utopian socialists were middle-class reformers who diverted workers from the true cause of forming trade unions. Her research shows that especially in the United States land reform forged a broad coalition of farmers, artisans, factory operatives, and reformers that defied monolithic class labels. In the era of early industrialism, class boundaries were still blurred, producerist ideas promoted flexible notions of useful work, and reform causes fit varied local agendas. Many British and American workers turned to land reform when other meliorist measures had failed. In the United States it fed upon the collapse of trade unions and communitarian experiments in the mid-1840s; in Britain it flourished as a second phase of Chartism that kept that movement's flame alive in the lull between its defeats in 1842-43 and its resurgence in 1848. …

Irish Potatoes and British Politics: Interests, Ideology, Heresthetic and the Repeal of the Corn Laws

The Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 remains one of the most fascinating events in the history of political economy. A parliament securely controlled by the party of agriculture, which was the main beneficiary of protection, abolished protection. Explanations have included the hegemony of Manchester School economics; class conflict; the effectiveness of the Anti-Corn Law League; the personality of Sir Robert Peel; and evangelical religion. We aim to see why the standard ideas from political economy (Chicago and/or Virginia) seem to fit our case so poorly. We use the Aydelotte dataset on rollcalls in the Parliament of 1841–7, augmented from primary sources, and the letters and memoranda of the principal actors.

THE ‘BONAPARTE OF FREE TRADE’ AND THE ANTI-CORN LAW LEAGUE

This article seeks to re-balance the canon of anti-corn law leadership by examining the ideas and activities of Thomas Perronet Thompson. A relatively neglected figure in modern accounts of the Anti-Corn Law League and repeal in 1846, Thompson was acknowledged in his own lifetime as an outstanding campaigner whose role in the work of the League and in the mobilization of opinion was exceptional. This article investigates Thompson's free trade principles, and uses his pamphlets, articles, correspondence, speeches, and organizational efforts to create a vivid impression of repeal agitation in the 1830s and 1840s. Personal relationships between anti-corn law leaders are examined, as are the links between their movement and such other phenomena as Chartism and the campaign for factory reform. The article stresses the central importance of Thompson in the achievement of repeal and, by using his contribution as a point of entry, seeks to promote a deeper understanding of the anti-corn law creed and its modes of organization, campaigning, publicity, and propaganda.

Democratization and Trade Liberalization in Industrial Capitalist Countries, 1830s to 1930s

Are democracies more likely to pursue free trade than autocracies? Turn-of-the-last-century liberals believed that democracies were more likely to engage in trade than absolutist monarchies (Doyle 1986:1161; Thomson 1966:462). “The majority consists of bread eaters,” wrote the French economist Frédéric Bastiat (1862: 102–3). The argument according to which democracy is less bellicose than autocracy does sometimes rest on the assumption that democracy is more prone to commercial intercourse than autocracy. For a criticism of this line of argument, see Gowa (1995: 519). The electioneering work of the Anti-Corn Law League in Britain in the 1840s confirmed English radicals' belief that the franchise would mitigate corruption and rent seeking. However, subsequent history falsified these expectations. The simultaneous moves of autocratic France toward free trade and of democratic United States toward protection confounded any simple association between regime type and trade policy. No one has found a straightforward relation between democracy and trade. With one recent exception. Geoffrey Garrett and Peter Lange (1995) argue that democracies are quicker to adjust to changes in their economic environment than autocracies because of the popular constraint. The present essay revisits the liberals' insight.

PRESSURE GROUPS AND PARTIES IN LATE VICTORIAN ENGLAND

One of the most striking divisions in later Victorian politics was that between the crotcheteers (the slighting name given to those who strove to promote disestablishment, land reform, temperance reform and non-denominational education) and their opponents. The crochetmongers were invariably Liberals, although a good many members of the Liberal Party opposed one or all of their demands; they therefore created pressure groups to press for measures to achieve or aid their ultimate ends. The effectiveness of public pressure of this kind may be doubted: the supreme exemplar and archetype of the 19th century group was the Anti-Corn Law League, but even this cannot incontrovertibly be said to have achieved its end through its own efforts. Certainly, none of the subsequent major single-cause pressure groups could feel the same satisfaction as the League had about the outcome of their campaigns. Mostly, such organisations enjoyed an uneasy but mutually vital alliance with the Whig-Liberal party, just as their opponents were normally closely interlinked with the Tory-Conservative party.

The Anti-Corn Law League and the Salisbury Election of November 1843

The Anti-Corn Law League and the Salisbury Election of November 1843

II. Class and Political Radicalism in London, 1831–2

Class has long been used as an analytical tool in the study of history and much has been written with regard to the formation of class-consciousness, which has to a considerable extent been related to the first half of the nineteenth century and especially to the events surrounding the passing of the first Reform Bill. Professor Briggs has noted the growing use of the term ‘class’ in the early nineteenth century and has postulated a middle-class consciousness created by the media of the Reform Bill and Anti-Corn Law agitations. ‘Sandwiched between an entrenched landed Parliament on the one hand and a bitter but still imperfectly integrated labour movement on the other, the middle classes were compelled to lay down their own postulates and programmes.’ More recently E. P. Thompson, in a brilliant and wide-ranging study of the working classes, has seen the formation of a working-class consciousness which involved ‘consciousness of identity of interests between working men of the most diverse occupations and levels of attainment’ and also ‘ consciousness of the identity of interest of the working class, or “productive classes”, as against those of other classes; and within this there was maturing the claim for an alternative system’.

The Political Ideas of the Manchester School

Apart from the history of the anti-corn law movement and the distinguished biographies of Cobden and Bright, the Manchester School has received little serious study. The average informed person, if asked to comment on their views, would probably reply that they were free traders. If pressed as to their political ideas, he might add that they were Little Englanders. If challenged as to whom the Manchester School included, he would answer Cobden and Bright, and possibly, as an afterthought, Goldwin Smith. Yet there is more to be said than this. From the 1840's to the 1870's, the ideas of the Manchester men, although often unpopular, were the most potent elements in British liberalism.

Council of the Anti-Corn Law League

Journal Article Council of the Anti-Corn Law League Get access Peter Barber Peter Barber Search for other works by this author on: Oxford Academic Google Scholar Notes and Queries, Volume CXCVIII, Issue nov, 1 November 1953, Page 497, https://doi.org/10.1093/nq/CXCVIII.nov.497b Published: 01 November 1953

British Liberalism and the Idea of Social Justice

POLITICAL AND SOCIAL IDEAS played a peculiarly important part in shaping British institutions in the century between Waterloo and the Great War of 1914. The utilitarian theories of Jeremy Bentham and his Radical followers, the free trade doctrines promoted by Richard Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League, the evolutionary socialism of Sidney Webb and the Fabian Society are classic examples of concepts which profoundly affected the course of British history, and which cannot be explained in purely material terms. The current fashion may be to emphasize the interplay of economic interests represented in parliament and consider reform legislation in terms of the pressure of special groups, but the great debates in the Commons and in the country were held in terms of the basic principles of government. Economic interest was a factor that only the blind could fail to recognize; but the great reforms which moulded British institutions into their present shape can be understood only in connection with the general ideas from which they grew. The influence of theory on politics was particularly significant in the early years of the twentieth century, when the great social reforms of the Liberal party laid the foundations of a new-and yet thoroughly British-social unity, the strength of which was tested in the first world war and in the great depression, and won universal admiration after the military collapse of Dunkirk. Between 1906 and 1911 as much important legislation was placed upon the statute books as in the six years from 1832 to 1837. Among the more significant laws were the Trade Disputes Act and the Workman's Compensation Act of 1906, the Old Age Pensions Act of 1908, the Labor Exchange Act, the Children's Act and the Housing and Town Planning Act of 1909, and the National Insurance Act of 1911. Although this mass of detailed social legislation was put into effect piece-meal, it was the coherent result of years of discussion and agitation. It was based on a considered view of the State and society. The laws have been described many times, and the circumstances of their passage are recorded in detail. Yet, curiously enough, little effort has been made to connect social reform with the acceptance of new political ideas.'

A History of the English Corn Laws from 1660-1846.

1. The Corn Laws Before 1660 2. The Restoration of Corn Laws 3. The Revolt Against Restoration Corn Laws 4. The Failure of the Law 1773 5. The Corn Laws and the Wars, 1791-1813 6. The Enclosure Movement and the Corn Laws 7. The Corn Law of 1815 8. The Law of 1815 in Operation 9. The Agitation of the Eighteen-Twenties 10. Decline in Interest in the Corn-Laws, 1828-1838 11.Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League, 1838-1845 12. Sir Robert Peel and the Repeal of the Corn Laws 13. Summary and Conclusion

The Political Methods of the Anti-Corn Law League

The Political Methods of the Anti-Corn Law League