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The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria cover

The History of England in Three Volumes, Vol.III. / From the Accession of George III. to the Twenty-Third Year of the Reign of Queen Victoria

Chapter 1015: THE CORN LAWS.
By Edward Farr
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About This Book

The volume traces British political, parliamentary, and military developments from the accession of George III through the early nineteenth century, chronicling changes of ministry and cabinet, debates over colonial taxation and the American conflict, parliamentary controversies involving figures such as Wilkes and Warren Hastings, questions of Catholic relief and slave-trade abolition, and responses to the French Revolution and Napoleonic wars, including major naval and continental campaigns, the union with Ireland, and domestic legislation on finance, civil liberties, and parliamentary reform.

THE CORN LAWS.

The people had long been taught to consider the corn laws as unjust monopolies, which enriched the landowner, by depriving the poor of “cheap bread,” and they firmly expected that reforming ministers and a reformed parliament would forthwith abolish them. Ministers, however, were not inclined to take up the question, and parliament was not yet prepared to respond to the general demand. On the 17th of May, Mr. Whitmore moved the following resolutions:—“That the present system of corn laws, founded on a high and ever-varying scale of duties, while it fails of conferring permanent benefit on the agricultural interest, tends to cramp the trade, and impair the general prosperity of this country; that an alteration of these laws, substituting in their stead a moderate duty, fixed at all periods except those of extreme dearth, while it indemnified the agriculturists for the peculiar burthens which press upon them, would, by restoring the commercial relations between this kingdom and foreign countries, increase the manufactures, and render more equal the price of the produce of the country.” Lord Althorp objected to the resolutions principally on account of the time at which they were brought forward, considering the many important questions which yet remained for the consideration of parliament; he therefore moved the previous question, which was carried by three hundred and five against two hundred and six. A few days previously certain resolutions relative to the same question were negatived in the house of lords without a division; and in the commons, on the 18th of June, a motion for leave to bring in a bill to alter the corn laws was rejected. The corn laws, therefore, were yet retained in the British code.