Until the middle of the last century England exported grain 
almost every year and very seldom needed to import this foodstuff 
from abroad. Since that time, however, the situation has been 
reversed. Under these circumstances the price of grain, on the 
one hand, was necessarily low and that of meat, on the other, was 
high, much arable land was converted into cattle pasture, while at 
the same time industry, and with it the population, owing to the 
invention of important machines, experienced an unprecedented 
growth. Hence England was first compelled to give up exporting 
corn and later had to import it from abroad. The twenty-five 
years’ war against France during the revolution, which made imports 
difficult, compelled England more or less to restrict itself to its 
own soil. The obstacles which the war put in the way of im- 
ports had the same effect as a protective tariff. Grain prices 
rose, ground-rents likewise rose, in most cases to double the 
previous figure, and in some cases even fivefold. The result was 
that a large part of the area that had recently been converted into 
pasture was again used for corn. This increase in their incomes 
tempted the English landowners, who, incidentally, consist of a 
few hundred lords and some 60,000 baronets and squires not 
belonging to the nobility, to adopt an extravagant mode of living 
and a mutual emulation in luxury for which very soon even their 
increased rents no longer sufficed. Before long the estates were 
encumbered with a heavy burden of debt. When in 1814 peace 
removed the obstacles to import, the price of corn fell and the 
tenant-farmers, in view of the high rents, could no longer cover 
the cost of producing their corn. Only two ways out were possible: 
either that the landowners should reduce the rent or that a real 

protective tariff should be imposed instead of the nominal one. 
The landowners, who not only dominated the Upper House and the 
Ministry but also (prior to the Reform Bill 237) possessed fairly 
unrestricted power in the Lower House, naturally chose the latter 
course and in 1815 introduced the Corn Laws amid the furious 
outcry of the middle classes and the people, at that time still 
guided by the latter, and under the protection of bayonets. The 
first Corn Law of 1815 prohibited import of corn altogether as 
long as the price of corn in England remained under 80 shillings 
a quarter. At this price or over,* foreign corn could be imported 
freely. But this law was not in accord with the interests of either 
the industrial or the agricultural population, and in 1822 it was 
somewhat modified. However, this modification never came 
into practical effect, for during the next few years prices always 
remained low and never reached the level at which the import of 
foreign corn was allowed. Despite all the improvements in the law 
and despite the investigations of several parliamentary committees, 
the tenant-farmers were unable to cover their production costs. 
Finally, therefore, Huskisson and Canning invented their famous 
sliding scale,’ which their successors in the Ministry embodied in 
the law.?*8> By this scale, the import duty rose as the price of 
home-produced corn fell and vice versa. By this means the English 
farmer was to be ensured a high and constant price for his corn, 
so that he could comfortably cope with his high ground-rent. But 
this measure was of no avail either. The system became increasing- 
ly untenable; the middle classes, whose representatives were 
predominant in the Lower House after the Reform Bill, became 
more and more opposed to the Corn Laws, and within a year after 
Sir Robert Peel’s entry into the Ministry he found himself 
compelled to lower the import tariff. 

Meanwhile, opposition to the Corn Laws had become organised. 
The industrial middle class, which had to pay its workers higher 
wages because of the increase in the price of corn, resolved to do 
its utmost to secure at any cost the abolition of these hated 
laws—the last survivals of the old dominance of the agricultural 
interests, which at the same time facilitated foreign competition 
against English industry. Towards the end of 1838, some of the 
leading Manchester manufacturers founded an anti-Corn Law 
association, which soon spread in the neighbourhood and in other 
factory districts, adopted the name of Anti-Corn Law League, 

started a subscription fund, founded a journal (the Anti-Bread-Tax 
Circular), sent paid speakers from place to place and set in motion 
all the means of agitation customary in England for achieving its 
aim. During its first years, which coincided with a four-years’ 
slump in business, the Anti-Corn-Law League was extremely 
active. When, however, at the beginning of 1842, the business 
slump turned into a downright commercial crisis which threw 
the working class into the most atrocious poverty, the Anti- 
Corn-Law League became definitely revolutionary. It took as 
its motto the saying of Jeremiah: “They that be slain with the 
sword are better than they that be slain with hunger.”? Its journal 
in clear language called on the people to revolt and threatened the 
landowners with the “pick-axe and the torch”. Its itinerant 
agitators ranged the whole country and preached in a language no 
way less forceful than that of the journal. Meeting after meeting 
was held, petition after petition to Parliament was circulated, and 
when Parliament opened its session, a Congress of League rep- 
resentatives assembled simultaneously in the immediate neighbour- 
hood of the Houses of Parliament. When, in spite of all this, Peel 
failed to abolish the Corn Laws, but only modified them, the 
Congress declared: 

“The people has nothing more to expect from the government; it must rely only 
on itself; the wheels of the government machinery must be halted all at once and 
on the spot; the time for talking is over, the time has come for action. It is to be 
hoped that the people will no longer be willing to starve for the benefit of an 
aristocracy living in luxury; and if naught else avails, there is still a means by which 
the government can be compelled to give way: we must” (stated this Congress of 
leading manufacturers and municipal officials of the great factory towns) “we must 
throw the people on to the agricultural districts which have produced all the 
pauperism; but the people must not go there like a crowd of humble ‘paupers’, but 

as if they had to ‘quarter themselves on a mortal enemy’. 

This great means in the hands of the manufacturers, by which 
they wished in 24 hours to bring together a meeting of 500,000 
persons on the Manchester racecourse and to raise an insurrec- 
tion against the Corn Laws, consisted in closing down their factories. 

In July, business began to improve. The manufacturers received 
increased orders and they noted that the crisis was coming to an 
end. The people was still in a highly excited state and distress was 

universal; but if anything was to happen, it was high time for 
action. And so, when an increase in wages was to be expeeted 
owing to the improvement in business a manufacturer in Staly- 
bridge suddenly reduced the wages of his workers, thereby 
compelling them to strike in order to maintain their wages at the 
previous level. The workers, to whom the signal for an insurrec- 
tion was thus given, brought all the factories in the town and its 
environs to a standstill, which was easy for them to do since 
the manufacturers (all members of the Anti-Corn Law League), 
contrary to their custom, offered no resistance at all. The workers 
held meetings presided over by the manufacturers themselves, 
who tried to draw the people’s attention to the Corn Laws. 
On August 9, 1842, four days after the outbreak of the insurrec- 
tion, the workers marched to Manchester, where they met with no 
resistance at all, and brought all the factories to a standstill. The 
only manufacturer who opposed them was a conservative and 
hostile to the League. The insurrection spread to all the factory 
districts; nowhere did the urban authorities (on whom everything 
depends in England in such cases, as is well known), who were all 
members of the Anti-Corn [Law] League, offer any resistance. So 
far everything proceeded as the League wanted. But in one 
respect it had miscalculated. The people, whom it had driven 
into insurrection in order to force the abolition of the Corn Laws, 
did not care in the least about these laws. They demanded the 
wages of 1840 and the People’s Charter.239 As soon as the League 
noticed this, it turned against its allies. All its members were sworn 
in as special constables and formed a new army for the suppres- 
sion of the insurrection, at the service of the government that was 
hostile to them. The involuntary insurrection of the people, who 
were not yet at all prepared for anything of the sort, was soon 
suppressed; the Corn Laws remained in force, and both the 
middle class and the people were given a profitable lesson. The 
Anti-Corn Law League, in order to furnish conspicuous proof that 
it had not been defeated by the failure of the insurrection, started 
a new large-scale campaign in 1843, with the demand for con- 
tributions from its members amounting to £50,000, and it 
amassed more than this sum in the course of a year. It began its 
agitation afresh, but it soon found itself compelled to seek a new 
audience. It always made a great boast that it found nothing more 
to do in the factory districts after 1843 and could therefore turn 
to the agricultural districts. But there was a snag to this. After the 
insurrection of 1842 it could no longer hold any public meetings 
in the factory districts without its representatives being most 

ignominiously driven from the platform and literally beaten up by 
the angry people whom it had so shamefully betrayed. Conse- 
quently, if it wanted to propagate its doctrines, it was compelled 
to go to the agricultural districts. Here the League was of 
some real service by arousing among the tenant-farmers a certain 
feeling of shame at their dependence hitherto on the landowners, 
and by making the agricultural class aware of more general 
interests. In 1844, encouraged by its success with previous contri- 
butions, the League opened a new subscription list of £100,000. 
On the following day the manufacturers in Manchester assembled 
and within half an hour had subscribed £12,000. By Novem- 
ber 1844, £82,000 had been collected, of which £57,000 had 
already been spent. A few months later the League opened an 
exhibition in London, which also must have brought in enormous 
sums. If now one asks what has been the motive of this colossal 
movement, which has spread from Manchester to the whole of 
England and has carried with it the vast majority of the English 
middle class, but which—we repeat—has not received an atom of 
sympathy from the working class, it must be acknowledged that this 
motive is the private interest of the industrial and commercial 
middle class of Great Britain. For this class it is of the greatest 
importance to have a system which, as it believes at least, ensures it 
for all time a world monopoly of trade and industry by enabling it 
to pay just as low wages as its competitors and to exploit all the 
advantages that England possesses as a result of its 80 years’ start 
in the development of modern industry. From this point of view 
the middle class alone, and not the people, benefits from the 
abolition of the Corn Laws. Secondly, the middle class demands 
this measure as a supplementary law to the Reform Bill. Through 
the Reform Bill, which introduced suffrage based on a property 
qualification and abolished the old electoral privileges of particular 
individuals and corporations, the monied middle class had come, in 
principle, to power. In reality, however, the landowning class still 
retained a considerable preponderance in Parliament since it sends 
there directly 143 members for the counties and indirectly almost all 
the members representing small towns, and is represented in 
addition by the Tory members from the towns. In 1841, this 
majority of the agricultural interest brought Peel and the Tories into 
the cabinet. The abolition of the Corn Laws would deal a fatal 
blow to the political power of the landowners in the Lower House, 
and hence in fact in the whole English legislature, since it would 
make the tenant-farmers independent of the landowners. It would 
proclaim capital to be the supreme power in England, but at the 

same time it would shake the English Constitution to its founda- 
tions; it would rob an essential constituent of the legislative body, 
viz. the landed aristocracy, of all wealth and all power, and 
thereby exert a different and greater influence on the future of 
England than many other political measures. Once again, however, 
we find that from this aspect too the abolition of the Corn Laws‘ 
offers no advantage to the people.