The Industrial Revolution

Bibliographic data

Monograph

Identifikator:: 1027928145

URN:: urn:nbn:de:zbw-retromon-159926

Document type:: Monograph

Author:: Cunningham, William http://d-nb.info/gnd/128907487

Title:: The Industrial Revolution

Place of publication:: Cambridge

Publisher:: The University Press

Year of publication:: 1922

Scope:: xxii S., S. 404-886

Digitisation:: 2021

Collection:: Economics Books

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340 LAISSEZ FAIRE AD 1s regards the modifying of the Navigation Laws and the read- The eco Justment of the tariff. It wasa very different matter when an nomic end attack was made on the legislation which interfered with free political . ’ . antagonism trade in corn, and afforded special protection to the landed i interest. The controversy thus aroused was not merely, or Corn Laws gyen chiefly, of economic interest; its far-reaching political importance was foreseen from the first’. The formation of the Anti-Corn-Law League in 1839? with the agitation which was organised by Cobden and Bright, was a serious attempt to educate the minds of the citizens of a great country on a question of public interest. The force of Radicalism, as a power in the State, was increased immensely; it had already associated itself with the interest of working men by the attitude which some of its leaders had taken in regard to the Combination Laws, and the progress of Trade Unions; and now it rallied the masses, who required bread to eat, under its banner. The days, when the Tory could pose as the friend of the people in their contest with ruthless employers, were over, and the Conservatives, who had prided themselves on their patriotism, were astonished and indignant to find themselves denounced as selfish drones in the community. The contest in regard to the Corn Laws was of course determined by the new character which they had assumed in 1815. It was then that a measure was definitely passed to protect the landlords, and to enable them to maintain the burdens which had fallen upon them, or which they had too readily undertaken®. From that time onwards, it was possible to represent the Corn Laws as a merely class measure, and to treat the whole question, as the advocates of the League habitually did. as that of a tax imposed upon the community as recast vn 1815, 1 Cobden appears to have been chiefly attracted to the subject at first, because it offered a field for political agitation. We must choose,” he wrote in 1838, “between the party which governs upon an exclusive or monopoly principle, and the people who seek, though blindly perhaps, the good of the vast majority. If they be in error, we must try to put them right, if rash to moderate, but never aever talk of giving up the ship....I think the scattered elements may yet be rallied round the question of the corn laws. It appears to me that a moral, and even a religious,spirit may be infused into that topic, and if agitated in the same manner that the question of slavery has been, it will be irresistible.” Morley, Life of Cobden, 1. 126. , 2 Tt was enlarged in this year from an Anti-Corn-Law Association which had been formed in 1838. Ashton, Recollections of R. Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law League, 23. 8 55 Geo. 111. c. 26.

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