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.