The Great Events by Famous Historians [Volumes 1-14]

After the passing of the Corn Law of 1815, and when it had worked for some time, there were sliding-scale acts introduced, which established a varying system of duty, so that when the price of home-grown grain rose above a certain figure, the duty on imported wheat was to sink in proportion. The principle of all these measures was the same. How, it may be asked, could any sane legislator adopt such measures? As well might it be asked, How can any civilized nation still, as some still do, believe in such a principle? The truth is that the principle is one which has a strong fascination for most persons, the charm of which it is difficult for any class in its turn wholly to shake off. The idea is that if our typical baker be paid more than the market price for a loaf, he will be able in turn to pay more to the butcher than the fair price for his beef; the butcher thus benefited will be enabled to deal on more liberal terms with the tailor; the tailor so favored by legislation will be able in his turn to order a better kind of beer from the publican and pay a higher price for it. Thus, by some extraordinary process, everybody pays too much for everything, and nevertheless all are enriched in turn. The absurdity of this is easily kept out of sight where the protective duties affect a number of varying and complicated interests, manufacturing, commercial, and productive.

In the United States, for example, where the manufacturers are benefited in one place and the producers are benefited in another, and where the country always produces food abundant to supply its own wants, men are not brought so directly face to face with the fallacy of the principle as they were in England at the time of the Anti-Corn Law League. In America "protection" affects manufacturers for the most part, and there is no such popular craving for cheap manufactures as to bring the protective principle into collision with the daily wants of the people. But in England, during the reign of the Corn Law, the food which the people put into their mouths was the article mainly taxed, and made cruelly costly by the working of protection.

Nevertheless, the country put up with this system down to the close of the year 1836. At that time there was a stagnation of trade and a general depression of business. Severe poverty prevailed in many districts. Inevitably, therefore, the question arose in the minds of most men, in distressed or depressed places, whether it could be a good thing for the country in general to have the price of bread kept high by factitious means when wages had sunk and work become scarce. An Anti-Corn-Law association was formed in London, It began pretentiously enough, but it brought about no result. London is not a place where popular agitation finds a fitting centre. In 1838, however, Bolton, in Lancashire, suffered from a serious commercial crisis. Three-fifths of its manufacturing activity became paralyzed at once. Many houses of business were actually closed and abandoned, and thousands of workmen were left without the means of life. Lancashire suddenly roused itself into the resolve to agitate against the corn laws, and Manchester became the headquarters of the movement which afterward accomplished so much.

The Anti-Corn-Law League was formed, and a Free-Trade Hall was built in Manchester on the scene of that disturbance which was called the "massacre of Peterloo." The leaders of the Anti-Corn-Law movement were Richard Cobden, John Bright, and Charles Villiers. Cobden was not a Manchester man. He was the son of a Sussex farmer. After the death of his father he was taken by his uncle and employed in his wholesale warehouse in the city of London. He afterward became a partner in a Manchester cotton-factory, and sometimes travelled on the commercial business of the establishment. He became what would then have been considered a great traveller, distinct, of course, from the class of explorers; that is, he made himself thoroughly familiar with most or all of the countries of Europe, with various parts of the East, and with the United States and Canada. He had had a fair, homely education, and he improved it wherever he went by experience, by observation, and by conversation with all manner of men. He became one of the most effective and persuasive popular speakers ever known in English agitation. He was not an orator in the highest sense. He had no imagination and little poetic feeling, nor did genuine passion ever inflame into fervor of declamation his quiet, argumentative style. But he had humor; he spoke simple, clear, strong English; he used no unnecessary words. He always made his meaning plain and intelligible, and he had an admirable faculty for illustrating every argument by something drawn from reading or from observation or from experience. He was, in fact, the very perfection of a common-sense talker, a man fit to deal with men by fair, straightforward argument, to expose complicated sophistries, and to make clear the most perplexed parts of an intricate question. He was exactly the man for that time, for that question, and for the persuasive and argumentative part of the great controversy which he had undertaken.