ABSTRACT
The great financial crisis of 1847 with its train of “declining trade and grinding poverty, bankrupt railways and increased taxation,” gave the Tory Protectionists an admirable opportunity of arguing that the whole trend of the commercial legislation. The best Protectionist opportunity of 1848 came in the matter of the sugar colonies, whose plantations were alleged to have been so dangerously affected by the Sugar Duties revision of 1846, that Bentinck obtained a Select Committee of some importance. By June 16th, indeed, Whig Ministers, who had opened with a stiff resolve not to make material concessions, had deemed it politic to change their course and were offering to prolong the regime of preferential duties on colonial sugar until 1854. The hard times of 1847–1848 had stirred a good deal of Protectionist sentiment in the considerable sections of the working class exposed to Continental competition and this gave special encouragement to the Tories in their efforts against the Navigation Bill of 1849.
