ABSTRACT
The 1815 Corn Law had been revised by Wellington’s government in 1828. Instead of a fixed threshold of 80 shillings, at which foreign corn was imported under the old Act, a sliding scale of duties operated in relation to domestic prices. Calls to reform the Corn Law – either through its total repeal or by substituting a fixed duty on corn – became increasingly prominent during the late 1830s. The Anti-Corn Law League was established in Manchester in 1838 to campaign for repeal, and Charles Pelham Villiers (1802–98), the MP for Wolverhampton, made an annual Repeal motion in the House of Commons from 1838 onwards.
The annual battle over Villiers’ motion to Repeal the Corn Laws was recommenced in 1840. Peel’s intervention, on the third day of the debate, was concerned with countering the three principal arguments being made in favour of Repeal. First, that the operation of the existing Corn Laws had led to a great drain of bullion from the Bank, and that a material derangement of the currency took place in consequence in the years 1838 and 1839. Second, that there had been a great fluctuation in the price of corn, caused by the operation of the Corn Laws, deranging commercial speculations, the varying price of grain having a tendency to derange the manufacturing interest. And, third, that the experience of the last year had shown a great depreciation of the manufacturing interest of the country.
The first argument involved Peel in a defence of the currency system, which led him to declare that ‘nothing, in his opinion, could be more destructive to the Bank than the suspension of cash payments’. He argued that the demand for bullion was not unique to Britain, which had a Corn Law, but was witnessed, amongst other places, in France and the United States, which did not.
The second argument was countered with a detailed recitation of the different prices operating under different Corn Laws over the preceding 25 years, whilst the third argument involved Peel in a full-scale review of the latest trade figures, including the amount of recorded imports and exports.
Peel’s characteristic argument was that the Corn Laws could not be considered independently of the state of the currency and the amount of British trade. Repealing the Corn Laws might be theoretically attractive as a temporary expedient but would not solve the country’s underlying economic problems.
