The Corn Laws

• Tasks
• Background
• Teachers' notes
• External links
• Connections to Curriculum

The Corn Laws were passed by the Conservative Prime Minister, Lord Liverpool, in 1815. These were measures brought in by the British government to protect landowners and farmers. They controlled the price of all grain crops, including wheat, barley and oats.

After the Napoleonic Wars, food prices were predicted to fall as Britain resumed its trade with Europe, and goods could once again be imported to Britain. However, further imports of cheaper foreign grain harmed the interests of British landowners and farmers. The Corn Laws were aimed to prevent this harm.

The laws placed tariffs on grain imported from other countries. The price of grain at home had to reach extremely high levels before duty-free grain from overseas was permitted. Harsh import duties made buying grain from abroad unaffordable. Therefore, the Corn Laws made it expensive to import grain, even when domestic grain was in very short supply.

The laws were met by fierce opposition from the public and there were frequent riots against them. The Anti-Corn Law League, founded in 1839, campaigned to repeal the laws. The Corn Laws remained in place until 1846; despite strong opposition from his own political party, Conservative Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel repealed them in 1846. Peel gives his reasons for doing so in a document here.

Use the original documents in this lesson to find out about the Corn Laws: how the British public reacted to them, and their eventual repeal in 1846.

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Tasks

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Background

The Corn Laws were passed in 1815 after the Napoleonic Wars. During these wars, Britain had been largely self-sufficient in grain production, but the return of peace brought further challenges. The country’s landowners and farmers were deeply concerned about increased foreign trade and imports to Britain, as they relied on high prices of grain to maintain their profits. By imposing tariffs on imported foreign grain, unless prices in Britain rose above a certain threshold, the welfare of domestic grain producers was secured. The Corn Laws signified a protectionist measure to protect this group of society, many of whom were extremely wealthy and held political power in Britain.

The enforcement of the Corn Laws damaged the welfare of many members of British society, as the price of bread and other staple foods remained high. Workers in towns and cities suffered greatly as they were forced to spend a higher proportion of their income on food as bread was a key staple of the urban worker’s diet. It wasn’t only the labouring classes who suffered. Merchants and industrial manufacturers were also dissatisfied. The Corn Laws made raw materials and labour more expensive. Protectionism stifled international trade at a time when manufacturers were keen to pursue to grow their businesses.

Opposition to the Corn Laws grew and calls for their repeal came from a wide variety of political and economic groups across Britain. In 1838, Richard Cobden and John Bright formed the Anti-Corn Law League, which argued forcefully for the detrimental effects of the Corn Laws across the nation; they advocated for lower food prices and free trade, highlighting how the Corn Laws had negative economic consequences for the nation’s economy. Both Bright and Cobden were elected to parliament in the early 1840s. The League was incredibly successful as a political pressure group, using public meetings and political lobbying to build a broad support base against the laws.

The movement for repeal gained a specific momentum in the 1840s, as the dates of Sources 2, 3 and 4 in this lesson suggest. The Irish Potato Famine of 1845-1849 led to a significant shortage of food in Ireland, and the British government’s response, which was dampened by the high cost of grain, was widely condemned. The Irish Potato Famine seemed to highlight the dangers of a protectionist agricultural policy and drew attention to the ways in which people across Britain were suffering from the Corn Laws.

In the early months of 1846, the Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel, decided to support the repeal of the Corn Laws, much to the distress of many in his political party. While Source 5 suggests the main factor for his repeal of the Corn Laws was the crisis in Ireland, it is likely that the growing power of the Anti-Corn Law League and the worsening economic conditions in Britain were also significant factors behind his decision. The laws were repealed on 25 June 1846.

The repeal of the Corn Laws had a significant impact on Britain’s economy and politics. It marked a shift towards a development of free trade and a shift away from protectionism; it also reoriented British politics as the interests of industrialists and urban workers became more influential in guiding government policy. The legacy of the repeal of the Corn Laws was significant – it gave way to a steadfast belief that British prosperity was inherently linked to free trade.

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Teachers' notes

This lesson uses sources from The National Archives, in particular records from the Home Office, to explore the Corn Laws. It is suitable for Key stage 5 students and uses five text-based sources and a visual source. You may want to split the lesson for students working individually or use the sources in paired/group work.

For Key stage 4, teachers may prefer to use a selection of these sources and/or crop them into shorter sections to use individually or in groups.

All sources have transcripts, and some language is explained/translated in square brackets. To retain the spirit of the language, we have not further simplified the transcripts. However, teachers may wish to create their own simplified transcripts.

Suggested starter activity

[Key stage 5 & 4]

Teachers can use our illustration image, an 1815 etching by the satirist George Cruikshank, as a starter document to introduce this lesson topic.

The image from the British Museum is entitled: ‘The Blessings of peace or, the curse of the Corn Bill’. The image shows four landlords who are spurning the three Frenchmen who stand in a small boat. The boat is filled with sacks of corn.

The Frenchmen says: “here is de best for 50s”, to which an elderly man replies: “We won’t have it at any price- we are determined to keep up our own to 80s- & if the Poor can’t buy at that price, why they must starve, we love money too well to lower our rents again, tho the Income Tax is taken off”. Other Englishmen behind him seem to concur with their companion: “No, no, we won’t have it at all’; “Aye—aye let ’em Starve & be D—d to ’em.” Aghast, one of the Frenchmen empties a sack of corn overboard, declaring: “By gar if they will not have it at all we must thro it over board.” There is another man in the sketch, John Bull, who stands by as the personification of the spirit and morality of the United Kingdom. Accompanied by his wife and children, Bull decries the landlords, saying: “No, No Masters, I’ll not starve but quit My Native Country where the poor are crushed by those they labour to support, & retire to one more Hospitable, & where the Arts of the Rich do not interpose to defeat the providence of God.”

• Ask the students to describe what they see.
• What do we learn about the role of the propertied landowners in relation to the Corn Laws?
• What does this cartoon suggest about the sympathies of the artist?
• What are the suggested consequences of the Corn Laws?
• What are the advantages and disadvantages of this source as evidence about the Corn Laws?

Following on, in Source 1, students examine a printed sheet or broadside that describes the intentions of the Corn Laws and the disastrous effects of the Corn Laws on the British public. Based on the arguments made in this source, students can consider if anyone in society benefitted from the Corn Laws.

Source 2 is a letter by John Browne on the evil effects of the Corn Laws. Browne suggests an alternative measure for the importation of foreign corn into England. This source provides the opportunity for students to learn about different solutions being considered to ensure a necessary supply of corn in England after the Corn Laws had been enforced. The enquiry questions also encourage students to think about the nature of The National Archives Home Office record collection, and the role of the Home Office in the nineteenth century.

Next in Source 3, students look at a petition from 1841 by the population of Ouseburn in Newcastle upon Tyne. The source describes the detrimental effects of the Corn Laws to shopkeepers, tradesmen, and their vulnerable families. In doing so, the petition provided some representation of individuals in society who were often left without a political voice. The source provides the opportunity for students to consider Anti-Corn Law sentiment in the period, the grounds upon which working people opposed them, and who they blamed for their ongoing distress. It would also be useful to discuss the Anti-Corn Law League in relation to this source – the political movement that aimed at the abolition of the Corn Laws, created in 1839.

Source 4 is a letter between the two foundational members of the Anti-Corn Law League, John Bright and Richard Cobden. This task helps students to think about the nature of letters as a historical source. Students can consider Cobden’s attitude to the repeal of the Corn Laws after years of fighting for their abolition.

Source 5 is Robert Peel’s address to the electors of his constituency of Tamworth in Staffordshire, after his resignation as Prime Minister in 1846. Students can infer the potential motivations for Peel’s address, as well as examining Peel’s key justifications for the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.

Students should be encouraged to think about the benefits and limitations of looking at different kinds of evidence to evaluate their understanding of the Corn Laws, the Anti-Corn Law League, and the Corn Laws’ eventual repeal.

Sources

Illustration Image: Satirical print, ‘The Blessings of Peace or, the curse of the Corn Bill’ by George Cruikshank, published by S. W. Fores, 50 Piccadilly, 3 March 1815. © The Trustees of the British Museum. Shared under a Creative Commons Attribution-Non Commercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International (CC BY-NC-SA 4.0) licence.

Source 1: Print, ‘Corn Laws: one of the Causes of Public Distress’, 1830. Catalogue ref: HO 44/20/23

Source 2: A Letter by John Browne, on the evil effects of the Corn Laws, June 1840. Catalogue ref: HO 44/35/34

Source 3: Anti-Corn Law petitions from the Ouseburn district upon Tyne, Newcastle, October 1841. Catalogue ref: HO 44/52/60

Source 4: Letter from Richard Cobden to John Bright regarding the repeal of the Corn Laws, February 1846. Catalogue ref: PRO 30/22/5A

Source 5: Extract from the newspaper ‘The Times’ containing Sir Robert Peel’s letter to the Electors of Tamworth, July 1847. Catalogue ref: PRO 30/12/23/8

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External links

The Corn Laws
BBC In Our Time Podcast

Fuelling the Debate: The English Corn Law returns, the Corn Laws and the birth of political economy
Gresham College Lecture

Corn Law Petitions | Parliamentary Archives
Video published as part of History Hub by Royal Holloway, University of London

Connections to Curriculum

These documents can be used to support any of the exam board specifications covering the Industrial revolution, Robert Peel, Political Protest, and Political and Social Reform in England in the eighteenth century.

Key stage 4

AQA GCSE History AB Britain: Power and the people: c1170 to the present day

Key stage 5

AQA GCE History 1F: Industrialisation and the people: Britain, c1783-1885

Edexcel GCE History 36.1: Protest, agitation and parliamentary reform in Britain, c1780-1928

OCR GCE History Y110: From Pitt to Peel: Britain 1785-1853

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