History of the Anti-Corn Law League/Chapter3
CHAPTER III.
THE NEW HOUSE OF COMMONS.
The new House of Commons was soon to be tested as to the Corn Law. On the 17th of May, Mr. Whitmore moved a declaration to the effect, that instead of producing equality of prices, and thereby a permanent good, it had produced a contrary effect, and tended injuriously to cramp trade. Mr. Hume, amid much outcry, denied that any peculiar burthen fell on trade. Mr. Feargus O'Connor, Mr. G. Heathcote, and others, resisted the motion, and Lord Althorp, Chancellor of the Exchequer and leader in the Commons, took the same side, on the ground that then to agitate the question, when they would not have an opportunity of setting it at rest, owing to the quantity of other business before Parliament, would be the most unwise thing they could do and so the question was settled for that session. Jeremy Bentham, who had gone to his grave after all opposition to the Reform Bill had been removed, rejoicing in his last days that the freedom of trade which he had always advocated, was about to be triumphant, could scarcely have anticipated that the "not the-time" plea would so soon have been used by the reform ministers. Importance of the business," he had said in his Book of Fallacies, "extreme difficulty of the business—danger of innovation—need of caution and curcumspection—impossibility of foreseeing all consequences —every thing should be gradual—one thing at a time—this is not the time—great occupation at present—wait for more leisure;— such is the prattle which the man in office, who, understanding nothing, understands that he must have something to say on every subject, shouts out among his auditors as a succedaneum of thought."
Parliament was prorogued in August. The country showed little disposition to urge ministers forwards. The "not-the-time" plea was admitted; when the right time for movement should come, ministers would, no doubt avail themselves of it. Believing that the right time would come sooner the people should exhibit some impatience, I counselled the formation of associations:— "If any one who had access to such of his Majesty's ministers as are supposed to be favourable to the abolition of the bread-tax—to Mr. Poulett Thomson for instance were—to ask him, "Why don't you repeal the Corn Laws, which you acknowledge to be bad in principle and oppressive in operation, the answer would probably be: 'What can we do? We have the landed interest, bound together as one man, to oppose the opening of the trade in corn, while the manufacturing communities utter not one word of complaint against the monopoly. It is impossible to contend with the one interest without the aid of the other. Now, if the individual who hears this, or can suppose that such might be said, does not do all in his power to procure that expression of public opinion which is necessary to effect that change, he, at least, has no reason to complain that he is obliged to sell his calicos cheap and his bread dear. * * * * There ought to be a systematic opposition to the continuance of the bread tax. Let half-a dozen persons in each of the surrounding towns meet together, and resolve to agitate the question in public meetings. The matter needs only a beginning. When once such little committees are formed, communication may be opened with other towns, and the opposition will then assume a regular form, and proceed with all the energy of union." Mr. William Weir, the editor of the Glasgow Argus, was advising a similar course.
He was reprinting in his paper an excellent pamphlet, by Mr. Thomas Crewdson, of Manchester; and at the conclusion of a commentary upon the facts therein stated, he said:— "We this day commence a system of agitation against the iniquitous Corn Laws, which we solemnly pledge ourselves shall terminate only with their abolition." He faithfully redeemed his pledge and I may be permitted to say, that I faithfully redeemed a similar pledge, made in 1828; but five years more were still to elapse before any half-dozen of persons set the agitation effectively at work. There was a good harvest in 1834, and a better in 1835, and there was the resulting prosperity of 1836 to make the people patient under the infliction; and there was, during all those years, a pretty general belief that ministers, "at the right time," would be faithful to their free-trade professions. Journalists, under these circumstances, could do little to excite activity—all that they could hope for was, that the seed which they had been sowing would appear after a time.
Manchester did a little, listlessly. On January 29th, 1834, a meeting of merchants and manufacturers, called by circular, was held in the Exchange Committee Room, to consider how the cause of Corn-Law repeal was to be forwarded; and good speeches were made by Mr. R. H. Greg (afterwards member for the borough), Mr. R. Potter, M.P., Mr. Mark Philips, M.P., Mr. John Shuttleworth, Mr. J. B. Smith (afterwards M.P.), Mr. J. Brotherton, M.P., and Mr. J. C. Dyer, chairman of Mr. Thomson's committee, but nothing came of it. The intention of forming any association was carefully disclaimed. A committee was appointed, from which the editors of newspapers were excluded, in order to avoid the appearance of a political agitation, and the committee did nothing, perhaps could do nothing.The sun was shining, and there was never to be a rainy day again.
The free-trade members in the Commons had not been strengthened by the country, and therefore fought under great disadvantage. Mr. Hume, with the resolution to do right whatever support he might have, had given notice, that, on the 6th of March, he would move for a committee, with the view of substituting a fixed duty on corn, in lieu of the fluctuating scale. The landowners mustered in great force to oppose it. Sir James Graham declared his firm conviction to be, that whenever such a scheme as that proposed should take place, it would not be the destruction of one particular class in the state, but of the state itself. Mr. Feargus O'Connor said that to admit corn duty free, would be the ruin of Ireland. Lord Morpeth (now the Earl of Carlisle), the first of after-converts of his class, supported the motion, as did Lord Howick (now Earl Grey), and some of his relatives. Lord Althorp pleaded that there was no present exigency—agriculture was depressed and manufactures were prosperous, and the change proposed could not improve the condition of the latter. Mr. Poulett Thomson, notwithstanding his position in the ministry, made a bold and masterly speech in favour of the motion, in which he most unmercifully demolished the arguments of Sir James Graham. He advised the house to legislate then, when they could do so with calmness, deliberation, and wisdom. "Let them wait," he said, "until one of those fluctuations should, under Providence, occur, through a failure of the harvest in France, and then a change of the Corn Laws would be called for in much less respectful language than he should ever wish to hear addressed to that house." The prophetic warning was disregarded. The monopolists had mustered for the occasion, and the cabinet took them under its protecting wing. Amongst the majority were almost all the Irish members, who, by refusing to sanction a poor law, and permitting their own countrymen to die of starvation, now gave a fresh instance of their heartless selfishness, by voting that Englishmen should not have cheap bread, because Irish landowners had corn to sell. On division, the numbers were:–For the motion, 155; against it, 313.
If the merchants and manufacturers placed too much on reliance parliamentary action without outward pressure, the working classes misdirected their aim. They were wasting their energies in the formation of trades' unions, and in obviously hopeless contests with their employers—alike sufferers by impolite restrictions on trade. Ebenezer Elliott, in an address to the people of England, published in Tait's Magazine, called on those classes to awaken from their slumbers, and told them:—"The Corn Laws have placed you on the verge of a volcano. If your rivals establish a system of free trade before you, you are gone for ever as a manufacturing people, and nothing will then remain for you but potatoes; nothing for your oppressors but potatoes and salt." The hard-smiting writer thus concluded his appeal:—"How many more sessions of your reform Parliament can you afford to throw away? Think not, then, of his Majesty's renegade ministers. False to themselves, can they be true to you? Trust them? What! have they not told you that your trade was never more flourishing than at present? Yes, there is one branch of your trade which does indeed flourish; I mean the manufacture of customers into rivals! Yes, and if the Corn Laws continue but a little longer, the trade of your rivals—planted, nurtured, and matured by the madness of the landed supporters of a suicidal administration—will continue to flourish and blossom, and bear fruit, over the grave of British prosperity! Haste, then, and destroy these deadly Corn Laws, ere they subvert the empire. Let every trade, from every town, one by one, and again, and again, send petitions to Parliament. Let brave and enlightened Glasgow speak again to timid and besotted Liverpool. Let awakened Liverpool shout to cowardly and goose-ridden Manchester; Manchester to London,—and all together to England and the world. We shall then have an union, not in name only, but in reality,—an union that will have, and do the right, and nothing but the right. Repudiate at once, and for ever, the idea of a fixed duty. Every shilling per quarter would be a direct tax of four millions sterling, per annum, on the productive classes of Englishmen. Treat not, then, for graduated iniquity; put not in the banns for a new marriage of reptile-spawning fraud and time; but with the word Restitution, pronounced in thunder, startle your oppressors from their hideous dream of injustice and ruin made permanent."
The call was unheeded trade was moderately prosperous, employment easy to be had, and provisions at a moderate price; and so the year 1834 drifted on quietly, men thinking it would be time enough to complain of their liability to famine when the famine came. In the mean time, King William, if we are to believe with Mr. Roebuck that he was adverse to the reform which had been effected, and fearful that more might follow, was watching his opportunity to rid himself of the whig ministry. In November Lord Melbourne was dismissed, and the Duke of Wellington was installed as sole minister, until Sir Robert Peel should arrive from Italy to form a new reform-resisting administration. At the close of the year Parliament was dissolved, and the country, so far as it was represented, had to choose whether it would support men who might be considered as progressive, though with rather too much caution, or permit the accession to power of those who, if they did not take backward steps., would determinedly resist all onward movement. At the general election, Manchester again returned Mr. Thomson and Mr. Philips, not unopposed, but opposed by a feeble candidate supported by a feeble party, notwithstanding the accession of its friends to office; and by this return made another emphatic declaration in favour of the principles of free trade. The election, however, of Mr. Thomson for the largest manufacturing constituency of the kingdom, placed him in a position to occupy, beneficially to the public, the time between the death of Huskisson and the advent of Cobden. In the memoir of his life, his brother, Mr. Poulett Scrope, says:—"Many valuable alterations were effected by Mr. Thomson in the customs' duties. Besides the entire abolition of the duty on hemp, an absurd and mischievous burthen on all British shipping, a great reduction was made in the duties on dye stuffs used in our manufactures, and on medicines consumed largely by the poor. He likewise introduced, for the first time, a methodical and rational classification of all the customs duties retained in our tariff. At a later period he carried out still further this simplification of the duties on import, and their reduction, where the revenue would admit of it. The attention of fiscal reformers had hitherto been directed, principally, if not wholly, to a few of the larger articles, such as sugar, coffee, timber, wool, and cotton. But Mr. Thomson saw clearly, that, while considerations of revenue or of party policy might forbid the sound principles of finance being at once applied to these, it was yet in the power of government to afford extensive and very sensible relief, both to a variety of branches of native industry, and to the consumer at large, by reduction of the heavy duties on some hundreds of small, and apparently insignificant articles, which brought in little to the revenue, while the high duties on them were a grievous obstacle to their use in the arts or manufacture, and their direct consumption.* * * * The records of the Board of Trade, and the evidence of the able officers permanently employed there, such as Mr. Macgregor and the late Mr. Deacon Hume, attest that the more recent alterations of the Tariff effected by Sir Robert Peel and Mr. Gladstone, are, to a great extent, but the realization of projects and the carrying out of principles laid down by Mr. Thomson during his official connection with that board, as desiderata to be secured, whenever the government had the power to do so."
The Wellington-Peel administration were soon compelled to resign office, and in the succeeding government, Mr. Thomson, again returned for Manchester, had the presidentship of the Board of Trade, with a seat in the cabinet, stipulating that, in his more influential position, he should still, notwithstanding the old rule of compromise, have liberty to raise his voice and record his vote against the heaviest and most oppressive of all the monopolies to which he was opposed. It was something that Manchester compelled this concession from colleagues far behind him in the comprehension of a principle and boldness in giving it expression–something that Manchester, from the period of its enfranchisement to the repeal of the corn-law, always sent representatives to protest against the landowners' monopoly.
The landlords, in 1834, were "distressed" with the abundance, as they had been with the abundance of 1822. I have, elsewhere,[1] described the comfort of the people at the former period; and there may be use, at the present time, when, while I write, an administration is in office, pledged to protection by all its antecedents, in repeating the description ; for the memory is more retentive of inflictions than of their occasional cessation, and history is more a record of crime and suffering than of periods of peace and plenty. The sword and the spear furnish more stirring descriptions than the ploughshare and the pruning hook. The man who storms and fires a city is immortalised by the historian's pen ; he who enables a nation to earn its food by honest labour, dies comparatively unnoticed, and to posterity comparatively unknown. How briefly are periods of peace passed over in our oldest and most authentic record! After the deliverance of Israel from a foreign yoke, effected under the direction of Deborah, the prophetess, we read: "And the land had rest forty years;" and that Jair "judged Israel twenty-and-two years." We hear no more of them; they judged rightly: the people were at rest—no history of misdoings was needed. The history of the eighty-five years of tranquillity, of peace, and, as we may presume, of plenty, is told in three lines. Would that the history of mankind were capable of such brief but precious record! In our little narrow history-ground of Manchester, we find, now and then, some such refreshing resting-places, some such green in the thirsty waste. In thirty years of war and scarcity, hunger and nakedness, to three-fourths of the community, are three or four years of peace and plenty nothing to the afflicted millions? In so long a period of constantly deepening gloom, was a brief gleam of general sunshine nothing? History was silent, but the people were fed. And they thought also, those briefly well-fed multitudes, calmly, but not less deeply, and their inquiry was: "Why should it not always be thus?" Mr. Wheeler, in his " History of Manchester," makes a great leap from Hunt's trial at York, in 1820, to the bank failures at the end of 1825, and the loom breakings and factory burnings of 1826. There lay a happy period some time between. One could then draw the curtains, and wheel round the sofa nearer to the cheerful fire, and the more enjoy the social meal, from the conviction that there was comfort also in the cottage, and no wailings in the street. It was worth something on the Saturday night, to see the working man's wife need her husband's help to carry home the heavy basket, filled with bread and beef, and flour and suet. But then came the reflection that the Corn Law was unrepealed, and that a single bad harvest might mar all this comfort. Much outcry came from the landowners at the cheapness of provisions, as if heaven-sent plenty was a curse. The Saturday's basket of the operative was well filled, but the landlord's rents were not well paid. What cared the latter about the well-filled baskets, when their coffers wanted the supply which hitherto had been wrung out from the people by war prices? The loyalists of 1793 were not more horror-struck at the murder of Marie Antoinette than the soilowners of 1829 were at the fall of wheat to 40s. a quarter. They had expected that their law of 1815 would keep up the price to. 80s.; for a profuse issue of paper money, accompanying scanty harvests, had long kept up prices. In 1816, 1817, and 1818, deficient harvests occurred—that of the former being calculated as below the average to a greater extent than in any year since the period at the close of the previous century, and prices rose in consequence so as to exceed the rate at which foreign corn might be admitted, and 2,600,000 qrs. of wheat were imported in 1817 and 1818. The harvest of 1820 was supposed to be one-fourth beyond the average; that of 1821 was large, but of inferior quality; and that of 1822 was again beyond the average, and was unusually early. In the week ending the 24th of December, 1822, the average prices were:—Wheat, 38s. 8d.; barley, 29s. 4d.; oats, 18s. 9d.; rye, 23s. 6d.; beans, 28s. l0d.; peas, 28s. 4d.; being 41s. 4d., 10s. 8d., 8s. 3d., 29s. 6d., 24s. 2d., 23s. 8d., lower than the scale which had been fixed upon, ostensibly for the protection of the farmer, but really for the protection of the landowner. The farmers did indeed now suffer for, during peace, and with a currency much enhanced in value, they were called upon to pay the rents which they had paid when they had war prices and a greatly depreciated currency. Many were the proposals made to relieve this "agricultural distress," and Parliament resolved to alleviate the "pressure upon the distressed landowners," and that £1,000,000 should be advanced to them, in exchequer bills, when the average price of wheat was under sixty shillings. Great efforts were made to make the country believe that the agricultural labourers were in a most wretched condition in consequence of the low prices of corn; but it began then to be understood that the wages of farm labour never rose in proportion to the rise in the price of farm produce, and that, although they had fallen in 1822, the recipients were more than compensated by the low price of food. In the olden time abundant harvests were regarded as the greatest of blessings. It was a special promise, often repeated, that the Israelites should have plentiful harvests if they obeyed the commandments of God. The framers of the English Prayer Book directed the people to supplicate for plenty and cheapness. It was reserved for the enlightened nineteenth century to regard them as deeply to be deplored evils. In 1822, a million of money was lent to enable the growers of corn to keep it out of the market till its price should rise; to withhold it till the people should begin to curse. The consumers said little about the loan or the law. It was well with them then, and they did not look to the future. Merchants and manufacturers, rejoicing that Hunt and his followers had been put down, were neither disposed to become agitators themselves, nor to sanction agitation by others. They suffered for their regardlessness of consequences. The real prosperity 1822-23,of was followed by the reckless speculation of 1824-5, and that was followed by the panic of 1826, and by that severe depression of trade, and that depth of discontent which made the Reform Bill a measure absolutely necessary for the conservation of the public peace.
On the return of the whigs to office, in the spring of 1835, they found the agricultural members, for whom a preponderance in the house, according to Lord John Russell's confession, had been provided in the distribution of seats under the Reform Bill, again complaining of the "distress" occasioned by the plentiful harvest, and demanding more protection. It was an opportune complaint, and an opportune demand. The ministry could again plead the imprudence of embarrassing them, after they had encountered the risk of utter exclusion from office, and could ask the impatient of monopoly how they could remove protection in the face of so loud a demand for its increase. It was quite enough for the period that a motion of the Marquis of Chandos, for a repeal of the taxes that bore upon agriculture, was negatived. It was not the right time to do more, for there was a promise in the appearance of the crops, that there would be an increase to the abundance, and consequently greater landlord complaint, and greater prosperity to commerce and manufactures.
There was a glorious harvest in 1835. In the September of that year, when on a visit to Mr. Childs, at Bungay, in Suffolk, I saw a barn floor covered with the finest wheat, which Mr. Feltham, the grower, told us could not at that time bring more than 4s. 6d. a bushel. He said he would keep it till the spring, when he hoped to get 5s. for it. How did the agricultural labourer fare? I recollected a saying of an old countrywoman in Scotland, when somebody was arguing that when the farmers got good prices the labourers were well off, "Na, na! Ye'll no persuade me that when there's plenty o' meal puir folks will get less than when it is scarce." In 1835, the farm labourers had more wholesome food at their command than they had ever had during my lifetime. In Manchester I had the gratification of again seeing the working man, on a Saturday night, helping his wife to carry home the heavy basket. There was no need for statistical tables, to show that there was a great additional consumption of necessaries and comforts. The fact spoke out in the manifest improvement in the appearance of the multitudes, now well dressed, and presenting undeniable proofs that they were well fed. I asked my foreman how the compositors in my office, whose wages had been the same sum weekly for a quarter of a century, were expending what they saved from the low price of food, and he said it was astonishing to see how much they were laying out on good clothes and good furniture, besides what they were laying past for future provision. And now again came the question from some: "Why should it not always be thus?" If a good harvest in England was productive of all this comfort, why should not the people of England have the advantage of a good harvest anywhere else? But then again came the question from others: "Why should we agitate for cheap food when wheat is only four shillings and sixpence a bushel?"
There were, however, some amongst those who were asking, "Why should it not always be thus?" who were also preparing to put the question emphatically to the country at large. In 1835 there had been sent to me, for publication in my paper, some admirably written letters. They contained no internal evidence to guide me in guessing as to who might be the writer, and I concluded that there was some new man amongst us, who, if he held a station that would enable him to take a part in public affairs, would exert a widely beneficial influence amongst us. He might be some young man in a warehouse who had thought deeply on political economy, and its practical application in our commercial policy, who might not be soon in a position to come before the public as an influential teacher; but we had, I had no doubt, somewhere amongst us, perhaps sitting solitary after his day's work in some obscure apartment, like Adam Smith in his quiet closet at Kirkaldy, one, inwardly and quietly conscious of his power, but patiently biding his time, to popularize the doctrines sent forth in the "Wealth of Nations," and to make the multitude think as the philosopher had thought, and to act upon their convictions. I told many that a new man had come, and the question was often put amongst my friends: "Who is he?" It is some satisfaction to me now, writing seventeen years after that period, that I had anticipated the deliberate verdict of the nation. In the course of that year, a pamphlet, published by Kidgeway, under the title "England, Ireland, and America," was put into my hand by a friend, inscribed "from the author," and I instantly recognized the hand writing of my unknown, much by me desired to be known, correspondent; and I was greatly gratified when I learned that Mr. Cobden, the author of the pamphlet, desired to meet me at my friend's house. I went with something of the same kind of feelings which I had experienced when I first, four years' before, went to visit Jeremy Bentham, the father of the practical free traders; nor was I disappointed, except in one respect. I found a man who could enlighten by his knowledge, counsel by his prudence, and conciliate by his temper and manners; and who, if he found his way into the House of Commons, would secure its respectful attention; but I had been an actor amongst men who, from 1812 to 1832, had fought in the rough battle for parliamentary reform, and I missed, in the unassuming gentleman before me, not the energy, but the apparent hardihood and dash which I had, forgetting the change of times, believed to be requisites to the success of a popular leader. In after years, and after having attained great platform popularity, he had been elected a member of parliament, and when men sneered and said he would soon find his level there, as other mob orators had done, I ventured to say that he would be in his proper vocation there, and that his level would be amongst the first men in the house.
Mr. Cobden, before his pamphlet appeared, was little known but as a calico printer, of good taste and good business ability, beginning to produce articles of a superior quality, competing with the best London prints. His pamphlet, in which the doctrine of free trade and nonintervention in the affairs of other states were advocated with great ability, was reprinted in a cheap form by William Tait, and circulated in tens of thousands. But a sterner teacher than Richard Cobden was needed. The seed sown by him was not scattered to the winds, but it produced no immediately visible fruit. During the abundance few thought of the probably soon following scarcity. Like the foolish rich man in Scripture, men, knowing that their garners were full, were disposed to give ease to their souls, and to eat, drink, and be merry. A prophet was amongst them, but they regarded him not, so far as action went. His able pamphlet was read, however, as Colonel Thompson's "Anti-Corn Law Catechism" (of which, when first published, I had distributed 4,000 copies along with my newspaper) had been; and, during the abundance which followed the plentiful harvest of 1835, the attentive perusal of the Colonel's Catechism, and Cobden's "England, Ireland, and America," and his subsequent "Russophobia," and the frequent articles in the Westminster Review and Tait's Magazine, and in some of the newspapers, did much to prepare men's minds for action when the sterner teacher came. From the time that Cobden made his public appearance in print in the year 1835, I did not hesitate publicly to declare my strong conviction that any Lancashire borough would do itself honour by returning him as its representative to parliament. That attainable honour Lancashire lost.
- ↑ Historical Sketchs of Manchester