quently to circulate the paper among them. Accordingly in 1842 a measure was carried, altering in two important details the act of 1828. In the first place, the scale was so revised as to tend to secure the price of wheat at fifty-six shillings a quarter, a figure considerably lower than that aimed at by the law of 1828. In the second place, experience had shown that hitherto the sliding scale had actually encouraged the foreign importer to keep back his corn until corn in our market reached famine prices, at which point the law allowed him to import free of duty. Peel now devised a highly complicated plan. The chief point was that there were to be certain resting-places in the downward movement of the scale of duties, and it was hoped that at such resting-places the importer would send his corn into the market instead of waiting for the total abrogation of the duty in consequence of the famine price. The measure was moderate, and yet it encountered fierce opposition in four quarters. In the cabinet there was considerable dissension (Memoirs, pt. iii. p. 101), and the Duke of Buckingham resigned. In the party ‘nobody expected such a sweeping measure, and there is great consternation among the conservatives. It is clear that he has thrown over the landed interest’ (Memoirs of an ex-Minister, p. 139). The abolitionists, led by Cobden, were incensed on exactly opposite grounds. But Peel was opposed to total repeal for the twofold reason that protection duly compensated the agriculturists for the heavy burdens on land, and also that it would be wise as far as possible to make ourselves independent of foreign nations in respect of the supply of corn. Finally, he resisted the whig plan of a fixed duty. ‘I think the sliding scale preferable to a fixed duty,’ he had said in the debates of 1841 (Speeches, iii. 794). For it was obviously better that in time of famine the duty should fall to nothing, as it did under a sliding scale, than that it should remain rigid at its original figure. The fixed duty was a tableland ending in a precipice.
At the close of the session of 1845 in August the government was held, in spite of the opposition to the Maynooth grant, to be of immovable strength. Cobden said that neither the Grand Turk nor a Russian despot had more power than Peel, who himself told the Princess Lieven that he had never felt so strong or so sure of his party, and of parliament. Yet even as he spoke the rains of July had fallen that were to ‘rain away the corn laws.’ In England the harvest had been spoilt; in Ireland the disease of the potato crop had appeared.
The corn law of 1842 stood unaltered. But during the three years 1842–5 Peel's mind had changed, and he no longer believed in protection for agriculture. To the general principles of free trade he had, with certain reservations, avowed himself favourable on taking office. The attitude which he had uniformly maintained since in the House of Commons on the question of protection was that the act of 1842 was an experiment; that he had no present intention of altering it; that if it proved a failure, it should be carefully revised. Attentive to Cobden's reasoning and to the successful free-trade budget of 1842, he was conscious of a growing conviction that the experiment had been a failure. He was accordingly prepared ‘to apprise the Conservative party, before the corn law could be discussed in the session of 1846, that my views with regard to the policy of maintaining that law had undergone a change’ (Memoir, pt. iii. p. 318). Famine intervened, and during August, September, and October, Peel watched and collected information, with feelings of which Wellington said ‘I never witnessed in any case such agony.’ He found that some three million poor persons in Ireland who had hitherto lived on potatoes would require in 1846 to be supported on corn. But, as the English harvest was bad, corn would have to be freely imported in order to avert starvation. Peel saw that the corn law should be at once suspended, and he resolved never to be a party to its reimposition. On 15 Oct. he wrote: ‘The remedy is the removal of all impediments to the import of all kinds of human food—that is, the total and absolute repeal for ever of all duties on all articles of subsistence’ (ib. p. 121).
From 31 Oct. to 5 Dec. a series of cabinet councils were held, at which Peel endeavoured to impress three things on his colleagues: that the crisis was urgent, that an order in council should at once be issued to suspend the duties on grain, and, that once those duties were suspended, they could never be reimposed. But the cabinet shrank from the vista of policy thus opened before them. No decision was taken. At last on 2 Dec. Peel clenched the question by stating that he himself was willing to introduce a measure ‘involving the ultimate repeal of the corn laws’ (ib. p. 221). Stanley and Buccleuch could not agree to this proposal, and on 9 Dec. Peel resigned. Lord John Russell, who, by a letter dated from Edinburgh on 22 Nov., had declared for total repeal, tried to form a government, but failed owing to a dissension between Lords Grey and Palmerston. On 20 Dec. Peel resumed
