THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS

The repeal of the corn laws by the British Government in 1846 was one of the seminal events of the nineteenth century. The basic law had been introduced by the administration of Lord Liverpool at the end of the Napoleonic wars, and provided for a prohibitively high duty on foreign corn if domestic prices fell below a threshold. As such, it was a high measure of protection for the landed interest at the expense of the consumer. In 1828 the all-or-nothing threshold was replaced with a sliding scale; and in 1842, the Government reduced the scale. However, with the industrial revolution really starting to get traction, the basic issue was whether the incomes of a (mainly) aristocratic minority should take precedence over cheap food for the masses flocking to the towns. The general consensus was that they shouldn't; the problem though was that in 1846, most of the masses had no vote, whereas the landed aristocracy dominated Parliament.

The man who cut through this Gordian knot was Sir Robert Peel, leader of the Conservative Party and Prime Minister since 1841. The irony was that although Peel himself came from manufacturing stock (his father was a first-generation baronet who had made money in Lancashire), the Conservative Party in general, and his Cabinet in particular, represented the landed interest in spades. Against that background, Peel decided to resign and pass the baton over to Lord John Russell, the leader of the Whig Opposition, who had announced his commitment to repeal in November 1845. However, after two weeks of dithering, Russell declined to accept what he perceived was a poisoned chalice (politicians were not so greedy to lead in those days), so Peel took up office again. By the following June, the bill abolishing the corn laws had passed through both Houses of Parliament. Almost immediately, however, Peel resigned as Prime Minister, following defeat on another issue.

The repeal of the corn laws was the biggest single reason behind the prosperity of the third quarter of the nineteenth century, and would not have happened without Peel. However, that same act both cost him his political career (he never held ministerial office again and died in 1850 after falling off his horse), and split the Conservative Party, condemning it to 28 years before it again commanded a Parliamentary majority. Although some party contemporaries undoubtedly wished to retain the laws, the driving force behind the split was the opportunism of Benjamin Disraeli, who took the opportunity to - in effect - destroy Peel as party leader, even if the party that he eventually took over was now a rump. In party-conscious Britain, Peel acquired a reputation as a splitter, even though his crime was to put the interests of his country before that of his party, a rare case of true statesmanship.

Indeed on that score, Peel has a justifiable claim to be Britain's greatest ever Prime Minister. Other Prime Ministers have put country before party; Gladstone over Ireland, Churchill over rearmament, Heath over Europe. However, Peel did it not just once, but twice, having promoted Catholic emancipation some years before. Politicians trying to sort out Europe's current problems could do worse than trying to follow Peel's example.

Walter Blotscher