Were the Corn Laws Justified?

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Adam Wright                                                                                      19th January 2003

Were the Corn Laws Justified?

Plan

Yes

Distress in areas of agricultural importance, majority of pop not urban, + bankruptcies

War food supply

Political + social stability- Radicals

Vote winner

No

        Starvation instigates political awareness

Free market interference-trade war, industrialists, depresses manufactured goods

        Trio of legislation anti common man

The Corn Law was a potentially dangerous bill introduced in 1815 after three years of good harvests. It was instigated with the support of Lord Liverpool the current Prime Minister who saw the Corn Laws as a temporary measure to create stability in the agricultural sector in the immediate post-war years. The Corn Laws were potentially disastrous because they, along with the abolishment of Income tax and the creation of the Game laws, were seen as a return by the ultra-Tory's to a single-issue, single class government. That issue being the wants and needs of the landed classes. I personally believe that the Corn Laws led to large swathes of the urbanised population become unreasonably politicised in their demands to parliament with the catalyst for this potentially revolutionary actions being the starvation of the working classes and thus the Corn Laws.  

Lord Liverpool's justification for the Corn Laws was the appalling state of agriculture in England in the post war period. England faced a unique set of financial and economic problems bought about by the end of the war. The harvest of 1813, 14 and 15 were extremely good leading to a fall in prices by almost half. The end of trade sanctions after the end of the Napoleonic Wars flooded the British market with cheaper corn that made British Corn uncompetitive. Agriculture still exceeded manufacturing as the country's largest single economic interest. Therefore the Corn Laws were justifiable in this sense because they still supported the largest single category of labour provider. But while choosing to secure one social group Liverpool and his cabinet had provided immediate alienation of the ever expanding urban working classes that without financial problems had to deal with the squalor the was commonplace in these cities that double in size in a decade.  

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The Napoleonic was showed the importance of the British island being able to support itself during periods when it could not rely on its European neighbours for food. The Corn Laws protected the security of Britain because it allowed Britain to continue to survive under long intense periods of isolation. Liverpool introduced this law partly as a security net after the problems that Britain had faced in the Napoleonic war. If Britain ever faced a determined maritime blockade then Britain would have starved to a considerably worse extent than it suffered in the immediate aftermath of the introduction of ...

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