Corn laws
The Corn Laws or laws on the corn were a series of Loi S protectionist applied to the the United Kingdom between 1815 and 1846. They encouraged export and discouraged the importation of Blé in particular when its course passed below a certain threshold, which sheltered the British producers (often aristocratic) of external competition, of the colony S (like Ireland).
Principles of these laws
Before the continental Blockade instituted by Napoleon, the importation of corn was quasi free, the Customs duties being relatively weak. Thanks to the blockade, the British producers profited from quasi a Monopole, followed by a rapid raising of prices (because the offer of grains being rarefied, those were exchanged at higher prices). However, following the end of the Napoleonean Wars and the blockade, the price of corn was divided by two.
Vis-a-vis this fall of the prices, in 1815, the British cereal producers made vote a law which envisaged the stabilization of the price of corn to 80 shillings the Quarter, and which prevented foreign corn from entering to the United Kingdom if the market price were lower than this price.
The Corn Laws thus corresponded to a protectionist reaction on behalf of the United Kingdom.
Consequences of these laws
The laws related to the whole of cereals, but it is on corn that they had the most dramatic consequences. Indeed, the bread was a vital food product at the time since it represented the basic food of the workmen.
Confronted with the raising of prices of the bread generated by the adoption of the Corn Laws , the workmen were reduced to misery. So the consumption of industrial goods was itself reduced.
In the same way, exports were affected by these laws, because the boats leaving the United Kingdom charged with iron, of coal or of machines, could not return charged with cereals like before there, which caused an increase in the transport costs.
This obstacle with consumption and exports encouraged the manufacturers to lay off, which resulted in to accentuate misery.
On the other hand the system instituted by the Corn Laws was advantageous with the aristocracy: there were more farmers ready to rent grounds to exploit them that grounds available. The lords could consequently obtain higher rents, because the farmers subjected to competition proposed the maximum price which they could support for the hiring of the grounds.
Thus, the landowners, very influential the Parliament, opposed any reform naturally.
Questioning of the Corn Laws
See also: Manchester school
The most virulent protest against these laws was undertaken with Manchester by Richard Cobden, which creates in 1839 the Anti-Corn Law League .
During 7 years, this league rejoined around its cause more and more people, by propagating the debate of Manchester to all the kingdom, then by introducing it at the Parliament. Meetings are organized in the British main cities, they become even weekly with London. Thousands of people attend these conferences in all the country and subscribe to association, thus allowing the financing of books, booklets and leaflets.
The abolition of the Corn Laws
Following the various pressures exerted against these laws, and terrible the famine in Ireland of 1845, the Corn Laws were abolished by the Prime Minister Robert Peel the May 15th 1846.
The abolition of these laws is symbolic system insofar as they constituted one of the principal obstacles to the free trade which is established thereafter in a durable way in the United Kingdom.
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