508387 MAR 3 - 1942 THE CORN LAWS. The close of the Napoleonic wars marks an era in the industrial history of England. During the war communication with the continent had been interrupted and the price of corn had risen higher in England than elsewhere. When Napoleon's anti-commercial system collapsed, vast quantities of corn held in reserve on the continent, were poured into the English market. Prices immediately fell and the farmer who had rented his land when corn was dear was obliged to sell at a low price. His margin of profit under the higher price being just enough for his existence, there was great, agricultural distress throughout the country. Under the pretence of preventing sudden fluctuations of prices; of obviating the danger of a reliance on a foreign supply; and of making the home market sufficient for the needs of the people by stimulating the cultivation of more land, the Corn Law of 1815 was enacted. Corn was allowed to be imported, warehoused, and exported free of duty, so that the country might be an entrepot for corn, but until the price reached 80 shillings per quarter an absolute prohibition was imposed on the delivery of wheat out of warehouse and its importation for home consumption. McCullough says, "The Corn Law was a fitting sequel to the French war. The ruling classes in England had before them a people impoverished and degraded by the waste of blood and treasure in which years of war had involved the country: and seeing the prospect before them, which the peace had opened, of a fall in the prices of agricultural produce, under the beneficent operation of the great laws of exchange, they resorted to the device of prolonging by Act of Parliament, the artificial scarcity created by the war and of thus preserving to the landed interest the profits which had been gained at the expense of the nation." The growth of manufactures was both the source and the overthrow of the corn laws. Early England was an agricultural country. Wheat was used enough as an article of food to bring it under the care of a paternal legislature, and a statute as early as the Great Charter makes the assize of bread an English law. Buying corn in one market and selling in another was punished with the pillory and imprisonment |