Question 6

What were the results of the Repeal of the Corn Laws?

Paragraph One (Peel)

• Peel defeated by coalition of Whigs and many of his former Tory supporters over a coercion bill (to enforce law and order in Ireland)
• It had proved an opportunity for the protectionists to bring him down because they felt that he had betrayed them
• Peel resigned as Prime Minister in June 1846 in the wake of this defeat
• He never again held a ministerial post (remained as an Member of Parliament until his death in 1850)
• He paid tribute to Cobden in his resignation speech
• Said it was Cobden who should be credited with the successful repeal

Paragraph Two (for the Conservative Party)

• Repeal split the Party
• Apart for short spells in 1852 and 1858, they were out of office until 1866
• Peel was more surprised that it had remained united for so long than that it had split
• Lord Derby, Lord George Bentinck and Disraeli became the leading figures
• The Peelites and others in favour of free trade became a separate group
• They were: Aberdeen, Gladstone, Sydney Herbert, Sir James Graham, Duke of Newcastle, Dalhousie and Elgin
• 1852 joined Aberdeen’s coalition government

Paragraph Three (Ireland)

• Repeal did not end the famine
• Jobs provided to enable people to buy food e.g. road building
• Problem – there was food but many peasant farmers hadn’t any money to buy it
• They’d always been subsistence farmers
• When their subsistence crop failed they had no means of buying other food
• Food prices continued to rise and men couldn’t earn enough to feed families
• Spring 1847 government stopped system of providing manual work
• Set up soup kitchens instead but this failed – closed next autumn
• 1847 epidemics of cholera, typhus, yellow fever, dysentery and scurvy
• Took nearly as many as the hunger
• Inadequate medical resources to cope with it
• 1 million died in the Great Hunger
• 1.5 million emigrated to England, Canada, USA and Australia
• 1851 Irish population had fallen from 8.5 million to just over 6 million
• Despite repeal the effects of the famine on politics lasted in Ireland, Great Britain and America well into the 20^th century

Paragraph Four (agriculture)

• 1850-1870 called the ‘Golden Age of British Agriculture’
• Great Britain’s population rapidly growing
• Demand for food from growing towns and cities increasing
• Prosperous middle class could afford more and greater variety of food
• Farmers had better access to their markets due to growing rail network
• Little foreign competition
• 1850s and 60s the great wheat growing prairies were only just being settled
• US economy also badly hit by the Civil War 1861-65
• Russia feudal system hindered potential for growing and export of wheat
• Crimean War 1854-56 caused disruption in Russia
• Australia and New Zealand still being colonised
• Meat producing countries such as the Argentine only just starting to develop
• No regular refrigerated steam shipping across Atlantic
• Railways in USA and Canada not built till 1870s