Parliamentary Debate

Debates over the Repeal of the

Arguments for repeal of the Corn Laws

Richard Cobden was born in 1804 into a farming family at near in West . In 1814 his father had to sell the farm and Richard, the fourth of eleven children, was sent to a school in Yorkshire which he described as "Dotheboys Hall" in reality. In 1819 Cobden went to work in his uncle's warehouse in where he proved to be an adept clerk and salesman.In 1828 he and two friends went into partnership to sell calico in London; in 1831 they opened a calico-printing works in . In 1832 Cobden settled in but went on to visit America and the Levant. Consequently he published England, Ireland and America in 1835 and in 1836. In them he preached and economic non-intervention by the government.In 1837 he stood as a parliamentary candidate for on a free trade platform but was unsuccessful. In 1838 he became one of the seven founding members of the Anti-Corn-Law League in Manchester. He conducted lecture tours all over England and he became an MP for Stockport in 1841. His parliamentary speeches were clear, quiet and persuasive; he was an ideal partner for the other leading MP and Anti-Corn-Law League member, . Cobden was the only man ever to beat Peel in debate in parliament and in 1846 Peel acknowledged Cobden's role in the repeal of the Corn Laws.He refused to merge the Anti-Corn-Law League with wider programmes of reform because he saw the advantages of a single policy, and saw the appeal to new industrial areas. He was so committed to the cause of free trade that he became bankrupt.

We want to bring the landowner and the tenant together, to confront them in their separate capacity as buyers and sellers; so that they might deal together as other men of business, and not allow themselves to play this comedy of farmers and landlords crying about for protection, and saying that they are rowing in the same boat; when, in fact, they are rowing in two boats, and in opposite directions

But let me not be misunderstood. I do not say that on other questions the small squire and tenant farmer should be separated. I do not say that the landlords and the farmers should not go to the same church together, and meet in the same market. But when the tenant-farmers meet to talk on the subject of Free Trade, they should meet together alone, and should exclude every landlord from their council….

The tenant farmers in this matter of protection have a totally distinct interest from the landowners, or small squires, or land-agents; and until they meet in their several localities totally distinct from all other classes, they never will have a chance of arriving at a just appreciation of their own position or their own difficulties.

--Richard Cobden

We are on the eve of great changes. Put yourselves in a position to be able to help in the work, and so gather honour and fame where they are to be gained. You belong to the aristocracy of the human kind - not the privileged aristocracy - I don't mean that, but the aristocracy of improvement and civilisation. We have set an example to the world in all ages; we have given them the representative system. The very rules and regulations of this House have been taken as the model for every representative assembly throughout the whole civilised world; and having besides given them the example of a free press and civil and religious , we are now about giving a still greater example; we are going to set the example of making industry free - to set the example of giving the whole world every advantage of clime, and latitude, and situation, relying ourselves on the freedom of our industry. Yes, we are going to teach the world that other lesson. Don't think there is anything selfish in this, or anything at all discordant with Christian principles. I can prove that we advocate nothing but what is agreeable to the highest behests of Christianity. To buy in the cheapest market, and sell in the dearest. What is the meaning of the maxim? It means that you take the article which you have in the greatest abundance, and with it obtain from others that of which they have the most to spare; so giving to mankind means of enjoying the fullest abundance of earth's goods, and in doing so carrying out to the fullest extent the Christian doctrine of "Doing to all men as ye would they should do unto you".

--Richard Cobden

In the first place, we want free trade in corn, because we think it just; we ask for the abolition of all restriction upon that article, exclusively, simply because we believe that, if we obtain that, we shall get rid of all other monopolies without any trouble. We do not seek free trade in corn primarily for the purpose of purchasing it at a cheaper money rate; we require it at the natural price of the world's market, whether it becomes dearer with a free trade - as wool seems to be getting up now, after the abolition of the 1d. a pound - or whether it is cheaper, it matters not to us, provided the people of this country have it at its natural price, and every source of supply is freely opened, as nature and nature's God intended it to be; - then, and only then shall we be satisfied. If they come to motives, we state that we do not believe that free trade in corn will injure the farmer; we are convinced that it will benefit the tenant-farmer as much as any trader or manufacturer in the community. Neither do we believe it will injure the farm-labourer; we think it will enlarge the market for his labour, and give him an opportunity of finding employment, not only on the soil by the improvements which agriculturists must adopt, but that there will also be a general rise in wages from the increased demand for employment in the neighbouring towns, which will give young peasants an opportunity of choosing between the labour of the field and that of the towns. We do not expect that it will injure the land-owner, provided he looks merely to his pecuniary interest in the matter; we have no doubt it will interfere with his political despotism - that political union which now exists in the House of Commons, and to a certain extent also, though terribly shattered, in the counties of this country. We believe it might interfere with that; and that with free trade in corn men must look for political power rather by honest means - to the intelligence and love of their fellow-countrymen - that by the aid of this monopoly, which binds some men together by depressing and injuring their fellow-citizens. We are satisfied that those landowners who choose to adopt the improvement of their estates, and surrender mere political power by granting long leases to the farmers - who are content to eschew some of their feudal privileges connected with vert and venison - I mean the feudal privileges of the chase - if they will increase the productiveness of their estates - if they chose to attend to their own business - then, I say, free trade in corn does not necessarily involve pecuniary injury to the landlords themselves.

--Richard Cobden

Protection is a very convenient vehicle for politicians; the cry of 'protection' won the last election; and politicians looked to secure honours, emoluments, places by it; but you, the gentry of England, are not sent up for such objects. Is, then, that old, tattered and torn flag to be kept up for the politicians, or will you come forward and declare that you are ready to inquire into the state of the agricultural interests? I cannot think that the gentlemen of England can be content to be made mere drum-heads, to be sounded by the Prime Minister of England - to be made to emit notes, but to have no articulate sounds of their own. You, gentlemen of England, the high aristocracy of England, your forefathers led my forefathers; you may lead us again if you choose; but though - longer than any other aristocracy - you have kept your power, while the battle-field and the hunting field were the tests of manly vigour, you have not done as the noblesse of or the hidalgos of Madrid have done; you have been Englishmen, not wanting in courage on any call. But this is a new age; the age of social advancement, not of feudal sports; you belong to a mercantile age; you cannot have the advantage of commercial rents and retain your feudal privileges too. If you identify yourselves with the spirit of the age, you may yet do well; for I tell you that the people of this country look to their aristocracy with a deep-rooted prejudice - an hereditary prejudice, I may call it - in their favour; but your power was never got, and you will not keep it, by obstructing the spirit which is calculated to knit nations more closely together by commercial intercourse; if you give nothing but opposition to schemes which almost give life and breath to inanimate nature, and which it has been decreed shall go on, then you are no longer a national body…. How can protection, think you, add to the wealth of a country? Can you by legislation add one farthing to the wealth of the country? You may, by legislation, in one evening, destroy the fruits and accumulations of a century of labour; but I defy you to show me how, by the legislation of this House, you can add one farthing to the wealth of the country. You guide that intelligence; you cannot do better than leave it to its own instincts. If you attempt by legislation to give any direction to trade or industry, it is a thousand to one that you are doing wrong; and if you happen to be right, it is a work of supererogation, for the parties for whom you legislate would go right without you, and better than with you.

--Richard Cobden

Now, what is the mode in which these gentlemen go to work to benefit the agricultural labourers? They call them together for a ploughing match, then they bring them into the room and give them a glass of wine, and they give a reward of thirty shillings to one man who has ploughed best! Then they inquire who has served for twenty-five years in the same place, and, perhaps, they condescend to give him thirty shillings as a reward for good conduct. Then the farmers - the farmers who sit at the table - have their names read over, and prizes are awarded: to one for successfully cultivating turnips, to another for having produced a good fat ox, and to another for having accumulated the greatest quantity of lard a pig. And this is the way in which agriculture is to be improved! What should you think if a similar plan was adopted to assist you in your business? Let us suppose that a number of monopolists came down once a year, and then it is only about two hours and a half long - that they held a meeting, in which they would have a spinning match and weaving match. And after they had been into some prize mill to see this spinning and weaving match, they sat down to dinner; and Job Hargreaves or Frank Smith is brought in, stroking his head down all the while as he comes before the squirearchy, and making his very best bow, to receive from the chairman thirty shillings as a reward for having been the best spinner and the best weaver! And, this being disposed of, imagine such a manufacturer getting a prize of five pounds for the best piece of fustian! And another 'ditto', 'ditto', for the best yard-wide calico! Then imagine a shopkeeper rising from his seat to the table while the chairman puts on a grave face, and addressing him in complimentary terms, presents him with five pounds for having kept during the past year his shop-floor and his counters in the cleanest state! Then they call up a manufacturer, and he has an award of five pounds, because the inspectors had found his mill to be in the best working condition. Then the merchant rises up, and gets his reward of five pounds for having been found by the inspectors to have kept his books in the best order by double entry.

You laugh at all this, and well you may; you cannot help it. Where is the difference between the absurdity, the mockery of bringing up men in round frocks to a dinner-table and giving them thirty shilling, because they had ploughed well, or hoed well, or harrowed well - bringing up farmers to give them prizes for having the cleanest field of Swedish turnips, or for having managed their farm in the best way? Where is the difference, I ask, between offering these rewards and giving out here of such rewards as I have just now alluded to? Let us suppose, if you can keep your countenances, that such a state of things existed here. Now what must be the concomitant order of things? It would argue, in the first place, that the prizemen who were so treated were an abject and servile class. It would argue that the trader who could condescend to be treated so would himself be little better than a slave. And if you needed such stimulants as these to make you carry on your business as you ought to do, where do you think you would be found in the race of industry as compared with other classes? Where would you be if you were so childish as to be fondled and dandled by a body of Members of Parliament? Why, there would not be a country on the face of the world that you could compete with - that is evident. You would like them, be going to these same Parliamentary men, begging them to be your dry nurses, in order that they might pass an Act of Parliament to protect you in your trade.

--Richard Cobden.

The Corn Law is the keystone of all the monopolies that afflict this country, and when once it shall have been knocked down, it will need no help from you or from us to bring down the whole structure. --Richard Cobden

In 1840, the Whig government of Lord Melbourne ordered an enquiry into the duties levied on goods imported into Britain. The report showed that there was little - if any - rationale behind the duties.

The Select Committee appointed to inquire into the Several DUTIES levied on imports into the United Kingdom, and how far those Duties are for Protection to similar Articles, the Produce or Manufacture of this Country, or of the British Possessions abroad, or whether the Duties are for the purposes of Revenue alone; and to whom several Petitions were referred; and who were empowered to report the Minutes of Evidence taken before them to the House; - have considered the Matters to them referred, and agreed to the following Report:

The Evidence is of so valuable a character, that Your Committee could hardly do justice to it in detail, unless they were to proceed, step by step, to a complete analysis, which the advanced period of the Session will not allow them to do. They must, therefore, confine themselves to reporting the general impressions they have received, and submit the Evidence to the serious consideration of the House, persuaded that it cannot be attentively examined without producing a strong conviction that important changes are urgently required in our Custom-house legislation.

The Tariff of the United Kingdom presents neither congruity nor unity of purpose; no general principles seem to have been applied.

The Schedule to the Act 3 & 4 Will. 4, c. 56 [1834], for consolidating the Customs Duties, enumerates no fewer than 1,150 different rates of duty chargeable on imported articles, all other commodities paying duty as unenumerated; and very few of such rates appear to have been determined by any recognised standard; and it would be difficult for any person unacquainted with the details of the Tariff to estimate the probable amount of duty to which any given commodity would be found subjected. There are cases where the duties levied are simple and comprehensive; others, where they fall into details both vexatious and embarrassing.

The Tariff often aims at incompatible ends; the duties are sometimes meant to be both productive of revenue and for protective objects, which are frequently inconsistent with each other; hence they sometimes operate to the complete exclusion of foreign produce, and in so far no revenue can of course be received; and sometimes, when the duty is inordinately high, the amount of revenue becomes in consequence trifling. They do not make the receipt of revenue the main consideration, but allow that primary object of fiscal regulations to be thwarted by an attempt to protect a great variety of particular interests, at the expense of the revenue, and of the commercial intercourse with other countries.

Arguments against repeal of the Corn Laws

In 1842 the Plug Plots broke out in the north of England and there was some suspicion that the Anti- Corn-Law League had been responsible for causing distress among the working population to further the League's own ends. Although the government realised that there was no evidence to substantiate these suspicions, Peel asked the Home Office to collect information on the activities of the League. Eventually the information was passed on to JW Croker who produced it as an article in the Conservative periodical, the Quarterly Review.

We now proceed to Mr Cobden's appearance in the Conference of the 11th of February, 1842. Mr Cobden on that occasion said - 'That three weeks would try the mettle of his countrymen (hear, hear). Why, would they submit to be starved, and put upon short allowance, by thirty or forty thousand men? (Loud cries of No, no.) He was sure that if they knew how insignificant, both morally and physically, those thirty thousand or forty thousand aristocrats and squires were, they would not fear them (Hear, hear). But though really insignificant, they were not conscious of any weakness; they were as confident in their strength as they had been five years since; they would not shrink one atom; and until these men were frightened the people would never obtain justice....

'Were they prepared to make sacrifices, and to undergo sufferings to carry this question? (Cheers, and loud cries of Yes, yes.) The time was not far off when they might be called upon to make sacrifices, and to undergo sufferings. The time might soon come when they might be called upon to inquire, as Christian men, whether an oligarchy which has usurped the government (Cheers), placed its foot on the Crown (Immense cheering, which continued some minutes), and trampled down the people (Continued cheering). - how far such an oligarchical usurpation was deserving of their moral and religious support (Immense cheering).... As soon as the bill should become the law of the land, by the physical force of a brute majority against reason, then would the time come when he should feel it his duty to secede, as far as he could do morally, from giving all voluntary support, whether pecuniary or morally, to such a government (Here the whole meeting rose, waving their hats, and cheering for several minutes). The administrators of the law might enforce the law - he would not resist the law - but there must be somebody to administer the law, and somebody to enforce the law; and he thought that three weeks hence the whole people would so thoroughly understand the real bearings of this bread-tax question, that they would not want physical force while they were unanimous (Loud cheers)'.

Meanwhile, the Conference continued its daily exercise of agitation; and on the 12th July Mr Cobden appeared there in person, and made a speech - which, coming from a man in his station, and conveyed, with the applauses of a hired press, to an excited populace, was well calculated to produce awful mischief, though in other circumstances, its intrinsic nonsense would have only excited contempt.

He said, amongst a variety of similar ebullitions, - 'Whatever they could do to embarrass the Government they were bound to do. They owed them no respect: they were entitled to none. They owed them no service which they could possibly avoid. The Government was based upon corruption, and the offspring of VICE, CORRUPTION, VIOLENCE, INTIMIDATION, and BRIBERY. The majority of the House of Commons was supported by the violation of morality and religion. He said for such a Government they should entertain no respect whatever. He would assist the Anti-Corn-Law League all in his power to embarrass the Government.'...

We are satisfied that we have made out such a case against the Anti-Corn-Law Association and League, as no rational man in the country... can resist.

We have shown that these societies set out with a public and fundamental engagement to act by 'legal and constitutional means'; but that, on the contrary, all their proceedings have been in the highest degree unconstitutional, and, to the common sense of mankind, illegal.

We have shown that their second fundamental engagement, that no party political discussion should be allowed at any of their meetings', has been scandalously violated; and that the language of their speeches and their press has been not merely violent and indecent - but incendiary and seditious.

We have shown that, even from the outset, they endeavoured to menace the government and the legislature with the pressure of physical force, and that these threats continued with increasing violence, till lost at length in the tumult of the actual outbreak which they had provoked.

We have shown that the Magistrates who belonged to these societies, instead of maintaining the peace and tranquillity of their respective jurisdictions, were amongst the most prominent and violent promoters of every species of agitation; and that, while all of them talked language and promulgated doctrines that endangered the public peace, some, the highest in authority, volunteered declarations which those inclined to disturb the public peace might reasonably consider as promises of, at least, impunity.

We have shown that the League have spent, according to their own statement, £90,000 in the last year, we know not exactly how, but clearly in furtherance of the unconstitutional, illegal, and dangerous practices which we have detailed.

We have shown, we think, abundant reason to conclude that the £50,000 which they are now endeavouring to raise is probably destined to the same, or perhaps still more illegal, unconstitutional, and dangerous practices.

We have shown that - from first to last - their system has been one of falsehood and deception - from their original fundamental imposture of being the advocates of the poor - down to the meaner shifts of calling brutal violence freedom of discussion, and a subscription for feeding sedition and riot a fund for education or charity.

And, finally, we hope we have shown that no man of common sense of any party - if he only adheres to the general principles of the British Constitution - can hesitate to pronounce the existence of such associations - raising money - exciting mobs - organised - and - to use a term of the same Jacobin origin as their own, a hated - for the avowed purpose of coercing the government and the legislature - can hesitate, we say, to pronounce the existence of such associations disgraceful to our national character, and wholly incompatible either with the internal peace and commercial prosperity of the country - or, in the highest meaning of the words - the SAFETY OF THE STATE.

Quarterly Review, LXXI, Anti-Corn Law Agitation

Goulburn's letter to Peel on the proposal to suspend the Corn Laws

30 November 1845

Henry Goulburn was Peel's Chancellor of the Exchequer and had supported Peel throughout the 1841-6 ministry. However, Goulburn was reluctant to give his support to Peel over the proposal to suspend the Corn Laws. The following is Goulburn's letter expressing his concerns to Peel.

I have such an habitual deference to the superiority of your judgement and such an entire confidence in the purity of your motives, that I always feel great doubt as to my being right when I differ from you in opinion. But the more I reflect upon the observations which you made to me a few days since as to your difficulty in again defending a Corn Law in Parliament, the more do I feel alarmed at the consequences of your taking a different course from that which you have previously adopted. An abandonment of your former opinions now would, I think, prejudice your and our characters as public men, and would be fraught with fatal results to the country's best interests; and as I probably hear many opinions on a subject of this kind which do not reach you, the view which I take of probable consequences may not be undeserving of consideration - at least you will not misinterpret my motives in stating it.

I fairly own that I do not see how the repeal of the Corn Law is to afford relief to the distress with which we are threatened. I quite understand that if we had never had a Corn Law, it might be argued that we should now have had a larger supply in our warehouses, or that from the encouragement given by a free trade in corn to the growth of it in foreign countries, we should have had a larger fund on which to draw for a supply. But I think it next to impossible to show that the abandonment of the law now could materially affect this year's supply, or give us any corn which will not equally reach us under the law as it

Under these circumstances it appears to me that the abandonment of the Corn Law would be taken by the public generally as decisive evidence that we never intended to maintain it further than as an instrument by which to vex and defeat our enemies. The very caution with which we have spoken on the subject of corn will confirm this impression. Had we always announced a firm determination under all circumstances to uphold the Corn Law, it would have been more readily believed that in abandoning it now we were yielding to the pressure of an overwhelming necessity which we did not before anticipate. But when the public feel, as I believe they do, great doubts as to the existence of an adequate necessity - when greater doubts still are entertained as to the applicability of the abandonment of the Corn Law as a remedy to the present distress - they will, I fear, with few dissentient voices, tax us with treachery and deception, and charge us, from our former language, with having always had it in contemplation.

So much as to the effect on our character as public men. But I view with greater alarm its effects on public interests. In my opinion the party [Tory] of which you are the head is the only barrier which remains against the revolutionary effects of the Reform Bill. So long as that party remains unbroken, whether in or out of power, it has the means of doing much good, or at least of preventing much evil. But if it be broken in pieces by a destruction of confidence in its leaders (and I cannot but think that an abandonment of the Corn Law would produce that result), I see nothing before us but the exasperation of class animosities, a struggle for pre-eminence, and the ultimate triumph of unrestrained democracy.

Believe me, &c.,

HENRY GOULBURN

Disraeli's speech on the third reading of the Bill for the Repeal of the Corn Laws: 15 May 1846

In 1841 asked for a position in the new government formed by Sir but was not included in the ministry. Thereafter, he sought opportunities to attack Peel. This speech saw the culmination of Disraeli's invective against the party leader in the debates over the repeal of the Corn Laws, in which Peel is accused of "trading on the ideas and intelligence of others. His life has been one great appropriation clause. He is a burglar of others' intellect".

. . I say, then, assuming, as I have given you reason to assume, that the price of wheat, when this system is established, ranges in England at 35s. per quarter, and other grain in proportion, this is not a question of rent, but it is a question of displacing the labour of England that produces corn, in order, on an extensive and even universal scale, to permit the entrance into this country of foreign corn produced by foreign labour. Will that displaced labour find new employment? The Secretary of State says, that England is no longer an agricultural country; and the right hon. Gentleman, when reminded by the noble Lord the Member for Gloucestershire [Hon. Grantley Berkeley], of his words, said, "No, I did not say that; but I said that England was no longer exclusively an agricultural country." Why, Sir, the commerce of England is not a creation of yesterday: it is more ancient than that of any other existing country. This is a novel assumption in the part of the Government to tell us that England has hitherto been a strictly agricultural country, and that now there is a change, and that it is passing into a commercial and country. …I believe, Sir, if you look to the general distribution of labour in England, you will find she may be less of a manufacturing country now than she has been. Well, I give you my argument; answer it if you can. I say, looking to the employment of the people, manufacturing industry was more scattered over the country a hundred years ago than it is now. … But what are the resources of this kind of industry to employ and support the people, supposing the great depression in agricultural produce occur which is feared - that this great revolution, as it has appropriately been called, takes place - that we cease to be an agricultural people - what are the resources that would furnish employment to two-thirds of the subverted agricultural population - in fact, from 3,500,000 to 4,000,000 of the people? Assume that the workshop of the world principle is carried into effect - assume that the attempt is made to maintain your system, both financial and domestic, on the resources of the cotton trade - assume that, in spite of hostile tariffs, that already gigantic industry is doubled - a bold assumption, even if there be no further improvements in machinery, further reducing the necessity of manual labour - you would only find increased employment for 300,000 of your population. Perhaps mechanical invention may reduce the number half, and those only women and children. What must be the consequence? I think we have pretty good grounds for anticipating social misery and political disaster. … But then you tell us of the aid to be had by the agriculturist from skill. It is not easy to argue on a phrase so indefinite as skill; but I think I can show you that the English agriculturist is far more advanced, in respect to skill, than even the English manufacturer. I don't mean to say that there are not English farmers who might cultivate their lands better and with more economy than they do; but the same may surely be said, in their respective pursuits, of many a manufacturer and many a miner, but what I mean to say is, that an English farmer produces more effectively and wastes less - is more industrious and more intelligent than the manufacturer. I will prove this by the evidence of a member of the Anti-Corn-Law League - Mr. Greg. Mr. Greg says, that the competition is so severe that he almost doubts the possibility of the English Manufacturer long maintaining that competition with the Continental or American manufacturer, who approach them nearer every day in the completeness of their fabrics and the economy of their productions. But no such thing can be said of the English agriculturist, who, I have shown you, can produce much more per bushel than the French, Russian, or American agriculturist. So much, then, for the argument with respect to skill.

There is one argument, or rather appeal, which I know has influenced opinion out of this House, and also within it. You bring before us the condition of the English peasant. It is too often a miserable condition. … It is very easy to say that the condition of the agricultural labourer, when compared with the general state of our civilization, is a miserable and depressed one, and that protection has produced it. …When Mr. Huskisson first settled in Sussex, his attention was naturally drawn to the extraordinary state of pauperism in that country; and after giving the subject all the meditation of his acute mind, he said that he traced it to the fact, that Sussex had formerly been the seat of a great iron trade, and that agriculture had never been able to absorb the manufacturing population. Now, apply that principle to the western counties, and don't you think it will throw some light upon their condition? They also have been the seats of manufactures - many of them obsolete, and many of them now only partially pursued. There, too, you will find that the manufacturing population has never been absorbed by the agricultural - that is, agriculture does not bear its ratio in its means of support to the amount of the population which it has to sustain, but which it did not create. And now go to Lincolnshire. I will rest our case on Lincolnshire. It is a new county; it is a protected county. Lincolnshire is to agriculture what Lancashire is to manufactures. The population there is produced by land and supported by land, in the same manner that the population of Lancashire has been produced and is supported by manufactures. …. And all under the faith of Protective Acts of Parliament. I am told that it is the contiguity of manufactures that makes Lincolnshire so prosperous. But, Sir, the frontiers of Wilts are nearer that great manufacturing district of which Birmingham is the centre, than those of Lincolnshire are to Lancashire. Now, see what Lincolnshire has produced under protection. There you see the protective system fairly tested. But when you find the labourers in the western counties wretched and miserable, do not say that protection has been the cause of it, when protection is, perhaps, the reason why they exist at all; but see if you cannot find other causes for their poverty and means to counteract it. I must say, that nothing astonished me more than when the noble Lord the Member for Falkirk [Lord Dalmeny] asked the farmers in Newark market, " What has protection done for you?" Why, that market is supplied with the wheat of Lincoln Heath, the intrinsic poverty of whose soil is only sustained by the annual application of artificial manures, but which produces the finest corn in the kingdom. What has protection done for them? Why, if protection had never existed, Lincolnshire might still have been a wild wold, a barren heath, a plashy marsh.

…[The case of Ireland] is too terrible, …. The hon. Gentleman [Richard Cobden] says, "Ireland an argument in favour of the Corn Laws! Of all countries in the world I never should have supposed that Ireland would have been brought forward in support of the Corn Laws." That is a saucy and gallant sally; but is it an argument? What does it prove? The population is reduced to the lowest sources of subsistence. Admitted; but how do they gain even their potatoes except by cultivating the soil, and by producing that wheat and those oats which they send to England? I should be very glad if that wheat and those oats, remained in Ireland; but I ask, what will be the state of Ireland, if the effect of this measure on your markets be such as I have assumed? You say that capital will flow into the country, and manufactures will be established. What length of time will elapse before these manufactures are established? … Believing that this measure would be fatal to our agricultural interests - believing that its tendency is to sap the elements and springs of our manufacturing prosperity - believing that in a merely financial point of view it will occasion a new distribution of the precious metals, which must induce the utmost social suffering in every class, I am obliged to ask myself, if the measure be so perilous, why is it produced? Sir, I need not ask what so many Gentlemen both in and out of this House have already asked, what was there in the circumstances of this country to authorize the change? If we are only a commercial and manufacturing people, all must admit that commerce was thriving and that manufactures flourished. Agriculture was also content; and even had it been suffering and depressed, - what does it signify, since England has ceased to be an agricultural country? Obliged, then, to discover some cause for this social revolution, I find that a body of men have risen in this country eminent for their eloquence, distinguished for their energy, but more distinguished in my humble opinion, for their energy and their eloquence than for their knowledge of human nature, or for the extent of their political information. Sir, I am not one of those who, here or elsewhere, in public or in private, have spoken with that disrespect which some have done of that great commercial confederation which now exercises so great an influence in this country. Though I disapprove of their doctrine - though I believe from the bottom of my heart that their practice will eventually be as pernicious to the manufacturing interest as to the agricultural interests of this country, still I admire men of abilities who, convinced of a great truth, and proud of their energies, band themselves together for the purpose of supporting it, and come forward, devoting their lives to what they consider to be a great cause. Sir, this country can only exist by free discussion. … No, we trusted … to one who by accepting, or rather by seizing that post, obtained the greatest place in the country, and at this moment governs England. Well, Sir, what happens? The right hon. Gentleman, the First Minister, [Sir Robert Peel] told his Friends that he had given them very significant hints of the change of his opinions. He said that even last year, Lord Grey {a former Tory Prime Minister] had found him out, and he was surprised that we could have been so long deluded. Sir, none of the observations of the right hon. Gentleman applied to me. More than a year ago I rose in my place and said, that it appeared to me that protection was in about the same state as Protestantism [repeal of the Test Acts] was in 1828. I remember my Friends were very indignant with me for that assertion, but they have since been so kind as to observe that instead of being a calumny it was only a prophecy. But I am bound to say, from personal experience, that, with the very humble exception to which I have referred, I think the right hon. Baronet [Peel] may congratulate himself on his complete success in having entirely deceived his party, … I want to know what Gentlemen think of their best bargain now? Suddenly, absolute as was the confidence in the right hon. Gentleman, the announcement was made that there was to be another change; that that was to occur under his auspices, which, only a few months before, he had aptly described as a "social revolution. " And how was that announcement made? Were hon. Gentlemen called together, or had the influential Members of either House any intimation given to them of the nature of it? No, Sir. It was announced through the columns of a journal which is always careful never to insert important information except on the highest authority. Conceive the effect of that announcement on foreign countries, and on foreign Ministers… How ingenuous was the conduct of Her Majesty's Government - or of that Minister who formed the omnipotent minority of the Cabinet, I leave the House to decide. But was it not strange that, after so much agitation, after all these schemes, after all these Machiavellian manoeuvres, when the Minister at last met the House and his party, he acted as if we had deserted him, instead of his having left us? Who can forget those tones? Who can forget that indignant glance?

"Vectabor humeris tunc ego inimicis eques; meacque terra cedet insolentiae;" ["Like a knight I will mount your unbroken back; the world will give way before my arrogant ride" - Horace, Epodes XVII] which means to say, "I, a protectionist Minister, mean to govern England by the aid of the Anti-Com-Law League. And, as for the country Gentlemen, why, I snap my fingers in their face." ….Sir, the right hon. Gentleman has been accused of foregone treachery - of long meditated deception - of a desire unworthy of a great statesman, even if an unprincipled one - of always having intended to abandon the opinions by professing which he rose to power. Sir, I entirely acquit the right hon. Gentleman of any such intention. I do it for this reason: that when I examine the career of this Minister, which has now filled a great space in the Parliamentary history of this country, I find that for between thirty and forty years, …that right hon. Gentleman has traded on the ideas and intelligence of others. His life has been one great appropriation clause. He is a burglar of others' intellect. …. Sir, the right hon. Gentleman tells us, that he does not feel humiliated. Sir, it is impossible for any one to know what are the feelings of another. Feeling depends upon temperament; it depends upon the idiosyncrasy of the individual; it depends upon the organization of the animal that feels. But this I will tell the right hon. Gentleman, that though he may not feel humiliated, his country ought to feel humiliated. Is it so pleasing to the self-complacency of a great nation, is it so grateful to the pride of England, that one who, from the position he has contrived to occupy, must rank as her foremost citizen, is one of whom it may be said, as Dean [Jonathan] Swift said of another Minister, that "he is a Gentleman who has the perpetual misfortune to be mistaken!" [Gulliver's Travels, III] …. I know, Sir, that there are many who believe that the time is gone by when one can appeal to those high and honest impulses that were once the mainstay and the main element of the English character. I know, Sir, that we appeal to a people debauched by public gambling, stimulated and encouraged by an inefficient and shortsighted Minister. I know that the public mind is polluted with economic fancies; a depraved desire that the rich may become richer without the interference of industry and toil. I know, Sir, that all confidence in public men is lost. But, Sir, I have faith in the primitive and enduring elements of the English character. It may be vain now, in the midnight of their intoxication, to tell them that there will be an awakening of bitterness; it may be idle now, in the spring-tide of their economic frenzy, to warn them that there may be an ebb of trouble. But the dark and inevitable hour will arrive. Then, when their spirit is softened by misfortune, they will recur to those principles that made England great, and which, in our belief, can alone keep England great. Then, too, perchance they may remember, not with unkindness, those who, betrayed and deserted, were neither ashamed nor afraid to struggle for the "good old cause" - the cause with which are associated principles the most popular, sentiments the most entirely nation - the cause of labour - the cause of the people - the cause of England.

Thanks so much to this source for all these primary documents.

A Web of English History

http://www.historyhome.co.uk/peel/cldebate.htm