Corn Laws, the name popularly given to certain statutory enactments which had for their object a restriction of the trade in grain. The English corn laws date as far back as the year 1360, in the reign of Edward III. Before this period, there seems to have been a general rule carried into effect by the crown against the exportation of any grain; and the Act of 1360 enacts the prohibition, but at the same time excepts certain places which the king may appoint by license. An Act of 1436 permitted exportation when the price of wheat did not exceed 6s. 8d. per quarter. Hitherto, there seem to have been no prohibitions against importation; but in 1463 an act was passed prohibiting it so long as the price at home was below the 6s. 8d. at which there was free exportation. The next change was in the reign of Henry VIII., when an Act of 1534 prohibited all exportation except by license specially granted under the great seal. This act was not found to work well; and twenty years later the previous arrangement was adopted of allowing exportation when the price stood below a certain point. In 1562 exportation was permitted when the price was under 10s. a quarter. Export duties of varying amounts were imposed from 1570 to 1689, when they were altogether abolished. The subsequent legislation for some time merely changed the price at which exportation might begin, generally enlarging it. After the Restoration, the policy of increasing the duties on importation, for the protection of agriculture and the landed interest at home, begins to be perceptible. At the same time the effect of that event on the relations of Scotland and England towards each other forms a curious illustration of such fiscal regulations. Under the Protectorate they were one country, with free intercommunion of trading privileges. Scotland was increasing in wealth under this arrangement; but the countries were separated by the restoration of Charles II., and became the same to each other as foreign nations. The English duties restricted the importation of grain from Scotland; and in 1663 the Scotch parliament, in retaliation, laid heavy duties on the importation of English and all other foreign grain. Had not the union of 1707 made the two countries one again, England and Scotland would probably have continued a corn-law contest against each other, as was the case with the French provinces under the old regime.
The agricultural interest continuing powerfully to control this department of legislation, an act was passed in 1670 for virtually prohibiting importation into England until the home price had reached 53s. 4d., and laying a heavy duty on it above that point. This law had, however, little effect in favour of the landed interest, from the circumstance that then, and for long afterwards, Britain was an exporting, not an importing country—that is to say, it generally produced more corn than its population required. A new device was adopted at the Revolution of 1689, a bounty being awarded on exportation—i.e. a sum of 5s. was paid for every quarter of wheat sent abroad when the price fell below 48s., so that if the price in the foreign market would not induce people to export corn, the bounty, in addition to that price, might. For upwards of a century the numerous enactments in this department will be found to be a mere shifting, according to circumstances, of the incidence of the bounty on the one hand, and of the import duty on the other. In 1773 a permanent adjustment was supposed to be reached by Burke's act, which provided that the bounty should cease when the price reached 44s., prohibited exportation when the price was above that figure, and allowed importation at a nominal duty of 6d. at a price of 48s. In 1791, and during the wars of the French Revolution, further alterations in the corn laws favourable to the landed interest were effected. The bounties, however, were abolished in 1814. In 1815, after the conclusion of the wars, a law was passed prohibiting importation of foreign corn when the price was below 80s. a quarter.
The principle of the sliding-scale which had been more or less followed in previous enactments was systematically carried out in the year subsequent to the great wars, in 1822, and particularly in 1828, when Wellington's sliding-scale was passed. The object of the device called the sliding-scale was to reduce the import duty as the price of grain increased, for the purpose of virtually prohibiting the importation when the price was low, and encouraging it when the price was high, so that at famine-prices grain might come in duty free. By the Act of 1828, the price of 62s. a quarter on wheat was taken as the turning-point. At that price the import duty was £1, 4s. 8d. For every shilling less in the price a shilling was added to the duty. When the price rose above this point a different gradation ruled, the duty decreasing by a larger ratio than the rise. Thus, when the price was 69s. the duty was 15s. 8d.; and when it rose to 73s. the duty sunk to its minimum of 1s. The effect of such fluctuation in rendering the trade a gambling one is obvious, and yet this was not acknowledged until it had been proved by a series of ruinous instances. Thus, an importer who, when the price of grain was 73s. a quarter, bought a cargo, if the price sunk 4s. before he could accomplish a sale, had not only to sell at that reduced price, but with a further reduction of 14s. 8d. a quarter paid as duty. What was still more important, the supplies to this country being so capricious and irregular, foreign countries did not grow corn habitually for the British market. In 1842 Sir Robert Peel tried a modification of the sliding-scale, which did not in the least degree mitigate the growing hostility to the corn laws.
The basis of this hostility to the corn laws was found in the population which had now grown up in the large towns. The effect of the industrial revolution connected with mechanical invention and the utilisation of steam had been to transform Great Britain from an agricultural into a manufacturing and commercial country. The new interests thus created were rapidly rising to supremacy. But the nation did not, till the very last, earnestly unite in calling for repeal. There was a powerful party who defended the corn laws, and represented, with great plausibility, that these restrictive statutes were for the public good. Their arguments might thus be summed up: (1) Protection was necessary, in order to keep certain poor lands in cultivation. (2) It was desirable to cultivate as much land as possible, in order to improve the country. (3) If improvement by that means were to cease, we should be dependent on foreigners for a large portion of the food of the people. (4) Such dependence would be fraught with immense danger; in the event of war, supplies might be stopped, or our ports might be blockaded, the result being famine, disease, and civil war. (5) The advantage gained by protection enabled the landed proprietors and their tenants to encourage manufactures and trade; so much so, that if the corn laws were abolished, half the country shopkeepers would be ruined; that would be followed by the stoppage of many of the mills and factories; large numbers of the working-classes would be thrown idle; disturbances would ensue; capital would be withdrawn; and what would happen then, the wisest could not foresee. Such arguments had great weight with the labouring-classes, the small-town shopkeepers, almost all the members of the learned professions, and an immense majority of both Houses of parliament. Those who endeavoured to represent the impolicy of a restricted trade in corn were generally set down as little better than mischief-makers. In the House of Lords in 1839, Lord Melbourne, a Liberal premier, said, 'To leave the whole agricultural interest without protection, I declare before God that I think it the wildest and maddest scheme that has ever entered into the imagination of man to conceive.'
Meanwhile the ANTI-CORN-LAW LEAGUE concentrated the efforts of the free-trade party in Britain, and ultimately enabled them to carry the repeal of the corn laws, and to establish in practice the principle of free trade. In 1836 a number of philosophical radicals, among whom were Grote, Joseph Hume, and Roebuck, had formed an association for repealing the corn laws. In 1838 seven Manchester merchants formed an association of the same kind. The latter was soon joined by Cobden, who threw all his energy into the agitation, and secured for it also the eloquent advocacy of John Bright. Charles Villiers, who led their cause in the House of Commons, moved in February 1838 that the House resolve itself into a committee of inquiry on the corn laws. The motion was rejected by 342 to 195; and immediately the famous League was formed, with a central office at Manchester, its constitution dating from the 20th March 1839.
This was the beginning of a remarkable agitation, supported by lectures, verses, pamphlets, and popular oratory, which had a great influence on the economic and political education of the country. Large sums of money were raised, and a vast mass of popular literature bearing on the corn laws was diffused. In 1843 the League raised £50,000; in 1844, £100,000; in 1845, £250,000, for continuing the agitation. At a great meeting at Manchester in 1845, £60,000 were subscribed in an hour and a half.
The opposition to the corn laws steadily increased. Roused by the addresses of Mr Cobden, Mr Bright, and other leaders of the League, the people poured in petitions to parliament. The failure of the potato crop and the famine imminent in Ireland gave an overwhelming weight to the arguments of the League. At length the Conservative premier, Sir Robert Peel, became a convert to Free Trade (q.v.), and in 1846 carried a measure to put an end to the corn laws. By this act, the duty on corn was at once greatly reduced, and was to cease altogether in 1849, with the exception of a registration duty of 1s. a quarter, which terminated in 1869.
The repeal of the corn laws did not lead to a very great fall in the price of corn, nor did it result in the ruin of the agricultural interest. The vast expansion of industries, attended with a large increase of population and the growing demand for food, kept prices up to a tolerably high level. A markedly increased consumption of butcher-meat specially tended to enhance prices in that department and to raise the rent of land. With the development of American competition, about the year 1876, however, a new period set in. English agriculture has suffered severely, a fact which has largely contributed to the formation of a Fair-trade Party demanding among other things what they consider a moderate and reasonable protection for our landed and cultivating classes.
The pressure of American competition has also of late years led to the establishment of a corn-law system for the protection of agriculture in Germany. In 1879 protective duties on the importation of foreign grain were passed by the imperial parliament, and these have since been considerably increased. In France, trade in grain has long been subject to government regulation. During the course of the 19th century the duties on importation had been greatly reduced, but within the last few years things have followed the same course as in Germany. Slightly raised in 1881, the duties on grain were increased fivefold in 1885. See BRIGHT, and COBDEN, and works there cited.