Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle/Introduction
NOTES ON THE ANTI-CORN LAW STRUGGLE.
INTRODUCTION.
In revising my MS. of "Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle," I am struck with the fact that one-third or more of the book is the work of him who was throughout the whole of the Struggle the advocate in Parliament of the Repeal of the Corn Laws; and is now the only survivor of a group of contemporaries among whom "si mea fama in obscuro sit, nobilitate ac magnitudine eorum, meo qui nomini afficient, me consoler."
I will state shortly what led me to become one of the labourers in the work of repealing the Corn Laws. On the 17th of January, 1842, I received a note signed Adam Scott, stating that the writer had been requested to communicate with me on behalf of the Anti-Corn Law League. A day or two after, Mr. Adam Scott[1] called on me at my chambers in Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, and informed me that the matter on which the Council of the Anti-Corn Law League were desirous of consulting me was the Land-Tax. After some correspondence and several conferences I received from Mr. Scott a letter, dated March 17, 1842, stating that Mr. Cobden had requested him to make an appointment for the following day. On the 18th of March, 1842, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Scott called together, between eleven and twelve o'clock, at my chambers.
In 1842 and the following three years the prospects of those who laboured for the repeal of the Corn Laws were not very good. When members of the League went into the agricultural districts the farmers did not give them a friendly reception. I have heard witnesses of the fact speak of the farmers on one occasion bringing the hose of a fire-engine to bear upon the Free Tradespeaker. Those who were travelling through the country to endeavour to diffuse some knowledge of political economy had to encounter not only hostile opinions, but the argumentum baculinum. One of those lecturers told me that (at Dorchester, I think it was) he observed a stalwart man in the front row of the audience with a large cudgel of which he appeared to make rather an ostentatious, not to say menacing, display.
Of the argument which I drew up in the case submitted to me professionally on behalf of the Council of the Anti-Corn Law League, the Council printed at the time two thousand copies for distribution to Members of Parliament. Mr. Cobden was repeatedly applied to for copies, and he referred applicants to me. Among those who noticed my argument on the Land-Tax was a critic in a weekly publication, who described my argument as that of "a writer of Mr. Bright's school," and said, "it was with universal assent that all the tenures were at the Restoration simplified into the form of free and common socage."
So far was it from "universal assent" that the resolution by which the excise was substituted for the feudal dues was only carried by a majority of two in a House of three hundred Members—one hundred and fifty-one to one hundred and fortynine—many Members urging in the strongest terms the injustice of the measure.[2]
This critic goes on to say: "If Mr. Bright had been then alive he might fairly have urged the justice of commuting an obsolete burden for a moderate land-tax; but the latter impost, which still exists under that name, furnishes an ample equivalent for one of the least productive revenues which belonged to the Crown."
The answer to this is that a question which all through the reign of James I. occupied very much of the time and attention of the Parliament was the mode of getting rid of the feudal tenures. The same hand which drew the Petition of Right drew up an account of a motion made at the Parliament in the eighteenth year of the reign of James I. for commuting the feudal tenures and payments into a "competent yearly rent, to be assured to his Majesty, his heirs, and successors" (4 Inst., 202, 203). This motion Coke stamps with his approbation, "hoping that so good a motion will some time or other, by authority of Parliament, one way or other, take effect and be established." The amount of the rent-charge which was to be substituted for the feudal payments was equal to nearly one-half of the whole revenue at that time (Sinclair, "Hist. Revenue," vol. i., pp. 233, 244); and as the value of the land would increase with the wealth and revenue of the kingdom, the proportion would remain the same.
The confidence with which this anonymous writer expressed himself on the subject of the Land-Tax, induces me to mention one of the numerous applications for a copy of my argument on the Land-Tax, because it shows, notwithstanding the judgment of this anonymous critic, that the soundness of the reasoning as well as of the legal learning of my argument has been stamped with the approbation of some of the highest legal authorities.
In Michaelmas Term, 1852, an eminent counsel—a Member of Parliament—who was engaged in a heavy land-tax case with the then Attorney-General, Sir Alexander Cockburn, afterwards Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, having applied to all the law booksellers, without effect, for a copy of the pamphlet which was out of print—indeed, I don t know that it was ever actually published for sale—I sent him a copy and received soon after the following note from him:—"Allow me to thank, you most sincerely for your very able and valuable pamphlet on the Land-Tax, which has been of great use and value to me."
On the 6th November, 1844, I received a letter from Mr. Cobden, dated Manchester, 5th November, 1884, in which he said:—
"There is an idea talked of here of sending a Commission of Inquiry into two or three of the southern counties, say Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, to ascertain the condition of the labouring population, and particularly how much of the average earnings of a peasant's family goes in purchasing clothing and articles paying excise or duty to Government. As the only way of making such an inquiry useful would be by having men of character and respectability to put their names to the report, it is thought that one person from Manchester and another from London would be best suited to the labour. The object would be simply an inquiry into facts, without meddling with theories, whether of Corn Law or Poor Law. Do you think you would be able to give six weeks to such an investigation, between this and Christmas, if the plan were carried out?"
In consequence of unavoidable delays it was not till towards the middle of December that the gentleman joined with me in this Commission, Mr. Philip Holland, and myself took our departure for Salisbury.
It will be of use in throwing light on the subject to give here the credentials, or at least the credential letter, dated 10th December, 1844, and addressed to A. Bisset, Esq., and P. Holland, Esq. The following is a copy of the letter:—
"My dear Sirs,
"Yours faithfully,
"RICHARD COBDEN."
This letter was written at the offices of the Anti-Corn Law League, in Spring Gardens, London, on the evening of the 10th December, 1844. It was a very hard frost. I had been waiting all the evening to receive this credential letter from Mr. Cobden, who was in his bed-room, with a large fire, receiving people on business, of which he had a vast deal on his hands. He wrote this letter while I was in the room with him; and it struck me as an example of his great aptitude for business that though he had been occupied for several hours by a succession of visitors who sought his counsel or direction on the business of the League, quite apart from the business on which I came to him, he immediately proceeded to write the letter above quoted, and with such precision and accuracy that he did not need to alter a word or even a letter, as I can see from the original letter now lying before me.
I left London on Saturday, December 14th, 1844. I reached Salisbury towards evening the same day, and called on Mr. Lambert the same evening. Some time after my return to London, in January, 1845, I made a report to Mr. Cobden of the result of my inquiries. I will refer in the fifth chapter to some points in my report that may appear of importance and interest; and I may say here that I found myself upon an engagement very difficult. Besides the difficulty of getting at the truth from the imperfect machinery we had for examining witnesses, there was getting up, in an unusually severe winter, at 4, or even sometimes 3 a.m., to catch a coach; and the farmers, who thought their interests identical with those of their landlords, threatened to shoot us if we came upon their ground. I remember in particular a room in an inn at Cranbourne, the door of which would not close though the frost was intense; and I remember my colleague, after taking great pains for some hours in examining a witness, saying, at the conclusion of his labour, "It's hard work!"
Some time after my return to London I made a report to Mr. Cobden of the result of my inquiries. I first made a somewhat short report in order that Mr. Cobden might have it in his hands before making a speech on a certain day in the House of Commons. Some months after I made a longer and more elaborate report, in which I compared the condition of the agricultural labourers at that time in England with their condition at other times. I showed, on the best evidence I could obtain, that in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the wages of the agricultural labourer in England were such as to procure for him nearly double the quantity of food which his wages between 1740 and 1794 procured; and that the wages obtained by him from 1834 to 1844, as measured by the quantity of produce, were considerably less than in the period between 1740 and 1794. I also showed that under the combined operation of the Poor Law of 1790 and the Corn Law of 1815 the wages of agricultural labour were lower, and the condition of the agricultural labourer was worse than at any former period except that in which the Poor Law of Elizabeth was passed.
In attempting to make a table of wages, the most that can be looked for is an approximation to the truth. Besides the difference of wages in different counties, there are the variations through the various seasons of the year—winter, summer, haytime, harvest. In a table which I drew up with great care to show the comparative amount of wages in pints of wheat from the fifteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, I have taken the summer wages as the basis of the calculation, because that basis afforded greater facilities for comparison, from the fact that in the early rates of wages fixed at various times by the legislature, or by the magistrates acting under the authority of a legislative enactment, a certain scale of wages is always given from Easter till Michaelmas, with the exception of harvest, when a somewhat higher rate is allowed. It appears from this table, which was drawn up from the best authorities, which authorities are cited at the foot of it, that wages were much higher in the fifteenth century than they have ever been since; that, about the middle of the eighteenth century, they were higher than they had ever been since the sixteenth; that from the middle of the eighteenth century they declined till they attained a minimum about 1824; that, after the agricultural riots and burnings of 1830-31, they rose considerably, so as to be for a time higher than they had been for upwards of fifty years. But the rise caused by the riots of 1830 and 1831 was only temporary. I subjoin the table to which I have referred.
(a) Average of nineteen years, in Sir F. Eden's tables.
(b) Stat. 11, Hen. VII., c. 22.
(c) Average of the prices in Sir F. Eden's tables.
(d) Stat. 16, Hen. VIII., c. 3.
(e) Sir F. Eden's tables.
(f) Ibid.
(g) Average, or below it, in Eden's tables.
(h) Rate fixed by justices of East Riding of Yorkshire in 1593.
(i) Eden, Appendix No. III.
(j) Rate of Rutlandshire justices in 1610.
(k) Eden, Appendix, p. lxxix.
(l) Rate of Lancashire justices, 1725.
(m) Eton tables, cited Tooke, "History of Prices," i., 48.
(n) Tooke's "History of Prices," i., 65. The wages here given are the general mean for the whole year. The summer wages are very near the general mean, as appears by the proportions in Arthur Young's "Six Weeks' Tour," p, 333. The equality is produced by the excess of the summer wages over the winter's being balanced by the excess of the harvest wages over the summer.
(o) Tooke, ibid.
(p) Ibid.
(q) Parliamentary Return.
(r) Ibid.
(s) Ibid.
(t) Summer wages, computed as above, from the accounts drawn up for the Board of Agriculture.
(u) Average of all England from Report of Committee on Labourers' Wages in 1824.
(v) Average of all the counties of England, from Appendix (B) to the Poor Law Commissioners' Report in 1834. This result has been obtained from a careful examination and analysis of the returns from more than 1200 parishes. But the average seems too high, even allowing for the temporary rise caused by the riots of 1830 and 1831.
- ↑ Mr. Adam Scott was the author of two able pamphlets, entitled "Anti-Corn Law Tract, No. 1. A Plea for the total and immediate repeal of the Corn Laws, with remarks on the Land-Tax fraud," London, 1842; and "Anti-Corn Law Tract, No. 2. Sir Robert Peel's Burdens on Land," London, 1842.
- ↑ Parliamentary History, vol. iv., pp. 148, 149.—Comm. Journ., Nov. 21, 1660.