Wk. 7 Primary Source William J. Fox, Speech before the Anti-Corn Law League (1843)

Question 1

William J. Fox, Speech before the Anti-Corn Law League (1843)

Answer 1

William J. Fox, Speech before the Anti-Corn Law League (1843) – The Corn Law, first passed in 1815 and renewed several times, were protective tariffs for British agriculture (“corn” is the generic British term for grain). By taxing imported grain, they shielded British farmers from international competition and enabled them to charge higher prices for their crops. This primarily benefitted landlords, who were able to raise rents paid by farmers on land they owned.

• The Corn Laws hurt working people, particularly those in cities, by raising the price of bread.
• The Anti-Corn Law League was an organization dedicated to repealing the Corn Law, but as you can see in this speech its members supported free trade as a general economic policy.
• This speech, delivered by one of the League’s most popular speakers, was part of a large rally in London prior to an election for Members of Parliament.
• The Corn Law would be repealed in 1846, a major victory for free trade ideas in Britain.

How did Fox justify the policy of free trade?

• Fox had the impression that Free Trade was good for the working man because it put downward pressure on prices. – “Who that lives by eating bread has not an interest in the repeal of the bread tax?”

How did it benefit different classes of people?

What were the most important parts of Britain and Britain’s economic prosperity?

What was Fox’s vision for the larger economy of Britain and the world?

• The usual take on Free Trade is that it favors the wealthy, but here, he had to convince the landlords that it was in their best interest to have free trade by eliminating the grain tariffs even though it meant lower rents from the farmers to the landlords – “The landlords gain by railways enhancing the worth of their property; they gain by the rich and flourishing community arising around them”
• Fox points out that everyone is for free trade, but only when it suits their particular interests and never more than that – “each in turn will tell you that Free Trade is the noblest thing in the world, except for corn, except for sugar, except for coffee, and except for this, that, and the other”
• Points out the hypocrisy of the Landlords in supporting the Corn Laws – “The landlord class call themselves feeders of the people. They speak of their ability […] to feed the nation. What feeds the people? Not the growing of corn, but the people being able to buy it. The people are no more fed, for all the wheat that is grown, than as if there were so many stones covering the rich valleys of the country. It is in the price required of the people who eat it; and if that is beyond the power of the multitude to give, the landlords become starvers instead of feeders of the people”
• Refutes the criticism that repealing the Corn Laws would put farmworkers out of work because he claims that is already happening with the machinery now being used on farms – “People talk much about machinery throwing hands out of employment; these very same people raise a cry of the evil results of corn-law repeal in throwing the cultivators of the ground out of employ. Why, are they not themselves throwing the cultivators of the ground out of employ every day? Have we not the Royal Agricultural Society and local agricultural societies all over the country, where premiums are offered of from £3 to £50, from £50 to £100, for the invention of machines to cheapen the tillage of the ground – to do that by mechanical ingenuity which had heretofore been wrought by human labour?”
• Points out that the TRUE purpose of the Corn-laws is to enrich those already wealthy that these laws are structured to allow the wealthy to produce at lower and lower costs without passing any of those savings on to the working man – “Production is cheaper, goods, apparel of various kinds, are brought to market at a lower rate. The use of it is diffused more extensively in society; people have enjoyments and accommodation which they did not possess; the demand has increased, and this again reacts upon production; more hands are employed, and in the natural course of things there is found to be more work, more wages, and more enjoyment. But in the employment of agricultural machinery, the intention of the Corn Law is not to let those inventions affect the price”
• With all this, Fox is creating a stark contrast between the haves and have-nots in class warfare.