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‘The Politics of Corn Law Repeal’: A Comment

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  27 January 2009

Iain McLean
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Extract

McKeown's excellent article (this Journal, 19 (1989), 353–80) excavates a rich seam and shows that there is much more to be dug out. By voting for the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846, a substantial number of MPs palpably voted against their economic interest. Even though many of the switchers can be shown to be Peelite office-holders with a vested interest in staying in office (p. 378), they cannot be described simply as Virginian (Chicagoan) self-interested actors, because everybody knew that Peel's action carried the risk of destroying the Tory coalition; his government fell in June 1846, and the Tories did not regain secure power until 1874. McKeown's regressions are valuable pointers towards alternative explanations, but the necessary limitations of his data may have led him to underestimate the effects of ideology and of consumer versus producer politics.

Type
Notes and Comments
Information
British Journal of Political Science , Volume 20 , Issue 2 , April 1990 , pp. 279 - 281
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 1990

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References

1 Brown, Lucy, The Board of Trade and the Free Trade Movement, 1830–42 (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1958)Google Scholar Pt I passim, esp. pp. 22–9; and cf. the evidence of the joint secretaries of the department to the Select Committee on Import Duties, Parliamentary Papers, vol. 5 (1840).Google Scholar

2 Peel, R., Memoirs, eds Stanhope, and Cardwell, (London: John Murray 1856–1857), II, p. 145Google Scholar, memo to Cabinet, 31 October 1845. To subsidize grain exports from Britain to Ireland without repealing the Corn Laws would be, in Peel's view, an unacceptable transfer from the taxpayer to the corn producer.

3 Peel, , Memoirs, II, pp. 166–8, 6 11 1845.Google Scholar

4 Parris, Henry (Government and the Railways in 19th-century Britain, London, Routledge, 1965, p. 55)Google Scholar calls the 1844 Act ‘a personal rather than a department measure’ but does not explain where the penny-a-mile train provision came from.