Corn Laws

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The Corn Laws (German Corn Laws ) were laws in the United Kingdom of the 19th century, by which local agriculture by high import duties and import bans on cereals protege was.

The laws were introduced after the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 , when grain prices fell on the world market. The grain laws were intended on the one hand to prevent local grain cultivation from declining, which would have led to an ever greater dependence on imports while the population had risen, and on the other hand they were an expression of the Tory Party's patronage towards its core constituency, the land-owning nobility .

  • The Grain Act of 1815 was passed under the Tory government of Lord Liverpool . Grain imports were banned with UK grain prices below 80 shillings per quarter ( wheat ). At higher prices, grain imports were duty-free.
  • The Grain Act of 1822 banned the import of grain when the domestic grain price fell below 70 shillings and allowed it again when the price rose above 80 shillings.
  • The Grains Act of 1828, passed under the government of the Duke of Wellington , introduced a tariff that began at prices below 73 shillings and increased progressively at lower prices.

A demonstration against the grain laws in Manchester in 1819 led to the Peterloo massacre . In 1831 opponents of the Corn Laws founded the Anti-Corn Law League . The Reform Act 1832 changed the electoral law in favor of the urban middle class, which tended to be anti-protectionist and supported free trade .

Under the Peel government , the grain laws were abolished in 1846 with a three-year phase-out. Peel was forced to resign that same year as a result of a defeat in his Irish policy. As a result, the Peelites split off from the Conservative Party and later joined the Liberals . The changed customs regulations did not prevent more than 1 million people from starving to death in Ireland alone between 1845 and 1849 ( Great Famine in Ireland ).

See also

Web links

Commons : Corn Laws  - collection of images, videos and audio files

Individual evidence

  1. ^ Richard Tames: Economy and Society in Nineteenth Century Britain (= Routledge library editions. Economic history ). Routledge, London 2006, ISBN 0-415-38250-5 , p. 64 (English; first edition: George Allen & Unwin, London 1972).