Part 6

For some years before 1838 the impression had become more or less prevalent that the influence of the Corn Laws was favorable to the landowners and the landowners alone. The system was devised as a means of protecting the interests of agriculture. The financial disturbances occasioned partly by the Napoleonic wars, partly by the invention of labor-saving machines, and partly by a succession of bad crops, tended at once to diminish the price of labor and increase the prices of food. The consequence was a universal prevalence of suffering among the wage-receiving class. Cobden and his associates believed that the suffering was chiefly due to the system of protection. The league was formed for the purpose of arousing public opinion in opposition to the prevailing system; and it did not rest till, after the most remarkable agitation in the history of reform, it had convinced the public of its errors, and swept the Corn Laws from the statute-books.

For seven years Cobden had the ear of the public, and during that period his labors were incessant. He not only spoke in all the large towns and cities, but he directed and inspired the movements of hundreds of others. The policy of the league was not only to send speakers into every electoral district, but to flood the country with the most effective writings on the subject in hand. What may be called the statistics of the league are impressive and instructive. Five hundred persons were employed to distribute tracts from house to house. In a single year five millions of such tracts were put into the families of electors in England and Scotland, and the number distributed to non-electors exceeded nine millions. This work of 1843 was done at a cost of about £50,000; in the following year it was resolved to redouble the efforts, and before the end of 1844 nearly £90,000 had been raised and expended.

The whole theory of Cobden’s propagandism was simply that, if the truth was brought to people’s doors, they would embrace it. The method was twofold. It sought to bring the facts bearing on the question to the attention of the people by means of the press, and then by public speech to persuade and arouse them to action. Of all the speakers of the time probably Cobden was the most effective. His methods were always plain and straightforward, showing a transparent honesty, a definite purpose, an argumentative keenness, and an almost irresistible persuasiveness.

Cobden entered the House of Commons in 1841, and, from his first speech, delivered five days after the opening of the session, was an acknowledged power in Parliament. He compelled attention even from an unfriendly audience, by his thorough mastery of the subject and by the directness and boldness with which he charged upon the ranks of his adversaries. His methods of address were new in the House; but it soon came to be universally conceded that he was one of the most powerful debaters in Parliament. It is the unique distinction of Cobden among English orators that he converted to his views a government long opposed to him, and finally persuaded a Prime-Minister to reverse his policy and become champion of the very cause he had formerly condemned. In the March of 1845 Cobden thought the time had come for the appointment of a select committee to inquire into the causes of the prevailing agricultural distress. It was in moving for such a committee that he made the speech selected for this collection. That the argument made a great impression may be inferred from Mr. Morley’s account of its effect on Peel. “The Prime-Minister,” he says, “had followed every sentence with earnest attention; his face grew more and more solemn as the argument proceeded. At length he crumpled up the notes which he had been taking, and was heard by an onlooker who was close by to say to Mr. Sidney Herbert who sat next him on the bench: ‘You must answer this, for I cannot.’ And in fact Mr. Sidney Herbert did make the answer while Peel listened in silence.”

During the summer of 1845 the agitation went on without any very obvious results. Indeed the cause seemed to be making no headway in Parliament, and Mr. Disraeli, in one of his characteristic phrases, spoke of the appeals, varied even by the persuasive ingenuity of Mr. Cobden, as a “wearisome iteration.” But Cobden meantime felt sure of his ground. Speaking to one of those immense multitudes, “which,” he said, “could only be assembled in ancient Rome to witness the brutal conflicts of men, or can now be found in Spain to witness the brutal conflicts of animals,” he exclaimed: “What, if you could get into the innermost minds of the ministers, would you find them thinking as to the repeal of the Corn Laws? I know it as well as though I were in their hearts. It is this: they are afraid that the Corn Law cannot be maintained—no, not a rag of it, during a period of scarcity prices, of a famine season, such as we had in ’39, ’40, and ’41. They know it. They are prepared, when such a time comes, to abolish the Corn Laws, and they have made up their minds to it. There is no doubt in the world of it. They are going to repeal it, as I told you,—mark my words,—at a season of distress. That distress may come; aye, three weeks of showery weather when the wheat is in bloom or ripening, would repeal these Corn Laws.”

This remarkable prophecy was now to have a startling fulfilment. The autumn of 1845 was a long succession of rains. Disquieting rumors and even portents of actual famine came from all parts of the islands. On the last day of October the cabinet met in great haste; and three other meetings took place within a week. Peel was in favor of calling a meeting of Parliament at once, and suspending for a limited period the duty on importation. Others declared that it would be impossible to restore the duty when it was once removed; and the cabinet separated on the 6th of November without coming to any decision. But on the 22d of the same month the public was thrown into great commotion by an address launched from Edinburgh by Lord John Russell to his constituents of London. He declared that “procrastination might produce a state of suffering that was frightful to contemplate.” “Let us all unite,” cried he, “to put down a system which has been proved to be the blight of commerce, the bane of agriculture, the source of bitter division among classes, the cause of penury, fever, mortality, and crime among the people. If this end is to be achieved, it must be gained by the unequivocal expression of the public voice.” This was the first announcement that Lord John Russell was a convert to the doctrines of the league. As the old reformer was on his way to London, Mr. John Bright met him at a railway station in Yorkshire, and said: “Your letter has now made the total and immediate repeal of the Corn Law inevitable; nothing can save it.”

Another cabinet meeting was called, but still there was no agreement as to the policy of convoking Parliament. The public distress and excitement were such that the Prime-Minister now felt it his duty to resign. That event took place on the 5th of December. It was universally understood that the strenuous opposition was in the Duke of Wellington and Lord Stanley. In a great gathering at Birmingham, Cobden exclaimed: “The Duke is a man whom all like to honor for his high courage, his firmness of resolve, his indomitable perseverance; but let me remind him,” added the orator, in a magnificent outburst and amidst a storm of approval, “that notwithstanding all his victories in the field, he never yet entered into a contest with Englishmen in which he was not beaten.”

The voice of the public could not be resisted. On the 4th of December the _Times_ newspaper announced that Parliament would meet early in January, and that an immediate repeal of the Corn Laws would be proposed. On the day following this announcement, Peel tendered his resignation. The Queen sent for Lord John Russell; but the attempt of the Opposition to form a ministry was not successful, and Peel reluctantly consented to resume the leadership. The speech of the Queen in opening Parliament made it evident that the occasion of the meeting was the repeal of the obnoxious laws. The question was practically settled when Parliament met; and the long debate is chiefly memorable for the extraordinary succession of excoriations to which the Prime-Minister was subjected by Disraeli. But in spite of a most energetic opposition the repealing bill slowly made its way to ultimate triumph. It was on the 26th of June, 1846, that the bill was passed, and that the great reformer’s work was done.

Until his death in 1865, Cobden continued to exert a powerful influence in behalf of the ideas which from the first he had advocated. His political opponents were among the most hearty to recognize his worth; and his most intimate friend, Mr. Bright, spoke of him in the House of Commons as “the manliest and gentlest spirit that ever quitted or tenanted a human form.”

RICHARD COBDEN.

ON THE EFFECTS OF PROTECTION ON THE AGRICULTURAL INTERESTS OF THE COUNTRY; HOUSE OF COMMONS, MARCH 13, 1845.

SIR:

I am relieved upon the present occasion from any necessity for apologizing to the other side of the House for the motion which I am about to submit. It will be in the recollection of honorable members, that a fortnight before putting this notice upon the book, I expressed a hope that the matter would be taken up by some honorable member opposite. I do not think, therefore, that in reply to any observations I may have to make upon the question, I shall hear, as I did last year, an observation that the quarter from which this motion came was suspicious.[9] I may also add, sir, that I have so framed my motion as to include in it the objects embraced in both the amendments which are made to it. I therefore conclude, that having included the honorable gentlemen’s amendments [Mr. Stafford O’Brien and Mr. Wodehouse], they will not now feel it necessary to press them.

Sir, the object of this motion is to appoint a select committee to inquire into the present condition of the agricultural interests; and, at the same time, to ascertain how the laws regulating the importation of agricultural produce have affected the agriculturists of this country. As regards the distress among farmers, I presume we cannot go to a higher authority than those honorable gentlemen who profess to be the farmers’ friends and protectors. I find it stated by those honorable gentlemen who recently paid their respects to the Prime-Minister, that the agriculturists are in a state of great embarrassment and distress. I find that one gentleman from Norfolk [Mr. Hudson] stated that the farmers in the county are paying their rents, but paying them out of capital, and not profits. I find Mr. Turner of Upton, in Devonshire, stating that one half of the smaller farmers in that county are insolvent, and that the others are rapidly falling into the same condition; that the farmers with larger holdings are quitting their farms with a view of saving the rest of their property; and that, unless some remedial measures be adopted by this House, they will be utterly ruined. The accounts which I have given you of those districts are such as I have had from many other sources. I put it to honorable gentlemen opposite, whether the condition of the farmers in Suffolk, Wiltshire, and Hampshire, is better than that which I have described in Norfolk and Devonshire? I put it to county members, whether—taking the whole of the south of England, from the confines of Nottinghamshire to the Land’s End,—whether, as a rule, the farmers are not now in a state of the greatest embarrassment? There may be exceptions; but I put it to them whether, as a rule, that is not their condition in all parts?

Then, sir, according to every precedent in this House, this is a fit and proper time to bring forward the motion of which I have given notice. I venture to state that had his Grace of Buckingham possessed a seat in this House, he would have done now what he did when he was Lord Chandos—have moved this resolution which I am now about to move. The distress of the farmers being admitted, the next question which arises is, What is its cause? I feel a greater necessity to bring forward this motion for a committee of inquiry, because I find great discrepancies of opinion among honorable gentlemen opposite as to what is the cause of the distress among the farmers. In the first place there is a discrepancy as to the generality or locality of the existing distress. I find the right honorable baronet at the head of the government [Sir Robert Peel] saying that the distress is local; and he moreover says it does not arise from the legislation of this House. The honorable member for Dorsetshire declares, on the other hand, that the distress is general, and that it does not arise from legislation. I am at a loss to understand what this protection to agriculture means, because I find such contradictory accounts given in this House by the promoters of that system. For instance, nine months ago, when my honorable friend, the member for Wolverhampton [Mr. Villiers], brought forward his motion for the abolition of the Corn Laws,[10] the right honorable gentleman, then the President of the Board of Trade, in replying to him, said that the present Corn Law had been most successful in its operations. He took great credit to the government for the steadiness of price that was obtained under that law. I will read you the quotation, because we find these statements so often controverted. He said:

“Was there any man who had supported the law in the year 1842 who could honestly say that he had been disappointed in its workings? Could any one point out a promise or a prediction hazarded in the course of the protracted debates upon the measure, which promise or prediction had been subsequently falsified.”

Now, recollect that the right honorable gentleman was speaking when wheat was 56_s._ per quarter, and that wheat is now 45_s._ The right honorable baronet at the head of the government now says: “My legislation has had nothing to do with wheat at 45_s._ a quarter”; but how are we to get over the difficulty that the responsible member of government at the head of the Board of Trade, only nine months ago, claimed merit for the government having kept up the price of wheat at 56_s._? These discrepancies themselves between the government and its supporters, render it more and more necessary that this question of protection should be inquired into. I ask, What does it mean? The price of wheat is 45_s._ this day. I have been speaking to the highest authority in England upon this point—one who is often quoted by this House—within the last week, and he tells me, that with another favorable harvest, he thinks it very likely that wheat will be 35_s._ a quarter. What does this legislation mean, or what does it purport to be, if you are to have prices fluctuating from 56_s._ down to 35_s._ a quarter, and probably lower? Can you prevent it by the legislation of this House? That is the question. There is a great delusion spread abroad amongst the farmers; and it is the duty of this House to have that delusion dissipated by inquiring into the matter.

Now, there are these very different opinions on the other side of the House; but there are members upon this side representing very important interests, who think that farmers are suffering because they have this legislative protection. There is all this difference of opinion. Now, is not that a fit and proper subject for your inquiry? I am prepared to go into a select committee, and to bring forward evidence to show that the farmers are laboring under great evils—evils that I would connect with the legislation of this House, though they are evils which appear to be altogether dissociated from it. The first great evil under which the farmer labors is the want of capital. No one can deny that. I do not mean at all to disparage the farmers. The farmers of this country are just the same race as the rest of us; and, if they were placed in a similar position, theirs would be as good a trade—I mean that they would be as successful men of business—as others; but it is notorious, as a rule, that the farmers of this country are deficient in capital; and I ask, How can any business be carried on successfully where there is a deficiency of capital? I take it that honorable gentlemen opposite, acquainted with farming, would admit that 10_l._ an acre, on an arable farm, would be a sufficient amount of capital for carrying on the business of farming successfully. I will take it, then, that 10_l._ an acre would be a fair capital for an arable farm. I have made many inquiries upon this subject in all parts of the kingdom, and I give it you as my decided conviction, that at this present moment farmers do not average 5_l._ an acre capital on their farms. I speak of England, and I take England south of the Trent, though, of course, there are exceptions in every county; there are men of large capital in all parts—men farming their own land; but, taking it as a rule, I hesitate not to give my opinion—and I am prepared to back that opinion by witnesses before your committee—that, as a rule, farmers have not, upon an average, more than 5_l._ an acre capital for their arable land. I have given you a tract of country to which I may add all Wales; probably 20,000,000 of acres of cultivable land. I have no doubt whatever, that there are 100,000,000_l._ of capital wanting upon that land. What is the meaning of farming capital? There are strange notions about the word “capital.” It means more manure, a greater amount of labor, a greater number of cattle, and larger crops. Picture a country in which you can say there is a deficiency of one half of all those blessings which ought to, and might, exist there, and then judge what the condition of laborers wanting employment and food is.

But you will say, capital would be invested if it could be done with profit. I admit it; that is the question I want you to inquire into. How is it that in a country where there is a plethora of capital, where every other business and pursuit is overflowing with money, where you have men going to France for railways and to Pennsylvania for bonds, embarking in schemes for connecting the Atlantic with the Pacific by canals, railways in the valley of the Mississippi, and sending their money to the bottom of the Mexican mines; while you have a country rich and overflowing, ready to take investments in every corner of the globe; how is it, I say, that this capital does not find its employment in the most attractive of all forms—upon the soil of this country? The cause is notorious—it is admitted by your highest authorities; the reason is, there is not security for capital in land. Capital shrinks instinctively from insecurity of tenure; and you have not in England that security which would warrant men of capital investing their money in the soil.

Now, is it not a matter worthy of consideration, how far this insecurity of tenure is bound up with that protective system of which you are so enamoured? Suppose it can be shown that there is a vicious circle; that you have made politics of Corn Laws, and that you want voters to maintain them; that you very erroneously think that the Corn Laws are your great mine of wealth, and, therefore, you must have a dependent tenantry, that you may have their votes at elections to maintain this law in Parliament. Well, if you will have dependent voters, you cannot have men of spirit and capital. Then your policy reacts upon you. If you have not men of skill and capital, you cannot have improvements and employment for your laborers. Then comes round that vicious termination of the circle—you have pauperism, poor-rates, county-rates, and all the other evils of which you are now speaking and complaining.[11] * * *

Now, sir, not only does the want of security prevent capital flowing into the farming business, but it actually deters from the improvement of the land those who are already in the occupation of it. There are many men, tenants of your land, who could improve their farms if they had a sufficient security, and they have either capital themselves or their friends could supply it; but with the absence of leases, and the want of security, you are actually deterring them from laying out their money on your land. They keep every thing the same from year to year. You know that it is impossible to farm your estates properly unless a tenant has an investment for more than one year. A man ought to be able to begin a farm with at least eight years before him, before he expects to see a return for the whole of the outlay of his money. You are, therefore, keeping your tenants-at-will at a yearly kind of cultivation, and you are preventing them carrying on their businesses in a proper way. Not only do you prevent the laying out of capital upon your land, and disable the farmers from cultivating it, but your policy tends to make them servile and dependent; so that they are actually disinclined to improvement, afraid to let you see that they can improve, because they are apprehensive that you will pounce upon them for an increase of rent. I see the honorable member for Lincolnshire opposite, and he rather smiled at the expression when I said that the state of dependence of the farmers was such that they were actually afraid to appear to be improving their land. Now that honorable gentleman, the member for Lincolnshire [Mr. Christopher], upon the motion made last year for agricultural statistics, by my honorable friend, the member for Manchester [Mr. Milner Gibson], made the following statement:

“It is most desirable for the farmer to know the actual quantity of corn grown in this country, as such knowledge would insure steadiness of prices, which was infinitely more valuable to the agriculturist than fluctuating prices. But to ascertain this there was extreme difficulty. They could not leave it to the farmer to make a return of the quantity which he produced, for it was not for his interest to do so. If in any one or two years he produced four quarters per acre on land which had previously grown but three, he might fear that his landlord would say: ‘Your land is more productive than I imagined, and I must therefore raise your rent.’ The interest of the farmers, therefore, would be to underrate, and to furnish low returns.”

Now, I ask honorable gentlemen here, the landed gentry of England, what a state of things is that when, upon their own testimony respecting the farming capitalists in this country, they dare not appear to have a good horse—they dare not appear to be growing more than four quarters instead of three? [Mr. Christopher: Hear!] The honorable member cheers, but I am quoting from his own authority. I say this condition of things, indicated by these two quotations, brings the tenant-farmers—if they are such as these gentlemen describe them to be,—it brings them down to a very low point of servility. In Egypt Mehemet Ali takes the utmost grain of corn from his people, who bury it beneath their hearthstones in their cottages, and will suffer the bastinado rather than tell how much corn they grow. Our tenants are not afraid of the bastinado, but they are terrified at the rise of rent. This is the state of things amongst the tenant-farmers, farming without leases.[12] In England leases are the exception, and not the rule. But even where you have leases in England—where you have leases or agreements—I doubt whether they are not in many cases worse tenures than where there is no lease at all; the clauses being of such an obsolete and preposterous character as to defy any man to carry on the business of farming under them profitably.