Milestones
Repeal of the Corn Laws
Also Known As Importation Act 1846
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The 1846 repeal, under Prime Minister Robert Peel, of the tariffs that had protected British grain since 1815. It ended decades of Anti-Corn Law League agitation and split the Conservative Party; how much credit belongs to that agitation, to Peel's own economic convictions, and to the shock of the Irish potato failure remains argued.
Historians divide over whether Peel's own conversion to free-trade economics or the emergency of the Irish potato failure was the decisive force behind repeal; both accounts are argued by serious scholarship.
Facts
Milestone Year WhenThe Corn Laws were in force from 1815; repeal passed 15 May 1846 and received royal assent on 26 June 1846. 1 Cross-Tradition Connections
Sources
Dissenting Readings (1 dissenting reading)
Description
Irwin's account holds that Peel's own conversion to free-trade economic doctrine, not pressure from the Anti-Corn Law League or the Irish famine alone, was the decisive force behind repeal: economic ideas, and not the pressure of interests, were central to Peel's conversion to favor repeal of the Corn Laws.
A dissenting reading, from Douglas Irwin (economic historian)Corn Laws (Wikipedia), Wikipedia
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