Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle

Front matter

NOTES

ON THE

ANTI-CORN LAW STRUGGLE.

Introduction

NOTES ON THE ANTI-CORN LAW STRUGGLE.

INTRODUCTION.

In revising my MS. of "Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle," I am struck with the fact that one-third or more of the book is the work of him who was throughout the whole of the Struggle the advocate in Parliament of the Repeal of the Corn Laws; and is now the only survivor of a group of contemporaries among whom "si mea fama in obscuro sit, nobilitate ac magnitudine eorum, meo qui nomini afficient, me consoler."

I will state shortly what led me to become one of the labourers in the work of repealing the Corn Laws. On the 17th of January, 1842, I received a note signed Adam Scott, stating that the writer had been requested to communicate with me on behalf of the Anti-Corn Law League. A day or two after, Mr. Adam Scott called on me at my chambers in Stone Buildings, Lincoln's Inn, and informed me that the matter on which the Council of the Anti-Corn Law League were desirous of consulting me was the Land-Tax. After some correspondence and several conferences I received from Mr. Scott a letter, dated March 17, 1842, stating that Mr. Cobden had requested him to make an appointment for the following day. On the 18th of March, 1842, Mr. Cobden and Mr. Scott called together, between eleven and twelve o'clock, at my chambers.

In 1842 and the following three years the prospects of those who laboured for the repeal of the Corn Laws were not very good. When members of the League went into the agricultural districts the farmers did not give them a friendly reception. I have heard witnesses of the fact speak of the farmers on one occasion bringing the hose of a fire-engine to bear upon the Free Tradespeaker. Those who were travelling through the country to endeavour to diffuse some knowledge of political economy had to encounter not only hostile opinions, but the argumentum baculinum. One of those lecturers told me that (at Dorchester, I think it was) he observed a stalwart man in the front row of the audience with a large cudgel of which he appeared to make rather an ostentatious, not to say menacing, display.

Of the argument which I drew up in the case submitted to me professionally on behalf of the Council of the Anti-Corn Law League, the Council printed at the time two thousand copies for distribution to Members of Parliament. Mr. Cobden was repeatedly applied to for copies, and he referred applicants to me. Among those who noticed my argument on the Land-Tax was a critic in a weekly publication, who described my argument as that of "a writer of Mr. Bright's school," and said, "it was with universal assent that all the tenures were at the Restoration simplified into the form of free and common socage."

So far was it from "universal assent" that the resolution by which the excise was substituted for the feudal dues was only carried by a majority of two in a House of three hundred Members—one hundred and fifty-one to one hundred and fortynine—many Members urging in the strongest terms the injustice of the measure.

This critic goes on to say: "If Mr. Bright had been then alive he might fairly have urged the justice of commuting an obsolete burden for a moderate land-tax; but the latter impost, which still exists under that name, furnishes an ample equivalent for one of the least productive revenues which belonged to the Crown."

The answer to this is that a question which all through the reign of James I. occupied very much of the time and attention of the Parliament was the mode of getting rid of the feudal tenures. The same hand which drew the Petition of Right drew up an account of a motion made at the Parliament in the eighteenth year of the reign of James I. for commuting the feudal tenures and payments into a "competent yearly rent, to be assured to his Majesty, his heirs, and successors" (4 Inst., 202, 203). This motion Coke stamps with his approbation, "hoping that so good a motion will some time or other, by authority of Parliament, one way or other, take effect and be established." The amount of the rent-charge which was to be substituted for the feudal payments was equal to nearly one-half of the whole revenue at that time (Sinclair, "Hist. Revenue," vol. i., pp. 233, 244); and as the value of the land would increase with the wealth and revenue of the kingdom, the proportion would remain the same.

The confidence with which this anonymous writer expressed himself on the subject of the Land-Tax, induces me to mention one of the numerous applications for a copy of my argument on the Land-Tax, because it shows, notwithstanding the judgment of this anonymous critic, that the soundness of the reasoning as well as of the legal learning of my argument has been stamped with the approbation of some of the highest legal authorities.

In Michaelmas Term, 1852, an eminent counsel—a Member of Parliament—who was engaged in a heavy land-tax case with the then Attorney-General, Sir Alexander Cockburn, afterwards Lord Chief Justice Cockburn, having applied to all the law booksellers, without effect, for a copy of the pamphlet which was out of print—indeed, I don t know that it was ever actually published for sale—I sent him a copy and received soon after the following note from him:—"Allow me to thank, you most sincerely for your very able and valuable pamphlet on the Land-Tax, which has been of great use and value to me."

On the 6th November, 1844, I received a letter from Mr. Cobden, dated Manchester, 5th November, 1884, in which he said:—

"There is an idea talked of here of sending a Commission of Inquiry into two or three of the southern counties, say Dorset, Somerset, Wilts, to ascertain the condition of the labouring population, and particularly how much of the average earnings of a peasant's family goes in purchasing clothing and articles paying excise or duty to Government. As the only way of making such an inquiry useful would be by having men of character and respectability to put their names to the report, it is thought that one person from Manchester and another from London would be best suited to the labour. The object would be simply an inquiry into facts, without meddling with theories, whether of Corn Law or Poor Law. Do you think you would be able to give six weeks to such an investigation, between this and Christmas, if the plan were carried out?"

In consequence of unavoidable delays it was not till towards the middle of December that the gentleman joined with me in this Commission, Mr. Philip Holland, and myself took our departure for Salisbury.

It will be of use in throwing light on the subject to give here the credentials, or at least the credential letter, dated 10th December, 1844, and addressed to A. Bisset, Esq., and P. Holland, Esq. The following is a copy of the letter:—

"My dear Sirs, "I have not time to write notes to all those with whom I am personally acquainted, or whom I know to be friendly, in Wilts, Dorset, and Somerset; but you will he good enough in the first instance to show this to Mr. Lambert, solicitor, Salisbury, and to Mr. Squarey, and they will, I am sure, not only give all the personal aid in their power, but also give you letters of introduction which will aid you in your inquiries in all parts of the country. I have sent you a list of names of parties to whom I would advise you to apply; and be good enough to use this letter as an introduction, if necessary.

"Believe me, my dear Sirs, "Yours faithfully, "RICHARD COBDEN."

This letter was written at the offices of the Anti-Corn Law League, in Spring Gardens, London, on the evening of the 10th December, 1844. It was a very hard frost. I had been waiting all the evening to receive this credential letter from Mr. Cobden, who was in his bed-room, with a large fire, receiving people on business, of which he had a vast deal on his hands. He wrote this letter while I was in the room with him; and it struck me as an example of his great aptitude for business that though he had been occupied for several hours by a succession of visitors who sought his counsel or direction on the business of the League, quite apart from the business on which I came to him, he immediately proceeded to write the letter above quoted, and with such precision and accuracy that he did not need to alter a word or even a letter, as I can see from the original letter now lying before me.

I left London on Saturday, December 14th, 1844. I reached Salisbury towards evening the same day, and called on Mr. Lambert the same evening. Some time after my return to London, in January, 1845, I made a report to Mr. Cobden of the result of my inquiries. I will refer in the fifth chapter to some points in my report that may appear of importance and interest; and I may say here that I found myself upon an engagement very difficult. Besides the difficulty of getting at the truth from the imperfect machinery we had for examining witnesses, there was getting up, in an unusually severe winter, at 4, or even sometimes 3 a.m., to catch a coach; and the farmers, who thought their interests identical with those of their landlords, threatened to shoot us if we came upon their ground. I remember in particular a room in an inn at Cranbourne, the door of which would not close though the frost was intense; and I remember my colleague, after taking great pains for some hours in examining a witness, saying, at the conclusion of his labour, "It's hard work!"

Some time after my return to London I made a report to Mr. Cobden of the result of my inquiries. I first made a somewhat short report in order that Mr. Cobden might have it in his hands before making a speech on a certain day in the House of Commons. Some months after I made a longer and more elaborate report, in which I compared the condition of the agricultural labourers at that time in England with their condition at other times. I showed, on the best evidence I could obtain, that in the thirteenth, fourteenth, and fifteenth centuries the wages of the agricultural labourer in England were such as to procure for him nearly double the quantity of food which his wages between 1740 and 1794 procured; and that the wages obtained by him from 1834 to 1844, as measured by the quantity of produce, were considerably less than in the period between 1740 and 1794. I also showed that under the combined operation of the Poor Law of 1790 and the Corn Law of 1815 the wages of agricultural labour were lower, and the condition of the agricultural labourer was worse than at any former period except that in which the Poor Law of Elizabeth was passed.

In attempting to make a table of wages, the most that can be looked for is an approximation to the truth. Besides the difference of wages in different counties, there are the variations through the various seasons of the year—winter, summer, haytime, harvest. In a table which I drew up with great care to show the comparative amount of wages in pints of wheat from the fifteenth century to the middle of the nineteenth century, I have taken the summer wages as the basis of the calculation, because that basis afforded greater facilities for comparison, from the fact that in the early rates of wages fixed at various times by the legislature, or by the magistrates acting under the authority of a legislative enactment, a certain scale of wages is always given from Easter till Michaelmas, with the exception of harvest, when a somewhat higher rate is allowed. It appears from this table, which was drawn up from the best authorities, which authorities are cited at the foot of it, that wages were much higher in the fifteenth century than they have ever been since; that, about the middle of the eighteenth century, they were higher than they had ever been since the sixteenth; that from the middle of the eighteenth century they declined till they attained a minimum about 1824; that, after the agricultural riots and burnings of 1830-31, they rose considerably, so as to be for a time higher than they had been for upwards of fifty years. But the rise caused by the riots of 1830 and 1831 was only temporary. I subjoin the table to which I have referred.

(a) Average of nineteen years, in Sir F. Eden's tables. (b) Stat. 11, Hen. VII., c. 22. (c) Average of the prices in Sir F. Eden's tables. (d) Stat. 16, Hen. VIII., c. 3. (e) Sir F. Eden's tables. (f) Ibid. (g) Average, or below it, in Eden's tables. (h) Rate fixed by justices of East Riding of Yorkshire in 1593. (i) Eden, Appendix No. III. (j) Rate of Rutlandshire justices in 1610. (k) Eden, Appendix, p. lxxix. (l) Rate of Lancashire justices, 1725. (m) Eton tables, cited Tooke, "History of Prices," i., 48. (n) Tooke's "History of Prices," i., 65. The wages here given are the general mean for the whole year. The summer wages are very near the general mean, as appears by the proportions in Arthur Young's "Six Weeks' Tour," p, 333. The equality is produced by the excess of the summer wages over the winter's being balanced by the excess of the harvest wages over the summer. (o) Tooke, ibid. (p) Ibid. (q) Parliamentary Return. (r) Ibid. (s) Ibid. (t) Summer wages, computed as above, from the accounts drawn up for the Board of Agriculture. (u) Average of all England from Report of Committee on Labourers' Wages in 1824. (v) Average of all the counties of England, from Appendix (B) to the Poor Law Commissioners' Report in 1834. This result has been obtained from a careful examination and analysis of the returns from more than 1200 parishes. But the average seems too high, even allowing for the temporary rise caused by the riots of 1830 and 1831.

Chapter 1

CHAPTER I.

WAS THE REPEAL OF THE CORN LAWS THE EFFECT OF ORATORY?

It may be of use to try to discover what really won the battle between the manufacturers and the landholders on the question of the Corn Laws. For it was a battle between those two powerful classes, and the poor man, whose cheap loaf was put forward as the principal casus belli, had very little, indeed nothing, to say in the matter except so far as his voice might be heard through the exertions of his advocates, General Thompson and Mr. Villiers, who could hardly obtain a hearing in the House of Commons; indeed, General Thompson distinctly says, in his published "Letters to his Constituents," that he was trampled on in the House of Commons, and Mr. Villiers had such powerful opposition to encounter, that, as Mr. Disraeli said in his generous tribute to the character of a political adversary, " anybody but the hon. and learned Member for Wolverhampton would have sunk in the unequal fray."

Sir Robert Peel attributed his change of opinion on the subject of the Corn Laws to "the unadorned eloquence of Richard Cobden." Mr. Cobden was certainly at once a most agreeable and a most effective speaker. Mr. Bright, who may be admitted to be a very competent judge, said in a note to me, "Mr. Cobden's speaking was to me always charming, so simple, easy, and true. He did not often rouse to passion, but his power to convince was something wonderful."

The words here applied by Mr. Bright to Mr. Cobden's speaking may truly be applied to Mr. Bright's own speaking, of which, as of Mr. Cobden's, force and clearness are the characteristics. Nevertheless the repeal of the Corn Laws was not the work of the eloquence adorned or unadorned of Mr. Cobden, or of anybody else. Neither did eloquence nor logic, nor even geometrical reasoning ever decide any great conflict of opinion, as was said by Hobbes more than two hundred years ago. If it had been contrary to the interest of men who were the ruling power in a country that the three angles of a triangle should be equal to two right angles, that doctrine would have been suppressed in that country.

It was the opinion of Philip of Macedon that he could subdue the States of Greece, and that he was under no moral obligation not to use his power for that purpose. Except to enthusiastic schoolboys it appears absurd to suppose that any words, though uttered by the greatest speaker known among men, could either turn Philip from his purpose or turn the Greeks of that time into the Greeks who had fought at Marathon and Salamis, or turn himself into Miltiades or Themistocles.

It was the opinion of Charles Stuart that he had certain rights over the souls, bodies, lands, goods and chattels of the people of England, which rights, if carried out as he sought to carry them out, did not leave to the people of England any souls, bodies, lands, goods and chattels which they could call their own. The eloquence of John Pym, whether it be called adorned or unadorned, was certainly equal to the eloquence, "the unadorned eloquence," to borrow the phrase of Sir Robert Peel, of Richard Cobden. But it was not the eloquence of John Pym that settled the controversy, it was an eloquence or a logic, the nature of which is well expressed in Cornet Joyce's answer to King Charles, who asked if he had any authority in writing. Joyce pointed to a body of about one thousand soldiers mounted and drawn up behind him, and said, "that the soldiers behind him were his commission, being a commanded party out of every regiment." The courtiers, in the great struggle for liberty, laughed and jeered at the eloquence of the talking members of the Commons' House of Parliament. The landowners, in the struggle for freedom of trade, did not drive their view of the question between them and the Free-traders so far as the King did his view of the question between him and the Parliament; for as the battles of Marston Moor and Naseby settled the question of the divine right of Kings, the pecuniary resources of Lancashire, rendered more formidable by the Irish Famine, settled the question of the divine right of squires.

The extraordinary power of enchaining the attention of their audience, displayed by Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, particularly by Mr. Bright in the latter part of his career—for some twenty years ago he had not nearly the popularity he now has, inasmuch as a weekly publication, intending to damage a book which I published with my name, did not give either my name or that of my book, but described me as "a writer of Mr. Bright's school,"—may give occasion for a few words on the old and much debated question whether oratory, eloquence, or the faculty of an orator is a gift of nature, or can be taught by a teacher like those Greek professors of philosophy who professed to be able to teach eloquence, or by careful study of Demosthenes and Cicero, and other great orators.

Dogmatists have been heard to affirm that they could by education out of any human being make a great philosopher, a great statesman, or a great orator, as surely as a shoemaker out of a given piece of leather could make a good pair of shoes. Two thousand years before this dogmatic assertion was made, Socrates in the Gorgias of Plato asks Gorgias what the art was which he practised. "Rhetoric," answered Gorgias. "You are then a rhetorician?" "A good one." "And you are capable of making others so?" "I profess to be capable." It must be noted that the Greek word ῤἡτωρ, denoting a public speaker or orator as well as a rhetorician or teacher of rhetoric, the meaning of Gorgias was that he professed to be capable of making men not merely rhetoricians but orators. Cicero also wrote much with the object of showing that eloquence or the faculty of an orator was susceptible of being taught. Alas! of the hundreds of medallists, double firsts, senior, second, &c., wranglers, how few have turned out great orators, and how many have shared the fate of a certain senior wrangler who assured his clients that he would plead their cause triumphantly before the Lord Chancellor! "But, Lord! Sir," said the clients, "the Lord Chancellor would not listen to to him." Alas! for the glory of medallists, senior wranglers, double firsts, and the whole tribe of such! Eloquence is not more capable of being taught than poetry. It is as true of the orator as of the poet, that he must be born not made; and the votes and verdicts gained by studying Demosthenes and Cicero may be classed with the battles won by lessons of tactics and strategics, and the epic poems written by the rules of criticism.

It is not after a short or narrow course of observation that I have come to this conclusion. In early life I was one of a party of young men who met at the chambers of one of them to study some of the mechanical parts of public speaking—such as articulation, modulation, expression in reading aloud. Two of those who thus met became eminent—one as a parliamentary speaker, the other as a philosophical writer, and late in life as a clear and logical parliamentary speaker. But neither of these two men, who may be said to have studied oratory, became nearly so great, either as orators or debaters, as Mr. Disraeli, who did not, as far as I know, study Demosthenes or practice at a debating society; nor as Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, who also did not study Demosthenes or practice at a debating society. And one remarkable element among the materials on which my conclusion rests, that eloquence cannot be taught, is my having had an opportunity of observing Mr. Cobden and Mr. Bright, who were formed by nature, and not by any professional teacher like Gorgias, or any model like Demosthenes or Cicero.

Mr. Cobden once said to me that the first time he got up to speak in public he was so nervous that he hardly knew what he was saying. That nervousness would, of course, wear off in time, or at least diminish; for some public speakers have said that to the last they never got up to speak in the House of Commons without a feeling of nervousness. But Mr. Cobden would appear to have attained an extraordinary command over his mental resources when addressing a public audience. I should not think that he ever wrote out a speech, or even particular passages of a speech, on a question which he considered of special importance. He did sometimes make, or intend to make, a few short notes. I say intend to make, from the following circumstance. One evening when I was going from Spring Gardens with him and Mr. C. P. Villiers in a cab to one of the meetings of the Anti-Corn Law League, in Covent Garden Theatre, Mr. Cobden, as he tore up and threw out of the cab window a piece of paper which he held in his hand, said that, as he was obliged to speak that evening at Covent Garden, he had intended to write down some notes of what he might say, but that he had been interrupted by people wanting to see him on business, and had therefore been unable to write down anything. The result was an excellent and most effective speech.

Even when an orator appears to treat certain topics in a manner bearing some resemblance to the manner of Demosthenes, we should not be entitled to conclude that such orator was imitating or even had ever read Demosthenes. I do not remember ever meeting with such a resemblance between the manner of a modern orator and the manner of Demosthenes as occurs in a passage of a speech of Robespierre. The words of Robespierre are:—"Non, nous n'avous point failli; j'en jure par le trône renversé, et par la République qui s'élève!" These words bear a certain resemblance to the celebrated passage in the "De Coronâ":—"Ὄὐκ ἔστιν, οὐκ ἔστιν, ὅπως ἡμάπτετε, ἄνδρες Ἀθηναῖοι, τὸν ὑπὲρ τῆς απάντων ἐλευθερίας καὶ σωτηρίας κίνδυνον ᾀράμενοι; ὀυ μὰ τὸυς ἐν Μαραθῶνι προκινδυνεύσθντας. —κ.τ.λ."

I have heard a successful candidate relate that a man who stood against him for Preston—a man famous for his power of coarse invective, and of whom Mr. Pitt, when he once met him in company, said, " A clever man, but too coarse,"—called some one he was inveighing against, "an aristocratic spitting-box." I think it was Lord Stanley he thus designated. This is the nearest approach that has come within my observation to the Greek oratory. The designation given by Demosthenes to Æschines—τὸν κατάπτυστον τουτονὶ—is very lamely and imperfectly reproduced by the words "this despicable fellow," in Mr. Kennedy's translation. The power of invective, that is of applying to an opponent the language of reproach, depreciation, and contempt, has always been reckoned one of the weapons of an orator. But there is a species of language which goes beyond this, and may be described as foul and abusive—language such as is used by the lowest ruffians. I do not remember in any English orator any specimens of such filth as is discharged by Demosthenes and Æschines against each other. For instance, calling Æschines "this spat-upon fellow," and insulting the poverty of Æschines's youth and attacking the character of his mother, which last is on a level with the London waterman's scurrility, of which Johnson gave a caricature when he returned the answer to an abusive attack from a passing boat—"Your mother is a receiver of stolen goods under the pretence of keeping a brothel."

Lord Macaulay says, in the beginning of his article on "History," that it would be impossible to alter a word in some speeches of Demosthenes without altering it for the worse. The article on "History" was published in 1828. I doubt if he would have expressed the same opinion in 1844, when the article on "Barère" was published. I have read again lately the Leptines and Midias of Demosthenes and the Seventh Book of Thucydides. Demosthenes may have great power of abuse combined with little regard to truth, and Thucydides has narrated some things well; nevertheless, I place Macaulay above Demosthenes for power of invective, and above Thucydides for power of narrative; and I could not name any historian, ancient or modern, whom it is a pleasure to read except Macaulay. Mr. Kennedy's version of τὸν κατάπτυστον τουτονὶ into "this despicable fellow" is only one of many proofs that Demosthenes is untranslatable. The character of the invective partakes too much of the filth of Swift to be fit for translation into English, at least in the nineteenth century. It may have been fit when Swift wrote at the beginning of the eighteenth century, and it may be—(Dii meliora!)—again in the twentieth century. But perhaps Macaulay's article on "Barère" may give some idea to an Englishman of the effect on an Athenian of the power of Demosthenes in invective.

Whether the invective of Demosthenes or that of Æschines surpasses anything that human genius can ever again produce, as far as my limited observation extends, Lord Macaulay's invective on "Barère" appears to be a censure of no slight nature. I will venture to quote one or two sentences of Lord Macaulay's article on "Barère:"—

"In two things he was consistent, in his love of Christianity and in his hatred to England. If this were so, we must say that England is much more beholden to him than Christianity.

"Renegade, traitor, slave, coward, liar, slanderer, murderer, hack writer, police spy—the one small service which he could render to England was to hate her: and such as he was may all who hate her be!"

Barère, it appears, adhered to the Christian faith through the whole Revolution; through all that time when he made his Reports,—which were popularly called Carmagnoles, of which, as Lord Macaulay says, whoever has read Lord Ellenborough's proclamations can form a complete idea;—through that time, when on the day on which the Queen was dragged to her doom, he regaled Robespierre and some other Jacobins at a tavern; where, in the intervals between the beaune and the champagne, between the ragout of thrushes and the partridge with truffles, he preached his political creed: "The vessel of the Revolution can float into port only on waves of blood."

This,—that is, the union of love of Christianity and hatred to England,—this, says Lord Macaulay,

"Makes the character complete. Whatsoever things are false, whatsoever things are dishonest, whatsoever things are unjust, whatsoever things are impure, whatsoever things are hateful, whatsoever things are of evil report, if there be any vice, and if there be any infamy, all these things, we know, were blended in Barère. But one thing was still wanting, and that M. Hippolyte Carnot has supplied. When to such an assemblage of qualities a high profession of piety is added, the effect becomes overpowering. We sink under the contemplation of such exquisite and manifold perfection; and feel, with deep humility, how presumptuous it was in us to think of composing the legend of the beatified athlete of the faith St. Bertrand of the Carmagnoles."

Besides the extreme coarseness of invective of the Athenian orators, the orators, rhetors, and historians "indulged," says Mr. Grote, "in so much exaggeration and untruth respecting this convention that they have raised a suspicion against themselves." "The passages of these orators (Æschines, "De Fals. Legat.," c. 54, p. 300, and "Andokides or the Pseudo-Andokides," De Pace, c. 1) involve so much both of historical and chronological inaccuracy that it is unsafe to cite them, and impossible to amend them except by conjecture." "The loose language of these orators (Demosthenes, Lykurgus, Isokrates) renders it impossible to determine what was the precise limit in respect of vicinity to the coast."