Corn Laws

The Corn Laws (English corn laws ) were laws in the Great Britain of the 19th century, with those on cereal local agriculture was patronized by high import tariffs and import bans.

The laws were introduced after grain prices fell by the end of the Napoleonic Wars in 1815 to the world market. Through the Corn Laws should on the one hand to prevent the domestic cereal production declined, which would have resulted in a simultaneous increase in population to ever greater dependence on imports, on the other hand they were an expression of the patronage of the Tory Party and its electoral base, the landowning nobility.

• The corn law of 1815 was passed under the Tory government of Lord Liverpool. The cereal import was banned in British grain prices under 80 shillings per quarter (wheat). At higher prices, the grain imports were duty-free.
• The Grain Act of 1822 banned the import of grain, a drop in the domestic grain prices under 70 shillings and permitted them again rising above 80 shillings.
• The corn law of 1828, passed under the government of the Duke of Wellington, introduced a tariff, which began at prices below 73 shillings and progressively increased at lower prices.

At a demonstration against the Corn Laws in Manchester in 1819 it came to the Peterloo massacre. 1831 founded opponent of the Corn Laws, the Anti-Corn Law League. By the Reform Act 1832 the right to vote in favor of the urban middle class has been changed, which was set tend to be anti- protectionist and free trade supported.

Under the Government Peel the Corn Laws were abolished in 1846 with a three-year phasing-out period. Peel was forced to resign as a result of defeat as to his Irish policy in the same year. As a result, the Peelites of the Conservative Party split off and later joined the Liberals. The revised customs regulations did not prevent 1845-1849 alone in Ireland more than 1 million people died of starvation ( Great Famine in Ireland).