Corn Laws Dbq

Many opponents of the Corn Laws (such as manufacturers wishing to cut wages and sell textiles cheaply abroad), agreed with the farmers about the probable results of free trade while disagreeing about their desirability. Industrialists wanted to repeal the Corn Laws to increase foreign consumption of British manufactured products; if foreigners were allowed to sell grain to Great Britain, they could earn the foreign exchange to buy British manufactured goods. Agricultural elites, by contrast, saw repeal of the Corn Laws as a direct threat to their interests because the trade barriers kept the price of the grain they produced artificially high. The Anti-Corn Law League was the first modern and national-level political pressure group to emerge in Britain. It began in London in
1836 as the Anti-Corn Law Association, but by 1838 had found its natural base in Manchester.
The leaders of the League were manufacturers and professionals engaged in export trade, most of whom were concentrated in the county of Lancashire “the most impressive of nineteenth century pressure groups, which exercised a distinct influence on the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.”5 (5. Anthony Howe, The Cotton Masters, 1830–1860 (Oxford University Press, 1984). The two key features of the League’s operational strategy were its nation-wide propaganda and electoral registration campaigns. The League raised substantial subscriptions to finance its propaganda campaign. It maintained a small army of workers and speakers, who toured the country distributing numerous tracts (most notably, the famous Anti-Corn Law Circular) and giving thousands of speeches on the virtues of free trade and the evils of protection. The registration campaign was, however, the League’s tool for replacing. Its leaders’ tactical strategy
included manipulating the voter registers and employing propaganda devices on existing voters. Looking toward the 1848 election, the League sought to add as many free traders and delete as many protectionists from these registers as possible. The League used the 40s. qualification to create several thousand new free trade voters in county constituencies with large urban electorates, constituencies whose representation was increased by the Reform Act a defensive Anti-League (or, Agricultural Protection Society) emerged… This group of protectionist landowners and farmers did not, however, ever obtain the momentum or backing of the League