=436. Movement of English manufacturers for a repeal of the corn laws.=—The House of Commons, even after the electoral reform of 1832, afforded but little representation to the manufacturing and mercantile classes; four fifths of its members belonged to the landed interests, and though they made some slight concessions they refused to grant adequate relief. It was necessary for the opposition, which organized under the name of the Anti-Corn-Law League, to carry on its campaign outside of Parliament; it could report, at the annual meeting of 1843, that nine million tracts had been distributed, and meetings had been held in 140 towns. Inside of Parliament the movement engaged the energies of orators like Cobden and Bright, who saw in it a question of life and death for English manufactures. How was the manufacturer to pay the wages which such a costly food supply required? To whom was he to sell his goods when so large a proportion of English incomes had to be expended for bare necessaries, and when England refused to take from foreign countries the commodities which they offered in exchange? Even among the agricultural classes the landlords were the sole gainers. The agricultural laborers were wretchedly poor; Cobden asserted that none of them spent more than about $7.50 a year in manufactured articles, if shoes were excepted, and that they bought a smaller amount of English manufactures than the people of Brazil. =437. Repeal of the corn laws and its significance.=—With the passage of time and with the growth of the industrial population conditions changed from bad to worse. The combination of a bad harvest and bad times in business in 1841 forced thousands of the manufacturing population to seek poor relief, while other thousands were estimated to be earning on the average less than a shilling a week. It needed only a shock like that given by the crop failure in the first year of the Irish famine, 1845, to force the change which had come gradually to be recognized as inevitable. Peel’s act of 1846 left a slight protection for a few years; but after 1849 only a nominal duty was to remain, and even this was abolished later. The repeal of the corn laws was a momentous act in English history. It marks the formal and final recognition that England had grown from an agricultural to an industrial and commercial state. It threw England, as an English economist said, from corn to coal as the staple product of the country. Manufactures and trade thenceforth developed freely. Even the agricultural interest gained in ways which it had not foreseen: the consuming population increased rapidly both in numbers and in purchasing power, and demanded increasing quantities of meat, dairy produce, vegetables, and fruit. The full effect of the change on commerce will be apparent when we review the history of the last half of the century.