The Free Trade movement had begun with Adam Smith in the eighteenth century. But little progress had been made in practical politics before the Reform Act. A {198} few economists like Ricardo and Joseph Hume argued the case in the Commons with as much persistency as Cobden and Bright. But the country gentry were not economists, and their main practical object had been the maintenance of their rents by import duties on corn. The common people, without any direct voice in politics, had been stung by their own sufferings into a vision of the truth, and resolutions in favour of free imports of corn had been passed at some of the Radical meetings after the French War.[248] In 1820 a number of London merchants presented a petition to the House of Commons which covered import duties of every kind, and stated "That freedom from restraint is calculated to give the utmost extension to foreign trade, and the best direction to the capital and industry of the country."[249] Huskisson, who was President of the Board of Trade from 1826 to 1828, had done something to readjust some of the import duties as between raw materials and partly or wholly manufactured goods. The Whig victory took the matter no farther. The Whigs were at first occupied with constitutional changes, and after Melbourne had succeeded Grey, they ceased to apply themselves to reform of any kind. Immediately before their defeat in 1841 they made one or two vague proposals, but were beaten before they could carry them into effect. The arrival of Peel, a Utilitarian Tory, decided the fate of the old system. Peel, with Gladstone at the Board of Trade, carried on Huskisson's policy with vigour and success. The tariff in 1842 included no less than 1,200 separate articles. On 750 of these the duties were cut down, and a general rule was established that duties on raw materials should never exceed 5 per cent. of their value. Though this was not Free Trade, it was a great departure from the existing system of regulating trade by taxes. But the corner-stone of Protection was the Corn Law, and this remained in force, modified, but in principle untouched. Whigs and Tories alike believed in the supremacy of land, and nothing {199} but a revolt of the manufacturers could break it down. The revolt was led by the Manchester School.