Corn Price 1835-1842

One possible approach to the problem is to view the fluctuations in wheat price in the preceding decades and determine what proportional restraints in supply gave way to precisely what percentage of increase. By doing this we should ascertain just how alarming a picture presented itself to the Peelite government in the event of a supply curtailment from Ireland.

http://www.bahs.org.uk/AGHR/ARTICLES/28n1a1.pdf

http://hansard.millbanksystems.com/lords/1842/aug/04/repeal-of-corn-laws#S3V0065P0_18420804_HOL_23

Lords 4th August 1842. Repeal of Corn laws. Earl of Radnor

"For instance, the average price of wheat in 1835 was 39s. 4d.; in 1840, 66s. 4d.; a difference of 27s. per qr. Now, stating the population of Great Britain at 18,000,000 of people, and assuming, which is the usual calculation, that the consumption of the people, one with another, is one qr. per person, the mess of the sum paid for necessary corn in 1840, over what was paid in 1835, would be no less a sum than 24,300,000l. Again, the price in 1841 was 64s. 4d.; 25s. per qr. higher than in 1835: in this year the excess of price paid over the former year would be 22,500,0001, so that in these two years there must have been paid 46,800,0001. more for the purchase of necessary food, than would have been required if the price had con 1012 tinued as it was in 1835; and all this money would have been expended in the purchase of other articles, some of necessity (but of a necessity less imperious than that of food,) some of use or luxury, and thus would have increased the general fund for the employment of labour."

The other day, when the noble Earl (the Earl of Ripon) moved the second reading of the present act for regulating the importation of corn, he appeared to admit fully, that we did not habitually and uniformly raise a sufficient quantity for our own people, and calculated the annual average deficicency at 1,000,000 qrs. At the same time, the noble Earl took great trouble, in another part of his speech, to prove, that there was no country from which we could be sure of having this constant supply. Now, what is the fact? Is this country independent of the foreigner?

 It is curious to observe, too, how those imports have gradually increased:— In ten years ending 1780, the excess of imports was 286,837 qrs.; in the next ten years, the excess was 645,311 qrs.; in the ten years ending 1800, it was 4,293,938 qrs.; in the ten years ending 1810, it was 5,996,350 qrs.; in the ten years ending 1820, it was 6,040,944 qrs.; in the ten years ending 1830, it was 9,413,459 qrs.; and in the ten years ending 1840, it was 14,953,408 qrs. Thus he found, that in the last of these ten years the average annual excess of imports above exports, was 1,495,340 qrs.; if the following year, 1841, be added, the average would be found to be 1,622,382 qrs. Again, taking the whole time during which the act of the 9th of Geo. 4th (the act repealed the other day) was in operation— that is, from 1829 to 1841— the annual average excess of imports above exports was 1,702,293 qrs. If the last five years only be taken, it would be found to be 2,193,254; and for the last three years, 2,800,140 qrs. So that, in fact, we may talk as long as we please of being independent; dependent we are, and with our increasing population are likely to remain so. If, then, we cannot supply ourselves, but must have recourse to foreign countries, what is the thing most to be desired?

For his own part, as he said before, he thought it a measure so pressing, that it could not be delayed with safety to the prosperity of the people. Having that opinion, he had brought it forward as a matter of imperative duty. It would, he believed, greatly relieve the present great and lamentable distress which prevailed in all parts of the country —not only in the manufacturing districts, where they were notorious and admitted, but also in the agricultural parts—and would lay the foundation of future prosperity. Without it, he despaired of seeing any permanent or uninterrupted course of well-being to either the agricultural or manufacturing interests.

Lord Kinnaird
. The feeling against that law was becoming stronger and stronger from day to day, and more widely diffused. Last year the number of signatures to petitions against the Corn-Law was only 1023 about one million, while this year the number of signatures exceeded four millions. There was no limit to our prospective trade with the United States, if we would only consent to receive their agricultural produce in exchange for our manufactures.

Ireland provides perhaps the world's lengthiest case study of the effects of an encroaching colonial superpower on an indigenous culture (from early mediaeval times arguably till the present); its study therefore should be of intrinsic interest to anyone seeking to understand the numerous post-colonial satellites of 'underdevelopment' in today's world; particularly Latin America (anti-colonial rhetoric of the new 'Bolivarianism'), India (the arguable solidification of caste-based hierarchies under the Raj) and sub-Saharan Africa (post-colonial resource extraction under neoliberal structural adjustment) who still struggle to divest themselves of the legacy of imperial exploitation. Is the Good Friday Agreement, for instance, a stable and realistic template for future peace given the communal hold and shared cultural identifications of Irish (particularly Gaelic) history on northern nationalist consciousness? Or have we utterly by-passed traditional affiliations in a 'post-modern' capitalist world order? What is particularly interesting is the shifting terrains of allegiance provided by the post-famine re-articulation of Gaelic cultural nationalism and separatist republicanism; their interlocking, overlapping and (more often) antithetical stance and discourse with proponents of a diluted 'federalist' Home Rule (O' Connellite, Parnellite, Redmondite) and how individual members of the four mooted 'communities'; Protestant English, Protestant Anglo-Irish, Northern Presbyterian and Catholic nationalist all managed to locate and assert themselves (often contrary to 'sect' expectations) within this rapidly changing pre-and post-Great War environment (amidst the rise of socialism, franchise expansion, collapsing influence of land-based aristocracy, mooted League of Nations etc.). 


The famine (1846-51) is the central defining event in modern Irish history. A social catastrophe of unprecedented proportions it obliterated a whole class of small rural landholders and peripatetic labourers who had for generations clung desperately to ever denuding portions of their native soil.  Among this economic strata; those whom it did not destroy outright were disgorged to the four corners; taking ship with whatever means left to them principally to America, England and Australia. In the crude mathematics of economic necessity it resolved at a stroke the Gordian knot of the Malthusian 'catastrophe', drastically depopulating the countryside and allowing at last the shift to more 'rational' and 'modern' modes of agricultural management. Such at least was the prevailing narrative quickly constructed to situate what for many remained an unutterable horror into some vaguely identifiable locus of meaning. One causative framework was erected for the consumption of the respectable 'propertied' middle and upper classes (both Anglo-Irish and Catholic nationalist), or, generally those who stood to benefit from the mass depopulation, another, closer to the bone, conveying all the horrendous immediacy of those dark days was retold and recycled orally among the survivors and their kin as they fled from their ancestral homes across the Atlantic. On the pivot of these two starkly contrasted interpretative experiences emerged the essential bifurcation of subsequent nationalist separatism; the one constitutional and pacifist which sought redress within the confines of Westminster; the other Fenian, republican and determinedly 'physical force' which repudiated the very legitimacy of the British 'liberal state'. The immediate impact of the famine therefore was to delegitimise the pre-existing constitutionalist O' Connellite Repeal movement not only in the eyes of the vast bulk of the dispossessed emigrés but also in the hearts of that huge swathe of small tenant holders who had suffered the most during 'the hunger'. Buoyed by the cultural and literary revivalists (Gaelic League, Yeats, Synge) it was the confluence of these two distinct modes of agitation which eventually provided the motor influence for the forces which propelled the Irish Revolution (1912-1923).

Generally, within Irish history at least, I'm attracted to 'liminal' figures who either straddle differing traditions, stand on the verge of new worlds waiting to be born or exhibit in their complex personalities all the contradictions of their age; for example Eoghan Ruadh (an early 'republican'?), John Toland (rara avis; an important enlightenment figure from a Gaelic speaking background) , Cornelius Neary (sought rapprochement with liberal Anglicans during penal era), some of the 'new light' Presbyterians which formed the backbone of the early United Irishmen, Mary Ann McCracken in particular, Thomas Russell, for the cross-cultural friendships he inspired, William Carleton for his colourful (and priceless) literary ethnographies, Mitchel for his thunder and inexplicable defence of Southern slavery, Lalor for his outrage and prescience, John MacHale for his quotability and sustenance of the Irish language ... the list goes on, but it is these types of figures perhaps (more for the variability of their thought) which can tell us something about the intricacies of decision-making during periods of intense political upheaval such as is found in decolonisation and independence movements.

What colonial parallels (if any) can be drawn from similar movements around the globe to the Irish revolution?