Historian AJP Taylor he wrote that in the 1923 general election “it was the only election in British history, fought solely and mainly on Defence.” The general election of 1847 was one of few contests.
The Reform Act of 1832 gave the vote to elements of the growing urban middle class. The Tory Party fought the Act, but others now realize they must adapt to new political realities. Traditionally an aristocratic party, the Tories needed new allies. One of the more thoughtful Tories, Robert Peel, believed he could be found among the growing urban working class, which was often at odds with the Whig middle class. In the 1835 election, Peel issued his ‘Tamworth Manifesto’, which endorsed the Reform Act and became the creed of the new Conservative Party. ‘One Nation’ Toryism was born.
Aristocrats and workers soon came together to oppose the Poor Law Reform Act of 1834, a key Whig policy that sought to reduce welfare spending. Much to the dismay of the workers, the Conservatives opposed it. The Tory legal reformer and industrialist Richard Oastler condemned it as “reprehensible, senseless, repulsive, repulsive, unchristian, unconstitutional and unnatural.”
Peel’s Conservatives were elected by a landslide in 1841, but tensions developed between Peel’s “One Nation” Conservatives and the Tory aristocrats. The first, inspired by Richard Cobden’s Anti-Corn Law League, wanted to end the Corn Laws, tariffs that kept foreign wheat into Britain, raised food prices and harmed the working class, and made up lost revenue through a new income tax. Justified on grounds of “food security,” these laws benefited the Tories who acquired the land. These Protectors – whom Queen Victoria denounced as “abhorrent, short-sighted and unpatriotic” and whose leaders included Benjamin Disraeli – resisted Peel to the end – and beyond.
The Corn Laws were repealed on June 25, 1846. The Protectors retaliated that night, splitting and joining the Whigs and the Irish Repeal Party. Peel resigned, and no longer held office. Cobden paid him:
If he has lost the position, he has gained the country. For my part, I prefer to descend into private life with that last measure of his…than to rise to the highest pinnacle of human power in any other way.
Peel’s followers – the ‘Peelites’ – supported the Whig government of King John Russell, but this unstable position collapsed in July 1847 and an election was called.
“The election of 1847 was contested . . . in a state of confusion, chaos and discrimination,” wrote the historian. Robert Blake. Not only were the Whigs opposed to the Conservatives, but the Conservatives were opposed, and the Irish Repeal Party was opposed to them all. Anger erupted. In Marlow, it was reported that “a mob of bloodthirsty people” had been “attacking any respectable person who did not like [protectionist] the cause.” Berkshire, The Times he wrote, “currently there is an agreement between the influential part of the region to keep the new member, who is thought to have a view not to disturb the peace of the region.” Only 44% of the seats were contested.
The results were slightly resolved. The Whigs gained slightly but fell short of the majority, the Peelites rose, but the Protectionists lost about 50 seats. One failed Protectionist representative taunted his audience in Essex, telling them, “we have tried, with no little difficulty to ourselves, to get into some of your thick heads, lest you go home as ignorant as you came!”
In opposition, the protectionists led by Lord Stanley (soon Earl of Derby) and Disraeli reconciled with free trade as Peel reconciled with the Conservatives on the Reform Act. When Britain went to the polls again in 1852, Disraeli argued that “The spirit of the age tends to have sex freely and no leader of a country can with impunity flout the wisdom of the age in which he lives.” After returning to office, Derby announced that the Conservatives would “abide by the decision of the country” and pursue free trade “as if we ourselves were the authors of that policy.” As the historian Thomas Babington Macaulay noted, Toryism amounted to a defense of the Whig achievements of the previous generation.
The battle to repeal the Corn Law had a long shadow. The Peelites, led by Peel’s lawyer William Ewart Gladstone, joined the Whigs in 1859 to form the Liberal Party and the rivalry between Disraeli and Gladstone dominated British politics until the former’s death in 1881, at which time Queen Victoria fell in love with Disraeli again. he hates Gladstone. But all sides will remain true to the faith of free trade as Britain rises to its imperial peak. Only when the country feels that its position is weak will the old cause of Protectionism revive.
John Phelan is an Economist at the Center of the American Experiment.
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