Repeal of the Corn Laws (1846)
The nineteenth century's defining defeat of the landed interest: Peel's repeal of Britain's grain tariffs, won with Ricardo's rent theory as its intellectual artillery — the historical proof that rent-theory politics can beat organized landowners, and the template George's movement tried to repeat.
Overview
The Corn Laws — Britain's tariffs on imported grain — propped up domestic food prices and, by Ricardo's law of rent, flowed through to landowners as higher rents while squeezing wages and profits. Their repeal under Prime Minister Robert Peel in 1846, after the Anti-Corn Law League's mass campaign, was the century's defining political defeat of the landed interest — won with Ricardo's rent analysis as its intellectual artillery.[1] For the Georgist tradition the episode matters twice: it demonstrated that rent-theory politics can beat organized landownership, and it set the template — economics plus mass movement — that George's single-tax campaign and the 1909 People's Budget consciously followed. Ryan-Collins, Lloyd & Macfarlane treat it as the high-water mark of classical economics' engagement with land (Ch. 4).[2]
See Also
- David Ricardo · Law of Rent
- 1909 People's Budget — the sequel fight the landed interest won
- Narrative: The Single Tax
Sources
- Standard historical record of the Anti-Corn Law League and the 1846 repeal (A-claims; any standard British political history). [VERIFY: add a specific scholarly citation — e.g., Schonhardt-Bailey, From the Corn Laws to Free Trade (MIT, 2006) — on direct read.]
- Josh Ryan-Collins, Toby Lloyd & Laurie Macfarlane, Rethinking the Economics of Land and Housing (2017), Ch. 4 — used for the classical-economics framing (A-claim with locator; provenance-pending scan — see book page). Book page