Xander West is an independent writer and author of the Grumbling Times substack.
This is the second in a two-part series. Read the first installment here.
Sir Robert Peel became convinced of the necessity of repealing the Corn Laws in 1845, if not earlier, still with a window of opportunity in Parliament to pre-empt radical agitation by Richard Cobden’s Anti-Corn Law League. Nevertheless, he continued to preside over a protectionist party.
In 1842, he had reinstated income tax to reduce tariffs across the board, including those of the Corn Laws’ sliding scale, but this was as far as the agrarian gentry was willing to compromise. The emergence of the Great Potato Famine in Ireland in 1845, however, gave Peel the pretext to promote suspending the laws within Cabinet and consideration of repeal in the House of Commons.
He met considerable resistance in proposing the latter suggestion to his ministers in November 1845, believing Peel had been frightened by the spectre of revolt in Ireland when he intended that as the means to force repeal. At the same time, Whig leader Lord John Russell publicly declared his support for repeal, attempting to exploit inevitable splits in the Cabinet between the protectionist gentry and free traders.
Peel duly resigned as Prime Minister at the start of December, only to demonstrate Russell had no basis for a Commons majority, then returned to government two weeks later having lost just one minister in Edward Smith-Stanley, Lord Stanley, and later the 14th Earl of Derby. Yet Peel’s claimed majority was certainly nominal, with most Conservative MPs now mutinous and deserting him in practice for the protectionist Stanley.
Unlike Russell, Peel was also capable of navigating repeal of the Corn Laws through the heavily protectionist House of Lords. Only he could convince the elderly Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, of the necessity of repeal, who in turn alone possessed the influence to produce a shaky yet vital majority. Again, the importance of these actions stems from Peel’s principles and his experience of the Reform Act’s passage.
The climax of those debates saw a standoff between Commons and Lords, only broken by the reluctant threat of King William IV to create as many Whig peers as needed to quell the growing unrest from the latter’s intransigence. The existential threat to their credibility and perhaps the institution itself made Wellington and the other Tory lords back down, but Peel had no wish to manufacture another such constitutional crisis in 1846.
After all, avoiding serious conflict between the two chambers served his deep commitment to maintaining the established order. Moreover, he decided upon gradual repeal over three years to present to Parliament in January 1846 to minimise the risk of failure and subsequent constitutional crisis. This underscores that the famine in Ireland was not his primary motivation, but the preservation of the constitutional order and parliamentary sovereignty through resolving clear faults in the system.
Peel’s principles and conversion to free trade, albeit the right course of action in the circumstances, were to all clear political suicide. In the event, he only retained the loyalty of about a third of Conservatives in the Commons; Cobden and the equally recent converts in the Whigs were vital to pass repeal.
A determined rearguard was mounted, but intriguingly not led by members of the landed gentry, as had previously been the case alongside their voteless tenants in the confusingly named Anti-League. Instead, the Romantic novelist Benjamin Disraeli and horse racer Lord George Bentinck took up the doomed cause, forcefully arguing for the landed interest and constitution they viewed as on the brink of destruction. They rallied the gentry, yet in the process destroyed the Conservative Party that Peel and his associates forged a mere twelve years prior.
On the same night as Wellington persuaded the Lords to repeal the Corn Laws, 25th June 1846, Peel’s government was defeated over the Irish Coercion Bill by an incongruous coalition engineered by Disraeli of protectionists, Whigs, Radicals, and Irish MPs. Cobden and Wellington urged Peel to fight an election on solidifying free trade rather than resign, but his principles forbade him to lead any new party lacking unity beyond a single issue.
He had successfully preserved the constitution, reinforced his conception of Parliament’s role and sovereignty against the threat of external agitation, and been proved correct in thinking the Corn Laws were never the vital institution proponents claimed. Therefore, Russell’s Whigs entered government and Peel took those still loyal to him, the Peelites, into opposition.
This faction included most with ministerial experience under him, prominent amongst them Sir James Graham, 2nd Baronet, and George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, as well as a number of formerly Conservative rising stars: Henry Pelham-Clinton, Earl of Lincoln and later 5th Duke of Newcastle, Sidney Herbert, John Young, Edward Cardwell and William Gladstone. The label of ‘Liberal Conservatives’ sometimes assigned to them is slightly misleading, at least for the period of Peel’s continued leadership until his death in July 1850; their only major disagreement with the protectionist Conservatives was over trade.
The Conservative rump, meanwhile, enjoyed a rudderless carousel of leaders until settling on Disraeli and Stanley, by that time Earl of Derby, in the early 1850s. Disraeli himself abandoned protectionism as party policy in 1852, but his emphatic support for it in 1846 had already condemned the Conservatives to oblivion. Peelite bitterness against Disraeli specifically, not least Gladstone’s withering assaults on his economic proposals, made reconciliation between the two wings impossible.
Over the twenty years following repeal, Conservatives were in government for just a little over two, and did not govern with an outright majority in the Commons until 1874. The Peelites, although consistently shrinking after 1850 from MPs and candidates self-selecting into either organised party, formed a coalition under Aberdeen with the Whigs between 1852 and 1855, before merging with them and the Radicals to form the Liberal Party in 1859.
As for the impact of repealing the Corn Laws, both agriculture and industry were successful after 1846. Britain had already become increasingly urbanised and industrial in character instead of rural, with the Reform Act as much of a realisation of the changing reality fourteen years prior.
Nevertheless, the landed interest was ultimately unaffected from the elimination of grain tariffs, aside from wounded pride. Perhaps because Peel had so successfully avoided the same radical agitation that preceded the Reform Act, the gentry’s place in politics remained unchanged until it was ironically Disraeli who decided on the next major constitutional alteration in 1867.
It is almost remarkable, albeit attenuated by subsequent foolish episodes, how adamantly the Conservatives deposed their first leader and majority government over support for free trade. However, such is the symbolic power otherwise mundane policies can generate.
Although the events described above set Gladstone and Disraeli on their respective courses towards the most iconic period of Victorian politics, Conservative obstinance lost the party something more significant than time in government. By 1846, Peel represented a disappearing type of politician, one who had a major part in the pre-1832 order yet skilfully adapted to the post-1832 reality.
The consistency of his principles over both eras led to his quite distinctive interpretation of conservatism, that of a disinterested ministerialist’s approach to strong and good government above party interest in a turbulent age. On the cusp of his most conservative act, he was ousted for an self-destructive party interest, hence weaker governments inherently less capable of institutional conservation followed.
Whilst not the only sage approach to government, factionalism had spurned it as something to be learnt from or applied for decades afterwards. In trying to hark back to a more agrarian Britain, the protectionists repudiated a source of its living wisdom. Maybe the Conservative factions, not for the last time, deserved their period of oblivion.
Xander West is an independent writer and author of the Grumbling Times substack.
This is the second in a two-part series. Read the first installment here.
Sir Robert Peel became convinced of the necessity of repealing the Corn Laws in 1845, if not earlier, still with a window of opportunity in Parliament to pre-empt radical agitation by Richard Cobden’s Anti-Corn Law League. Nevertheless, he continued to preside over a protectionist party.
In 1842, he had reinstated income tax to reduce tariffs across the board, including those of the Corn Laws’ sliding scale, but this was as far as the agrarian gentry was willing to compromise. The emergence of the Great Potato Famine in Ireland in 1845, however, gave Peel the pretext to promote suspending the laws within Cabinet and consideration of repeal in the House of Commons.
He met considerable resistance in proposing the latter suggestion to his ministers in November 1845, believing Peel had been frightened by the spectre of revolt in Ireland when he intended that as the means to force repeal. At the same time, Whig leader Lord John Russell publicly declared his support for repeal, attempting to exploit inevitable splits in the Cabinet between the protectionist gentry and free traders.
Peel duly resigned as Prime Minister at the start of December, only to demonstrate Russell had no basis for a Commons majority, then returned to government two weeks later having lost just one minister in Edward Smith-Stanley, Lord Stanley, and later the 14th Earl of Derby. Yet Peel’s claimed majority was certainly nominal, with most Conservative MPs now mutinous and deserting him in practice for the protectionist Stanley.
Unlike Russell, Peel was also capable of navigating repeal of the Corn Laws through the heavily protectionist House of Lords. Only he could convince the elderly Arthur Wellesley, Duke of Wellington, of the necessity of repeal, who in turn alone possessed the influence to produce a shaky yet vital majority. Again, the importance of these actions stems from Peel’s principles and his experience of the Reform Act’s passage.
The climax of those debates saw a standoff between Commons and Lords, only broken by the reluctant threat of King William IV to create as many Whig peers as needed to quell the growing unrest from the latter’s intransigence. The existential threat to their credibility and perhaps the institution itself made Wellington and the other Tory lords back down, but Peel had no wish to manufacture another such constitutional crisis in 1846.
After all, avoiding serious conflict between the two chambers served his deep commitment to maintaining the established order. Moreover, he decided upon gradual repeal over three years to present to Parliament in January 1846 to minimise the risk of failure and subsequent constitutional crisis. This underscores that the famine in Ireland was not his primary motivation, but the preservation of the constitutional order and parliamentary sovereignty through resolving clear faults in the system.
Peel’s principles and conversion to free trade, albeit the right course of action in the circumstances, were to all clear political suicide. In the event, he only retained the loyalty of about a third of Conservatives in the Commons; Cobden and the equally recent converts in the Whigs were vital to pass repeal.
A determined rearguard was mounted, but intriguingly not led by members of the landed gentry, as had previously been the case alongside their voteless tenants in the confusingly named Anti-League. Instead, the Romantic novelist Benjamin Disraeli and horse racer Lord George Bentinck took up the doomed cause, forcefully arguing for the landed interest and constitution they viewed as on the brink of destruction. They rallied the gentry, yet in the process destroyed the Conservative Party that Peel and his associates forged a mere twelve years prior.
On the same night as Wellington persuaded the Lords to repeal the Corn Laws, 25th June 1846, Peel’s government was defeated over the Irish Coercion Bill by an incongruous coalition engineered by Disraeli of protectionists, Whigs, Radicals, and Irish MPs. Cobden and Wellington urged Peel to fight an election on solidifying free trade rather than resign, but his principles forbade him to lead any new party lacking unity beyond a single issue.
He had successfully preserved the constitution, reinforced his conception of Parliament’s role and sovereignty against the threat of external agitation, and been proved correct in thinking the Corn Laws were never the vital institution proponents claimed. Therefore, Russell’s Whigs entered government and Peel took those still loyal to him, the Peelites, into opposition.
This faction included most with ministerial experience under him, prominent amongst them Sir James Graham, 2nd Baronet, and George Hamilton-Gordon, 4th Earl of Aberdeen, as well as a number of formerly Conservative rising stars: Henry Pelham-Clinton, Earl of Lincoln and later 5th Duke of Newcastle, Sidney Herbert, John Young, Edward Cardwell and William Gladstone. The label of ‘Liberal Conservatives’ sometimes assigned to them is slightly misleading, at least for the period of Peel’s continued leadership until his death in July 1850; their only major disagreement with the protectionist Conservatives was over trade.
The Conservative rump, meanwhile, enjoyed a rudderless carousel of leaders until settling on Disraeli and Stanley, by that time Earl of Derby, in the early 1850s. Disraeli himself abandoned protectionism as party policy in 1852, but his emphatic support for it in 1846 had already condemned the Conservatives to oblivion. Peelite bitterness against Disraeli specifically, not least Gladstone’s withering assaults on his economic proposals, made reconciliation between the two wings impossible.
Over the twenty years following repeal, Conservatives were in government for just a little over two, and did not govern with an outright majority in the Commons until 1874. The Peelites, although consistently shrinking after 1850 from MPs and candidates self-selecting into either organised party, formed a coalition under Aberdeen with the Whigs between 1852 and 1855, before merging with them and the Radicals to form the Liberal Party in 1859.
As for the impact of repealing the Corn Laws, both agriculture and industry were successful after 1846. Britain had already become increasingly urbanised and industrial in character instead of rural, with the Reform Act as much of a realisation of the changing reality fourteen years prior.
Nevertheless, the landed interest was ultimately unaffected from the elimination of grain tariffs, aside from wounded pride. Perhaps because Peel had so successfully avoided the same radical agitation that preceded the Reform Act, the gentry’s place in politics remained unchanged until it was ironically Disraeli who decided on the next major constitutional alteration in 1867.
It is almost remarkable, albeit attenuated by subsequent foolish episodes, how adamantly the Conservatives deposed their first leader and majority government over support for free trade. However, such is the symbolic power otherwise mundane policies can generate.
Although the events described above set Gladstone and Disraeli on their respective courses towards the most iconic period of Victorian politics, Conservative obstinance lost the party something more significant than time in government. By 1846, Peel represented a disappearing type of politician, one who had a major part in the pre-1832 order yet skilfully adapted to the post-1832 reality.
The consistency of his principles over both eras led to his quite distinctive interpretation of conservatism, that of a disinterested ministerialist’s approach to strong and good government above party interest in a turbulent age. On the cusp of his most conservative act, he was ousted for an self-destructive party interest, hence weaker governments inherently less capable of institutional conservation followed.
Whilst not the only sage approach to government, factionalism had spurned it as something to be learnt from or applied for decades afterwards. In trying to hark back to a more agrarian Britain, the protectionists repudiated a source of its living wisdom. Maybe the Conservative factions, not for the last time, deserved their period of oblivion.