History  

A Model for Libertarian Activists

by Jacques de Guenin

A century and a half ago, a small group of men challenged entrenched power, convinced the public that taxes should be cut, trade freed up, and government reduced — all within a decade.

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We are in 1838, at which time the United Kingdom was divided into roughly six social classes:

• The elder branch of the aristocracy, who owned practically all the land and had a majority in parliament.
• The younger branch of the aristocracy, who owned little or nothing since, in order to avoid the partition of properties, only the first-born son inherited property. Since noblemen despised creative work, members of this class could sustain themselves only through the exploitation of the working classes: external exploitation through wars, conquests, and colonization; internal exploitation through taxes, tithes, charges, and monopolies. They made up the larger part of Army and Navy officers, the clergy, and colonial administrators. They also emigrated to the colonies, where they became landowners. (At that time, the U.K. had 45 colonies.)
• Manufacturers, bankers, and traders. The Industrial Revolution was in full swing, and this class was becoming more and more significant.
• Shopkeepers and craftsmen
• Factory workers
• Farmers. They rented their land from the big landowners, led a rather miserable life, and hired even more miserable agricultural workers.

The parliament had around 580 members, 160 of whom were elected by the counties and 420 by the burroughs. There were two major parties, the Tories and the Whigs. Certain conditions were required in order to be an elector. These conditions were such that the counties elected only aristocrats. The burroughs elected aristocrats too, but they also elected representatives from the manufacturing and trade bourgeoisie. However, each party was controlled by the aristocracy so that, whatever the majority, the parliament was controlled by the aristocracy.

The Corn Law

In 1838, the kingdom was plagued by a law called the Corn Law, which restricted the import of grains. It was introduced in 1815, and amended several times. It concerned all grains, but its effect was particularly tragic in the case of wheat, a requisite for making bread, then a vital food for most people.

Before Napoleon's continental blockade, the import of wheat was relatively free, and custom duties were not very high. The blockade gave English producers a quasi monopoly, followed by a rapid increase in prices. At the end of the Napoleonic wars, the price of wheat fell by half, and producers were alarmed. In 1815, they managed to promote a law whose object was to stabilize the price of corn at a high level. No foreign wheat could enter the market if the market price was below 80 shillings a quarter. Without ever reaching that level the price of wheat rose again considerably, as did the price of bread, the staple diet of the workers. Working classes became very poor. Their consumption of manufactured goods decreased. Exports also decreased, as ships could no longer carry return freight such as grain. Manufacturers were forced to make workers redundant which increased poverty even more.

The law impoverished workers and traders, but it worked well for the aristocracy. It raised the cash value of the most important agricultural product, thereby raising the rent that the aristocrats could charge for land, virtually all of which was owned by them. Not surprisingly, the aristocracy was opposed to any reform.

In 1828, however, the government of the Duke of Wellington managed to amend the legislation a little. Wellington was intelligent enough to perceive how precarious the situation was, and his prestige gave him freedom to maneuver. He introduced a so-called "sliding scale," working thusly: when the price of wheat reached 73 shillings per quarter, foreign wheat could be imported without duty. When it fell below that price, foreign wheat was charged a duty. It was a small improvement, and a very insufficient one.

Besides grain, there was a complicated protectionist system affecting a number of other vital food products such as sugar. These tariffs were called "differential" because they depended on a product's origin. They guaranteed an outlet for colonial products, and were a significant source of revenue for the colonists.

The Corn Law helped to make the Britain of 1838 a place where social inequality was extreme, destitution was prevalent, and criminality was high. The decrease of all consumption resulted in lower tax revenues. The state deficit was increasing to the point of threatening its credit.

History of the League

In 1838, the Anti-Corn Law Association was created in London, but had little success in changing things. In October 1838, seven men from Manchester decided to take matters into their own hands. They modified the statutes and the name of the Association, which became "The Anti-Corn Law League," or, more popularly, the League.

Their aim was to mobilize public opinion to put pressure on parliament to repeal the Corn Law. The League proclaimed that repealing the Corn Law would have extraordinary benefits for the kingdom. It would:

• increase industrial outlets
• develop employment
• decrease the price of bread
• increase industrial and agricultural productivity through competition
• promote peace between nations.

Manchester was a good base for the League because it was the major manufacturing city in the country, and its activity was particularly affected by the strangling of international trade.

The founders surrounded themselves with people from the middle class: industrialists, merchants, bankers, traders. Among its leaders, four were to play a decisive role: George Wilson, the president, who administered the huge machinery of the League with great competence and rigor; Charles Villiers, the spokesman of the league in Parliament; Richard Cobden, its most active and most influential member; and John Bright, a great orator, and a faithful disciple and friend of Cobden.

Richard Cobden was born in 1804 to a poor farm family. He was trained by an uncle to become a clerk in his warehouse. At 21, he became a travelling salesman, and was so successful that he was able to set up his own business by acquiring a factory making printed cloth. His company became very prosperous. At the age of 30, he left the management of the company to his brother so that he could travel. He wrote some remarkable articles in which he defended two great causes: pacifism, in the form of nonintervention in foreign affairs, and free exchange. He revealed himself to be a clear and brilliant economist.

From 1839, he devoted himself exclusively to the League, neglecting even his family, though he was very fond of them. He displayed the talents of a great tactician, being rational, skillful, tenacious, and resolute. He was to be elected MP for Stockport in 1841.

John Bright was a manufacturer from Lancashire. He belonged to a Quaker family. He was to be elected to the Commons in 1843. He was a very eloquent speaker — clear, precise, and moving, especially when describing poverty, revealing a deep conscience and a quasi-religious sense of his responsibilities. Even though he was self-educated, he supported his eloquence with well-chosen literary and historical references.

A determined individualist, he considered freedom of exchange as the remedy for all economic evils. He was very wary of state intervention in economics and society.

A nonconformist, he pleaded for the equality of religions under the law, criticized the privileges of the Church of England, supported the separation of church and state, and asked for the right of Jews and atheists to swear a non-Christian oath and be allowed into Parliament.

Within the League, he acted as the unconditional supporter of Cobden and a star speaker. But he avoided appearing as a formal forefront leader, because, as a Quaker, he was not accepted by all groups.

These four people played the major roles in the League, but many more people of high quality and reputation spent a lot of their time, money, and talent for it.

For seven years, until the final victory, the League endeavoured to gain more and more people to its cause, radiating farther and farther from Manchester until it covered the whole kingdom. Meetings were organized in the larger cities. In London, they were held weekly. Everywhere they took place in the largest rooms available, containing several thousand people in London, and up to 10,000 in Manchester. Everywhere, all seats were booked and many people were left outside. More and more subscriptions made it possible to finance books, brochures, periodicals, and even to pay professors to spread understanding of economics among the general public.

The first spectacular breakthrough happened in 1841. That year, the League managed to win over the so called "dissident churches," i.e., the non-Anglican ones. Sixteen hundred "dissident" priests responded to the call of the League, and 700 of them gathered in Manchester. They decided to preach the cause of freedom of exchanges throughout the kingdom, as it was "in agreement with the Laws of providence that it was their mission to propagate."

The League then endeavored to put the farmers on their side. That was trickier insofar as the latter believed that their fate was linked to protection. Within two months, Cobden held 40 meetings among the agricultural population. To quote Bastiat, "There, often surrounded by thousands of farmers and laborers among whom, no doubt, also sneaked in some troublemakers, a cool, skillful, and eloquent Cobden impressed his audience, and even aroused sympathy among his most implacable opponents."

The aristocracy, which had treated the League with disdain resulting from their feeling of political invulnerability, began to worry. They scrutinized the public and private lives of the principal leaders of the League, but soon realized that they had more to lose than to win at this game. They then spread the litany of eternal protectionist sophisms: the protection of farmers against the invasion of foreign products, the lowering of workers' salaries by factory owners taking advantage of the lower cost of subsistence, national independence, outlets for colonial products, control of the sea, etc.

But a remarkable feature of the League was that its actors were skillful economists, and none of these sophisms could stand up to them. Tirelessly, they demonstrated that only the full and unilateral repeal of all obstacles to free trade could bring about prosperity for all.

With poverty and its causes becoming more and more obvious, the aristocracy attempted to soothe the situation through charity. They organized subscriptions to help the poorest. They introduced laws reducing daily working hours. But manufacturers, in turn, took measures to help the truly needy directly. At the same time, the League clearly showed that the only source of hardship was spoliation by the aristocracy.

But the aristocracy still had one defense: its majority in parliament. Then, in a new phase of its action, the League methodically endeavored to have the maximum number of its supporters elected to parliament. At the request of Cobden and Bright, several thousand free-traders registered on electoral lists, and kicked out all those who did not have any right to be on them.

At the elections of 1841, five League members, including Cobden, had been elected. Sir Robert Peel, the leader of the Tories, was again prime minister. Extremely clever and competent, he came from the manufacturing bourgeoisie, and he sought to attract its members into Parliament. Being a lucid opportunist, he soon realized that the League held the truth about the causes of poverty, and that its progress was irreversible. But he felt obliged to defend the interests of the class which had brought him into power. He certainly foresaw that the supporters of the League would obtain a majority in Parliament sooner or later, and thought he might as well implement himself the measures that would become inevitable. During the next five years, he took measures aimed at alleviating the most severe poverty, thus giving some tokens of satisfaction to the free-traders, and, on the other hand, to broaden the outlook of the aristocracy.

In order to improve public finances, he introduced an income tax, exempting revenues below 150 pounds, that lasted three years. He introduced a series of custom duty reforms. Straight import prohibitions were abolished. Oxen, sheep, and fresh and salted meat, the import of which had been prohibited, were now admitted with low duties. Duties on 650 basic consumer goods such as flour, oil, rice, vinegar, beer, wool, cotton, linen, and leather were considerably reduced and the duties for 430 products were eliminated. Export duties, which notably penalized machinery and coal, were abolished.

Economic activity grew, poverty diminished, and, in accordance with the Laffer Law, customs revenues actually increased.

Concerning the Corn Law, Peel acted very cleverly. Experience had shown that the price of wheat on the market fluctuated around 56 shillings, and never rose above 65 shillings. The ceiling of the "sliding scale," at 73 shillings, was therefore pointless. Peel reduced the ceiling to a fixed rate of 56 shillings, which gave to the people the impression of a great discount — without really addressing the problem — and still keeping rents high.

Cobden feared that these improvements might enervate the supporters of the League, though its objectives were far from achieved. So he persuaded his friends to change gear. Until 1844, it seemed impossible to obtain MPs from the counties because one had to own rural property to be an elector. On closer inspection of the electoral law, Cobden discovered an obscure amendment called the Chandon clause, which granted the right to be an elector to any person owning a property yielding an annual revenue of at least 40 shillings. The aristocracy had used this clause in 1841 to register a number of its minions on electoral lists. Nothing prevented the manufacturing and trading classes from doing the same.

Cobden submitted his plan to the League council in December 1844. The deadline for registration on the electoral lists was Jan. 31, 1845. In ten weeks, Cobden organized no less than 35 meetings in the Northern counties of England in order to encourage suitable people to become electors.

Meanwhile, the support of the League from various corners was steadily increasing, and, with it, the means at their disposal. To illustrate the magnitude of their effort, let me quote figures from the annual report for the year 1844 presented on Jan. 22, 1845, by Mr. Hickin, secretary of the League, in front of 10,000 people. First of all, here is the income statement. (I have made an attempt to evaluate the sums in present day dollars. It is, I agree, a very bold and fragile estimate. 1£ (1840) = $84 (2000).

Revenues	£ 86,009	($7,224,000)
Expenses	£ 59,333	($4,984,000)
Balance	£ 26,676	($2,240,000)

More than 200 meetings were held in England or Scotland, to mention only those attended by official representatives of the League.

Two million pamphlets and 20,000 copies of each issue of the League's weekly journal were distributed.

The offices of the League received a huge number of letters, and sent about 300,000!

The League professors opened courses in 36 counties out of 40. Everywhere, and most particularly in agricultural counties, demand for professors largely exceeded supply.

England was divided into 13 electoral districts. Agents well versed into the knowledge and practice of law were assigned to each district to supervise the preparation of the electoral lists and if necessary, obtain their rectification by judgment.

This operation was carried out in 160 boroughs. Up to then, free-traders had outnumbered the monopolists in 112 boroughs, resulting in a fair chance of a free-trade candidate being elected in many of these.

It was only recently that the League had directed its attention to the electoral lists of the counties. Within a few days, the balance in favor of the free traders increased by 1750 in North Lancaster, 500 in South Lancaster, and 500 in Middlesex.

Every year, Charles Villiers, an MP from the League, had proposed a motion to Parliament in favor of the repeal of all protectionist laws. It had always been defeated, but the majority against the repeal decreased year after year: 303 in 1842, 256 in 1843, 206 in 1844, 132 in 1845. Peel started to prepare the minds of the MPs for a gradual repeal, but he came up against both the great landlords, and the free traders who wanted a complete and immediate repeal.

In 1846, a terrible famine struck Ireland, because heavy rains had rotted the potato crop, the staple diet of the Irish people. Bread was too expensive to replace potatoes. In December, Peel decided to apply an emergency reduction in the duty on grain through government decrees, but he lost the support of his own cabinet and had to resign.

The queen called upon the leader of the Whigs, but he was unable to form a cabinet. So, she asked Peel to come back and form a new cabinet. He did it with Tories individually favorable to the repeal. He then proposed to parliament a more radical measure abolishing the Corn Law. After numerous debates and some to-and-fro with the House of Lords — which proved to be more open to freedom of exchange than expected — Parliament put an end to protectionism. On May 26, 1846, the law instituting unilateral freedom of exchange was passed by a majority including, besides representatives of the League, Whigs, Tories, and Irish representatives. The law lasted for 85 years, during which the United Kingdom enjoyed a brilliant period of freedom and prosperity known as the Victorian Era. We should call it instead the Free Trade Era.

The Tory party, however, was irreparably divided. On that same evening, Peel lost a vote of confidence on his Irish policy. He had to resign. Before leaving, he paid tribute to Cobden in his last parliamentary speech, saying :

"The merit of these measures, I declare it to the honorable members of the opposition as well as to ourselves, this merit does not belong to any party. There arose between parties a coalition which, helped by the government, led to the final success. But the name that should, and certainly will be, attached to these measures, is that of a man, driven by the most disinterested and the purest motive, who, with tireless energy, appealing to public reason, demonstrated their necessity with an eloquence all the more admirable as it was simple and without affectation, it is the name of Richard Cobden.

"Sir, I now close the observations which it has been my duty to address to the House, thanking them sincerely for the favour with which they have listened to me in performing this last act of my official career. Within a few hours, probably, that power which I have held for a period of five years will be surrendered into the hands of another — without repining — without complaint on my part — with a more lively recollection of the support and confidence I have received during several years, than of the opposition which during a recent period I have encountered.

"In relinquishing power, I shall leave a name, severely censured I fear by many who, on public grounds, deeply regret the severance of party ties — deeply regret that severance, not from interested or personal motives, but from the firm conviction that fidelity to party engagements — the existence and maintenance of a great party — constitutes a powerful instrument of government: I shall surrender power severely censured also, by others who, from no interested motive, adhere to the principle of protection, considering the maintenance of it to be essential to the welfare and interests of the country: I shall leave a name execrated by every monopolist who, from less honorable motives, clamors for protection because it conduces to his own individual benefit; but it may be that I shall leave a name sometimes remembered with expressions of good will in the abodes of those whose lot it is to labour, and to earn their daily bread by the sweat of their brow, when they shall recruit their exhausted strength with abundant and untaxed food, the sweeter because it is no longer leavened by a sense of injustice."

Sir Robert Peel left public life that same evening. He died four years later in a riding accident.

The League dissolved itself on July 22, 1846.

A ceremony commemorating the passage of the law took place on Jan. 25, 1848. It was attended by 3000 people. Another was celebrated on Feb. 1, 1849.

Richard Cobden was exhausted and ruined when the League finally reached victory in 1846. So the League organized a subscription in his favor which reached the unbelievable sum of 75,000 pounds ($6.3 million)! The sum was handed to him with great cheers during the last meeting of the League.

This money allowed him to start another campaign of his own. For 14 months, he toured Europe with his wife in order to promote freedom of exchange and peace. In 1849, he submitted to Parliament a law instituting compulsory international arbitration before any conflict and, in 1851 a general reduction of armaments. Towards the end of the 1850s, he was asked by the government to negotiate a freedom of exchange treaty with France. His opposite number was Michel Chevalier, a minister of Napoleon III, and a friend and admirer of Bastiat. The treaty was signed by Cobden and Chevalier in 1860.

Cobden died in 1865.

The Lessons of the League

The League's approach included the following tactics:

• it focused on a single goal;
• it propounded the right argumentation;
• it conducted a moral, quasi-religious crusade;
• it was single-minded in the face of opposition;
• it gained the support the middle class;
• it obtained parliamentary representation;
• it took advantage of the intelligence and skill of the prime minister.

This order is not irrelevant, since it can be expected that if the six first conditions are met, there will always be — sooner or later — enough politicians to espouse the cause. Of crucial importance is the first element: we libertarians are very wonderful people fascinated by a number of questions. But we shall never achieve anything if we do not focus our actions on a single cause. Remember the Rev. Martin Luther King and the abolition of segregation in the busses. From that standpoint, Bill Bradford's idea to concentrate the last Libertarian presidential campaign on the single issue of repeling the drug laws was certainly not a bad one.

Remember the advice of Margaret Mead: "Never doubt that a small group of thoughtful, committed persons can change the world. Indeed, it's the only thing that ever has."

© Copyright 2008, Liberty Foundation

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