1830-1859
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The Anti-Corn Law League
The second Corn Law of 1828 sparked a wave of radical protest amongst Britain’s urban classes by introducing a sliding scale of duties on foreign wheat, thus causing bread prices to fluctuate excessively during a period that was plagued by high unemployment and poor harvests. The Corn Laws were seen to safeguard the interests of…
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The Age of Russell and Palmerston, 1846-1868
The collapse of Sir Robert Peel's Conservative government, following the 1846 repeal of the Corn Laws, began a complex re-arrangement of British political parties; one that took more than a decade to complete. Paradoxically, by rejecting Peel, the remaining Tories held the advantage of unity in their desire to protect agricultural interests and the established…
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Let us open to them the door of the House of Commons
Speech by Thomas Babington Macaulay on Jewish Disabilities (House of Commons, 17 April 1833).
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Lord John Russell and the Irish Catholics
1829 – 1852: despite the Whig leader Lord John Russell’s efforts to work for justice to Ireland, his policies ended mainly in failure.
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Plus ca change
The politics of faction in the 1850s; an introduction to a speech by John Bright.
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A political man
The political aspirations of William Taylor Haly, a perenially unsuccessful Liberal candidate in the 1850s.
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‘His friends sat on the benches opposite’
Examination of the part played by the renegade Conservatives – the Peelites – in the creation of the Liberal Party.