year’s infamous legislation, whose passage required not only majority votes in both houses but also fixed bayonets outside them, absolutely forbade grain imports when wheat fell below eighty shillings per quarter.66 Not long after, grain prices briefly fell well below eighty shillings, and Ricardo participated in a successful rearguard action through further pamphleteering and speeches in the Commons against the demands of landowners for even more protection.67 He died in 1823 at age fifty-one, his dream of global free trade unfulfilled.
