A Splendid Exchange: How Trade Shaped the World

by William J. Bernstein

“real” England (as opposed to the hypothetical England of Principles) lay in its factory machinery. The corn laws, he wrote, impeded the purchase of foreign grain and forced England to waste its precious labor in less productive farmwork. This benefited no one except the landowning aristocracy. Ricardo’s pamphlet convinced few. His more influential Principles did not appear in print until 1817, and he himself did not enter Parliament until 1819. The thought of German, Polish, and Danish warehouses bulging with cheap grain incited England’s working poor. In the end the mob proved more influential than the forces of rational discourse, but not in the direction intended. In March 1815, anti-Corn Law rioters raged through London’s streets and broke into the houses of the bill’s supporters, including those of Lord Castlereagh, the notoriously repressive foreign minister, and Frederick Robinson, who had introduced the bill. In the aftermath of the French wars, starving workers rioted for free trade, just as today more comfortable workers riot against it. Their lawlessness proved similarly counterproductive, forcing pro-repeal politicians and newspapers to disown their raucous allies. In 1815 the landed interests ruled the day. That