Abstract
In early 1841, William Thornton accepted an invitation to address the members of the Travellers’ Club on the divisive issue of the repeal of the Corn Laws.1 Published later that year as The True Consequences of the Repeal of the Corn Laws (1841), Thornton’s pamphlet was part of a wider economic debate on agricultural protection, triggered by the publication of John R. McCulloch’s Statements Illustrative of the Policy and Probable Consequence of the Proposed Repeal of the Existing Corn Law (1841).2 There, McCulloch (1841: 16, 7), a free trader, had advanced the view that British agriculturalists had “nothing to fear … from the total and unconditional repeal of the Corn Laws” because corn prices “would [not] sink … to the level of those on the continent” owing to the “considerable cost … of conveying a quarter of corn from Dantzic … to London”.3 Free trader or not, Thornton had reckoned that McCulloch’s pamphlet was being deployed in the service of the political interests of a disproportionately powerful landed (i.e. aristocratic) order who feared that the abolition of an import tax on grain would increase foreign grain imports, lower the domestic price of grain, and so, reduce their income from agriculture. Thornton did not believe, however, that this situation would obtain and took aim at McCulloch’s estimates of the market price of grain across Europe, the effects of a free trade in grain and the cost of its “conveyance” to England: “Happily”, Thornton noted, “Mr. McCulloch’s opinion is not only utterly erroneous, but is founded on a sophism so gross and palpable, that one can only wonder how a reasoner, generally so acute and clear-sighted, has suffered it to mislead him” (Thornton 1841: 6). Even at this point, the first-time pamphleteer is prepared to make firm judgements about the views of seasoned economic commentators.
Ebenezer Scrooge: The Treadmill and
the Poor Law are in full vigour, then?
—Charles Dickens, A Christmas Carol (1843)
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William Thomas Thornton’s Books and Articles
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Donoghue, M. (2016). “Your Plea Will Not Be in Vain”. In: Faithful Victorian. Palgrave Macmillan, New York. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-58773-2_3
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