- Corn Laws enacted after 1815
- Designed to protect English landholders by encouraging the export and limiting the import of corn when prices fell below a fixed point
- Kept the cost of food high
- Depressed the domestic market for manufactured goods because people spent the bulk of their earnings on food rather than commodities
- Caused great distress among the working classes in the towns
- Working Class unable to grow their own food and had to pay the high prices
- Vast majority of voters and members of Parliament were landowners and so the government was unwilling to reconsider new legislation to help the economy because it effected their pockets
- Abolished in the face of militant agitation by the Anti Corn law League formed in Manchester in 1839
- Anti Corn Law League maintained that the laws which amounted to a subsidy increased industrial costs
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