Peel: a Reappraisal

Hilton, Boyd

doi:10.1017/s0018246x00017003

Cited by 66 publications

(7 citation statements)

References 5 publications

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“…Peel considered this would benefit the whole United Kingdom and was a greater priority than local measures to help the Irish economy. In his 1842 budget speech and in a long argument by letter with Ripon, the President of the Board of Trade and brother of De Grey, Peel showed that he firmly believed that reducing agricultural tariffs would not damage the Irish economy and that ‘no part of the empire will be more benefited … than Ireland’ by this policy. Peel did exempt Ireland from the income tax in 1842, but this was not meant to be a concession for Ireland as David Eastwood has suggested.…”

Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peel, De Grey and Irish Policy, 1841–1844

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2014

History

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Historians have traditionally framed debates over Irish policy in the early 1840s between London and Dublin Castle in sectarian terms. Robert Peel's ‘liberal‐minded’ attitudes towards Catholics have been portrayed as conflicting with his lord lieutenant's, which were supposedly anti‐Catholic, sectarian and ‘Orange’. Using the Earl de Grey's political papers in addition to Peel's for the first time in historical analysis, this article shows this is a misinterpretation which has concealed the actual nature of the policy debates between Peel and De Grey during the ‘Repeal Year’ period. Conflict arose, not along sectarian or ideological lines, but over the cause of the sudden rise in popular support for the Repeal Association and the nature of public policy which would best counteract this. De Grey thought the ‘Repeal Year’ crisis was the result of economic grievances, while Peel considered it a religious issue. In the resulting disagreement over the most effective policy, De Grey favoured policies based upon economic conciliation, and Peel prioritized religious concessions towards Irish Catholics. This anticipated debates in Irish policy much later in the nineteenth century between constructive unionists, who advocated economic conciliation to combat the rise of Irish nationalism, and those who supported religious and constitutional reforms.

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Section: IVmentioning

confidence: 99%

Peel, De Grey and Irish Policy, 1841–1844

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2014

History

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“…This tendency also contributed to the view that political economy tempted him to stray from the long-standing Tory position on the Corn Laws. See the contemporaries quoted in Hilton (1979) and Read (1987). Speeches, i.…”

Section: Douglas a Irwinmentioning

confidence: 99%

Political Economy and Peel's Repeal of the Corn Laws

Irwin

1989

Economics & Politics

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The repeal of the Corn Laws in Britain in 1846 has been much debated as to whether interest groups or ideology contributed most to this policy reform. This paper examines a conventional view that Sir Robert Peel, in proposing repeal, converted from protection to free trade under the influence of the ideas of political economy. It is shown that economic ideas had a crucial influence on Peel, but that he remained skeptical of political economy as a doctrine. Copyright 1989 Blackwell Publishers Ltd..

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“…Whilst debates about the repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 have long since transcended the simplistic argument that repeal represented, in the words of Anna Gambles, ‘a clash between modernized “Peelism” and a reactionary, self‐interested protectionism’ (1998, 928), our conception of the politics of repeal remain rather narrow. Indeed, that repealing Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel had ‘already marked down the Corn Laws for total abolition in the 1820s’ (Wordie 2000, 53; also see Hilton 1979) suggests our understandings of the politics of repeal and protectionism have been too squarely focused upon Manchester. Indeed, the men of Manchester were not the inventors of free trade – the concept had its roots in seventeenth‐century England (see Poovey 1988) – but rather proselytisers for a particular take that would later define economic liberalism (Winch 1996).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Placing political economy: organising opposition to free trade before the abolition of the Corn Laws

Griffin¹

2009

Trans Inst British Geog

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The unfurling of global capitalism – and its attendant effects – has long been fertile intellectual terrain for geographers. But whilst studies of the processes and mechanisms of globalisation undoubtedly assume a talismanic importance in the discipline, geographers, with few exceptions, have left examinations of early economic liberalism to historians. One such critically important episode in the evolution of the liberal economic project was the repeal of the so‐called ‘Corn Laws’ in 1846. Whilst the precise impact of the Manchester‐based Anti‐Corn Law League (ACLL) continues to be a matter of conjecture, Eric Sheppard has asserted that their particular take on political economy managed to assume a ‘truth‐like status’ and worldwide universality. But the ACLL’s campaign represents only one, albeit decisive, stage in the long intellectual and practical struggle between ‘protectionists’ and the disciples of free trade. Studies of the non‐’Manchester’ components have tended to focus squarely upon national politics. This paper examines a pivotal attempt in 1838 by Lord Melbourne’s Government to experiment with the effective elimination of import duties on fresh fruit. Unlike most agricultural commodities, table fruit was produced in a tightly defined area, thus allowing the Government’s experiment to play out, in theory, without national political fallout. Whilst the Government’s clandestine actions left little time for a concerted opposition to develop, Kentish fruit growers soon organised. A formidable lobby was forged that drew wide local support yet also evolved beyond the original ‘epistemic community’. Whilst the coalition failed in their efforts to reintroduce protective duties, their actions allow us to see how protectionist ideologies and policies were vivified through practices at many different spatial scales and to better understand the complex spatiality of protectionist takes on political economy. Their campaign also changed – at least in the short term – the course of British mercantile policy.

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Peel: a Reappraisal

Cited by 66 publications

References 5 publications

Peel, De Grey and Irish Policy, 1841–1844

Peel, De Grey and Irish Policy, 1841–1844

Political Economy and Peel's Repeal of the Corn Laws

Placing political economy: organising opposition to free trade before the abolition of the Corn Laws

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