At the accession of the Queen protective duties or taxes existed in Great Britain on all imported breadstuffs and on many manufactured articles.  Sir Robert Peel, the Conservative Prime Minister (1841), favored a reduction in the last class of duties, but believed it necessary to maintain the former in order to keep up the price of grain and thus encourage the English farmers.  The result of this policy was great distress among the poorly paid, half-fed workingmen, who could not afford to buy dear bread.  A number of philanthropists led by Richard Cobden and John Bright organized an Anti-Corn Law League[1] to obtain the repeal of the grain duties.

[1] Corn is the name given in England to wheat or other grain used for food.  Indian corn or maize cannot be grown in that climate, and is seldom eaten there.

At the same time, Ebenezer Elliott, the “Corn-Law Rhymer,” gave voice to the sufferings of the poor in rude but vigorous verse, which appealed to the excited feelings of thousands in such words as these: 

“England! what for mine and me, What hath bread tax done for thee? . . . . . . . .  Cursed thy harvest, cursed thy land, Hunger-stung thy skill’d right hand.”

When, however, session after session of Parliament passed and nothing was done for the relief of the perishing multitudes, many began to despair, and great numbers joined in singing Elliott’s new national anthem: 

“When wilt Thou save the people? 
O God of mercy! when? 
Not kings or lords, but nations! 
Not thrones and crowns, but men! 
Flowers of thy heart, O God, are they! 
Let them not pass, like weeds, away! 
Their heritage a sunless day! 
God save the people!”

Still the Government was not covinced; the Corn Laws were enforced, the price of bread showed no signs of falling, and the situation grew daily more desperate and more threatening.

593.  The Irish Famine, 1845-1846.

At last the Irish famine opened the Prime Minister’s eyes (S592).  When in Elizabeth’s reign Sir Walter Raleigh brought over the cheap but precarious potato from America and planted it in Ireland, his motive was one of pure good will.  He could not foresee that it would in time become in that country an almost universal food, that through its very abundance the population would rapidly increase, and that then, by the sudden failure of the crop, terrible destitution would ensue.  Such was the case in the summer of 1845.  It is said by eyewitnesses that in a single night the entire potato crop was smitten with disease, and the healthy plants were transformed into a mass of putrefying vegetation.  Thus at one fell stroke the food of nearly a whole nation was cut off.[1]

[1] O’Connor’s “The Parnell Movement.”

In the years that followed, the famine became appalling.  The starving peasants left their miserable huts and streamed into the towns for relief, only to die of hunger in the streets.