False Economy - Alan Beattie [92]
For most, this remained a sideline to their main activities of farming, or at least collecting the rent from tenant farmers. But diversification accelerated markedly in the nineteenth century, not least because of the growing sophistication of financial markets. The Bank of England, at that point a private entity, had been created in 1694 to help the government borrow money to fight the French. Trading in stocks boomed in the 1830s and 1840s as controls on companies setting up and selling shares were lifted, and the new railway companies took advantage. Something between a fifth and a quarter of share offers in the "railway mania" investment boom were snatched up by landowners. Indeed, railway companies wishing to avoid landowners objecting to their planned routes often found it prudent to reserve a certain portion of each new share offer to buy them off. And so, even though the House of Commons (and more so the House of Lords) remained dominated by aristocrats, some had taken a stake in the country's economic future rather than cling exclusively to the rewards to be had from owning its economic past.
The Anti-Corn Law League used a combination of propaganda and aggressive campaigns of electoral manipulation that would have done credit to any modern Washington lobbyist. It made thousands of objections to the registration of known protectionist voters when the electoral rolls came up for review each year, and registered its own supporters as the number of eligible seats and voters increased after the 1832 parliamentary reform. By canvassing support in the urban constituencies where its backing was strongest, and reporting the results back to its headquarters, the League often had a better idea of the electorate's views than either of the two main political parties.
The League's propaganda used every line of rhetoric it possibly could to promote free trade. With those who would benefit directly, like the cotton manufacturers, it appealed to their self-interest. With those, such as tenant farmers and agricultural laborers, who might have been tempted to see the issue as one of the countryside versus the city, they argued that the effect of the Corn Laws was merely to raise the price of land—and thus their rent. And with those who might have lost out financially, it invoked morality and Scripture. It was wrong on principle, the League said, to support an aristocratic monopoly. John Buckmaster, a free-trade agitator who toured country towns and villages, trying to recruit farm laborers and craftsmen to the cause of repeal, employed a prototype "What would Jesus do?" campaign. "If the Corn Laws had been in evidence when Jesus Christ was on earth," he rather presumptuously declared, "he would have preached against them."
Perhaps its most important success was to win over the temporary allegiance of the Chartist movement. Working-class protesters were part of the coalition of the disenfranchised that had managed to force the 1832 Reform Act through Parliament by adding the force of mass meetings and even violence against property to the cause. Nottingham Castle, property of the Duke of Newcastle, who had initially opposed parliamentary reform when the bill reached the House of Lords, was burned to the ground by an angry mob in 1831. But unlike the leading lights of the League, the working and lower-middle classes remained (literally) disenfranchised by the Reform Act, failing the property qualification, which was still required to have a vote.
The Chartist movement, so named for its list of demands (the People's Charter),