of the
abrupt leaps it made in the amount of duties leviable. For example, a
merchant who ordered a shipment of foreign wheat when the home price was
70s. and rising to 73s., instead of having a duty of 1s. to pay, should
on a backward drop of the home price to 69s. have 16s. 8d. of duty to
pay. The result was to introduce wide and incalculable elements of
speculation into all transactions in foreign corn. The prices during
most part of this period were under the range at which import was
practically prohibited. The average price of British wheat was 96s. 11d.
in 1817, but from that point there was in succeeding years a rapid and
progressive decline, varied only by the results of the domestic
harvests, till in 1835 the average price of wheat was 39s. 4d., of
barley 29s. 11d. and oats 22s. The import of foreign grain in these
years consisted principally of a speculative trade, under a privilege of
warehousing accorded in the statute of 1773, and extended in subsequent
acts, by which the grain might be sold for home consumption on payment
of the duties, or re-exported free, as suited the interest of the
holders.

The act of 1822 admitted corn of the British possessions in North
America under a favoured scale of duties, and in 1825 a temporary act
was passed, allowing the import of wheat from these provinces at a fixed
duty of 5s. per quarter, irrespective of the home price, which, if
maintained, would have given some stability to the trade with Canada.
The idea of a fixed duty on all foreign grain, however, appears to have
grown in favour from about this period. It was included in the programme
of import duty reforms of the Whig government in 1841, and fell with its
propounders in the general election of that year. Sir Robert Peel, on
succeeding to office, and commencing his remarkable career as a
free-trade statesman, introduced and carried in 1842 a new sliding scale
of duties somewhat better adjusted to the current values. But public
opinion by this time was changing, and the prime minister, convinced, as
he confessed, by the arguments of Cobden and the Anti-Corn-Law League,
and stimulated into action by the failure of the potato crop in Ireland,
put an effectual end to the history of the corn laws by the famous act
of 1846. It was provided under this measure that the maximum duty on
foreign wheat was to be immediately reduced to 10s. per quarter when the
price was under 48s., to 5s. on barley when the price was under