mous
petition on behalf of free trade.[43] It was drawn up by Thomas Tooke
(1774-1858), who had long been actively engaged in the Russian trade,
and whose _History of Prices_ is in some respects the most valuable
economic treatise of the time. Tooke gives a curious account of his
action on this occasion.[44] He collected a few friends engaged in
commerce, who were opposed to the corn laws. He found that several of
them had 'crude and confused' notions upon the subject, and that each
held that his own special interests should be exempted on some pretext
from the general rule. After various dexterous pieces of diplomacy,
however, he succeeded in obtaining the signature of Samuel Thornton, a
governor of the bank of England, and ultimately procured a sufficient
number of signatures by private solicitation. He was favourably
received by the Prime Minister Lord Liverpool, and Vansittart (then
Chancellor of the Exchequer), and finally got the petition presented
to the House of Commons by Alexander Baring (afterwards Lord
Ashburton). Tooke remarks that the Liverpool administration was in
advance, not only of the public generally, but of the 'mercantile
community,' Glasgow and Manchester, however, followed in the same
steps, and the petition became a kind of official manifesto of the
orthodox doctrine. The Political Economy Club formed next year at
Tooke's instigation (April 18, 1821) was intended to hasten the
process of dispersing crude and confused ideas. It was essentially an
organ of the Utilitarian propaganda.

The influence of the economists upon public policy was shown by the
important measures carried through chiefly by Huskisson. Huskisson
(1770-1830) was a type of the most intelligent official of his time.
Like his more brilliant friend Canning, he had been introduced into
office under Pitt, and retained a profound reverence for his early
leader. Huskisson was a thorough man of business, capable of wrestling
with blue-books, of understanding the sinking-fund, and having
theories about the currency; a master of figures and statistics and
the whole machinery of commerce. Though eminently useful, he might at
any moment be applying some awkward doctrine from Adam Smith.

Huskisson began the series of economic reforms which were brought to
their full development by Peel and Gladstone. The collection of his
speeches[45] incidentally brings out very clearly his relation to the
Utilitarians. The most remarkable is a great s