n had kept up the
price of corn, a calamity for the mass of the people.

The amount of wheat imported into England before the era of Corn Law
repeal was inconsiderable. Mr. Porter has shown[636] how very small a
proportion of wheat used in this country was imported from 1801-44.
From 1801 to 1810 the average annual import of wheat into the kingdom
was 600,946 quarters, or a little over a peck annually per head, the
average annual consumption per head being about eight bushels. Between
1811 and 1820 the average importation was 458,578 quarters, or for the
increased population a gallon-and-a-half per head, and the same share
for each person was imported in the next decade 1821-30. From 1831-40
the average imports arose to 607,638 quarters, or two-and-a-quarter
gallons per head, and in 1841-4 an average import of 1,901,495
quarters raised the average supply to four-and-a-half gallons per
person, still a very small proportion of the amount consumed.

In 1836 a small association had been formed in London for advocating
the repeal of the Corn Laws, and in 1838 a similar association was
formed in Manchester.[637] At one of its earliest meetings appeared
Richard Cobden, under whose guidance the association became the
Anti-Corn Law League, and at whose invitation John Bright joined the
League. Under these two men the Anti-Corn Law League commenced its
great agitation, its object being 'to convince the manufacturer that
the Corn Laws were interfering with the growth of trade, to persuade
the people that they were raising the price of food, to teach the
agriculturist that they had not even the solitary merit of securing a
fixed price for corn'. The country was deluged with pamphlets, backed
up by constant public meetings; and these efforts, aided by
unfavourable seasons, convinced many of the errors of protection. In
1840 the League spent L5,700 in distributing 160,000 circulars and
150,000 pamphlets, and in delivering 400 lectures to 800,000 people.
Bakers were persuaded to bake taxed and untaxed shilling loaves, and,
on the purchaser choosing the larger, to demand the tax from the
landlord; in 1843 the League collected L50,000, next year L100,000,
and in 1845 L250,000 in support of their agitation.

Yet for some years they had little success in Parliament; even in 1842
Peel only amended the laws; and it was not until 1846 that, convinced
by the League's arguments, as he himself confessed, and stimulated by
the famine in Irela