r by what was commonly known as a sliding scale:
a scale, that is, which varied inversely with the price of the grain
itself, rising as the price in the home market fell, and falling as it
rose. In the manufacturing districts a different feeling had prevailed
for some years. In the first years of the present reign severe distress
in Manchester and others of the chief manufacturing towns had led to the
formation of an association whose chief object was sufficiently
indicated by its title of the Anti-Corn-law League. At first Mr.
Villiers, the member for Wolverhampton, was its principal spokesman in
the House of Commons, but at subsequent elections two manufacturers of
great eloquence obtained seats, and year after year urged the entire
repeal of all duties on corn with great earnestness, though for some
time their arguments made but little impression on the House. Their
motions were rejected in 1842 by a majority of 300; in 1843 by one
exceeding 250; in 1844 by above 200; and in 1845 by one of more than 130
in a much smaller House. But this last division had scarcely been taken
when an unprecedented calamity--the almost entire failure of the potato
crop, which was attacked in nearly every part of both islands by a new
disease, the cause of which is not to this day fully ascertained--
suddenly changed the aspect of the subject. To the English farmer and
laborer it was a severe loss; to the Irish farmer it was ruin; to the
Irish peasant famine. The grain harvest, too, was generally deficient.
And it was evident that rigorous measures, promptly taken, were
indispensable, if a large portion of the peasantry in the southern and
western provinces of Ireland were not to be left to perish of actual
starvation. In the face of so terrible an emergency Peel acted with
great decision. On his own responsibility he authorized the purchase of
a large supply of Indian corn from the United States, hoping, among
other indirect effects of such a step, to accustom the Irish to the use
of other kinds of food besides the root on which hitherto they had too
exclusively relied.[269] And he laid before his colleagues in the
cabinet a proposal to suspend the existing Corn-law "for a limited
period," a measure which all saw must lead to its eventual repeal. It
would be superfluous now to recapitulate the discussions which took
place, the various alternative proposals which were suggested, or the
dissensions in the cabinet to which his proposal gave