DisMember writes
Bright tells the landed interest their Corn Law creates nothing and blights everything — and that Peel, their own leader, will be the one to bury it. The potato blight made him a prophet within six months.
The speech
10 June 1845 · MP for Durham · House of Commons
The key quote
“The Corn Law created nothing, it blighted almost everything.”
Supporting Villiers's annual repeal motion, Bright dissects Sir James Graham's speech as free trade half-avowed and half-retracted, marshals a decade of import statistics to show no protected interest ever suffered from open ports, and warns the agricultural benches they are wholly in Peel's hands. The famine price of bread, he tells the House, was made in Parliament — and the League's growing millions will unmake it.
Historical context
June 1845, and the Corn Law fortress is quietly crumbling from within. Peel's government still officially defends the sliding scale, but the Prime Minister's every budget has edged toward free trade, and Bright — the Rochdale cotton-spinner's son elected for Durham two years earlier — knows it. This speech captures the League's high summer: the Covent Garden bazaar had just taken £30,000 from middle-class pockets, the registration campaign was menacing county seats, and Bright could taunt the squires that their leader would abandon them, for 'what he said must be law, and would be law.' He was out by only months. The autumn rain fell, the potato blight reached Ireland, and by December Peel had resolved on repeal — carrying it the following June with Bright's minority turned majority, at the price of his party's destruction. The passing swipe at a book about 'two nations' is its own footnote: Sybil had been published three weeks earlier, and its author would lead the protectionist revenge.
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Search Parliament →Historical context and scoring written by AI (Gemini). The key quote is verbatim from Hansard. Verify against source before publishing.