86 ENGLISH SAGA

of grievance. The fine gentlemen in Parliament and the land-
owners on the Board of Guardians who refused outdoor relief
and ignored the promptings of common humanity in the name
of laissez-faire, themselves enjoyed a protection that was the
antithesis of laissez-faire. In the shape of a tax on food, pro-
tection wore its most odious and therefore most vulnerable
form. Wages being low and employment uncertain, the obvious
remedy was to remove the impost and cheapen the workers'
bread. A Tudor statesman, viewing the interests of the nation
as a whole, might have deemed it wiser to seek the same end
through minimum wage rates and political action stabilising
markets and trade. But to a student of laissez-faire such a course
could only seem a flagrant breach of immutable economic law.

The cry for cheap bread, therefore, had a triple force. It
respected hallowed and eternal truths. It appealed to the needs
of the hungry and the hearts of the charitable. It offered en-
hanced industrial profits. Instead of having to pay higher wages,
the north-country manufacturer could reasonably expect,
through a fall in the cost of living, to pay lower, and at the
same time, by selling more, to increase his returns. That this
gain would be at the expense of the landed interest did not
trouble him. In the view of Manchester—-and as Manchestei
grew richer, its social consciousness became almost aggressively
acute—the landed interest was composed of stupid and anti-
quated feudal snobs. The sooner they could be swept away'to
leave room for the unhampered rule of progressive talent, the
better.

But despite the Reform Bill of 1832 the benches of Parliament
were still mainly occupied by country gentlemen. The Whig
aristocrats who had passed the Reform Bill were landowners like
the Tory squires who had opposed it Neither were yet ready
to dispense with a principle on which their own wealth and
power, and as they therefore believed, the security of the con-
stitution depended. The Conservative majority which supported
Sir Robert Peel had pledged itself to maintain the existing agri-
cultural duties. The most the Government of 1841 would con-
cede to the reformers was a modification of the sliding scale of
1828 and the fixing of a maximum duty of ao/- a quarter. Even
this, to many of its back-bench supporters, seemed too much,
A corn-law reformer's motion for total repeal was rejected in
1842 by a majority of more than four to one.