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 CHARTISM VERSUS FREE TRADE

(1842–1844)

Chartism found itself competing, both for the attention of the public and the allegiance of working people, with a very powerful rival. This was the Anti-Corn Law League, whose agitation began almost simultaneously with the publication of the Charter and ran alongside it until 1846. The Chartists early discerned the danger to their cause which was threatened by the Free Trade agitation, and took up a definitely hostile attitude to it. But the earlier years of the Anti-Corn Law movement gave little promise that it would become a very serious rival to the Chartist propaganda. Its petitions and motions in the House of Commons were rejected with little ceremony, and the Chartists only saw in these non-successes further proofs of their belief that without political reform no important social improvement could be achieved. During 1839 the working classes were preponderatingly on the side of the Charter, but the ignominious collapse of Chartism, the imprisonment of the leaders, and the temporary abandonment of agitation, gave the Anti-Corn Law League an opportunity which it did not let slip. With large funds, able and eloquent leaders, and unswerving purpose, the Free Traders made great headway. The solid mass of the middle-class was behind them, and this was the class which had the preponderating influence in the majority of the electorates which returned the reformed House of Commons. Moreover, it probably required no great persuasion to bring over all the better-paid and more educated artisans and operatives, who were beginning more and more to share the political and economic ideas of the Radical middle class. The extent of the Free Trade 213