The Reform Act and the Municipal Reform Act gave the islands a ...

The Reform Act and the Municipal Reform Act gave the islands a rational political

framework; steam unified

their economic structure. Of all these processes, the Repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846 was the logical and historical culmination.

The operations of the League, which had gone with a swing all through the bad years, flagged with the return of

prosperity in 1843 and the

absorption of the unemployed by the rail-way boom; by 1845 manufacturers did not know where to turn for hands. Peel himself was slowly moving towards Free Trade in maize, but he was restrained, not by a political, but by an economic scruple: the belief that cheap food meant low wages and that the loss of rents to the land-owner would be followed with no compensating advantage to the working classes.

When this doubt was resolved his way grew clear. The great Budget of 1842, in which he had swept away the accumulated muddles of the Whigs and raised an income tax to lower the customs, marks the opening stage of classical Victorian finance.

Incidentally, the sliding scale of 18-28, which had refused to slide, was readjusted.

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