144 THE ROARING FORTIES 



progress since 1815. The immediate occasion 

 for the change was the necessity of readjustment 

 in the budget to get rid of a persistent deficit; 

 the character of the change was determined, 

 however, by the intellectual conviction slowly 

 reached by Peel and his coadjutors that Adam 

 Smith s economic philosophy was sound. To 

 get rid of the protection on manufactures was 

 no hard matter. The manufacturing centres 

 were the abodes of Whigs and Radicals, and 

 Peel s Tory followers were not unwilling to see 

 them ruined. By 1845, through successive re 

 ductions, most of the old tariff was gone. The 

 process involved some changes in the agricul 

 tural items and every step in this direction 

 caused frantic alarm among the landowning 

 aristocracy who furnished the bulk of the Tory 

 party. It was becoming clear that the Corn 

 Laws were doomed, and it seemed likely that the 

 Tory leader himself was to be the agent for 

 executing the decree. The full meaning of this 

 situation to the aristocracy is to be realized 

 only when attention is given to the extra- 

 Parliamentary activities of the Anti-Corn-Law 

 League. 



This organization was formed, as has been 

 stated, in the later thirties, and was made a 



