Object Literature
The Anti–Corn Law League was a successful political movement in Great Britain aimed at the abolition of the unpopular Corn Laws, which protected landowners’ interests by levying taxes on imported wheat, thus raising the price of bread at a time when factory-owners were trying to cut wages. The League was a middle-class nationwide organisation that held many well-attended rallies on the premise that a crusade was needed to convince parliament to repeal the corn laws. Its long-term goals included the removal of feudal privileges, which it denounced as impeding progress, lowering economic well-being, and restricting freedom. The first Anti–Corn Law Association was set up in London in 1836; but it was not until 1838 that the nationwide League, combining all such local associations, was founded, with Richard Cobden and John Bright among its leaders. Cobden was the chief strategist; Bright was its great orator.
The engraving shows Cobden at the centre, addressing a large group of members of the Anti-Corn Law League seated and standing around him, holding a paper in his left hand and looking to the left, in a room with a bay window to the left, two other windows at the rear and two framed portraits on the back wall with a table at the centre and a copy of ‘Punch’ magazine on the floor to the foreground right.
Scale, originality, texture, grandeur; faded country house at its peak; glorious.
