Free Trade and the Irish Famine DECEMBER 01, 1991 by JOHN P.
FINNERAN Mr. Finneran recently received his B.A. in history and
in international relations from Tufts University. In the
mid-19th century, the political life of Great Britain was torn
by a great debate on the principles of protection and free
trade. The debate, with its triumph for the free trade cause,
remains equally relevant today, for it shows that protection,
whatever its theoretical merits, is ruinous in human terms. The
cornerstone of the free trade victory was the repeal of the corn
laws by the Tory government of Sir Robert Peel in 1846. The
Tories and the Corn Laws The Tory party had had an ambivalent
history toward protection and free trade. On the one hand, the
Tories under William Pitt the Younger had favored free trade.
With the onset of the Napoleonic wars, however, this policy was
interrupted. When peace was established, the price of wheat and
other grains, with their supply from abroad augmented by the
increase in commerce that follo