Corn laws

Corn laws, various laws regulating English import and export of grain from the 14th century to 1849. After the Napoleonic Wars the corn price was raised to offset agricultural depression. But protests from the poor and from manufacturers objecting to agricultural subsidy helped Cobden and Bright, leaders of the Anti-Corn Law League (1839–46), persuade Prime Minister Sir Robert Peel to repeal the Corn Laws (1846 and 1849).