It was with the publication of the Corn Law Rhymes in 1830 that recognition of Elliott was to reach its peak and also to find a new direction. He now became known as the Corn Law Rhymer, a title he was to retain until the present day. Up to the beginning of 1831 Elliott's work was to all intents and purposes unknown. A fortunate occurrence ^ resulted in it being brought to the notice of the public through an article in the New Monthly Magazine which took the form of a letter addressed to the poet laureate Southey, 'Respecting a remarkable poem by a Mechanic.'
The first edition of the Corn Law Rhymes contained only The Ranter which is referred to later, but in the two succeeding editions in 1831 further poems were added, and in the collected works of 1833 still more. These additional poems made up the group which I wish to consider in this chapter. The Preface to these poems first appeared in the third edition under the
heading of 'Declaration of the Sheffield Mechanics Anti- Bread-Tax Society up to 1833.'
(1). John Bowring visiting Thomas Asline Ward, editor of the Sheffield Independent, went south with a copy , met Wordsworth in Nottingham, and indicated to him, the
'wonderful poet of Sheffield, not Montgomery but a new name.' In London, he enlisted the support of Bulwer
Lytton, who dispatched a letter to the New Monthly Magazine (1831, no. 2), inviting Southey's attention, although Elliott had been known to the latter for over twenty years.
The Declaration, though signed by the Secretary of the Society, one John Carr, bears all the signs of being by Elliott himself. The substance of this
declaration is indicated in the first sentence:
Convinced that the Mechanics are the only body of men in this country sufficiently independent to
oppose, with any chance of success, the host of corruptionists who are feeding on our labour, and, at the same time, limiting the market for our
productions; trusting also that we shall speedily be joined by every wise and good mechanic in the empire, and supported by the yet undebased portion of the middle class of our countrymen, if any
such there be, we, the Sheffield Mechanics' Anti- Bread-Tax Society, declare that, in a fully peopled country, it is an act of national suicide to
restrict the exchange of manufactured goods for corn; because, where there is a law which
restricts the necessaries and comforts of life, profits and wages, (being nowhere worth more than the
necessaries and comforts which they will purchase,) are demonstrably measured by the restriction.
The Preface opens with a grateful acknowledgement of thanks to those critics who had praised the early editions of the Corn-law Rhymes, and attempts a defence of the use of poetry for political purposes.
Elliott opened his Preface to the 2nd edition of the Corn Law Rhymes of 1831 with
Two generous critics...have praised so highly (3) this little unpuffed, unadvertised book, that I
am almost compelled to doubt whether I still live in England.
and succeeded in drawing attention to the salient points of debate which the Rhymes provoke. The reviews of his work provided Elliott, who had been writing for over thirty years with the opportunity to present himself
(2). Elliott. Preface to 3rd ed. of Corn Law Rhymes - 1831.
(3). Elliott - Preface to 2nd edition of Corn Law Rhymes - 1831. - 10 7 -
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under his own name as a dogmatic and bitter
opponent of a social and political evil. It is the extent to which in the Corn Law Rhymes, Elliott
adapted the medium of verse to the political purpose he sought to serve, using rhetorical devices seemingly more appropriate to the political platform than poetry, that is my consideration in this Chapter.
The Corn Law Rhymes are so closely related to the Anti-Corn-Law agitation of the 1830's, however, that, before proceeding to the poetry it is necessary to draw
in the outline of the political climate as it related to the price of bread. The Corn Laws, or Bread Tax
as Elliott referred to it, had been passed in 1815. The Napoleonic Wars had produced the Continental system, which gave the English farmer a virtual monopoly of the home market, and the consequence of this artificial scarcity and of a series of bad harvests, was a rapid rise in prices, accompanied by fluctuations in the
(5)
trade cycle. The solution to the problem, propounded (4). For example, he had resorted to a pseudonym in 1810 with the Soldier and other, poems by Brittanicus.
(5). The price of corn, which in 1789 had stood at 45/9 the quarter, had risen ten years later to over 100 shillings. This trend was reversed by the abundant harvest of 1813, which produced a sharp decline in prices:
from 117s.lOd. in June 1813, to 69s.7d. in May 1814. The enormous harvest, followed by peace and considerable importation, spread dismay in the ranks of the landed interest. Farmers in recent years had made enormous profits and, presuming on the indefinite continuance of high prices, had sunk a vast amount of capital in improvements and had renewed their leases, in many instances at rents proportionate to prices. Both farmers and landowners had raised their standard of living during the war and were loath to submit to any lowering.
by an unreformed Parliament, representative mainly of the landed interest, was the Corn Law of 1815. Its purpose was to stabilise the price of wheat at 80/- a quarter; no imports of grain were permitted while the price remained below that level. The Act was to
force up the price of grain by protective tariffs on imports, serving the interests of the landowners.
Opposition was to come especially from the new industrial classes, leading to the formation of the Anti-Corn-Law League in 1838. The change was not only one of principle but of spirit as well. Behind the old system lay a definite philosophy of social justice in which the interest of both producer and consumer were considered. The intention was to keep the price at a level which would be fair to both. Thus, up to a certain price, the producer was given practically a monopoly of the home market and was given assistance in exporting his surplus. Under the new system the fluctuation in price, up to the point at which foreign grain was admitted duty free, varied
directly with the size of the crop at home.
This Act, which satisfied neither the Protectionists nor their opponents and failed to stabilise the price of wheat, produced little agitation beyond petitions to Parliament and a small crop of pamphlets. Agitation
/ g \
for Parliamentary Reform overshadowed the Corn Laws
and the controversy was not revived until 1838, when the (6). This culminated in the Reform Act of 1832, which
enfranchised large industrial towns previously unrepresented, abolished numerous 'rotten boroughs', and extended the
vote to middle class men.
formation of the Anti-Corn Law League coincided with Chartist Agitation. The Industrial Revolution, which had exacerbated the problem, provided a way of solving it by bringing into being a new political class, men such as Sir Robert Peel and in a small way Elliott himself, whose interest was in factories rather than land. They resented the political power which the landed interest held, and wanted cheaper bread, some for humanitarian reasons and all to reduce their wage bill. John Bright called their opposition 'a movement of the commercial and industrious classes
against the lords and great proprietors of the soil1; it was infused with 'a moral and even a religious spirit'.
The years 1822 to 1828 are important in the history of the anti-Corn-law movement in that they marked the union of the industrial and commercial classes against the landowners. The reduction of duties on both manufactured articles and raw materials, which Huskisson made in the years following 1823, enabled the manufacturing and commercial classes to attack protection on grain without provoking, as it did in 1815, a reference to the high protection which they
themselves enjoyed. Freed from this handicap of
earlier years, writers in newspapers and periodicals, pamphleteers and representatives in Parliament were
less hampered in the use of certain arguments and in the flood of personal abuse which they directed against,the landowners. Practically every argument against protection to agriculture and nearly every epithet hurled against the landed interest by
Cobden and the Anti-Corn Law League from 1839 to 1846 was anticipated at this time The League and its henchmen increased the output'rather than the number of arguments, and the volume rather than the intensity of the vituperation. (7)
So, before Elliott began his major controversial (7). Barnes, D.G. - History of the Corn Laws 1660-1846 (1930), Ch. 9 pJ.85.This and McCord, N. The Anti-Corn Law League (1958), deal extensively with the points raised here and were my major sources of reference.
writings, the principles of the attack on the Corn-laws had already been established. The Corn Law Rhvmes. then, were used as a medium for the expression of
economic, social and political opinions. The mode chosen for the Corn Law Rhvmes and the sentiments expressed
within them led to the supposition that they had been written by one of the mechanics, although Elliott was quick to refute this. Indeed Elliott, far from being the
quite unmoneyed, russet coated speaker, nothing (8) or little other than a Sheffield worker in brass and iron... doing personal battle with Necessity, was an employer and reasonably successful business man, essentially a member of the commercial class anxious
about his own interests. He therefore addressed himself to both middle and working classes, in the hope that
the workers could be raised from their miserable position and profit from a cheaper loaf of bread and improved trade, and that the middle classes would use their new electoral and social powers to bring about
necessary reform. Elliott himself seems to have wondered at the sudden popularity which attended the publication of the Corn Law Rhvmes. However, he found that he
was writing on a subject which concerned the whole of England. His first readers were invited to respond more to their topicality than to their poetic merit.
Elliott's main political objectives were presented in the Corn Law Rhvmes as an attack on all those who exploit the workers, whom he saw as parasites of the
(8). Carlyle - 'Corn Law Rhymes' in Edinburqh R e v i e w , No. 110
p. 339/40 (1832)
state, the 'Palaced Paupers' as he calls them and it is this exploitation, allied to a pathetic portrayal of the distressed poor which forms the essential message of his verse. This passionate, un-yielding opposition to the Corn Laws is what makes a man who prided himself on his lack of literary finesse so interesting a poet. Contemporary reaction was quick to realise this,
their professed object is to descant upon the evils arising from the Corn-laws; and they effect this, with a poetical power and grandeur of which, we own, we should not have thought so hungry a subject capable:- strength and manly eloquence is their leading characteristic - sweetness they seldom aim at - pathos they frequently court, and to a great extent... (9) .
For Elliott, involvement with contemporary
politics was inescapable and his particular abhorrence of the Corn Laws had its origin in personal experience of poverty and unemployment. He had seen throughout his life the effect of the vagaries of the trade cycle upon industry in Sheffield, where as an employer of labour he had a clear view of the suffering they caused to masters and men.
Sheffield itself was a town based on small workshops, where mechanics and their employers were habitually in close contact with one another. Elliott was extremely well placed to speak with authority about the effect
of the Corn Laws on the artisan. To this piece of legislation, however, Elliott tended to attribute all _ _
The Literary Beacon; a guide to Books, the Drama and the Fine Arts:- No. 3 - Saturday July 2nd 1831 -
1 Review of Corn Law Rhymes1 - 112 -
the miseries of the labouring poor and his own
perplexities in business. There were other economic reasons which Elliott did not seem to account for;
a general fall in demand at home and abroad (10) following the war effort; the restoration of a large labour force and the resulting unemployment and low wage problem, allied to the continual undulating vagaries of the trade cycle.
The subjective stance of the poet and the necessity for a poetic technique which related to a prescribed audience was formed from his response to this experience. Agitation against the Corn Laws in Sheffield went back to 1814 when a petition was signed against them by over fifteen thousand people. The Corn Law Question became a regular part of the local radical platform, to which Elliott became a regular and active contributer. He remained an ardent reformer and his involvement in radical politics culminated when around 1830 he formed the 'Sheffield Mechanics Anti Bread Tax Society', which was aimed at linking together the oppressed in all parts of the country to attack the common 'landed' enemy. This society was responsible for the publication of the
first and second editions of the Corn Law Rhymes in 1831 which was to ensure Elliott's reputation. The thought that the Reform Bill of 1832 would inevitably bring about the repeal of the Corn Laws meant that the
operations of the Society were suspended to assist with the recently formed Sheffield Political Union. It was
(10). Brown, Simon, M.A. dissertation - University of Leicester, 19 71.
Elliott's own fiery personality which kept Anti-Corn Law agitation a distinct movement after the first
reform bill. This personality was described in Spencer T. Hall's numerous recollections in Biographical Sketches of Remarkable People,
(Elliott) speaking of the final result of all restrictions of food, he lifted up his clenched hands and his eyes toward heaven, and cried aloud in a terrific alto-tenor voice, 'God would they handcuff Thee'. (11).
January Searle too, in his 'Memoirs' recalls being taken aside by Elliott's wife when visiting the house to which he had retired at Hargate Hill and being asked to avoid the subject of the Corn Laws in order to prevent an explosion of anger. In the 1830's, Elliott was always in the public eye with a constant flow of verse,
either for national publications or to be sung or chanted at some local function, a mass meeting in Paradise Square, for example.
This trenchant tone of rhetoric in public speaking is to be found in the Corn Law Rhymes themselves and
notably in their frontispiece which comprises a declaration, ardently and honestly expressed in the following way,
Our oppressors.... say they cannot live without (12) alms. If the assertion be true, why do they not go to the workhouse for their pay as other paupers do? If it be not true, why are they not sent to the tread-mill for obtaining money under false pretences?
In dealing with the Corn Law Rhymes, it is often
(11). Hall, Spencer, T. - Biographical Sketches of Remarkable People. 1873. Chapter 4.
Jl2). Declaration of the Sheffield Anti-Bread Tax Society - printed as a frontispiece for 3rd edition - Corn Law Rhymes.
more appropriate to speak of an audience rather than a readership. The socio-political milieu in which he worked required of the poet a language adapted to the understanding of the artisan.
If working class poetry, the exponents of which according to Shelley,
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