Though opposed in both Houses with unusual bitterness, the ministry
carried their measure, which, indeed, in all probability, even if the
destruction of the potato crop had not come to accelerate the movement,
could not have been long delayed, the continual and rapid increase of
the population adding yearly strength to the arguments of those who
denounced the imposition of any tax which had the effect of increasing
the price of the people's food. But, however inevitable it may have
been, we are not the less compelled to regard it as indirectly bringing
about a great constitutional change, or rather as consummating that
which had been commenced by the Reform Bill. Till the year 1832 the
territorial aristocracy had exerted a predominating influence in the
government of the state. The Reform Bill, which deprived the wealthier
land-owners of the greater part of their power at elections, struck the
first blow at that influence. The abolition of the Corn-laws inflicted
on it a still more decisive wound, by its extinction of the doctrine
that there was any such peculiar sacredness about the land and its
produce as entitled them to protection beyond that enjoyed by other
kinds of property. Placing in that respect the commercial and
manufacturing interest on a level with the landed interest, it made us,
in a farther and a somewhat different sense from that in which Napoleon
had used the phrase, a nation of shopkeepers.
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