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Property Rights in Pheasants: Landlords, Farmers and the Game Laws, 1860–80

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  31 October 2008

John Fisher
John Fisher
Affiliation:
Department of Economics, University of Newcastle, New South Wales, Australia
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Extract

The deference shown by English tenant farmers to their landlords was the despair of English radicals in the nineteenth century. This was especially the case for Cobden and Bright, the leaders of the Anti-Corn Law League. As firm believers in Ricardo's theory of rent, according to which only landowners gained from the Corn Laws, they felt that tenant-farmers should have been the natural allies of the League. Unfortunately, they proved unable to convince farmers of this logic. Their attempts to drive a wedge between landlord and tenant remained unavailing – until 1845, when John Bright raised the question of the game laws in the Commons. The select committee that followed tapped a rich vein of farmer resentment and hostility, one that led nowhere at the time but remained to be exploited for the next forty years.

Type
Research Article
Information
Rural History , Volume 11 , Issue 2 , October 2000 , pp. 165 - 180
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2000

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References

Notes

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