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11 - A Prime Minister Resigns
from Part IV - Irish Questions
Michael Wheeler, University of Southampton
Book:

The Year That Shaped the Victorian Age

Published online:

08 December 2022

Print publication:

22 December 2022, pp 347-373
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Summary

In the autumn of 1845, as news of a potato blight came in from various parts of Great Britain and Ireland, the prospect of famine in the ‘second island’ began to loom. By December, Sir Robert Peel was convinced that his government would have to save Ireland by abolishing the Corn Laws, that shibboleth of the Tory landed class. Having failed to take his cabinet with him, he stepped aside, only to be reinstated by the queen when Lord John Russell failed to form a Whig ministry. Six months later the Corn Laws were abolished and the Tories were out of office. This chapter examines the private political letters exchanged between Peel and Sir James Graham, Richard Cobden and John Bright of the Anti–Corn Law League, and other leading players, on the brink of the ‘great hunger’ in Ireland and the eventual resignation of a prime minister.