panded upon by David Ricardo who postulated the concepts of absolute and comparative advantage, and who showed that every nation involved in trade benefited. The first group of influential people to accept and use these arguments thus arose in Britain in the form of the international merchants and industrialists. Britain in 1832 expanded the franchise to the urban upper middle class, of whose numbers merchants and industrialists constituted a significant amount. Thus at the same time the merchants were beginning to advocate a liberalization of Britain's trade policy, they were also becoming empowered to influence the parliamentary rules. Younger politicians intent on simplifying the government architecture gained power as a result, including Robert Peel and William Huskisson. The greatest barrier to free trade in Great Britain in the 1840s were the Corn Laws. The Corn Laws principally benefited the landed aristocracy, the strongest group traditionally represented in Parliament. Thus the landed aristocracy can and should be viewed as an institution as well as a separate interest group, given their hegemony over policy within the nation for several centuries. The rise of the merchant classes and the enfranchisement thereof provided the catalyst necessary to promote a sweeping change of the traditional policies. In Britain this political turmoil led to a trend towards free trade and a demand for the repeal of the Corn Laws by the industrialists and merchants. Richard Cobden, an industrialist, formed the Anti-Corn Law League2 in 1839 which created one of the first large scale campaigns to influence public opinion. The Whig party saw the merchants as a way to gain more control in Parliament, but failed to win the election in 1841. Tory Sir Robert Peel was elected prime minister, already intent on making extensive changes in the fiscal system. The Anti-Corn Law League achieved triumph in 1846, not due to their extensive propaganda, but thanks...
