Obediently, I read up on the Factory Acts and the Corn Laws and studied the newspaper.

NEWYORKER: Hand on the Shoulder

The immediate purpose of the repeal of the Corn Laws was to help the Irish peasantry caught in the grip of the potato famine.

ECONOMIST: Ireland and Gladstone and all that

It is the hall which saw the earliest campaigns against the protectionist Corn Laws (hence the name Free Trade Hall) as well as for women's suffrage.

BBC: Ed Miliband - An historic speech?

Protectionist tariffs were dismantled, forcing companies to become more competitive through innovation, embracing new technologies and finding new markets a process that culminated in the abolition of the hated system of agricultural subsidies known as the Corn Laws which had inflated the price of bread.

WSJ: In Place of Austerity: What Comes Next?