Manchester School

The Manchester School was a nineteenth-century British movement, centered on the textile manufacturers of Manchester, that applied the free trade doctrines of classical economists directly to government policy. Its leading figures, Richard Cobden and John Bright, built the Anti-Corn Law League from 1839 to campaign against Britain's protective grain tariffs, arguing that free trade between nations would lower prices and raise living standards. The League's campaign succeeded when Parliament repealed the Corn Laws in 1846, and the school's laissez-faire program went on to shape mid-Victorian British trade policy for decades. Beyond tariffs, Manchester School liberals also championed pacifism, opposition to slavery and a free press as extensions of the same principle of individual freedom from state interference. The school's political dominance waned later in the century as protectionist sentiment revived elsewhere in Europe, but its identification of free trade with economic progress remained a reference point for later liberal economics. This description is adapted from Wikipedia contributors under CC BY-SA 4.0; changes were made. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0/