[368] ... It is clear that the Corn Laws and free trade represented different perceptions of the appropriate structural balance of the economy, between manufacturing and agriculture. As the boom of the mid-1830s gave way to economic downturn from 1837, so the opposition against agricultural protection gained momentum, and the Corn Laws became a higly visible issue of British political economy. If we return to Tylecote's notion of mixed crisis, this may allow us to unfold the story. In a mixed crisis the existing mode of development partly blocks the new technological style. The pace of diffusion is such as to 'cause a build up of socio-poltical tensions', but is not enough to avoid the consequential economic difficulties. The crisis that finally errupts is then of a mixed socio-political and economic origin. We contend that Britain experienced such a mixed structural crisis between 1837 and 1842. The severe economic downturn in this period coincided with socio-political protest in the form of the Chartist movement and the Anti Corn Law League. The Liberal Tory consensus was shattered when a Tory government, the guardians of the landed interest and the defenders of agricultural protection, abandoned the Corn Laws in 1846 and ushered in a policy of unilateral free trade.