Described by the Whig Edward John Littleton, Lord Hatherton as ‘a cunning, clever, active, managing man’, Forster, a country banker, was an influential figure in Walsall, even after he ceased to represent it.1Hatherton Journal, 29 June 1841, Staffordshire Record Office, D260/M/F/7/5/26/22. Although regarded as a Whig by some in the early 1830s, Forster, whom Lord Stanley classified as one of the ‘Derby dilly’, 23 Feb. 1835, is better understood as a Conservative.2Dod’s parliamentary companion (1833), 114; R. Stewart, The foundation of the Conservative party 1830-1867 (1978), 376. In 1837 it was fairly said that he ‘usually votes with the Tories’.3The assembled Commons (1837), 75. Forster was a ‘high authority’ on financial, commercial and monetary policy, and Josiah Clement Wedgwood MP, founder of the History of Parliament, commented that ‘all his interventions in debate were marked by great common sense’.4Gent. Mag. (1851), i. 98; J.C. Wedgwood, Staffordshire parliamentary history (1934), iii. 83
The family bank, C. Forster’s & Sons, also known as the Walsall Old Bank, had been established in the eighteenth century.5A list of the country banks of England and Wales, private and proprietary (1838), 63. Forster was mayor of Walsall in 1818 and 1828, and in 1830-2 led the local campaign for its enfranchisement as a parliamentary borough.6F. Willmore, A history of Walsall and its neighbourhood (1887), 208, 406-7. After the passing of the Reform Act in May 1832, Forster outlined his views to the secret committee on the Bank of England charter. In the interests of stability, Forster supported the gold standard and was opposed to small denomination Bank notes.7PP 1831-32 (72), vi. 104-111. However, he believed that country bankers should continue to be permitted to issue their own notes otherwise they would become merely ‘bill brokers to the Bank of England’.8Ibid., 110. Standing as a Conservative against ‘rash, wanton reckless change’, Forster was elected as the first MP for Walsall in December 1832 after defeating a Radical.9Morning Post, 29 Nov. 1832.
Forster opposed the Attwood brothers’ motions for altering the monetary system, 21 Mar. 1833, 24 Apr. 1833. During the latter debate he denied that the circulation was inadequate to the country’s needs and rejected calls for a paper currency not convertible into gold.10Hansard, 22 Apr. 1833, vol. 17, cc. 441-4. He later criticised the creeping monopolisation of note issues by the Bank of England and called for £1 notes to be ‘kept out of circulation’.11Hansard, 31 May 1833, 1 Aug. 1833, vol. 18, cc. 203-4, 1396. Forster defended the intervention of the military in the Walsall election, but condemned the use of physical force by political unions.12Hansard, 26 Feb. 1833, vol. 15, cc. 1168-9; 27 June 1833, vol. 18, c. 1279. He opposed the ballot and resisted attempts to disenfranchise the venal borough of Stafford.13Hansard, 20 Mar. 1834, vol. 16, c. 896; 5 Mar. 1834, vol. 21, c. 1177. Forster backed Fryer’s motion to modify the corn laws, 18 June 1833, but opposed concessions to Dissenters and Jews, 24 Apr. 1834, 9, 21 May 1834.14Hansard, 9 May 1834, vol. 23, c. 782.
Returned unopposed at the 1835 general election after promising to not be ‘the tool of government’, Forster voted with the Conservatives for Manners Sutton as speaker and for the address, 19, 26 Feb. 1835, and against Russell’s Irish church resolution, 2 Apr. 1835.15Staffordshire Advertiser, 10 Jan. 1835. He did, however, support the total abolition of the freeman franchise at parliamentary elections, 23 June 1835. Welcoming the establishment of an inquiry into joint-stock banks in 1836, Forster maintained that ‘the best corrective of the evils … was a strict adherence to the laws now regulating our currency’, before praising his leader Sir Robert Peel’s 1819 Bank Act.16Hansard, 12 May 1836, vol. 33, c. 875. He rejected Jewish emancipation as incompatible with a ‘Christian nation’, 3 Aug. 1836, but was more amenable to attempts to replace church rates with an alternative source of revenue.17Hansard, 3 Aug. 1836, vol. 35, c. 871; 3 Mar. 1837, vol. 36, c. 1269.
Unexpectedly defeated at the 1837 election by a Radical, which Hatherton thought just desserts for ‘his very shuffling political conduct both in & out of Parl[iamen]t’, Forster continued to play a major role in Walsall politics.18Hatherton Journal, 25 July 1837, Staffs. RO, D1178/1. His influence and electioneering talents helped a Conservative to win a by-election in February 1841, although this was reversed at the general election that June.19Hatherton Journal, 29 June 1841, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/7/5/26/22; Staffordshire Advertiser, 2, 23 Jan. 1841, 6 Feb. 1841. Privately consulted by Peel over the 1844 bank charter bill, Forster reassured the prime minister that the majority of country bankers would ‘cordially acquiesce in a measure which in some degree should require security for their issues’.20Charles Smith Forster to Sir Robert Peel, 27 Apr. 1844, Add. 40543, f. 244. His own preference was for a permissive scheme of ‘secured bankers notes’: country banks would pay cash deposits to a public board, which would invest the sums in government securities, thus securing their notes. Unsecured notes would drop out of circulation as the public realised their inferiority.21Forster to Peel, 30 Apr. 1844, Add. 40543, ff. 247-8.
At the 1847 general election at Walsall Forster supported a Whig against his own son, who, he told Hatherton, ‘greatly to my annoyance and regret, had been put forward as a candidate by that party of low Radicals which had on former occasions caused so much mischief and tumult in the borough’.22Charles Smith Forster to Lord Hatherton, 29 Mar. 1847, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/7/5/27/17. Some detected a shift in Forster’s political allegiance, so that when a vacancy for South Staffordshire was considered imminent in late 1848, he was mooted as a possible Whig candidate. The election agent Joseph Parkes thought Forster the ‘best man for all interests’, although he admitted that many local Liberals hated him.23Joseph Parkes to Lord Hatherton, 7 Dec. 1848, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/7/5/27/18. Furthermore, Parkes opined that ‘Forster is not a Tory. He is a timid Liberalish man between both parties & at this juncture better for the Ministry than an Ultra-Liberal’.24Parkes to Hatherton, 9 Dec. 1848, Staffs. RO, D260/M/F/7/5/27/18. However, Forster ultimately disappointed such expectations by nominating a protectionist at the February 1849 by-election.25The Times, 22 Jan. 1849, 20 Feb. 1849.
On his death the following year, Forster was succeeded by his only son Charles Forster (1815-91), Liberal MP for Walsall, 1852-91, who was granted a baronetcy in 1874. Forster’s only daughter, Ellen, was married to Richard Dyott, Conservative MP for Lichfield 1865-80.