The Counties
Twenty-seven Scottish counties each returned one Member. The other six (Buteshire and Caithness; Clackmannanshire and Kinross-shire; Cromartyshire and Nairnshire) were paired and sent a Member in rotation to alternate Parliaments. The franchise was in freeholders who held crown land valued at 40s. ‘of old extent’ or £400 Scots (about £35 sterling). After the enactment of the measure of 1743 (16 Geo. II, c. 11), which required ‘old extent’ claimants to provide a retour dated before the enfranchising Act of 1681, most electors qualified on the £400 valuation. In Sutherland, where the earls (later dukes) of Sutherland held almost the whole county from the crown, the vote was conceded to their vassals who held land rated at £200 Scots. No man could be enrolled and so become eligible to vote until he had been in possession of his qualification for a year and a day. The roll of qualified freeholders was revised by the enrolled freeholders at their annual Michaelmas head court and immediately before every election. Where two or more interests were in contention for a county seat, these meetings were often trials of strength. The chair was first taken by the man who had last represented the county in Parliament. After the election of a chairman (praeses) and clerk, the meeting proceeded to strike off dead or disqualified freeholders and to consider the claims of newly qualified electors. The praeses had a crucial casting vote, to be exercised when necessary.
Electorates were small and composed mainly of a few substantial landowners. The lesser gentry and small farmers were excluded. According to a certified copy of the rolls laid before the Commons in July 1820, the total nominal electorate of the counties at the preceding general election was 2,889.
A key feature of the Scottish county representative system was the creation and multiplication of fictitious or ‘parchment’ votes, whose owners had no genuine stake in the county. This was facilitated by the survival of the feudal notion that the right to vote derived not from the mere possession of property, but from the fact that it was held in a state of direct vassalage to the crown, that is, in ‘superiority’. Legislation in 1743 had ended some of the original methods of creating nominal votes, but the practice had continued in more subtle ways, until by the 1780s the system was shamelessly corrupt. A ruling in the Lords by lord chancellor Thurlow, 19 Apr. 1790, on a test case brought by some aggrieved resident proprietors of Aberdeenshire, had pronounced against the validity of nominal and fictitious votes and authorized the use of special interrogatories, which could be put to suspect claimants either at freeholders’ meetings or, within a limited time, before the court of session. An Act of 1797 outlawed some other types of malpractice and extended the provisions of an Act of 1782 disqualifying most revenue officials from voting in parliamentary elections to ban them also from voting for the praeses and clerk of Michaelmas head courts or election meetings. This legislation seems to have had some initial effect in curbing the manufacture of parchment superiorities, but ingenious Scottish lawyers devised means of evading the sanction of interrogatories, which were in any case open to abuse and difficult to implement, chiefly by ensuring that claimants appeared to derive genuine revenue from their interests.
There were contests at 30 (21 per cent) of the 146 Scottish county elections that occurred in this period. Of the 120 general elections, 25 (21 per cent) were contested; and of the 26 by-elections, five (15 per cent) were. Thirteen counties were uncontested: Buteshire, Berwickshire, Clackmannanshire, Dumfriesshire, Edinburghshire, Elginshire, Kinross-shire, Linlithgowshire, Nairnshire, Peeblesshire, Perthshire, Selkirkshire and Sutherland. Thirteen had one contest. Banffshire, Fifeshire, Stirlingshire and Wigtownshire were contested twice; and Dunbartonshire, Haddingtonshire and Lanarkshire had three contests. There were five contests in 1820, five in 1826, three in 1830 and 12 in 1831.
Scottish county elections, whether contested or not, bore little resemblance to those in England, Wales and Ireland. There was a role for influence derived from property, tradition or family connection, but manipulation, negotiation and chicanery were often the keys to success. Public opinion beyond the ruling elite had virtually no impact. In a few counties, notably Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Dunbartonshire, Fifeshire, Lanarkshire, Renfrewshire and Stirlingshire, industrialization and urbanization were well advanced; but these developments were electorally insignificant. The ‘radical war’ of April 1820, when a few men in Glasgow and the surrounding area rose in arms, supposedly as part of an uprising to establish a ‘Provisional Government’, was a pathetic storm in a teacup.
This has been the most anxious and interesting election I ever attended. Since we came here [Tain] last night, every hour has produced some change in our prospects … All parties acting like cautious chess players, in the various conferences … I don’t wish to make you too sanguine, as nothing is given us but what is wrung out, at the last hour, and with a great grudge.
 NAS GD46/4/133/4.
(As it happened, Stewart Mackenzie had a relatively easy success, by 28-21, when one of his two competitors pulled out at the last minute.) While Scottish county elections had more of the atmosphere of the courtroom than of the hustings, outbreaks of violence were not unknown, particularly when inhabitants of the burgh where the proceedings took place assembled in large numbers. Serious disturbances occurred in Aberdeenshire in 1831, when a mob caused chaos in Aberdeen; Ayrshire, where the anti-reformer returned in 1831 was besieged in the court house by a baying mob for three hours and stoned when troops escorted him to a steamer; Caithness in 1826, when the defeated George Sinclair of Ulbster surrounded himself with ruffians from Wick and Thurso, who obstructed his rival’s supporters and later ran riot; Dunbartonshire in 1831, when supporters of the successful Tory were stoned as they left the hall and the Member and his friends were besieged and attacked when they were freed; Lanarkshire, where the 1831 election riot by a pro-reform mob required the Riot Act to be read and cavalry to be deployed and was noticed in the Commons; Renfrewshire in 1820, when the lower orders of Paisley went on the rampage, and Roxburghshire in 1831, when the anti-reformer Henry Hepburne Scott was almost lynched during his canvass. There were only five petitions against Scottish county returns in this period: Banffshire (1826); Dunbartonshire (1830); Forfarshire (after the 1831 by-election); Haddingtonshire (1820), and Roxburghshire (1831). Those concerning Banffshire and Forfarshire, which alleged ‘gross partiality’ in the review and adjustment of the rolls, were successful and resulted in the seating of the plaintiffs.
Of the 13 uncontested counties, eight were virtual pocket constituencies, controlled by one interest: Buteshire (2nd marquess of Bute); Clackmannanshire (the Abercrombys of Tullibody); Elginshire (Colonel Francis Grant of Castle Grant); Linlithgowshire (4th earl of Hopetoun); Nairnshire (1st and 2nd Barons Cawdor); Pebblesshire (Sir James and Sir George Montgomery of Stobbo); Selkirkshire (5th duke of Buccleuch and his uncle Lord Montagu), and Sutherland (the countess of Sutherland and her husband the 2nd marquess of Stafford). In Berwickshire the Liverpool ministry propped up Sir John Marjoribanks from 1818 until 1826, when the former Foxite Whig but now Tory 8th earl of Lauderdale secured the support of all the leading interests for his son Sir Anthony Maitland, who sat unopposed thereafter. In Dumfriesshire, a combination of the interests of the Tory Member Sir William Johnstone Hope, Montagu and Buccleuch and the 6th marquess of Queensberry kept things quiet. In Edinburghshire Melville and his kinsmen the Dundases of Arniston, together with Buccleuch, sustained the Member Clerk, if only faute de mieux and despite increasingly strained relations. Kinross-shire was shared (not formally) in this period by the two leading interests: the Tory George Graham of Kinross House sat in the 1826 Parliament and the Whig Charles Adam, son of William Adam of Blair Adam, came in in 1831. The Tory 4th duke of Atholl had the commanding interest in Perthshire and was able to return his son-in-law James Drummond in 1820 and have him replaced in 1824 by the minister Sir George Murray, whose liberal inclinations made him acceptable to the potentially troublesome Whig and independent interests, led by the 4th earl of Breadalbane, the 8th Baron Kinnaird, the 10th earl of Kinnoull and the 2nd Baron Gwydir. Although Atholl died in September 1830, leaving an imbecile son as his successor, the Whigs and the Grey ministry were unable to mount a challenge to Murray in 1831.
The Argyllshire contest of 1826 was not the result of a serious challenge to the hegemony of the Whig 6th duke of Argyll, but arose out of a family squabble. In Renfrewshire in 1820, the ministerialist Boyd Alexander ran the sitting Member John Maxwell, the candidate of the ruling Whig triumvirate, close, but the county was secure for the Whigs thereafter. Aberdeenshire was contested in 1831, when William Gordon, the Tory Member since October 1820 on the dominant interests of his brother the 4th earl of Aberdeen and the 5th duke of Gordon, comfortably defeated the reformer Sir Michael Bruce. There was an almost identical outcome in Ayrshire in 1831, when the sitting Tory William Blair, backed by the Eglinton interest, which, with government support, had generally had its own way in the county (even though the 13th earl was a minor), beat by two-to-one the reformer Richard Oswald. The 1826 contest in Caithness arose partly from George Sinclair’s provocative espousal of parliamentary reform in 1823, which prompted Melville to intervene and endorse the candidature of James Sinclair, the brother of the 13th earl of Caithness. Neglect of his interest by George Sinclair’s father Sir John and some important defections helped James Sinclair to win by five votes. At the next return, in 1831, George Sinclair secured the seat as a reformer without opposition, after the failure of a bid to start another reformer. The narrow win by the Tory Davidson in Cromartyshire in 1831 has already been noticed. The degenerate Whig William Maule sat securely for Forfarshire from 1805. When he was created a peer in the autumn of 1831, his sponsored candidate Douglas Hallyburton was defeated by two votes by the Tory Donald Ogilvy, but, as previously noted, the result was reversed on petition. The liberal Tory government minister Charles Grant had replaced his father as Member for Inverness-shire, sitting on an interest based initially on East India Company and government patronage, but subsequently bolstered by property purchases and the support of local clan chiefs, in 1818. In 1826 he faced three rivals, but only Lord Macdonald persevered, and Grant easily beat him. He defied a token Tory challenge in 1831, when he was a member of Lord Grey’s cabinet. The Kincardineshire contest of 1820 ended in the return of the moderate Whig Sir Alexander Ramsay as a result of the initial refusal of the Tory Lord Arbuthnott to withdraw his brother Hugh in favour of the government’s preferred candidate, James Farquhar, some indecision on the part of Melville and his lieutenants and Arbuthnott’s spiteful decision to back Ramsay when he did pull his brother out. He was denied continued support as a representative peer, but was forgiven and reinstated in 1821. Hugh Arbuthnott was untroubled in the seat from 1826. In the Stewartry, Melville persuaded the powerful 8th earl of Galloway to back the sitting Member Dunlop against a Whig challenge, which ended in smoke, in 1820. As noticed above, in 1826 Dunlop, whose canvass was impeded by a fall which dislocated his shoulder, was narrowly defeated by the liberal but protectionist nabob Fergusson, despite retaining the support of Galloway and the dowager Lady Selkirk. Fergusson was unopposed in 1830 and 1831. Stewart Mackenzie’s success as a reformer in Ross-shire in 1831 has already been mentioned. The dominant Buccleuch interest in Roxburghshire was managed by Montagu and Charles Douglas, son of the 1st Baron Douglas, and the 6th marquess of Lothian joined them in endorsing the sitting Tory Member Sir Alexander Don in 1820. On his death in April 1826 the 1st earl of Minto, Montagu and Lothian co-operated to secure the return of Hepburne Scott, Melville’s preferred candidate of four aspirants. The alliance endured for the 1826 and 1830 general elections, and in 1831 Hepburne Scott, a prominent opponent of the Scottish reform bill, was challenged by Sir William Eliott, but won with ease. In Orkney in 1818 the leading independents William Balfour, James Traill and James Baikie had concluded with the Whig 1st Baron Dundas a pact, which was endorsed by the Foxite Laings, to thwart Sir William Honyman (Lord Armadale, SCJ) by alternating the nomination with mutual support. The coalition was again successful in 1820, when John Balfour, William’s aged uncle, backed by government, defeated Richard Honyman. The agreement was renewed for the next two elections and there were no more contests in this period; but this apparent tranquillity belied the intensity of manoeuvre and recrimination as the independents’ alliance was broken by disagreements over the vexed question of the right of Shetland proprietors to vote. George Traill had the backing of the Balfours and Baikies and the 2nd Baron Dundas in 1830 and retained the seat as a reformer the following year, when the Dundas nominee stood aside and a threatened opposition came to nothing.
The dominant interest in Banffshire was that of the Member, the quixotic Irish peer, the 4th Earl Fife. He defeated John Morison by five votes in 1826, but complained of a ‘clannish’ plot to oust him. Morison’s petition against the return was successful and he was unopposed in 1830. The following year, when he abstained on the reform bill, the Tory duke of Gordon and the Elginshire Grants put up George Ferguson. Morison eventually declared himself to be a reformer and defeated Ferguson. In Fifeshire, a county of many small estates, there were plenty of contenders. In 1820, the sitting Tory William Wemyss retired and started his son James, who was backed by the 9th earl of Kellie and Lord Hopetoun. Sir John Oswald persisted, despite being warned off by Melville, but he finished a distant third. Wemyss eventually secured control of county patronage and was unopposed in 1826 and 1830, but in 1831, when he voted for the reform bill and received Whig support, he was defeated by the Tory James Lindsay, cousin of the 7th earl of Balcarres. The Tory 3rd duke of Montrose sought to control Stirlingshire, but he needed support from others. The Tory sitting Member Sir Charles Edmonstone was unopposed in 1820, but he was ailing, and a canvass ensued between his son Archibald, backed by Montrose, and the Tory Henry Home Drummond, whom the county Whigs were willing to support in order to frustrate the duke. Melville’s acolytes encouraged him to endorse Home Drummond, but he was reluctant to oppose Montrose. At the by-election caused by Edmonstone’s death in 1821 Drummond narrowly beat his son. He was unopposed in 1826 and 1830, but in 1831 stood aside for the Whig reformer Charles Elphinstone Fleeming, who was, however, defeated by William Ramsay, the candidate of Montrose and the Tories. In Wigtownshire in 1820, Galloway endorsed the sitting Member James Hunter Blair, at Melville’s request. On his death in 1822, James McDouall got a favourable response from the minister, but the former Member Sir William Maxwell, the self-proclaimed founder of the county’s independence movement, also stood, alleging that a few lairds were plotting to form a ruling oligarchy. He easily won, was unopposed in 1826 and retired in 1830, when Agnew obtained the support of both Galloway and Stewart Mackenzie and so forced McDouall to give up. In 1831, Agnew voted both for and against the reform bill and gave notice of an amendment to save the English schedule A boroughs by grouping them on the Scottish model. Hathorn started as an unequivocal opponent of reform, but the Grey ministry eventually came down on Agnew’s side and Stewart Mackenzie made his dramatic dash across country to secure his return.
Dunbartonshire was disputed between Montrose and the duke of Argyll, but the former’s Tory candidates were victorious in the contests of 1821, 1830 and 1831. In Haddingtonshire, the Tory 8th earl of Haddington and his brother-in-law Hopetoun had returned Sir James Grant Suttie in 1816. Their rivals were the Tory 8th marquess of Tweeddale and his uncle Lauderdale, who in 1820 ran Tweeddale’s brother Lord John Hay against Grant Suttie. As mentioned above, Melville’s backing saw the latter home by one vote. In 1826 Grant Suttie abandoned the seat to Hay, who in 1830 defeated Grant Suttie’s son. In 1831 Hay, who took fright at the reform bills, persuaded his father and Lauderdale to allow him to stand down on a pretext and support James Balfour as a professed moderate reformer. The county’s reformers rallied behind Sir David Baird, but he was beaten out of sight. Lanarkshire was peaceful until the death in 1827 of Lord Archibald Hamilton, who had sat on the interest of his father and brother, the 9th and 10th dukes of Hamilton. Shaw Stewart, one of the Whig patrons of Renfrewshire, offered in his room. The new Goderich ministry initially backed him, but when Charles Douglas privately assured the lord advocate that he would support the government, ministers declared neutrality, to the dismay of some metropolitan Whigs. However, Shaw Stewart won. In December 1828, a conclave of leading local Whigs drew up plans for future elections in the region: if a dissolution occurred before the next year was out, Shaw Stewart was to stand again for Lanarkshire; if it came later, he was to take Renfrewshire and Sir John Maxwell Lanarkshire; but if Elphinstone Fleeming or any other independent candidate with a good chance of success offered for the latter county, he would be supported in preference to Shaw Stewart and Maxwell. By the time of the 1830 election it was reported that Hamilton had lost his hold on the county, and so it proved, as Maxwell was soundly beaten by Douglas in a contest which attracted some national attention. In 1831 Douglas defeated Maxwell’s son.
National political issues were increasingly aired in the Scottish counties in this period, both at elections and at meetings. At the 1820 election the threat of sedition was raised in Renfrewshire, and in 1826 the Liverpool ministry’s liberalization of commerce and relaxation of the corn laws were debated in Fifeshire, Lanarkshire, Perthshire, Renfrewshire and Stirlingshire, where the Catholic question was also touched on. In 1830, parliamentary reform was advocated in Fifeshire and Stirlingshire, the barilla and wool duties and the corn laws were subjects of discussion in Invernesshire, and in Lanarkshire there was an unsuccessful bid to quiz the Tory candidate on the East India Company’s trade monopoly. Doubtless the debate on these and other issues extended far more widely than indicated here, for surviving and accessible newspaper coverage of some areas of Scotland in this period is patchy. The 1831 election was of course dominated by the issue of reform, and proceedings were generally reported in considerable depth. Most Tory candidates paid lip service to the need for ‘moderate’ or ‘temperate’ reform, even though they were horrified by the scale and scope of the ministerial scheme. In Aberdeenshire, Kincardineshire, Lanarkshire, Ross-shire and Roxburghshire (and probably elsewhere) committees were set up to monitor the progress of the reform bills and the conduct of the Members. The cry of electoral independence continued to be raised in some counties, most overtly in the Stewartry in 1826 and Lanarkshire at the 1827 by-election. It was at least implicit in many contests when established interests were challenged, usually without success.
Political issues were sometimes discussed at the freeholders’ meetings which followed the Michaelmas head courts, although the staple diet was local matters. In Fifeshire in 1824, for example, the Member Wemyss was questioned about his opposition to the Scottish juries bill and urged to press for equalization of the distillery regulations. The meeting in Perthshire in 1821 instructed the Member to join in attempts to secure a general turnpike bill for Scotland and relief for the brewers. In 1824, resolutions condemning the bill to reform the Scottish courts was carried against an amendment for change. The Scottish poor laws and the gaols bill were discussed in 1829. In Renfrewshire in 1822 the corn laws were the subject of debate. Counties also held general meetings on 30 April each year. They tended to concentrate on local affairs, but there are plenty of instances of national issues and the conduct of Members being considered. The constituency articles on Aberdeenshire, Ayrshire, Banffshire, Dunbartonshire, Forfarshire, Inverness-shire, Kincardineshire, Perthshire, Ross-shire, Roxburghshire, Stirlingshire and Sutherland furnish examples. The proposed additional duty on corn spirits was a common topic at the meetings in 1830. County meetings called to consider specific issues proliferated. Most counties met on the Queen Caroline affair in late 1820, when, in marked contrast to England, the initiative came from Tories who wished to vote loyal addresses to the king. Whig amendments expressing support for the queen or hostility to ministers were defeated or suppressed in Aberdeenshire, Ayrshire, Dumfriesshire, Edinburghshire, Fifeshire, Invernesshire, Renfrewshire and Ross-shire. The oppositionists’ sole known success came in Whig-dominated Lanarkshire, where an amendment calling for economy, retrenchment and conciliation was carried by 94-90. There were numerous county meetings to petition against further relaxation or interference with the corn laws between 1825 and 1828, and almost all the counties met in 1826 to protest against the threatened ban on the circulation of Scottish bank notes of £5 and under. This campaign was successful, as the government gave way. In 1831 the reform issue produced meetings in most counties, either to call for reform of the Scottish representative system or to endorse the Grey ministry’s proposals for the United Kingdom when they were unveiled. At the same time, the opponents of reform were able to make their voices heard in a significant number of counties. Petitioning from formal county meetings or from places within counties other than the royal burghs multiplied. Issues which produced the widest response, apart from the threat to the currency, were repeal of the additional malt duty (1820-1); the free export of Scottish spirits to England (1822-4); relief from agricultural distress (1822-3) and the maintenance of protection (1825-8); repeal of the duty on notaries’ certificates (1824); the abolition of slavery (1826, 1830-1); protection against imports of foreign wool (1828); Catholic emancipation, which evoked mostly hostile petitioning (1829); the additional duty on corn spirits (1830); the use of molasses in distilling (1831), and of course reform (1830-2). While many favourable reform petitions were produced, there was much more hostile petitioning than in England. Aberdeenshire, Berwickshire, Dumfriesshire, Edinburghshire, Elginshire, Forfarshire, Kirkcudbright Stewartry (by a vote of 25-24), Perthshire, Ross-shire and Roxburghshire petitioned against the bills. There was petitioning on details of the Scottish reform bill: for example, from Argyllshire and Buteshire against the transfer of Cowal from the former to the latter (which was dropped by ministers); from Dunbartonshire against its proposed merger with Buteshire (which was also abandoned); from Elginshire against the junction with Nairnshire; from Orkney and from Shetland for separate representation; from Peeblesshire and Selkirkshire against their planned junction (which was set aside), and from Ross-shire against the union with Cromartyshire. In 1832 petitions for vassals of the crown and the holders of superiorities to be financially compensated for their loss of property were sent up from Aberdeenshire and Kincardineshire.
Almost all the Members and candidates for Scottish counties came from old landed families. Buchanan was a Glasgow merchant; James Drummond had served with the East India Company at Canton; Cutlar Fergusson had prospered in India as a barrister for the Company; Marjoribanks was an Edinburgh banker, and Morison was a former Baltic merchant); but all were eminently respectable, with deep roots in Scottish landed society. The eldest sons of Scottish peers were barred from sitting for Scottish seats, but one Irish peer (Fife) and 15 younger sons of peers sat for the counties in this period. The other Members included 15 baronets. Seven held government office during their tenure of county seats: Archibald Campbell Colquhoun, Clerk, Charles Grant, Sir William Johnstone Hope, Lord Francis Leveson Gower, Murray and Sir William Rae. The only man not of Scottish blood to sit for a county in this period was Lord Francis Leveson Gower, but his mother was a Scot.
The Burghs
The Scottish burghs returned 15 Members. Edinburgh sent one and the other 65 royal burghs were grouped into 14 electoral districts: nine (Aberdeen, Anstruther Easter, Ayr, Dumfries, Elgin, Haddington, Perth, Stirling and Tain) contained five burghs and five (Dysart, Glasgow, Inverness, Linlithgow and Wigtown) had four.
The councils were predominantly closed, self-electing oligarchies. The smallest was that of Inverurie (Elgin Burghs), where there were nine councillors; and the largest was that of Inverkeithing (Stirling Burghs), which had a council of 42. The councils of Edinburgh and Selkirk had 33 members, that of Glasgow 32. The average size was about 20. The number of men with a say in parliamentary elections in the burghs was 1,314, an average of 88 per group, or of 92 if Edinburgh is removed from the calculation. The largest electorate was in the Stirling district (125), while Perth Burghs had one of 122. Leaving aside Edinburgh, the smallest electorates were in Inverness (70) and Wigtown Burghs (72). The combined population of the burghs in 1831 was about 721,700. At one extreme were the insignificant villages of Kintore (Elgin Burghs), with 402 inhabitants; Anstruther West (430); Dornoch (Tain Burghs), with 504 inhabitants, and Queensferry (Stirling Burghs) with 684. The least populous district was Anstruther, a straggle of five fishing villages on the north shore of the Firth of Forth, with a combined population of 5,847. In contrast, the 33 men who elected the Member for Edinburgh administered the affairs of a city whose population rose from 112,235 in 1821 to 136,294 in 1831. Glasgow, where rapid industrialization and commercial expansion drove up the teeming population from 147,043 to 202,426 in ten years, had a council composed of a wealthy merchant oligarchy and was shackled to three burghs (Dumbarton, Renfrew and Rutherglen) with a total population of 11,197, which could in theory combine to outvote it. In the Perth district, Perth itself (20,016) and Dundee (45,355), the fastest growing town in Scotland, were joined to three burghs (Cupar, Forfar and St. Andrews) with a combined population of 20,057, although all three were thriving places. The expanding towns of Paisley (31,460) and Greenock (25,577) were not directly represented. Not all the councils were completely self-elected. There was a small element of popular election in a few, where some of the councillors were chosen by members of the incorporated trades. Edinburgh, as the municipal corporations commissioners noted, was ‘not altogether without an admixture of popular representation’, as the 14 deacon councillors were elected by the 700 or so members of the trades, though the council vetted the leets (lists) which were submitted to them.
There were contests at 19 of the 60 general elections (32 per cent), but only one of the six by-elections was contested (Perth Burghs in January 1831). There were five contests in 1820, three in 1826, six in 1830 and five in 1831. The Ayr, Dysart, Inverness, Tain and Wigtown districts were uncontested. There was one contest in the Dumfries and Elgin groups. Two occurred in the Aberdeen, Anstruther, Glasgow, Haddington, Perth and Stirling districts and in Edinburgh. Linlithgow Burghs were contested on all four occasions. Petitions against returns were lodged and unsuccessfully pursued from Aberdeen Burghs in 1820; Anstruther Burghs in 1826; Glasgow Burghs in 1830 and 1831; Linlithgow Burghs in 1830, and Stirling Burghs in 1826. Those sent up from Elgin Burghs in 1820 and Stirling Burghs in 1830 were not prosecuted. Petitioners were seated by decision of election committees for Haddington Burghs in 1831 and Perth Burghs in March 1831; the latter petition followed the January by-election necessitated by the voiding on petition of the general election of 1830 on account of the ineligibility of the vote of the delegate for disfranchised Dundee.
The burghs superficially resembled the English corporation boroughs, but the grouping system made management much more tricky. Councils and delegates were susceptible to the customary pressures of influence, seduction by patronage, bribery, treating and intimidation, but patrons, Members and candidates had to pay close and time-consuming attention to the interests, demands and requirements of the various councils, often to those of individual councillors. No group was directly under the control of government, but ministerial influence was sometimes decisive or useful, as in Anstruther, Linlithgow, Perth and Stirling in 1820. It became less obviously effective thereafter, although it may have contributed to the return of 11 Members committed to support the Grey ministry’s reform scheme in 1831.
I was permitted to take rather a lead, and I began with calling their attention to the strongest evidence of bribery … We read over all the evidence, and determined that though the presumption was strong, yet that it did not amount to proof. We divided 7-3. Next came a question whether tender, or offering, a bribe, the same not being accepted, constituted bribery and we determined not 6-4. Lastly we read the evidence of the treating at Cupar, and as champagne, turtle and claret appeared to have been given in profusion, we decided that it was treating. The effect of our decision was to nullify the whole election and send them down to try it all again.
 NLW, Ormathwaite mss FG1/5, pp. 143-4 (11 Dec. 1830).
Very little hard evidence has come to light on the cost of burgh elections, but some fragments have turned up. James Lindsay of Leuchars decided not to get involved in Anstruther in 1823 because the cost of an unopposed return was reckoned to be £1,000, plus annual expenses of about £800, while the cost of a contest was ‘infinite’.
In Edinburgh, the chief focus of opposition to the Tory politics of the council, which consisted mainly of tradesmen and a few merchants, was the côterie of Whig lawyers, led by Cockburn, Jeffrey, James Moncrieff and John Archibald Murray, who promoted, with increasing success, the cause of reform. The council remained under the control of Melville and his Dundas relatives of Arniston, who managed what was nominally the interest of the dukes of Buccleuch; but there was a knot of opposition within the council, where the trades deacons were a potential source of trouble, and it was not quite plain sailing for Melville and his associates. In 1820 three deacons voted for an opponent of the sitting sinecurist William Dundas, Melville’s cousin. An attempted rebellion in 1825 and 1826 required firm intervention by Melville and Robert Dundas of Arniston, who after the election begged the minister to purge the council of ‘a set of wild and vacillating idiots, alternately the tools and the laughing stock of the Whig fanatics of Edinburgh’.
Ayr, Tain and Wigtown Burghs were under stable electoral patronage throughout this period. In the Ayr district, the duke of Argyll combined with Bute to return the Whig reformer Thomas Kennedy, who was made impregnable by a purge of Tories from Ayr council in 1825. Tain Burghs were controlled by an alliance between the countess of Sutherland and her husband and Stewart Mackenzie. Their dominance was enhanced by Sinclair’s sale of the Wick interest. The Wigtown group was in the pocket of Galloway. The two other uncontested districts were under firm but not unchallenged control. The 2nd earl of Rosslyn and the Whig Robert Ferguson of Raith had returned the latter’s brother Sir Ronald Ferguson for Dysart Burghs since 1806 and did so again in 1820 and 1826, despite attempts by Sir John Oswald to persuade Melville to undermine them and the inclination of Rosslyn’s son Lord Loughborough to turn out Ferguson on the latter occasion. Rosslyn’s adhesion to the Wellington ministry in 1828 changed the picture, and Ferguson accepted the inevitable and made way for Loughborough in 1830. The following year the tables were turned, as all four burghs declared for reform and requisitioned Ferguson of Raith, who came in unopposed. In Inverness Burghs the alliance of Sir William Gordon Cumming and Colonel Francis Grant maintained control and returned an opponent of reform in 1831. William Douglas sat for Dumfries Burghs on the combined Buccleuch and Queensberry interests and was twice quietly re-elected on his appointment to office. In 1831, the 6th marquess of Queensberry came out for reform and backed Matthew Sharpe, but Douglas held on by the skin of his teeth.
The other eight districts were, to varying degrees, open, troublesome and venal. Lord Fife’s violent attempt in 1820 to wrest control of Elgin Burghs from the hitherto dominant alliance between Colonel Grant, as acting head of the Findlater interest, and the 7th earl of Kintore ended in defeat, but at Michaelmas 1820 Fife gained control of Elgin council, and his brother Alexander Duff was returned unopposed in 1826 and 1830. In 1831, when Duff cast votes both against and for the English reform bill, Colonel Grant was able to secure the return of his Inverness Burghs ally Gordon Cumming as an outright anti-reformer. In 1820, the Liverpool ministry unsuccessfully attacked Hume in Aberdeen Burghs. On his retirement to stand for Middlesex in 1830, the Tory Sir James Carnegie, with Aberdeen and Inverbervie secure and Hume’s former prop Lord Panmure staying neutral, managed to win Brechin and so defeat the reformer Horatio Ross, who was backed by Hume. In 1831 enthusiasm for reform drove out Carnegie and gave Ross a walkover. The Anstruther family’s interest in the Anstruther Burghs secured the unopposed return of the lord advocate Rae in 1820, but in 1826 he was beaten 3-2 by the pro-Catholic Tory James Balfour, Lauderdale’s son-in-law. In 1830 the Anstruthers put up Robert Marsham, warden of Merton College, Oxford, but Balfour prevailed by 3-1 (Kilrenny was disfranchised). Balfour transferred his attention to Haddingtonshire in 1831 and Marsham started as an anti-reformer, but some local independents enticed the young advocate Andrew Johnston to stand as a reformer. With Kilrenny still out of the equation, his capture of Crail and the returning burgh of Pittenweem was decisive and frightened Marsham off. Glasgow Burghs were uncontested in 1820 and 1826, when the Tory Archibald Campbell, who controlled Renfrew and had the backing of the Dixon family of Dumbarton and the former Member Alexander Houston, was returned. In 1830 he was challenged by the wealthy Glasgow merchant Kirkman Finlay, a free trader and cautious reformer, who secured Rutherglen and Dumbarton. With Renfrew safe for Campbell, the election turned on the casting vote of Glasgow, where the election of a delegate ended in a tie, 16-16. The delegate nominated in Campbell’s interest claimed a casting vote to gain his own election and subsequently used it to return Campbell. In 1831, when the anti-reformer Campbell withdrew, the uncompromising reformer Joseph Dixon beat Finlay by 3-1, after winning Rutherglen by bribery and treating. In the Haddington district in 1820, the combined interest of Sir Hew Dalrymple Hamilton and Lauderdale was attacked by the government-backed Home Drummond, but Dalrymple Hamilton won. His kinsman Adolphus Dalrymple was unopposed in 1826 and 1830, but in 1831 he was beaten by the reformer Robert Steuart, who got Haddington and Jedburgh and won Lauder 8-7 by the expedient of having a Tory councillor kidnapped. Dalrymple was subsequently seated on petition. Melville endorsed the candidature for Perth Burghs in 1820 of the East India Company director Hugh Lindsay, a brother of the 6th earl of Balcarres, and he walked over then and again in 1826, when the other four burghs followed Perth’s lead. In 1830, when Dundee was disfranchised, Lindsay retired. The seat was contested by John Stuart Wortley, secretary to the board of control and the son of the 1st Baron Wharncliffe, and Donald Ogilvy, brother of the 4th earl of Airlie. The vote of the delegate for Dundee, whose council had persisted in choosing one, gave the return to Stuart Wortley by 3-2. When the election was declared void reformers in Dundee and Perth invited Jeffrey to stand, while Airlie started his brother William Ogilvy. Jeffrey won by virtue of the commission in his favour sent by Dundee, but the result was reversed on Ogilvy’s petition. At the 1831 general election Jeffrey, who had already been returned for Malton as a safeguard, came in unopposed. The Stirling district had gained notoriety as the most venal and ungovernable constituency in Scotland. In 1820, Tory councillors in Stirling and Queensferry asked Melville to produce a man to get rid of the sitting Whig Francis Primrose, brother of the 4th earl of Rosebery. Melville said he could not personally intervene, but when the rich ex-East India merchant Robin Downie appeared on the scene, Rae interviewed and endorsed him. He carried Stirling, Queensferry and Dunfermline and came in unopposed. In 1826 he defeated Lauderdale’s brother. Despite his purchase in 1829 of some Dunfermline burgh lands, Downie was defeated in 1830 by James Johnston, who seduced the burgh from him. Downie claimed to be its legally elected delegate and cast a vote for himself, but Johnston was returned. In 1831 there was no serious challenge to Johnston, who supported reform. The most contentious group in this period was the volatile and widely scattered one of Linlithgow, but all four contests were decided by 3-1. In 1820 the Glasgow cotton merchant Henry Monteith, standing on the Buccleuch interest and backed by the government, beat the social reformer Robert Owen of New Lanark. In 1826 Monteith lost to Adam Hay, the son of an Edinburgh banker, but he reasserted himself in 1830, when his success in Selkirk, Peebles and Lanark brought him in against the popular liberal William Gillon. In 1831 Gillon, standing as a reformer, secured Linlithgow and Peebles and, decisively, Lanark, as Monteith’s obstinacy in persisting fatally handicapped Buccleuch’s preferred candidate James Johnstone.
Patchy newspaper coverage of burgh elections makes it difficult to ascertain the extent to which issues were debated. Some local ones certainly assumed considerable importance. In Dysart and Perth Burghs in 1826 the contentious Forth ferries bill raised hackles, and in Dysart there were also mutterings of complaint at the Member Ferguson’s excessive devotion to Kirkcaldy’s particular concerns. In Edinburgh the police bill of 1822, and in 1825 the plan to improve and develop the south-western approaches, the highly controversial Leith docks bill, the aftermath of its failure, and the municipal water bill gave Melville and William Dundas an uncomfortable time. National issues were aired in the Aberdeen district in 1820 (the linen bounties, economy and retrenchment) and 1830 (reform and retrenchment); in Glasgow Burghs in 1830 (reform and retrenchment), and in the Perth group in 1820 (retrenchment and burgh reform) and 1826 (corn law revision and the Catholic question). The most striking (and well-reported) instances of such debates occurred in Edinburgh and most of the districts at the general election of 1831, when the Grey ministry’s reform scheme was the central issue. As mentioned above, reformers were returned for 11 of the burgh seats, with only Edinburgh and the Dumfries, Elgin and Inverness districts electing opponents of reform. Committees to promote reform, whether municipal, Scottish or general, or to monitor the progress of the bills and scrutinize Members’ conduct, are known to have been formed in Edinburgh and in the Aberdeen, Dumfries, Glasgow, Elgin, Haddington, Inverness and Perth groups. Political unions were established in Edinburgh and the Dumfries, Glasgow and Perth districts, and in the last two there was a strong radical element in reform agitation.
Edinburgh (and Leith, its outlet to the sea) and all the districts petitioned both Houses frequently and on a wide variety of subjects. The campaign for the abolition of slavery produced heavy petitioning in 1824, 1826 and 1830-31, as did the hostile reaction to the proposed currency restrictions of 1826. Support for Queen Caroline was far more marked than in the counties, with only a handful of loyal addresses being sent to the king from such Tory councils as Aberdeen, Cullen, Dornoch, Dumfries, Edinburgh, Glasgow, Peebles, Perth, Tain and Wick. There was widespread support for repeal of the Test Acts in 1828, but petitioning on Catholic emancipation the following year was overwhelmingly hostile. Urban and commercial concerns, whether local or national, were naturally reflected in the subject matter of petitions from the burghs: for example, continuance of the linen bounties, the timber duties, the coastwise coal duties, the Combination Acts, salmon fisheries, repeal or revision of the corn laws, the East India Company’s trade monopoly, and abolition of the death penalty for forgery. All the burghs contributed to the petitioning of the 1830 and 1831 Parliaments on the reform issue, which ranged over municipal reform, general reform in Scotland, and the Grey ministry’s scheme, with particular emphasis on their proposals for Scotland. Hostile petitions were sent up from burghs in the Anstruther and Perth groups, and by Tories in Edinburgh. Details of the Scottish reform proposals drew petitions, notably those against the planned £300 property qualification for burgh Members and the appointment of county sheriffs as returning officers for burgh constituencies. The initially proposed disfranchisement of the Anstruther group (which was abandoned) evoked hostile petitioning from its burghs, and some of the other adjustments were petitioned on by interested parties. A large number of mass reform meetings took place between March 1831 and May 1832, especially in the larger towns. Four Englishmen sat for burgh seats in this period: John Henry Lowther, Sir John Osborn and Nicholas Conyngham Tindal, all accommodated in Wigtown Burghs by Galloway; and John Stuart Wortley.
The parliamentary campaign for burgh reform continued in the 1820 Parliament, but to no good effect beyond highlighting the defects and abuses of the existing system. On 4 May 1820 Hamilton secured the reappointment of the select committee on the subject. Twelve of the 21 members of the 1819 committee survived, but most of the new ones were ministerialists. Hamilton presented petitions calling for reform in June and brought up the committee’s report, which recommended change, 14 July 1820. The committee was reappointed, 16 Feb. 1821, with all but two of the 1820 men, and a number of local burgh petitions were referred to it. By now, however, Hamilton had very little influence over it, and on 6 Mar. 1821 he told Kennedy that it ‘goes on worse and worse’.
The Members
When Parliament was dissolved in late February 1820, the Scottish Members might have been classified as 31 general supporters of the Liverpool ministry, 12 opponents and two independent or dubious (William Douglas and George Sinclair). At the general election, five counties, Edinburgh and four districts of burghs were contested. The government’s loss of a seat in the Kincardineshire fiasco was balanced by the return of a friend for Orkney; and in the burghs the loss of Elgin was more than compensated for by the return of Tories for the Linlithgow and Stirling districts. Thirty-four of the Scottish Members in possession at the dissolution were returned. Thirty-three came in for the same seats as before, while the ministerialist Archibald Campbell moved from the Perth to the Glasgow district. George Graham (Kinross-shire), Roderick Macleod (Cromartyshire) and Sinclair (Caithness) went out as their counties had no return for this Parliament. Their replacements were Robert Bruce (Clackmannanshire), George Campbell (Nairnshire), and Lord James Crichton Stuart (Buteshire). This rotation gave opposition an advantage of one. Overall, it was a more than satisfactory return for the government, who would have expected 33 of the Members to give them general support. Of these, Archibald Campbell Colquhoun, Sir George Clerk, William Dundas, Charles Grant, Sir William Johnstone Hope, Sir James Montgomery and Sir William Rae were office-holders or sinecurists. William Douglas became a lord of the admiralty in 1824. There were perhaps doubts about Sir Hew Dalrymple Hamilton (who was claimed by the Grenvillites, but was almost perpetually absent) and Lord Fife, despite the latter’s holding a household place. The unequivocal opposition contingent had been reduced to ten: Lord Archibald Hamilton, Sir Ronald Ferguson, Joseph Hume, Thomas Kennedy, William Maule, John Maxwell, survivors from the 1818 Parliament, were joined by George Campbell, Crichton Stuart, Archibald Farquharson and Sir Alexander Ramsay.
In 1820 Melville, whose sons were too young and showed little interest in politics, secured the appointment as joint-deputy keeper of the signet of his 26-year-old kinsman John Hope, a son of the lord president, Charles Hope of Granton, with a view to grooming him as his eventual successor in the management of Scotland. Hope became Scottish solicitor-general in late 1822. Throughout the 1820 Parliament the resources of patronage, so vital to the maintenance of the Melvillite supremacy, continued to be diminished by the government’s response to increasing demands for economy and retrenchment. The Edinburgh Whigs, led by Cockburn and Jeffrey, promoted an alliance with working class Scottish reformers, most of whom renounced violence after the failure of the 1820 ‘radical war’. As noticed above, the state of the Scottish representative system in both counties and burghs was raised in the Commons.
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
|
Queen Caroline 6/2/21 |
81% |
19% |
64% |
36% |
|
Reform 9/5/21 |
73% |
27% |
55% |
45% |
|
Tax cuts 11/2/22 |
79% |
21% |
67% |
33% |
|
Tax cuts 21/2/22 |
71% |
29% |
65% |
35% |
|
Postmastership 13/3/22 |
75% |
25% |
54% |
46% |
|
Lord advocate 25/6/22 |
67% |
33% |
56% |
44% |
|
Foreign Enlistment Act 16/4/23 |
82% |
18% |
66% |
34% |
|
Irish prosecutions 22/4/23 (govt. defeat) |
67% |
33% |
46% |
54% |
|
Scottish reform 2/6/23 |
79% |
21% |
56% |
44% |
|
Edinburgh reform 26/2/24 |
73% |
27 % |
56% |
44% |
|
Missionary Smith 11/6/24 |
76% |
24% |
56% |
44% |
|
Irish unlawful societies bill 25/2/25 |
85% |
15% |
70% |
30% |
|
Cumberland annuity 10/6/25 |
68% |
32% |
58% |
42% |
|
Pres. bd. of trade’s salary 10/4/26 |
64% |
36% |
53% |
47% |
At the same time, it must be noted that the numerical turnout of Scottish Members who voted on the ministerial side in these divisions was not often large. The greatest was 26 against the opposition censure motion on the Caroline affair, 6 Feb. 1821. The third reading of the bill to suppress the Catholic Association, 25 Feb. 1825, secured 22 Scottish votes. Nineteen Scottish Members voted against reform of the Scottish representative system, 2 June 1823, and 18 did so against abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar. 1822, and repeal of the Foreign Enlistment bill, 16 Apr. 1823. Thus support and sympathy were not necessarily reflected in zeal in the lobbies. If the voting figures in these divisions are considered as percentages of the whole Membership of the Scots (45) and the House (658), the comparison becomes as follows:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
|
Queen |
58% |
13% |
51% |
29% |
|
Reform |
24% |
9% |
24% |
19% |
|
Tax cuts |
24% |
9% |
33% |
16% |
|
Tax cuts |
33% |
13% |
36 |
19% |
|
Postmastership |
40% |
13% |
28% |
24% |
|
Lord advocate |
27% |
13% |
19% |
15% |
|
Foreign Enlistment |
40% |
9% |
33% |
17% |
|
Irish prosecutions |
31% |
16% |
28% |
36% |
|
Scottish reform |
42% |
11% |
23% |
18% |
|
Edinburgh reform |
24% |
9% |
15% |
12% |
|
Smith |
28% |
9% |
31% |
25% |
|
Irish bill |
49% |
9% |
35% |
15% |
|
Cumberland |
29% |
13% |
26% |
19% |
|
Pres. bd. of trade |
20% |
11% |
14% |
12% |
When the non-voters are taken into consideration, the preference of Scottish Members for the government as against that of the House as a whole becomes much less marked, except on Scottish reform, 2 June 1823. In the two 1822 divisions on tax reductions and that on Missionary Smith a smaller percentage of the Scottish contingent than of the House as a whole rallied to ministers. The largest single temporary defection of basically friendly Scottish Members occurred, not surprisingly, on the sore point of the additional malt duty, 21 Mar. 1821, when 15 Scottish Members voted for its repeal, which was carried against the government by 149-125. They included the oppositionists Farquharson, Hamilton, Hume and Ramsay, and ten ‘fringe’ supporters of the ministry: Robert Bruce, Buchanan, John Drummond, William Gordon, Francis Grant, James Hunter Blair, Thomas Mackenzie, George Macpherson Grant, Henry Monteith and James Wemyss. Of these, Bruce, Gordon, Grant, Hunter Blair, Mackenzie, Macpherson Grant, Monteith and Wemyss had voted with the government against the censure motion of 6 Feb. The other dissident was Fife, who was instantly dismissed from his household place. (The office-holders Clerk and Rae were listed in the partial ministerial minority.) On 3 Apr. 1821 the government exerted itself to have the repeal bill thrown out by 242-144. Fourteen Scottish Members went against them: the four opposition men named above were joined by Crichton Stuart and Sir Ronald Ferguson. Fife stood his ground, but did not rise to the bait of Hamilton’s allusion to his dismissal for showing ‘independence’. (Fife’s only other two recorded votes in this Parliament were both with government.) Dalrymple Hamilton voted for the repeal bill. Only six of the ‘fringe’ rebels in the first division joined them: Bruce, Grant, Hunter Blair, Mackenzie, Macpherson Grant and Wemyss. Fourteen Scottish Members divided in the ministerial majority, including four (Buchanan, Drummond, Gordon and Monteith) who reversed their earlier votes. Among wayward votes on other issues cast by those in the ‘government fringe’ were those by Bruce for admiralty reductions, 1 Mar. 1822, and inquiry into the prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr. 1823, when he was joined in the opposition majority by Wemyss; by William Eliott Lockhart for the successful opposition motion for abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 2 May 1822; and by George Cumming against the duke of Cumberland’s annuity, 6 June 1825, and the awarding of a separate ministerial salary to the president of the board of trade, 10 Apr. 1826. With two exceptions, the Scottish opposition contingent were not the most assiduous of attenders and voters. The indefatigable Hume voted against government in 318 (85 per cent) of the 372 divisions which have been used for the analysis of voting behaviour in this Parliament. Sir Ronald Ferguson did so in 181 (49 per cent). Even Hamilton only managed 130 (35 per cent). The others, in descending order, were Kennedy (78/21 per cent); Maxwell (67/18 per cent); Crichton Stuart (57/15 per cent); Maule (31/eight per cent); Farquharson (29/eight per cent); George Campbell (21/six per cent); and Ramsay (14/four per cent). Walter Campbell, who was returned in March 1822, voted in 11 (four per cent) of the 299 divisions available to him. All these Scottish opposition Members voted at least once for parliamentary reform of some sort. Walter Campbell and Ramsay did so only for Lord John Russell’s general motion, 25 Apr. 1822; while George Campbell and Farquharson were in the minority for Russell’s similar motion, 24 Apr. 1823. Maule cast two known votes for reform, Crichton Stuart three and Kennedy and Maxwell four. Its staunchest supporters were Ferguson, Hamilton and Hume. Dalrymple Hamilton (who divided seven times against government in the 1821 session, but thereafter recorded a mere four votes, all with them) voted for reform of the Scottish county representation, 10 May 1821. The Scottish Members voted 20-10 in favour of Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821. This represents a bias in its favour of 67 to 33 per cent, as against 51 to 49 per cent for the House as a whole. (If the non-voters are taken into account, the proportions become 44 per cent of Scottish Members for, and 22 per cent hostile; and 38 per cent of the whole House for, and 37 per cent against.) The supporters of relief comprised nine oppositionists, five government supporters (Don, Douglas, Dunlop, Charles Grant and Stewart), five of the ‘government fringe’ (Cumming, Hunter Blair, Macpherson Grant, Francis Grant and Thomas Mackenzie), and Dalrymple Hamilton. Its opponents on this occasion were the government men Archie Campbell, Clerk, Hugh Lindsay, James Montgomerie and Rae, plus the ‘fringe’ Members Bruce, Downie, Grant Suttie, Monteith, and Wemyss. Bruce, Campbell, Downie, Lindsay, Monteith and Wemyss were joined in the minority against Canning’s bill to relieve Catholic peers, 30 Apr. 1822, by Buchanan, Gordon and Grant Suttie. In 1825, 23 Scottish Members divided at least once for relief in the three divisions for which lists have been found, while 15 voted at least once against it. Clerk had become a convert to relief since 1821. Thus Scottish Members who voted favoured relief in the proportion of 61 to 39 per cent, as against the average figures of 52 to 48 per cent for the House at large.
At the general election of 1826 there were contests in five Scottish counties and three burgh districts. In an embarrassment for Melville and the ministry, Rae was defeated in Anstruther Burghs by the pro-Catholic Tory James Balfour, son-in-law of the 8th earl of Lauderdale, who, having renounced his Foxite past, was, in the words of the duke of Bedford, ‘the most powerful supporter ministers now have in Scotland’.
The consequences of Liverpool’s stroke in February 1827 were felt in Scotland. After considerable deliberation, Melville, despite his personal support for Catholic relief, joined Peel, the duke of Wellington and other anti-Catholic cabinet ministers in declining to serve in a ministry headed by the pro-Catholic Canning. His decision, which many found hard to understand (William Dundas, for example, let Canning know that he ‘bitterly’ deplored it),
On hearing of Melville’s resignation old John Balfour, Member for Orkney in the 1820 Parliament, commented that ‘the Scotch interest and Members are shaking in the wind’.
a report … that the new administration intend to revive that anomalous … grievous and mischievous situation, ‘a minister for Scotland’ – that fruitful source of misgovernment, oppression and jobbing. Of late years Lord Liverpool in his department, and still more Mr. Peel in his [home office], have done much to remove this grievance, nominating to the Scotch appointments (as ought to be the case) on the same footing as any English county.
 Canning’s Ministry, 277.
Carlisle passed on this letter to Canning, who was also pressed by Abercromby, before he accepted the office of judge-advocate general, to knock the Binning scheme on the head and allow Scotland to be governed ‘by the ministry or by some known and responsible part of it, specially assigned to the duty by constitutional office, instead of handing us over as a province to some proconsul and taking no more thought of us’. Specifically, he wanted Lord Lansdowne, earmarked for the home secretaryship, to oversee Scottish affairs.
Scotland as far as church and law go I cannot shake off, for it is tacked to my office in the most troublesome way without a Lauderdale or a Melville to manage it.
A few days later he commented that ‘I mean as soon as I leave office to give the fruits of my experience to posterity, in the form of a dissertation on the art of rising in life as practised in Scotland, illustrated by a six months’ correspondence with the home office’.)
It is almost impossible to assess the attitude of the Scottish Members to the short-lived Canning ministry, as 30 of them did not vote in the four divisions on political issues for which lists have been found. Six, namely the office-holders Clerk, Douglas and Charles Grant, plus Archie Campbell, Fife’s brother Alexander Duff and Robert Grant, voted with the government in one or both (in the case of Clerk and Charles Grant) of the divisions on the proposed disfranchisement of Penryn, 28 May, and the grant for improved water communications in Canada, 12 June: Douglas, Duff and Robert Grant were in the ministerial minority on the first issue, while Campbell was in their majority on the second. Six Scottish Members voted against the ministry in at least one of the four divisions. Hume did so in all of them. Sir Ronald Ferguson was in the opposition minorities for separating bankruptcy from chancery jurisdiction, 22 May, and for Hume’s motion for repeal of the Blasphemous and Seditious Libels Act, 31 May. John Maxwell voted with opposition on chancery and Penryn, and Kennedy did so on Penryn. Downie was in the majority on that issue, while Anthony Maitland voted with Hume on 31 May. Cutlar Fergusson voted for the disfranchisement of Penryn but for the Canadian grant; and Adam Hay divided against the government on chancery but with them on the Canadian subsidy. The historian of ‘the Dundas despotism’ thought that ‘including Whigs, Canning could count on 16 Scots in the Commons’.
In this part of the world I think the general feeling is decidedly with us, more so indeed than I had anticipated. Almost all the great leading interests are on our side, and if the government will only perform, as I have no doubt they will, and as they did in 1806, a few Whig pranks in this country, it will settle matters as satisfactorily as possible.
 Canning’s Ministry, 349.
Less than three weeks later Canning died. The hapless Lord Goderich eventually formed a coalition ministry on the same basis and with broadly the same personnel. All the Scottish Members who had held office under Canning remained in place. The Lanarkshire by-election of 16 Oct. 1827 necessitated by Hamilton’s death had national overtones. The Whig Shaw Stewart offered in his room and the Goderich ministry initially promised him support; but when the Tory Charles Douglas, son of the 1st Baron Douglas, started and told Rae that he was willing to give general support to the government, they decided to become neutral. London and Edinburgh Whigs became alarmed by reports that Rae and his deputies were working actively for Douglas, who was seen as a Melvillite. When the Whigs expressed their misgivings, ministers informed Rae and all government employees that their neutrality was genuine and ordered them to abstain from canvassing or voting. Shaw Stewart’s victory by 12 votes pleased the Whigs. As the ministry stumbled from crisis to crisis in the closing months of the year, Huskisson, colonial secretary and leader of the Commons, was in correspondence with Binning about its prospects and potential support from the Scottish Members. He had hopes of finding a seat for Hope, possibly by enticing Rae to take a place on the bench, but nothing came of this. Binning believed that
government will have the general support of Scotland. Men’s minds have been strangely unhinged by the events and disruptions of the last year. Attachments have been thrown loose and long-standing connections have been shaken if not dissolved. The support you will get at first will be of course rather than zealous, but zeal will be acquired in the field, and with time, temper, and management, all doubts, fears and suspicions will vanish … Except upon corn, on which … there seemed to be an incurable insanity, you will have the support of a majority of the Scotch [representative] peers.
 Add. 38752, ff. 84, 176.
In mid-December Binning advised Huskisson that
what is to be apprehended with respect to the Scottish representation, peers and Commons, except those who mean to oppose, is a tendency to stay away. They ought not to have the excuse of not knowing that they are wanted. Something more than the circular that you will write to all Members of Parliament should be had recourse to. Is not the advocate the proper man to do the necessary work, at least with respect to the Commons?
Following Huskisson’s reply, he wrote on Christmas Day:
It is certain that you should do more than send your circular, but Hope reminded me that on a former occasion many of the Members of Parliament resented being applied to by the advocate, so that perhaps either you or [Joseph] Planta [the patronage secretary], as the usage is, should write to those to whom it may be safe to write. Perhaps the most politic thing would be to assume all those to be friends who did not last year announce their hostility in any shape, and to write to them all. But you are a better judge than I am whether you ought to act so widely on this French principle. You can submit the list to those (such as Abercromby and Loch) who know Scotland and they doubtless will be able to throw light on some obscure parts. Charles Grant may know about some, Planta perhaps about others.
Binning ‘marked x’ (on a list which unfortunately has not survived) those Members to whom ‘letters should certainly be sent’.
it has struck … [Hope] and me that the early and immediate attendance at the commencement of the session of [Archibald] Campbell … and Home Drummond would have a good effect on others. If they would take a decided line it would probably tell among their countrymen. The former especially is much considered by them … They are both possessed of ample estates, and above the suspicion of having selfish views … Hope has been in correspondence with Planta. He is very zealous and most downright and sincere. He wishes me to repeat to you what he has said to Planta, that he fears that Melville’s influence has been operating prejudicially. He was at first inclined to think he was doing nothing, but has now ground to change his opinion.
 Add. 38754, f. 20.
All this became academic, as the ministry collapsed before meeting Parliament. Wellington was asked to form a government and brought back Peel and others of the seceders, ditched the Whigs and took in the Canningites Huskisson, Palmerston, Lord Dudley and Charles Grant, who took the board of trade. Melville became president of the board of control, but without a seat in the cabinet. When the admiralty board was reconstituted in the autumn of 1828, Melville returned to its head and resumed his cabinet place. In February 1828 Leveson Gower was appointed colonial under-secretary. William Douglas was removed, but Clerk remained at the admiralty, as did Johnstone Hope, though only for a few weeks. Rae stayed as lord advocate. Grant resigned with Huskisson and Palmerston when the uneasy ministerial coalition fell apart in May 1828. Leveson Gower was forced to do so by his father Lord Stafford, and he and Charles and Robert Grant were then listed among ‘the Huskisson party’.
When Lord John Russell’s motion for repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts was carried against the government, 26 Feb. 1828, seven Scottish Members voted for the measure: the Whigs Walter Campbell, George Dundas, Ferguson, Cutlar Fergusson and Kennedy, the radical Hume and the liberal ministerialist Lord John Hay. Thirteen Scottish Members, including the official men Clerk, Johnstone Hope and Leveson Gower, were in the hostile minority. Thus the Scottish Members opposed repeal in the proportions of 65 to 35 per cent, as against 45 to 55 for the House as a whole. Including the non-voters in the calculation, 29 per cent of Scottish Members opposed repeal, as against 30 per cent of the whole House, while only 16 per cent voted for it, as against 37 per cent of the whole membership. Twenty of the current Scottish Members cast no recorded vote in the 33 political divisions of the 1828 session for which lists survive. Twelve divided in at least one of the ministerial majorities on chancery administration, 24 Apr., the ordnance estimates, 4 July, and the customs bill, 14 July. Archie Campbell and Sir James Mackenzie were in all three; Balfour, Clerk, Dalrymple, and Murray appeared in two; and Adam Hay, Home Drummond, Sir Hugh Innes, Johnstone Hope, Lowther and Morison in one. The consistent opponents of government in these divisions numbered ten, but, apart from Hume, who cast 28 adverse votes, they were not very assiduous. Ferguson and Shaw Stewart gave six votes; George Dundas, Kennedy and John Maxwell cast five; Cutlar Fergusson was in four minorities; and Charles Grant was in two, after leaving the ministry. William Douglas was in the minority of 13 against the third reading of the small bank notes bill, 27 June, and Sir Anthony Maitland voted against the provision for Canning’s widow, 13 May. Three Members gave mixed votes: Arbuthnott opposed the Canning pension, but divided with ministers on the customs bill; Robert Grant was in their majority on the ordnance estimates, but voted (with his brother) against the East Retford disfranchisement bill, 27 June, and on the customs bill; and Lord John Hay divided against the Canning pension but was in the majority against ordnance reductions. On the last, when 301 Members voted overall, ten Scottish Members divided for and four against government. Thus they split 71 per cent to 39 per cent for ministers, as against 68 to 32 per cent for all those who voted. If the non-voters are included in the calculation, the result is 22 per cent of Scottish Members for government, nine against; and 31 per cent of all Members for and 15 per cent against.
The government’s pragmatic concession of Catholic emancipation dominated the first half of the 1829 session. When Burdett’s motion to consider relief had been defeated by four votes, 6 Mar. 1827, 24 Scottish Members had voted for it and 15 against. On 12 May 1828 the same motion was successful by 272-266, with 21 Scottish Members in the majority and 15 in the minority. A comparative analysis of these divisions produces the following results:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
For |
Against |
For |
Against |
|
|
1827 |
62% |
38% |
50% |
50% |
|
1828 |
58% |
42% |
50.5% |
49.5% |
When the non-voters are included in the calculation, the results are:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
For |
Against |
For |
Against |
|
|
1827 |
53% |
33% |
44% |
44% |
|
1828 |
47% |
33% |
46% |
45% |
The Scottish Members showed even more enthusiasm for emancipation in 1829. In February Planta predicted that 30, among them ten who had voted against relief in 1827 and/or 1828, would go ‘with government’ for it. He was correct about 24, who included six previous opponents (Arbuthnott, Archie Campbell, John Campbell, William Dundas, Gordon and Hepburne Scott). He was wrong about Dalrymple, George Graham (Pigott), Sir Alexander Hope and Wemyss, who voted against emancipation, while William Eliott Lockhart and Sir William Maxwell did not vote. Planta noted that nine Members (seven of the ‘regular opposition’ and the Grant brothers) were ‘opposed to securities’; they all divided for emancipation. He correctly described Downie and Johnstone Hope as being ‘opposed to the principle’ of emancipation. He classed Lowther, oddly, as ‘doubtful’, but reckoned that he (like Downie) would support securities once the principle of emancipation had been carried. Lowther voted against emancipation. The three Scottish Members whom Planta marked ‘absent’, Davidson, Duff and James Montgomerie, all previous opponents of relief, did not vote. Therefore 33 Scottish Members (83 per cent) voted for emancipation and seven against (17 per cent). If the non-voters are included, these figures become 73 per cent for and 16 against. In the divisions of 6 Mar. and 30 Mar. 1829, for which lists of favourable voters survive, the voting was as follows:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
For |
Against |
For |
Against |
|
|
6 Mar. |
85% |
15% |
68% |
32% |
|
30 Mar. |
86% |
14% |
68% |
32% |
If the non-voters are taken into account, the results are:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
For |
Against |
For |
Against |
|
|
6 Mar. |
62% |
11% |
54% |
25% |
|
30 Mar. |
71% |
11% |
52% |
25% |
Hume was in the minority of 17 against the second reading of the bill to disfranchise the Irish 40s. freeholders, 19 Mar. 1829.
When the emancipation dust had settled, concerted opposition to the ministry was virtually in abeyance. Only 11 minority division lists have survived for the period between 1 May and 5 June. Hume, of course, was in eight of them, including those on the motion for allowing Daniel O’Connell to take his seat for county Clare without swearing the oath of supremacy, 18 May, when he was joined by Ferguson, the Grants, Kennedy and Maule, and for the Ultra Lord Blandford’s parliamentary reform plan, 2 June, for which John Maxwell also voted. Cutlar Fergusson, the Grants and Kennedy divided for the transfer of East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 May; Hume, Kennedy and Maxwell voted to reduce the grant for the marble arch sculpture, 25 May; Maxwell was in Hume’s minority of 12 for a fixed duty on corn imports, 19 May; and Kennedy divided for reduction of the hemp duties, 1 June 1829. In October 1829 the Ultras’ Commons leader Sir Richard Vyvyan listed Arbuthnott, Gordon, Leveson Gower and Murray among ‘present government connections who will be hostile to a new [coalition] one’. His list of Members who had voted for the third reading of the emancipation bill, ‘but whose sentiments’ on his putative Ultra-Whig coalition ministry were ‘unknown’, included John and Walter Campbell, Francis Grant, Gordon [sic], Adam and Lord John Hay, Hepburne Scott, Sir Hugh Innes, Mackenzie, Maitland, Maule, Morison and James Sinclair. The Grant brothers he of course listed as ‘Huskisson’.
In November 1829 Melville wrote to Peel about
the inconvenience frequently complained of by the natives of Scotland, particularly the Members of Parliament, that there is no special officer or office in London for the transaction of business, parliamentary or otherwise, of that part of the kingdom, though in fact from the dissimilarity of our laws and institutions, such an establishment is even more necessary than a similar office for Ireland. It has hitherto devolved chiefly on the lord advocate, most improperly and inconveniently for the public service.
 NAS GD51/17/77, p. 338, quoted in Fry, 377.
Nothing came of this. Early In February 1830 Wellington, at Peel’s prompting, offered to a surprised Abercromby (Melville’s cousin) the vacant and lucrative post of lord chief baron of the Scottish exchequer court. After agonizing, Abercromby accepted it.
Scottish Members were not particularly active in the parliamentary exertions of the reviving Whig opposition under the leadership of Lord Althorp in the 1830 session. Ten cast no known votes in the 67 political divisions for which lists have survived. Nine divided consistently against government, but only Hume, inevitably, was persistent (though he, with Shaw Stewart, was among the 28 opposition Members who voted with ministers against the Ultra Knatchbull’s amendment to the address, 4 Feb.). Kennedy gave 12 hostile votes, George Dundas nine, Ferguson eight, Cutlar Fergusson seven, and Maule three. Davidson and Sinclair, general supporters of government, cast wayward votes to amend the controversial sale of beer bill, 21 June, when they were joined in the minority by Wemyss, another ministerialist, who had also voted to consider abolition of the Irish lord lieutenancy, 11 May. The Grant brothers divided with ministers against Blandford’s reform scheme, 18 Feb., but thereafter were in regular opposition, voting ten and twelve times respectively against government. John Maxwell voted for reduction of the public buildings grant, 3 May, and inquiry into the civil government of Canada, 25 May, but evidently sided with government for the grant for South American missions and against abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 7 June. Shaw Stewart was in the ministerial ranks on Blandford’s scheme, forgery punishment and judges’ salaries, 7 July, but cast eight hostile votes on other issues. Thus only half a dozen Scottish Members, including the Grants, were in reasonably active opposition. On the other hand, 21 voted only with government in at least one of the six divisions for which lists of ministerial voters have been found. Eleven of these did so in three or more of these divisions: among them were the office-holders Clerk, Leveson Gower and Murray. When Robert Grant successfully sought permission to introduce a bill for Jewish emancipation, 5 Apr., he carried five Scottish Members with him, while five opposed the motion. When ministers mustered numbers to have the measure thrown out, 17 May 1830, seven Scottish Members (George Dundas, Ferguson, Cutlar Fergusson, the Grants, Hume and Kennedy) defied them, but 11 now backed them. Ferguson, the Grants, Hume and Shaw Stewart were in the opposition majority for abolition of the pensions enjoyed by sons of Melville and Lord Bathurst, 26 Mar. Looking at the two divisions in which there was the largest participation of Members, the Whig proposals to enfranchise Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb., and to abolish the death penalty for forgery, 7 June, the votes of the Scottish Members compared with those of the House as a whole as follows:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
|
Reform |
72% |
28% |
57% |
43% |
|
Forgery |
67% |
33% |
52% |
48% |
When the non-voters are also considered, the results are:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
|
Reform |
40% |
16% |
30% |
23% |
|
Forgery |
31% |
15% |
28% |
27% |
At the general election of 1830, three Scottish counties and six districts of burghs were contested. Ministerial influence was strongly and for the most part effectively exerted. Abercromby and his son believed that Lauderdale was ‘at the bottom of all the Scotch contests’, actively working with Planta and the whip Billy Holmes. Abercromby reflected that it would not signify whether Wellington or Holmes was prime minister, as ‘office will always command the elections here’, where ‘that which is most servile and base will be sure to happen’, and where ‘the only particles of public spirit and feeling which can be found … exist among the middling classes, who have not an iota of power or influence’.
Planta and Charles Ross, a newly appointed lord of the admiralty, listed 35 of the Scottish Members as ‘friends’ of the ministry. Of these, Carnegie was noted to have a ‘crotchet’, while William Douglas and Hepburne Scott were marked ‘Q[uer]y’. Only four were named as ‘foes’: George Campbell, Cutlar Fergusson, Kennedy and Maule. Three were reckoned to be ‘good doubtfuls’: Walter Campbell, Johnston and, oddly, Shaw Stewart, who was subsequently described as ‘a friend, where not pledged’. Loch was designated as one of the ‘doubtful doubtfuls’, but on second thoughts deemed to be ‘doubtful favourable at least’; Wemyss was placed with the ‘moderate Ultras’, but later marked as a ‘friend’; and Charles Grant was of course named as one of ‘the Huskisson party’. Thus the head-counters reckoned on 36 ‘friends’ (including Wemyss), only five (including Grant) in certain opposition, and four not quite certain.
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
80% |
20% |
47% |
53% |
The contrast is striking. When the non-voters are included in the calculation the figures become:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
62% |
16% |
31% |
36% |
On 25 Nov. 1830 Lord Melbourne, home secretary in Lord Grey’s new ministry, replied to an enquiry from his cabinet colleague Holland:
I have only as yet had time to mention Scotland once to Grey, and he then said he had done nothing about it, and that whatever was to be done, was to be done about system. I know little about Scotland, but I am much inclined to agree … with you. In every Whig coalition administration which I have either supported or had anything to do with I have always seen the system which you mentioned pursued and have always found in consequence all the weight of Scotland either openly hostile or treacherously friendly. It was so in 1806 and still more so in Canning’s administration, when bad people were suffered to remain. I should much like now to try the other course, and see whether it will turn out better. Worse it cannot.
 Add. 51558.
The Scottish law officers were changed, with Cockburn becoming solicitor-general and Jeffrey, accepting, with grave misgivings, the place of lord advocate, despite indifferent health and the prospect of having to dip into his own pocket find a parliamentary seat.
I keep as much aloof from … the politics of this place as I possibly can; but I cannot help hearing what friends will impart. The gentry do not like to be placed under lawyers, and that leads them to form little cabals and combinations which have no unfriendly object so far as regards the government, but with the view of promoting their own ends, and bringing about some arrangement with respect to Scotland that would be more agreeable to them. This is hurtful … to the government … I have all along thought that it was a mistake not having a Scotch Member at the treasury. He would … by knowing what was going on, have been enabled to give the necessary information to heads of departments, and have put an end to such caballing. It would have pleased the gentry, I believe, have left the advocate free for his own proper business, and would have created no new office and no new expense. I do not at all think that he ought to have had any patronage and still less that he ought to have been looked upon as the minister for Scotland, but the gentry and others would have been led to him for advice. He would have told them how to apply, and when referred from other offices, he would have been in a position to offer an opinion on the merits of the different applicants.
 Cockburn Letters, 267, 270; Brougham mss, Abercromby to J. Brougham, 27 Feb. [1831].
Nothing immediately came of this, but it seems that before the ministerial reform scheme was introduced on 1 Mar. 1831 Ellice and Lord Duncannon, one of the architects of the proposals, picked Kennedy’s brains about his ‘Northern colleagues’ as they scrutinized the list of Members and tried to predict their votes.
We have decided that it is not desirable on the main question that we should have any further discussion on the Scotch bill on its being read a first time, reserving our opposition until the second reading, which I trust will never take place, as should the English bill be lost, the Scotch one will go along with it.
He thought ‘we certainly ought to petition against’ the Scottish measure, although he felt it would ‘require some caution to ascertain if there is a sufficiently strong feeling amongst the commissioners of supply and farmers to induce them to petition against what at first sight might appear to be for their advantage or at least a boon or rather bait held out to them’. He hoped for a majority of 30 against the second reading of the English bill, but conceded that ‘there are many who have not yet made up their minds’ and was ‘sorry to say’ that a scrutiny of ‘the list of Scotch Members’ had revealed ‘16 in favour’ whom it would be ‘difficult to bring … over’.
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
||
|
For bill |
Against |
For |
Against |
|
34% |
66% |
50% |
50% |
When the non-voters are considered, it becomes:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
||
|
For bill |
Against |
For |
Against |
|
31% |
60% |
46% |
46% |
In the division on Gascoyne’s successful wrecking amendment to the bill, 19 Apr. 1831, there were 16 Scottish Members in the ministerial minority and 25 in the opposition majority. Baillie, William Douglas, Mackenzie and Morison were absentees. Of those voting with the government, 13 had divided for the second reading, and two (George Campbell and William Ogilvy, who had only been seated on petition for Perth Burghs on 28 Mar.) had not voted on that occasion. Duff had divided against the second reading. Jeffrey of course voted with his colleagues, but he was now not a Scottish Member. Of the 25 supporters of the amendment, all had voted against the second reading except Montgomery. The comparative figures for this division are as follows:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
39% |
61% |
49% |
51% |
Counting the non-voters, it is:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
36% |
56% |
47% |
48% |
This level of support for reform indicated that times were changing even in Scotland.
At the ensuing general election 12 Scottish counties and five burgh districts had contests. The reform issue and the ministerial bills were central to most of them. The Whig John Hamilton Dalrymple told Holland a year later that ‘no preparatory steps … [had been] taken’ by the government beyond Ellice and Jeffrey writing to him to ask him ‘to assist’ on the ground, which he did as best he could.
On the eve of the new session Abercromby repeated directly to Grey his homily on the management of Scottish patronage:
We have … no controlling authority, and there are various pretenders to influence who all agree that no place or office should be filled up except with their concurrence or on their recommendation … My object has … been to prevent the usurpation of undue influence by any individual or class of individuals … The habits of a lawyer’s life here do not give him the necessary tact and experience for managing affairs with dexterity and success, and besides, they are not very acceptable to the gentry … Scotland is not so large or important as to require a secretary as in Ireland, and yet the laws and institutions of the country are still so dissimilar from those of England, that ministers require someone to whom they can refer in dispensing patronage and other matters. The first thing to be done … is that it should be made known here that all applicants for appointments should apply to the treasury or home office, as the case may be, accompanying their applications with such recommendations in their favour as they may think useful … But when such applications reach you or Lord Melbourne, you will not be able to decide on the pretensions of the different candidates, in some cases, without assistance. To remove that difficulty, I have always thought that it could not fail to be useful to you to place at the treasury or in some other office a Scotch Member, to whom you could on all such occasions refer … Such a person, being always in London during the sitting of Parliament and occasionally in Scotland, would be removed from the evils of the narrow and intolerant society of this place, and would also be so well acquainted with what is passing here, as to be aware of all that was essential to be known. A person so employed could not be a principal, or manager of Scotland, only an assistant to be used by you and others … Such a man might materially relieve the advocate from labour not necessarily connected with his office.
Abercomby added that he regretted not having ‘made this suggestion to you directly’ in November 1830, instead of communicating it by ‘a channel [James Brougham], through which it failed, as I feared, to reach you’. He clearly had in mind Kennedy, who apparently carried round with him ‘a list of disposable [Scottish] offices’.
Thus during the life of the 1831 Parliament the ministry’s Scottish management remained largely extemporary. Kennedy evidently compiled for the whips ‘correct lists’ of the votes of the Scottish Members on the reform bills, a task in which he may have been helped by George Sinclair.
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
For |
Against |
For |
Against reform |
|
|
6/07/31 |
55% |
45% |
61% |
39% |
|
19/07/31 |
48% |
52% |
59% |
41% |
|
27/07/31 |
53% |
47% |
58% |
42% |
|
21/09/31 |
49% |
51% |
59% |
41% |
|
23/09/31 |
51% |
49% |
69% |
31% |
|
19/12/31 |
54% |
46% |
65% |
35% |
|
28/02/32 |
51% |
49% |
59% |
41% |
|
22/03/32 |
50% |
50% |
59% |
41% |
|
25/05/32 |
55% |
45% |
65% |
35% |
Although slightly over half the voting Scottish Members favoured reform, they were markedly less enthusiastic for it than the House as a whole. When the non-voters are included in the calculations, the results are as follows:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
For |
Against |
For |
Against |
|
|
6/07/31 |
53% |
44% |
57% |
37% |
|
19/07/31 |
31% |
33% |
37% |
26% |
|
27/07/31 |
40% |
36% |
38% |
28% |
|
21/09/31 |
47% |
49% |
54% |
38% |
|
23/09/31 |
44% |
42% |
32% |
15% |
|
17/12/31 |
42% |
36% |
54% |
29% |
|
28/02/32 |
44% |
42% |
51% |
39% |
|
22/03/32 |
47% |
47% |
56% |
39% |
|
25/05/32 |
38% |
31% |
39% |
21% |
The same trend is apparent, but the turnout of Scottish Members was higher than that of the whole Membership in six of these nine divisions, significantly so in that on the Scottish reform bill. Agnew and Walter Campbell voted for the Chandos amendment, while 14 reformers sided with ministers against it. The first Tory attempt to secure an increase in the Scottish county representation, 4 Oct. 1831, attracted the support of 21 Scottish Members, including Agnew, Cutlar Fergusson and Ross, while 15 voted with ministers. Thus the Scottish contingent divided 42 to 58 per cent against the proposal, in contrast to the figures of 65-35 for the whole House. Of the entire Scottish Membership, 33 per cent opposed the amendment and 47 favoured it; while the Membership as a whole voted in the proportions of 17 per cent against and only nine for. When the proposal was made again, 1 June 1832, 17 Scottish reformers voted against it, while three (Dixon, Cutlar Fergusson and Ross) were named as voting in the favourable minority. Seventeen Scottish reformers were in the ministerial majority against a Conservative attempt to stop a proposed change to the borders of Perthshire, 15 June 1832. When Parliament was dissolved in November 1832 the Scottish Members were made up of 23 reformers and 22 anti-reformers.
Turning now to the voting of the Scottish Members in 11 divisions on motions of confidence or party conflict,
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
|
Dublin |
68% |
32% |
75% |
25% |
|
Loan 26/1 |
39% |
61% |
53% |
47% |
|
Loan 12/7 |
58% |
42% |
55% |
45% |
When the non-voters are taken into consideration, the result is:
|
Scottish MPs |
All MPs |
|||
|
G |
O |
G |
O |
|
|
Dublin |
29% |
13% |
32% |
10% |
|
Loan 26/1 |
27% |
42% |
36% |
33% |
|
Loan 12/7 |
31% |
22% |
40% |
33% |
Thus the Scottish Members were initially more hostile to the loan than the House as a whole, but their opposition to it had fallen away by July 1832. Seventeen Scottish Members were in the majority for Lord Ebrington’s motion of confidence in the Grey ministry, following the reform bill’s defeat in the Lords, 10 Oct. 1831. This was 38 per cent of their total strength, as against 50 per cent of the whole House. The same number voted in support of the motion for an address asking the king to appoint only ministers who would carry undiluted reform after Grey’s resignation, 10 May 1832. Forty-four per cent of the whole House were in that majority. It was reported that the reformers Agnew and Morison were in the chamber during the debate, but did not vote.
While the Scottish Members were clearly divided in their attitude to reform and preference for government or opposition, the picture becomes more confused when their voting in 53 divisions on miscellaneous issues is considered.
The Scottish Reform Legislation
In a fragment of autobiography, Lord Brougham asserted that when the Grey ministry began to consider their Scottish reform bill, Lord Durham, one of the committee of four entrusted with drawing up the overall scheme, bypassed the Scottish law officers (one of whom, the solicitor-general, Brougham mistakenly recalled as having been John Archibald Murray) and confided the plan directly to James Loch, Lord Stafford’s factotum and Member for Tain Burghs, who was thereby encouraged to indulge in ‘jobbing and mischievous activity’ and to try to ‘smuggle through a Stafford job against reform’.
On 24 June 1831 Kennedy was summoned by Graham to dine at the admiralty in order to ‘discuss the Scottish reform bill’ as ‘an affair of life or death’ with himself, Althorp, Russell, Durham, Brougham and Jeffrey.
it is very well for you … to say that you adhere to the original arrangement of the bill, and that all the objections to it are nonsense. I must hear and discuss all these objections, and I cannot say to the minority that they are nonsense, for they are very much moved by them, and want me to obviate them by more decisive arguments than can always be produced.
 Cockburn, i. 319.
On 1 July he secured leave to reintroduce the Scottish reform bill and briefly stated two minor changes to the county franchise. The second reading was carried by 209-94, 23 Sept., but in committee three days later Althorp, in the absence of the ill Jeffrey, explained the concessions which ministers had made in response to agitation from various quarters, including those friendly to the principle of the bill. Scotland was now to receive eight additional seats, rather than five. Buteshire’s annexation to Dunbartonshire was dropped, but it had the Cowal peninsula of Argyllshire attached to it. Rothesay was removed from the Ayr district and thrown into its county of Buteshire. More controversially, the burghs of Peebles and Selkirk were taken out of the Linlithgow group and put into their respective counties. The industrial Lanarkshire town of Airdrie was enfranchised to join Falkirk, Lanark and Linlithgow in the revamped district. The Anstruther Burghs were reprieved by giving Perth a Member of its own and grouping St. Andrews and Cupar with the Anstruther villages. Peterhead was added to the five royal burghs in the Elgin district and was replaced in the Montrose (formerly Aberdeen) Burghs by Forfar, the other survivor of the old Perth group. Port Glasgow was joined to Greenock to keep it out of Renfrewshire, and some changes were made to the boundaries of Stirlingshire, Perthshire and Nairnshire. The agitation for Scottish university representation was set at nought. As noticed above, on 4 Oct. 1831 the Tory Sir George Murray secured 61 votes to 113 for his proposal to give the eight largest counties an additional Member each, attracting support from three usual supporters of reform. After the English bill’s defeat in the Lords, the slowly recovering Jeffrey advised Cockburn of the importance of securing ‘firm and lawful’ expressions of support for ministers and their measures from Scotland.
Though the great body of the people is at this moment unusually quiet … the desire for reform is more deep and intense than ever … The reports of all my informers concur in expressing their thorough conviction that a second rejection of the reform bills [by the Lords] would be the signal, all over the populous and manufacturing districts, for a general defiance of authority and for scenes of violence and outrage … The political unions (which I have endeavoured to discourage … without exasperating them … ) have contributed greatly to preserve peace and good order … but have also given a confidence and consciousness of strength to the reformers … It is impossible to look to this new feature in the state of our society without much anxiety; but I feel the strongest assurance that, if the reform bills were once passed, the greater part of these associations would silently expire and the rest become quite insignificant.
 Add. 51644.
During the ‘days of May’ there were widespread peaceful demonstrations of support for Grey and his colleagues and the reform cause. The Edinburgh public meeting of 15 May, for example, was reckoned by the reformers to have been attended by 60,000 people, ‘chiefly from the lower orders’, but with a handful of ‘men of landed property and representing old families’ present also.
To recap its principal provisions, there were now 30 county constituencies, each returning one Member, with Clackmannan and Kinross, Elgin and Nairn, and Ross and Cromarty combined for electoral purposes. Glasgow and Edinburgh returned two Members each, while Aberdeen, Dundee, Greenock, Paisley and Perth had one each. There were 14 single Member burgh districts, including the entirely new one of Leith, Mussselburgh and Portobello. Seven of the others (Dumfries, Dysart, Elgin, Haddington, Inverness, Stirling and Wigtown) were left unchanged in their composition; and the non-royal burghs of Airdrie, Cromarty, Falkirk, Hamilton, Kilmarnock, Oban, Peterhead and Port Glasgow were variously distributed among the rest. Only three royal burghs, Peebles, Rothesay, and Selkirk, no longer functioned as parliamentary burghs. The changes to the franchise dramatically increased the Scottish electorate from a nominal 3,257 in the counties to 31,118, and from 1,314 in the burghs to 32,251: that is, from about 4,500 to over 63,300. Some Edinburgh Whigs were concerned at the lack of preparation for the first reformed elections in Scotland in the summer of 1832.