The Slaneys of Hatton Grange, near Shifnal, were reputed to have come over from Bohemia in the twelfth century ‘in the train of the Empress Maud’. By the sixteenth century they were established in Shropshire, where, as lords of the manor of Dawley, they supplemented the income from their 3,000-acre estate and the Kemberton and Lizard forges by leasing the mineral rights of Horsehay to the Darbys of Coalbrookdale and other entrepreneurs.
If London agrees with me I intend to visit it towards the end of January and remain there till summer, thus dividing our time: to attend sessions, Westminster Hall, etc., and keep up my law acquaintance; and, if not employed in gaining addition to fortune, I hope to be usefully occupied in laying up store for future use and in turning my attention with greater steadiness to political economy, not neglecting sessions law, agriculture, and perhaps a knowledge of mechanics [which] will fill up vacant time, and the education of my dear little girls will be an additional source of amusement to me. On every account, I shall try to keep up Italian and French.
Salop Archives 6003/1, 30 Dec. 1819.
His first major public speech, a call for ‘uniformity’ and declaration for the moderate loyal address adopted at the Shropshire county meeting, 10 Jan. 1821, was well received.
In his first Parliament Slaney gave the Whigs ‘uniform independent support’, broadened his acquaintance, lobbied hard, often with scant success, on matters affecting the poor and the maltsters and divided sporadically with the Whig opposition. His maiden speech, 22 Nov. 1826, reiterated and endorsed the agriculturists’ complaints against the duties on malt and beer, but failed in its objective of securing returns on account of a prior request by the Breconshire Member, Thomas Wood. Slaney resumed his campaign to little apparent purpose, 28 Nov. 1826, but was pleased to hear ‘from authority I cannot doubt’ that his speech ‘attracted Mr. Canning’s attention, who noticed me in consequence’.
Slaney left his family in Shropshire for the 1828 session ‘with natural regret’. He considered Brougham’s six-hour speech advocating law reform, 29 Feb. 1828, ‘most eloquent and laborious’, and its conclusion
a noble specimen of stern and manly English eloquence worthy of the enlightened and independent man who (in spite of his failings, for he is but a man) has done more to clear away bigotry, to support rational freedom and to spread the cause of education and intelligence than any other person living.
Salop Archives 6003/5, 1-6 Feb. 1828.
According to his journal, he attended the House ‘pretty assiduously’, devoting his time ‘chiefly to two subjects’, poor law reform and repeal and improvement of the laws affecting malt. He postponed his labourers’ wages bill, 8, 27 Feb., 14 Mar., while he gathered ‘information by abstracts, returns, etc.’, and attended the select committee on parochial settlement, to which he was appointed, 21 Feb. He pointed to the close correlation between emigration, low agricultural wages, crime and poor law abuse when Irish migrant labour was considered, 19 Feb., and legislation on emigration proposed, 4 Mar., and obtained leave to bring in his bill based on the 1817 and 1819 reports, 17 Apr., when, though ‘dismayed by poor attendance’, he spoke for two hours as his speech ‘could hardly be compressed from the facts and returns quoted’. He declared that he had no intention of ‘meddling’ with those parts of the law governing rating, settlement or relief to ‘the lame, the impotent and the blind’, advocated inquiry into fluctuating demands for labour, and suggested treating corn law and poor law reform conjointly, raising agricultural wages and ending systematic doles to able-bodied ‘artisans, mechanics and agricultural labourers’, who were suffering because of the misapplication of legislation originally intended for vagrants. He spoke of the increased burden that relief costs, which doubled every 20 years and associated litigation expenses, which did so in 12, placed on landed wealth, praised the Scottish system and voiced his customary criticism of poor law administration in the 16 counties south of a line from Gloucester to Stamford. He commended the Buckinghamshire petition, suggested a credit system linking parish employment to savings accounts and called for the appointment of a select committee. The bill was read a second time, 29 Apr., and its recommendations incorporated in the widely circulated report Slaney drafted as chairman of the 1828 select committee on the poor laws, which he hoped would ‘lead to a practical measure next session for which I shall prepare!’
He presented petitions, 25 Feb., and voted for repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb, but abstained on Catholic relief, 12 May, for which he presented Shrewsbury’s petition, 6 May 1828. He thought East Retford deserved disfranchisement, 25 Feb., and explained before voting against recommitting the disqualification bill, 27 June, that although he usually supported the landed interest, in this case he thought the franchise should be transferred ‘to a great town’ like Birmingham. He also criticized the agriculturists for seeking high corn prices when commerce was depressed, and infuriated Nicolson Calvert by offering to support any plan that left East Retford disfranchised. He also divided against the ministry to lower the corn pivot price from 64s. to 60s., 22 Apr., and on the small notes bill, 5 June, the Buckingham House expenditure, 23 June, and the ordnance estimates, 4 July. He presented a petition against the friendly societies bill, 6 May, briefly endorsed the Shrewsbury anti-slavery petition, 19 June, and, alluding to its unpopularity in Shropshire, suggested withdrawing the additional churches bill for redrafting, 3 July. He voiced local concerns over the security of the Chester mail, 6 July 1828. Assessing his progress that session, he observed: ‘I have become acquainted with more Members ... and have been kindly noticed by Lord Althorp and others of real weight, but feel greatly the want of an introduction-perseverance’.
Reacting to the establishment of a Brunswick Club in Shropshire, Slaney knowingly placed his political future at risk by informing his constituents in an open letter that he was ‘in favour of concessions to the Catholics under securities, i.e. denying them any vote in Parliament on questions connected with religion’, 24 Nov. 1828. He stressed the difference between petitioning meetings, of which he approved, and clubs, which tended to perpetuate political divisions, and wrote to George Dawson*, the secretary to the treasury ‘offering to support government in any conciliatory proposition’.
Slaney aired his views on poverty whenever the topic was broached, and hearing from Peel that he, as committee chairman, should introduce changes based on his 1828 report, he did so, 24 Feb. 1829, with a warning that Beaufroy’s 1740 prediction, that by 1840 poor rate expenditure would exceed £9,000,000 and one person in seven would be a pauper, had almost been realised. His detailed criticism of the administration of the 1603 Act apportioned particular blame to decisions made in 1795 and the way in which the word ‘impotent’ had been misconstrued to include children, so facilitating the introduction of rent and wage subsidies, bread scales and a minimum wage and contributing to depressed wages, population increases and a rise in crime. He asserted that the merit of his bill lay in its being a ‘gradual remedy’ calculated to end abuse of the Elizabethan poor law, not to supersede it, and claimed that it could not ‘be considered impracticable, because it is the universal practice in the north of England, where ... the labourers are the most independent, happy and moral’. He aimed to reduce relief dependency by abolishing money payments to the able-bodied in employment, so drawing ‘a line between the industrious and the idle, between the working man of good and the working man of bad character’. Allowances would continue during ‘temporary illness’, to widows and deserted wives unable to ‘wholly maintain’ their families, to those incapable of maintaining themselves through old age or infirmity and as a temporary expedient ‘in case of urgent distress from fire or flood’. The first reading was carried, 26 Feb., but, after consultation with Althorp and Wellington, the second reading was deferred until 4 May. Favourable petitions were received from Gloucestershire, Somerset and Bristol, 25 Mar., and Westhoe, 21 May, but Leeds and Birmingham petitioned against it, 4 May, and the Tories Sturges Bourne and Sadler and the radical Hume condemned it as unworkable. On 22 May, after it had been thrice recommitted and reprinted, Slaney abandoned it, having carried the clause prohibiting overseers from paying wage supplements to labourers by 39-11, 15 May.
It is supposed that I mean to take away by that bill all relief from every able-bodied man in this country who would not be able to procure employment. I mean no such thing. All that the bill states is, that relief shall be afforded to such persons in the form of work, and not in the form of money.
He brought in an abortive bill to regulate poor rate assessment in certain Scottish parishes, 1 June. Heeding Lord Milton’s* advice, and with government clearly against him, he withdrew his proposed malt bill, which he claimed was ‘no party question’ and vital to the poor and the prosperity of the landed interest, 12 May 1829. His ‘speech on the supply of malt liquor to the middle and poorer classes’ discussed regional variations in malting practices by soil type and the prevalence of the tied houses he abhorred, and was ‘printed voluntarily by Mr. Howell of Shrewsbury’.
the causes which depress and degrade the artisans and manufacturers, and endeavour to devise a remedy and call the public attention to it. The alternations and fluctuations of wages demand the serious investigation of those who desire well to their fellows.
Salop Archives 6003/5, June-Sept.; 6003/6, 30 Oct., 31 Dec. 1829.
Unsure how to react to the prospect of ‘moderate liberals’ among Canning’s former supporters joining the Wellington ministry in January 1830, he consulted Althorp, whose reply, ‘as we were end last session’, seems to have done little to reassure him.
parties are oddly divided, ministers about 120, Whigs about 90, Ultra Tories inveterate against government now 30. Huskisson and C. Grant, clever free trade men, also now strong in opposition, about 15, and the plot thickens as others come to town. I am rather desolate by myself and very inconveniently placed, but am, I trust, usefully occupied.
Ibid. 6 Feb. 1830.
He did not divide on the address, from which distress was omitted, 4 Feb., but he presented and endorsed petitions incorporating requests for government action to alleviate it, 16 Mar. He voted to transfer East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 11 Feb., and paired for this when out of town for his uncle Richard Slaney’s funeral, 5 Mar.
As announced, 11 Feb., Slaney’s poor law bill, a revision of his 1829 measure incorporating legislation on rating low rental tenements, was read for the first time, 22 Feb. 1830.
If I succeed this year in inclining Parliament to sanction the principle of the bill, it will give me great pleasure; but I shall not be disappointed if it be rejected, nor shall it prevent me again and again from urging it on the attention of Parliament, for so convinced am I of the importance of having some change in the present system of our poor laws, that as long as I have a seat in this House I shall not cease to press the matter on public attention.
The measure was recommitted, 3, 4 May, when it was split into two: a bill to prevent poor law abuse and one making landlords liable for payments on properties rated under £10.
He said that he intended seeking a select committee on the malt duties, 12 Feb., and presented petitions criticizing their effects on the poor, 22, 26 Feb., 1, 3, 4 Mar., but deferred to the successful ministerial measure, for which he voiced ‘general support’, 26 Apr 1830. He thought that ‘the malt and beer question ... has aided me in the opinion of the House and at Brooks’s’ and that he ‘ranked third’ on the select committee on the sale of beer bill, which he considered to be ‘one of the most important measures as regards the poorer classes that has been introduced to the attention of the legislature for some time past’, 21 May. He praised it as a deregulatory measure, 21 May, 3, 6 June, but acknowledged that additional restrictions on on-consumption were desirable, 3, 4 May, and voted accordingly, 1 July. Voicing local concerns, he expressed support for the Birmingham Junction canal bill, criticized the attack on its solicitor Thomas Eyre Lee, 20 May, and promised to oppose any plan which omitted Shrewsbury from the route of the Holyhead road, 3 June 1830. By starting earlier, superior organization and his father’s financial backing he defeated Corbett to come in for Shrewsbury with the local Tory nabob Richard Jenkins at the general election in August 1830. On the hustings, he gave a resumé of his parliamentary career to date and warned that, as in France, unrest might lead to revolution.
The Wellington ministry counted him among their ‘foes’, but although present to propose his own bills, to urge ministers to legislate for the poor and to criticize them for dissuading the king from attending the City dinner, 3, 8, 9, 11, 12 Nov., he was absent from the division on the civil list which brought them down, 15 Nov. 1830, having been summoned to Shropshire following the death of Muckleston on the 11th.
His much-deferred liability of landlords bill was committed, amended and reprinted, 23 Feb. 1831. Manchester petitioned in its favour, 28 Feb.; Newcastle, 7 Mar., and Merthyr Tydfil, 28 Mar., against it; and with his proposals to end poor law abuse and his motion for a select committee on open spaces it became a casualty of the dissolution.
He voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, against using the 1831 census to determine English borough representation, 19 July 1831, and steadily for its details. When the enfranchisement of Manchester was considered, 2 Aug., he testified to the growth of the coalfields and manufacturing districts, and contrasted the annual average of £100 paid in assessed taxes by 38 schedule A boroughs with the £26,000 paid by 38 new boroughs. The reactionary Shropshire Member John Cressett Pelham commented caustically that ‘to hear him one would imagine that manufactures are the road to population and wealth, and that agriculture is only the road to ruin’. He divided for the bill’s third reading, 19 Sept., passage, 21 Sept., and Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct., and informed the Shrewsbury reformers that he lamented its loss in the Lords.
It appears to me ... that some curtailment and alteration might take place which would render it safer and more palatable to a very large and respectable minority who would be glad (now they see reform must be carried) to meet us (as they ought) much more than half way! I know several Members ... who voted against the bill, who are desirous to support it, and settle the question, if some modification could be introduced. The same must be felt by many peers anxious to settle the question safely; I do not presume to say what alterations should be made, but think that if it were practicable to leave out great part of schedule B, to alter the uniformity of franchise, to make the £10 qualification (if such remain) bona fide, by introducing quarterly letting reservations of rent instead of mere weekly payments it would be a great improvement. Ten pounds reserved weekly and stopped out of wages on Saturday is not ten pounds per annum, but really the credit and class indicated hereby is not more than renters of six pounds per annum in quantity rent. I ... earnestly wish some approximation could take place in settling this great question, between honest and conscientious men belonging to the two great parties, as there are those who watch their contentions, and would rejoice to destroy them both when exhausted by the contest. The opinion of most persons in [Shropshire] ... is that the measure would be safe, if less extensive, and they are anxious for a quiet settlement.
W. Suss. RO, Goodwood mss 636, f. 84.
Before voting for the second reading of the revised bill, 17 Dec. 1831, he expressed regret ‘that anything like a spirit of party should have manifested itself in the course of these debates’ and called for calmness, moderation, and concessions on both sides ‘without damaging the principle or the efficiency of the measure’. He contrasted the population, wealth and intelligence of rural and urban areas, rejected the notion that the latter enjoyed ‘virtual representation’ through such places as Gatton, and thanked Lord Clive for his conciliatory speech. Referring to the Whitchurch incendiaries, he concluded with a warning that ‘to delay reform will make property insecure’. He voted against enfranchising all £10 poor rate payers, 3 Feb., called for ‘prejudices be laid aside’, as ‘by this bill the representation of the country will be placed in the hands of the most intelligent and most deeply interested classes of the community’, 19 Mar., and added:
I do not think that the new constituent body will return a gentleman to this House, solely in consequence of his abilities as an orator, or in consequence of his usefulness to his party as a Whig or a Tory. These have too long been the qualifications to a seat in this House, while the most important one - namely a man’s habits of business, and his capability to attend to the interests of his constituents - have been neglected. I think that, in a reformed Parliament, the political parties which now exist will have little weight, and men will not be sent here because they are gifted with great eloquence which they may occasionally be called upon to exert on grand occasions for the interest of their party. Those persons will be sent here who will sedulously devote their time and attention to the important business of the House, and who will anxiously watch over the interests of their constituents. You will not have men who only occasionally attend in their places, but those who are constant in their attendance, and who will be desirous to promote the well-being of the great communities who send them here.
He divided for the bill’s third reading, 22 Mar., paired for the address requesting the king to appoint only ministers who would carry it unimpaired, 10 May, and voted against a Conservative amendment to the Scottish measure, 1 June. He questioned the decision to make Church Stretton rather than Much Wenlock the principal polling town for Shropshire South, 7 June. Nothing came of a suggestion that he should stand for the Northern Division following its passage.
Initially Slaney proceeded with his liability of landlords bill, 28 June, 8 July, and proposals for ‘parks in populous towns’, 22 June 1831, and he persisted in publicizing his views on poor law reform whenever the issue was raised. However, he conceded that reform ‘must come from government’, that ‘individual good intentions ... will not do to correct an evil which has its roots in a general and most mischievous system’, 28 June 1831. Blaming poor law abuse, rather than the laws themselves, he refuted Sadler’s criticism of the political economists, and although, like Althorp, he offered ‘general support’ for the labourers’ employment bill, 11 Oct., he criticized its sponsor Sadler’s failure to appreciate the lack of uniformity and pockets of deprivation within the north-south divide, and by 1 June 1832 he was openly hostile to the measure. He also opposed Sadler’s proposals for extending the poor laws to Ireland, 19 June, and pointed to possible abuses of the bill to remove Irish and Scottish vagrants, 28 June 1832. Writing to Brougham that day, after consulting Nassau Senior, he suggested that the new poor law commission should have no more than six members in London, who in turn would report on the findings of ‘a like number of persons (or rather more) ... appointed as perambulatory or country commissioners’. He offered to serve in London with Senior, the Benthamite Walter Coulson, Bishop Blomfield of London and ‘possibly [Lord] Sandon*, Sir Thomas Fremantle* and Thomas Grimston Estcourt*’, and recommended two clergymen, John Thomas Becher and Charles David Brereton, the retired barrister Ward and Sir John Wrottesley* as country commissioners.
Slaney studied the 1832 cholera epidemic closely, and despite being much lampooned for this and his plans to educate the poor, he polled in second place at Shrewsbury, which returned him as a Liberal at the general election in December.