In a fragment of autobiography begun on his retirement from politics at the end of 1834, Althorp, the most personally attractive of the half dozen men who dominated the Commons in this period, wrote:
There is only one object ... worthy of the ambition of a man of sense, and that is, to obtain the favour of God. Political pursuits and political rivalships are not the means to conduce to this end ... The occupations and the compliances which necessarily belong to a political man must ... have a tendency to diminish religious feelings.
Le Marchant, pp. xv-xvi.
In March 1818 he told his friend Lord Milton* that ‘my vanity was very near overpowering my reason’ when he was asked by some Whig activists to undertake the leadership of the Whig party in the Commons: although he was aware of his ‘total incapacity for the office’ and ‘decidedly refused’, he recognized that he had strong credentials for it, in that his good relations with the mainstream Whigs George Tierney* and Henry Brougham* and the reformers Sir Francis Burdett* and John Lambton*, and his intimacy with Lord Folkestone* and Henry Grey Bennet* of the ‘Mountain’, with whom he had acted sporadically in the 1807 Parliament, made ‘my personal influence in the ... Commons perhaps more general than that of any of our party’. His close friendship with Lord Lansdowne, a potential leader in the Lords, was another asset.
Althorp’s determined parliamentary opposition to the Liverpool ministry’s repressive legislation after Peterloo and his appearance on the platform at the Westminster protest meeting, 8 Dec. 1819 (which annoyed his sour natured mother, from whom he was more or less alienated) prompted some of the Northamptonshire Tories to consider opposing him at the 1820 general election, but the notion ended in smoke and he came in unopposed again with the Tory Cartwright, in accordance with the tacit compromise which had operated since their return together in 1806.
I do not apprehend that the ... session will be a very busy one ... If the ministers are contented with the same civil list that the late king had, I should not think it would be adviseable for us to endeavour to reduce it ... By taking a conciliatory line with the people the country might be very well governed without the additional 11,000 ... [troops] raised in the autumn, but it would be a very disadvantageous question for us if we were to press for ... reduction ... at the very time when the disturbances in Yorkshire and Scotland have compelled the military to be called upon actual service ... There does not remain much to do, except any question relative to the queen should arise ... I shall have my hands quite full, for I must instantly begin upon the insolvent debtors.
Althorp Letters, 103-4.
Althorp reintroduced his bill to amend the Insolvent Debtors Act, which had passed both Houses in the previous Parliament but had been overtaken by the dissolution, on 17 May 1820. It empowered three commissioners to investigate the affairs of debtors and gave creditors the right to compel them to surrender their effects after nine months’ imprisonment. With the backing of the government law officers he saw the measure to a third reading, 16 June.
He attended a party meeting at Burlington House, ‘the first which I ever attended that I thought likely to be useful’, 4 May 1820, when it was decided that Brougham should attack the droits of admiralty as part of the civil list next day. He voted in the opposition minority, and again on the general civil list, 8 May, and told his father on the 12th that they had had ‘two very good divisions’ and that ministers seemed ‘considerably alarmed at the state of things’.
He is certainly the most unamiable and unsocial being ... reserved, suspicious, and repelling to a degree seldom seen ... I am sure he needed not to have feared any persuasion from me to alter his determination, since his society affords me very little else than regret at his unhappy disposition and strange lack of all affectionate feeling and openness of heart ... This additional instance of his poverty of mind and contraction of heart is ... only a confirmation of what I have had too long reason to know.
Add. 75937, Lady to Lord Spencer, 15 Jan. 1821.
Althorp, who believed the queen to be ‘guilty, though I do not think it has been anything like proved’, was against Milton’s notion of calling a county meeting on the issue, while admitting that he approved of its ‘objects’ of demanding the dismissal of ministers and a prorogation of Parliament. At Althorp in October he found both parents ‘stout anti-queenites’, but at the Whig gathering at Holkham subsequently he discovered that she was there ‘considered as nothing else than spotless innocence personified’. His private hope that the bill of pains and penalties would not come before the Commons was gratified by ministers’ abandonment of it in mid-November.
Yet he was delighted with the Whig ‘victory’ at the Derbyshire meeting in January 1821, when he told Milton that he was ‘rather inclined to think that notwithstanding all that has passed the ministers will be too strong for us this session’.
No man can now ... assert that they express the feelings of the country. If the people choose to submit, well and good, and they must be satisfied to be told by Lord Londonderry that they have been under a delusion; but if there is a grain of English spirit left, petitions for reform of Parliament will come from every parish ... I do not mean that they should be for universal suffrage or anything of that kind, but generally for such a reform as will give the people a greater influence on the decisions of the ... Commons.
Northants. RO, Gotch mss GK 1206.
He spoke and voted for Milton’s proposal to make Leeds a scot and lot borough if it got Grampound’s seats, 2 Mar., wanted inquiry into the Lyme Regis petitioners’ allegations of Lord Westmorland’s electoral interference, 12 Apr., and divided for Lord John Russell’s parliamentary reform motion, 9 May. He voted for Catholic relief, 28 Feb. He divided only sporadically in support of the Mountaineers’ campaign for economy and retrenchment. On 29 Mar. he said the ministerial proposals for the timber duties were ‘quite at variance with true commercial principles’; but on 5 Apr. he opposed Parnell’s attempt to reduce them on the ground that as long as the colonial system was maintained, reasonable protection was justified. He presented and endorsed petitions against the additional malt duty, 3 Apr., and urged Tory country gentlemen to disregard the empty government threat to resign if the repeal bill was carried against them;
more eager than ever after his present hobby of cows, sheep and pigs ... It is ... the best employment for anybody who lives so much alone as he does ... and ... I never knew a person who knew as well how to get on by himself, without being more or less unfitted for society. I wish he would marry ... but I am convinced he is as much determined against that as ever. He says he lives alone more comfortably as he grows older, but I do not think he will find his account in it when he really grows positively old.
Lady Lyttelton Corresp. 239.
At the turn of the year his brother-in-law William Henry Lyttelton† reported that he was
in much better health than he has had for many years, owing to prescriptions and rules of a Dr. Scudamore’s, who put him upon a sensible, plain but nourishing diet, which he has kept now for five months ... He has had no cold nor any ailment at all for a long time, and can ride 45 miles on end without fatigue. He says he thinks he is as strong as ever again. He looks uncommonly well, and quite sufficiently fat ... and yet within these three months he has lost sixteen pounds.
Ibid. 240.
In January 1822 Russell, surveying the Commons scene after the ministerial reshuffle and absorption of the Grenvillites, judged the Whigs to be ‘the strongest party in the House’ and thought that Althorp ‘might be leader of the band’, with Brougham as ‘first fiddle’.
I do not know whether I agree with you in wishing to see our friends in administration. I like some of them very much and I had much rather the ship should go ashore, as she indubitably will, when my adversaries are at the helm ... I do not see a possibility of our getting through our difficulties ... We shall go on in an alternation of agricultural and manufacturing distress. This must be the case with any country taxed out of proportion beyond the rest of the world ... Capital must leave us and we shall go from bad to worse, till our ruin is complete. I fear it is not in the power of man to prevent this and I therefore do not wish to see any of my friends in a situation where disgrace will accompany failure though there is no chance of success.
Fitzwilliam mss.
Resuming attendance after Easter, he voted for Russell’s reform motion, 25 Apr. He threw ‘a great deal of cold water’, as his mother reported, on an unsuccessful Northamptonshire farmers’ attempt to secure a county meeting to petition for tax cuts and reform; but when he presented the petition, 12 June, he said that in refusing the requisition the sheriff had ‘not exercised a sound discretion’.
Althorp agreed with Milton that it was ‘foolish’ to move an amendment to the address in 1823, as some intended, and decided to stay away. He confessed that French aggression against Spain had put him in ‘such a fury that I have not proper possession of my faculties’ and argued that ministers ‘should have proposed an offensive and defensive alliance with Spain on condition of her acknowledging the independence of South America’: war was preferable to passivity while ‘every vestige of liberty is destroyed on the continent and everything is to be dependent on an oligarchy of barbarian tyrants’.
Althorp agreed with Brougham that opposition must make Ireland and Catholic relief, which had been ‘opposed only by prejudice, folly and bigotry’, their priority in the 1825 session, regardless of the potential threat to his electoral interests. He approved of the Irish Catholic leader Daniel O’Connell’s* ‘wise line’.
Althorp saw no merit in calling a county meeting to petition for the abolition of slavery, as he told Milton, 11 Feb. 1826. Apart from not wishing to agitate his constituents so close to an election, when ‘No Popery or corn’ might be raised against him, he reckoned that such meetings were ‘not so much intended and certainly not so much calculated to procure the emancipation of the slaves as to increase the power of the Methodists’. He hoped the government would be able to carry their bills to deal with the banking crisis, but was not convinced, as ‘they appeared very weak in the House last night’.
I spoke upon reform ... slavery, the Catholic question and the corn laws ... Some observations that were made upon the corn laws enabled me to explain again, and in more detail, to the farmers the principles that ought to be looked to ... and it appeared to satisfy them.
Afterwards he went to assist Tavistock in Bedfordshire, where he was standing on ‘free election’ principles.
Russell, defeated in Huntingdonshire, publicly entrusted his planned measure to curb electoral bribery to Althorp in November 1826.
Althorp voiced his ‘considerable regret’ that ministers would not deal with the corn question before Christmas, 22 Nov. 1826. On the 28th he now concurred in Littleton’s resolutions on private bill committees as ‘a great improvement’ worth a fair trial. He signed a requisition for and attended a ‘thin’ and non-political county meeting to vote condolences on the death of the duke of York, 1 Feb. 1827.
As the ministerial uncertainty which followed Lord Liverpool’s stroke dragged on, Althorp predicted to Brougham, 26 Mar. 1827, that it was ‘intended to patch up a divided administration with Lord Bathurst or some other King Log at the head of it’. While he thought that the Whigs would probably be able to ‘support most of their measures of foreign and commercial policy’, he felt that they would thereby be sanctioning ‘an administration which acts upon a system quite contrary to every constitutional principle and highly detrimental to the real permanent interests of the country’.
Althorp believed that Canning’s death would cause ‘a loss to our foreign politics ... beyond calculation’, while domestically the king’s decision to perpetuate the coalition was ‘absolute annihilation to the Tories’, and therefore ‘some consolation’. He saw no ‘reason to take a different course from the one we ... had taken already’, as the Goderich ministry remained ‘a less evil than a pure Tory one’. At the same time he expressed to Holland his hope that ‘our friends will not hold office the moment after they are not able to forward’ Catholic relief.
There is no chance whatever that it will be offered to you or to any man of decided character to take a place in this administration. They must have men of a more pliant disposition who will give up all the great principles on which we have acted for the sake of doing what I admit to be a good, viz., the [keeping] the Tories out ... I should certainly advise you or any other friend not to take upon yourself the responsibility of a cabinet office ... unless the Catholic question is to be made a government measure. There are many other questions which ought to be stipulated for, but this appears to me to be quite a sine qua non ... There is no change in the principles of the administration and therefore this ought to have our conditional but very jealous support.
Russell Early Corresp. i. 258-9.
From the ministerial perspective, Alexander Baring* damned Althorp with faint praise by observing that ‘if we are to have a second rate performer’ as leader in the Commons, assuming Huskisson’s health would not stand it, ‘I always thought Althorp would please the House and satisfy the country better than anybody’.
thought that he could turn his character and talents to the best account by watching measures, supporting what he liked, urging what he thought useful, and opposing what he disapproved ... I was enabled from personal knowledge ... to confirm this view to the fullest extent. We understood, therefore, that though he was not to be reckoned an adherent ... he would on many occasions be a useful ally, and never a mischievous opponent.
Lansdowne mss, Tierney to Lansdowne, 5 Sept., Abercromby to same [4 Sept. 1827].
From Leamington, 9 Sept., Althorp gave his opinion of the situation to Holland, who had informed him of ‘circumstances which ... must undoubtedly be considered to palliate the appointment of Herries’. Althorp conceded this, but criticized the Whig ministers for failing to attend the cabinet at which it was effected, which made it clear to ‘the whole country that they are holding office without possessing any influence whatever’:
I can ... see no course for myself but to withhold my confidence from a government in which those ministers of whose principles ... I approve are without the power of doing any good. I must be ... quite independent and look only to measures ... Looking forward ... with horror to finding myself in this situation next session, still I think it is the only thing I can honestly do. If these ministers act upon the principles they have hitherto most of them professed, I shall almost always find myself supporting them. If they do otherwise, I ought to oppose them.
To his father the same day he confirmed that ‘nothing ... shall at present shake me from the resolution ... of being in an armed neutrality’.
The most useful thing ... which public men can do in the present circumstances is to hang together and to compel the ministers to do that which they themselves think right, so that while the power of the king acts upon them in one direction to induce them to do that which is wrong, a good strong party in the ... Commons may act upon them in the opposite direction ... If I can effect this I shall accomplish the highest object of my political ambition, for I have only one personal object, only one point on which I am aware that my personal feelings may lead me to act corruptly, and that is to keep myself in such a position that I may not be compelled to take office. Nothing shall ever persuade me to do so, but I should be sorry to be placed in such a situation as to avow this selfish feeling publicly, though I think it right that all those who wish to act with me should be aware of my decision.
JRL, Bromley Davenport mss.
In the last week of November 1827 Tierney, having obtained the blessing of Goderich and Huskisson, but not Herries, asked Althorp whether he would take the chairmanship of the finance committee if it was offered. Althorp was inclined to accept it, as affording him a small means of doing some practical good, but he did not expect the offer to be made, having, as he told his father, been ‘given to understand’ when he had been sounded about office on the formation of the ministry, that ‘the king would have objected to my being in the cabinet, had I not put a stop at once to any discussion on the subject’. He consulted and got the approval of Tavistock and Milton, and on 29 Nov. wrote to Tierney to ‘accept the chair ... on the clear understanding that I am to support or oppose the views of government in that committee as I may think right’.
He told an unknown spokesman for the Catholics, 25 Jan. 1828, that the new Wellington ministry, for all its professions of ‘neutrality’, was in reality ‘decidedly hostile to your claims’, for which the Catholics should agitate as before.
I ... expected ... that the ministers would follow the advice of the financial committee as to reducing the salaries of the clerks in public offices, and perhaps the daily pay of the labourers in the dock yards; but that they would reject our advice whenever we recommended any reduction in political offices ... I had made up my mind as to the course ... to ... pursue ... on as fair and impartial a consideration of the circumstances as a man very anxious to cull his ewes could be expected to give them. By being out of the way I have it in my power next session to say that I concluded that the recommendations of the finance committee would be attended to, but that, finding they were not, I for one decline being a party to such a delusion again. My main object being to see the Catholic question carried, I am inclined to sacrifice everything to this. But if there does not appear a prospect of this being done ... we must declare open war upon the government; and there cannot be a more hostile measure, or one more likely to be effective, than blowing up the finance committee upon the grounds which they are now about to give us ... I look forward with sanguine hopes of being relieved from my attendance ... next year and being at liberty to apply myself to other things of minor importance in which I am calculated to do much more good than by labouring at a subject above my abilities, and in a committee where consequently I have and ought to have no influence.
Parker, Graham, i. 72; Sir James Graham mss (IHR microfilm XR 80).
In late august 1828 Althorp observed to his father that ‘the Catholic question looks uncommonly well, thanks to O’Connell and the freeholders of Clare’. By the end of September he was almost sure that the government intended to ‘do something for the Catholics’; but, still considering Wellington to be ‘a man of a little mind’, he feared, as he told Brougham, that he would
propose some half measure ... This ... will be a great evil. It will be a fresh ground for our opponents to say nothing will ever satisfy ... [the Catholics]; and although it is not in the power of man to prevent the carrying of Catholic emancipation ... very soon, now that the Catholics are acting like rational beings, yet it will be a difficulty in the way of us who support them ... Whatever may be the degree of concession which they propose, we ought to accept it, unless it should be something which would amount to persecution ... I mean any measure calling upon all Catholics ... to subscribe something contrary to their religion ... If it is not the whole, we must enter our protest that it will ... and ought not to satisfy the Catholics. With respect to foreign politics, I find many of those with whom we have acted ... inclined to open war with the ministry ... Though the figure we are cutting ... is far from satisfactory, my political mind is so entirely absorbed by Ireland that I cannot bring myself to any very violent feelings on any other subject. If nothing is proposed for Ireland I am for open war, and will then gladly make use of any other topics of attack.
Add. 76369, Althorp to Brougham, 30 Sept. 1828.
Abercromby heard from Althorp in mid-October that a visit on farming business from his county neighbour Charles Arbuthnot*, the duke’s confidant, had convinced him that nothing would be done and that he was now ‘prepared to act decisively if he can get support’. Abercromby felt that if Althorp ‘is stout, as I believe he will be’, Grey, who wanted to hold off until ministers declared their hand, could have little influence on Whig Members.
Althorp, who was ‘lame’ again in December 1828, favoured ‘a good attendance on the first day’ of speakers, but not of ‘the foxhunters’, for ‘if the ministers intend to settle Ireland in a satisfactory manner they will want support [and] if they do not I hope they will be met by decisive opposition’:
I think Ireland of such critical importance now that if ministers will do their duty on that subject I would not annoy them on any other ... If ... not ... I would annoy them ... [and] ... attack them on every subject I could lay hold of and ... make every effort in my power to turn them out.
As for the growing notion that he should take a formal lead in the Commons, he wrote to Graham, 17 Dec. 1828:
No man ever underrates himself; and I do not believe that any individual, except the person himself, is able to make any estimate of the abilities of a man who is discreet enough not to make attempts to which he is unequal. I agree with you that a great many of our party fancy that I should make a good leader ... but I know I should not. I should not have been two months before I should have fallen into the greatest possible contempt. At present I am overrated, then I should be underrated ... Ask Littleton, or some other person not particularly connected with me, what he thinks of my abilities as a member of the finance committee. If he will tell you the truth, you will be satisfied as to my capacity for a leader ... When anyone on whose judgement I can depend shall be equally well informed with myself as to the qualities of my mind, and the amount of information which I possess, I shall admit him to be competent to controvert what I say when I assert that I am not equal to the post of the leader of a party.
Cockburn Letters, 204; Althorp Letters, 141; Fitzwilliam mss, Althorp to Milton, 5 Dec.; Brougham mss, Lansdowne to Brougham, 26 Dec. [1828]; Parker, Graham, i. 73-74.
He interpreted Wellington’s letter to Dr. Curtis as a sign that he would ‘do nothing for the Catholics if he can help it’, but admitted that Russell and others did not see it in that light. On the question of O’Connell’s right to take his seat as Member for Clare, he gave Brougham his view that ‘we ought to vote and speak against’ as ‘he has clearly no legal right to sit’ and ‘we shall damage ourselves and diminish our means of giving effectual support to the Catholic question’ if they supported him.
Going may appear as if I wished much more than I do to support or join with the government. I do not and cannot act quite as a solitary being; doing anything of this kind may commit others ... This ... applies to refusing to go as much as to accepting ... For myself ... the matter is one nearly of indifference, not being a man who would, under any circumstances, at least any conceivable one, submit myself to the trammels of office ... But ... I cannot act without involving others. What I have done is to accept ... in the first instance, and in case before the day arrives I should see reason for not going, I shall have business to do which shall force me to leave town.
He appears not to have attended the event, 8 Apr. A week later he was ‘laid up’ at Wiseton ‘with a regular fit of the gout after having had it flying about me for six to seven months’.
On 20 Feb. 1829 he said that even if ministers did not reappoint the finance committee, the House and country would expect them to ‘make the greatest possible reductions’, as they now had ‘the materials to do so’. He acquiesced in the navy estimates, 27 Feb., and on 12 Mar. obtained information concerning the role of the Bank in management of the national debt. When he questioned Peel on his intentions for reform of small debt recovery, 8 May, the minister insisted that compensation was essential. Althorp urged Western to leave repeal of the tax on agricultural horses to ministers, 13 May, and approved the principle of the bill to prevent the payment of labourers’ wages from the poor rates and of the anatomy bill, 15 May, when he did not get to bed until four next morning. He encouraged O’Connell privately and voted to allow him to take his seat unhindered, 18 May.
He is a very honest, good kind of man but a weak liberal in politics, and certainly not a man whose support I would ever seek. He is, however, the sort of head of a party in the ... Commons who pretend to stand aloof and see what the ministers will do, and act accordingly and talk of the government strengthening themselves; that is to say, taking some of them in ... I heard him say ... the government was too weak in the ... Commons to go on as it was, and I remarked to him that, if everybody was to go on his principle of standing aloof, it was no wonder the government was weak ... To [Arbuthnot] he said that in the ... Lords the government would do perfectly, that the duke managed it excessively well and was very strong, but that in the Commons they had no party or power at all ... that his party considered the taking of Lord Rosslyn as a demonstration of cordiality towards them, but that they thought nothing of Scarlett ... He pretended that his party did not require offices (this is true as regards himself individually), though they would all have joined in a body if Lord Grey had come in; but he let out that the way to have them was to put one of their body in the ... Commons into the cabinet and to make Brougham master of the rolls!
Arbuthnot Jnl. ii. 285-6.
News of this encounter apparently worried the king, who became ‘alarmed at the idea of having more Whigs forced upon him’; but Wellington knew better. Lord Camden thought that if the ministry could not conciliate the Ultras, they ‘must get a few Whigs’, including ‘the Althorp people’.
They are so weak that they are unfit to govern ... I am doubtful whether it might not be expedient to say that, with every wish not to oppose them ... unless something is done to strengthen their hands before the next session, we shall feel it our duty not to allow the country to remain in such inefficient hands, if we can prevent it ... A great deal depends on the real wishes of the duke ... If he wishes to form a junction with us, and is only prevented by the bad humour of the king, it is perhaps the most prudent thing to say nothing. If ... he is absurd enough to think he can govern without the ... Commons, a gentle notice of this kind might tend to bring him to his senses ... I am rather, on the whole, inclined to think that they are favourably disposed.
Add. 76369, Althorp to Brougham, 17 June 1829.
Althorp was outraged by Scarlett’s instigation of ex-officio prosecutions of newspapers for libels of Wellington at the end of 1829.
But this object is only to be compassed in a manner flattering to Althorp, who is a vain man. He is a person of great respectability and purity of character, public and private, and withal rich in connection. Otherwise he has no qualifications ... except his industry.
‘Very little was done’, as Howick noted, because most of those present would not swallow a property tax, which Althorp favoured. However, he agreed to become leader for the purpose of promoting tax cuts if at least 45 Members turned up to a similar meeting planned for the 6th. He also wished to consult Brougham, Graham and Russell, whose blessing he obtained.
The principle of the junction is that it is to extend only to measures of retrenchment and reduction of taxes. On all other points we are to continue as much disunited as ever. We have determined not on any pretence to hold any intercourse with the Tory or Canning party previous to measures being brought forward, but to support anything brought forward by either ... with perfect cordiality, if it comes within the principle of our union. I am to take occasion to state this determination ... before Goulburn brings forward his budget, in the hope - a vain one I fear - that it may have some influence ... There was so much variety of opinion in our meeting on ... [the 3rd], that I almost expected that the result of today would be to dissolve it; but today there was less difference of opinion, and I now hope that some good may be effected.
Le Marchant, 267; Wasson, 168-9.
In the House, 8 Mar., Althorp indicated that ‘a union had been formed’ to promote ‘economy and reduction of taxes’, but stressed that this party had no wish to turn ministers out.
I quite approve of your connecting yourself with Althorp, of whose good sense and honour and integrity I have a high opinion. But I should doubt his having all the requisites for management of such a concern, above all readiness to take his part on the spur of the occasion and firmness to assert it by a direct, simple and open line of conduct.
Grey argued that ultimately the only feasible and creditable basis for a party was its projection as an alternative government to one which it opposed as inadequate; but he ruled himself out as too tired and old (66) to take office.
We hear that from two to two and a half millions of taxes will be the reduction proposed. I think they might safely take from four to five without substituting any tax, assuming that they can reduce the four per cents ... It is impossible to expect a comprehensive view of our finances, which alone will do any good, from our present financial ministers ... Huskisson undertook last night to move upon pensions ... I should have preferred this motion being in the hands of one of our own men, because I have no great confidence in Huskisson’s spirit of economy; but still it is good to have him committed to the cause.
Add. 76369.
Lady Spencer was ‘happy’ to hear Althorp say that ‘since he has been in Parliament, he has never felt so much interest, never been so satisfactorily employed, never so conscious of having been so useful, nor ever been so capable, as to health, of his work sitting light upon him, as he feels himself at present’.
On Goulburn’s budget statement, 15 Mar. 1830, Althorp concurred in his assertion that the sinking fund was not a breach of faith with creditors and approved his selection of taxes for repeal, but thought he could have gone further. He supported Slaney’s poor law amendment bill. When Cartwright presented the Northamptonshire distress petition, as that of the sheriff, 16 Mar., Althorp claimed that a more radical one for reform had had a majority. There had been another meeting at his rooms that morning, ‘more numerously attended and less divided in opinion than the former ones’. More took place as the session progressed.
We are in a strange state; acting together pretty well and likely to do so better; but without any party views at all. I never saw people more inclined to be honest, and it is the first time I believe that a party could be brought to act together on an avowed principle of neutrality without any prospect of individual ambition.
Cockburn Letters, 226.
Supporting his protégé Poulett Thomson’s motion for a revision of taxation, for which he was a minority teller, 25 Mar., he declared his preference for a property tax; but this, in Howick’s view, ‘frightened away’ a ‘great many of our own people’ and reduced the minority to 78.
After Easter he presented a Kettering petition for abolition of the death penalty for forgery, 26 Apr.; he voted to that effect, 24 May 1830. He divided with O’ Connell for reform of Irish vestries, 27 Apr., and with the now resurgent opposition for inquiry into the Terceira affair, 28 Apr. Next day he explained his current views on the debtors laws, which turned on his wish to treat ‘the unavoidably unfortunate’ less harshly while bringing to book the ‘fraudulent or willfully extravagant’. He gave his ‘warmest support’ that day to Brougham’s scheme to establish cheap local courts. He spoke and voted for cuts in the ordnance estimates, 30 Apr., and the public buildings grant, 3 May. He was a majority teller for repeal of the usury laws, 6 May. ‘Nearly satisfied’ that the Irish lord lieutenancy should be abolished, he divided with Hume to consider this, 11 May. He did not think there were sufficient grounds for censuring the Irish solicitor-general John Doherty* over the Cork conspiracy trials and voted accordingly, 12 May,
Althorp had drawn closer to Grey, who had shaken off his selfish indolence, during the second half of the session. In mid-May 1830 they talked of the possibility of an approach from Wellington, or even the formation of a new ministry, when the new reign began. According to Howick, Althorp ‘said he should prefer not being in office, but if my father made it a condition he would consent’.
Soon afterwards Poulett Thomson, wondering who might take up reform vigorously in the Commons in the wake of events in France, discounted Brougham and Graham and could ‘see but Althorp, who from station ... character and ... honesty can do it’, though ‘his modesty and diffidence prevent his using all the power which he possesses’.
conceal from myself that the difficulty of my situation will be very much increased. If I could back out I would, but I cannot ... I was ... just a little surprised at seeing you had said [in Devon] you were not opposed to the ministers, for I thought everyone must agree that they are so weak that they cannot carry on the government ... I shall on this ground declare open war when Parliament meets. I fear Brougham is likely to be more violent than in prudence he ought ... Perhaps both he and myself are more disgusted with the administration than others, from having been witness to the shabbiness ... of their conduct to ... Grey. My private opinion is that they are quite incapable from ability, as well as through weakness in numbers, to carry on ... the ... duke is as incapable as executing his office as any of the rest, while ... it is impossible to put any confidence in his integrity. How much of this it will be prudent to disclose is another thing.
Devon RO, Earl Fortescue mss 1262M/FC 86.
Althorp was reported by Brougham in late September, after Huskisson’s death, to be keen on a junction with his followers; but two of these, Lords Palmerston* and Melbourne, told Holland that they ‘did not feel any great confidence in the discretion’ of either man.
I am inclined to ground our opposition to the government mainly, if not entirely, on their total inefficiency. I think the thing most to be avoided, is the giving people an opportunity of saying that we were very moderate and mealy-mouthed as long as there was a chance of the duke ... taking us in, but that now we despair of this we are become violent ... We ought to be cautious how we urge anything against the ministers which might have been equally well brought forward last session. I should also be for giving them more credit for the quickness with which they acceded to the wishes of the people in acknowledging Louis Philippe.
Le Marchant, 252-3.
Privately, he still feared that Brougham would not ‘confine his attack ... to such topics as will be intelligible to the country’. He also lamented the ‘great scrape’ into which his kinsman Lord Exeter had got himself by turning out hostile Stamford electors, which might oblige Althorp to ‘vote against him on some violent resolution’: ‘it really appears as if grandees never could learn anything by looking at what was going on’.
It was not very numerously attended, but there was much less difference of opinion than at any of those last year. Althorp began by saying that at the beginning of the last session he had been unwilling to do anything which might have the effect of driving out the government, but that in consequence of its inefficiency and the apparent determination of the duke not to strengthen it he had no longer any such feeling ... It was agreed that retrenchment and parliamentary reform were to be our great objects ... Althorp ... gave notice that John Russell meant ... to give notice of the renewal of his motion for giving representatives to the three great towns, but the feeling of all present was so strongly expressed that such a motion as not going far enough ought not to be made that he engaged to write to John Russell to induce him to give it up.
Lansdowne mss, Macdonald to Lansdowne, 22 Oct.; Agar Ellis diary, 26 Oct.; Howick jnl. 31 Oct. [1830]; Lieven Letters, 260.
Althorp gave his own view of the meeting to Milton, 2 Nov.:
We agreed for war against the ministry, but ... to be conducted in a reasonable manner. I am therefore to say today that I have no confidence in the government, but that if they propose good measures they may depend upon our support ... If ... any vote is proposed to which we feel favourable but which if carried would have the effect of removing the administration, this last circumstance will by no means prevent us from giving it our support. Brougham is in a much more controllable state than he was.
Fitzwilliam mss.
He duly spoke in these terms on the address later that day, approving the promise of economies and advocating ‘extensive’ parliamentary reform. Howick considered the speech ‘injudicious’, in that Althorp ought to have moved an amendment on the foreign policy element, but he accepted that he probably felt ‘bound by [what] was agreed the other day’. John Campbell II, a new Member, told his brother that ‘there is a better speaker than Lord Althorp in every vestry in England’.
I never saw such a change in opinion on any question ... I used to think it never could be carried, but now I think that an administration favourable to it may effect it. I cannot at present foresee what will happen to the ministry. I hardly think we shall be able to carry any question which will have the immediate effect of turning them out, but still I do not think it possible they can carry on the business of the ... Commons ... I do not ... think there is any real danger [of insurrection], but people generally are much alarmed ... I can only write a political letter for I have nothing else in my head.
Fitzwilliam mss.
He spoke and was a minority teller for Parnell’s motion for inquiry into the ‘monstrous’ civil list, which brought the ministry down, 15 Nov. He was named to the select committee. He condemned the ‘Swing’ rioters, 18 Nov. 1830.
Grey, charged with forming a government, offered Althorp the premiership, which he flatly rejected. Grey browbeat him into becoming chancellor of the exchequer and leader of the Commons (on which Palmerston, the foreign secretary, deferred to him), by saying that otherwise he would give up the commission. Althorp consented with ‘great reluctance’ and on condition that he should not be asked to succeed Grey as prime minister and that Brougham must be persuaded to take the lord chancellorship rather than the mastership of the rolls, which would have made him a dangerous loose cannon in the Commons. He persuaded Brougham to swallow this and was also credited with securing the appointment of Poulett Thomson as Lord Auckland’s efficient deputy at the board of trade.
A week after the fall of the Wellington ministry Althorp wrote to Milton:
The accounts from the country are very bad and certainly we come into office in as difficult a time as men ever had to engage with ... Attention to politics is a dangerous duty, and to no one ... more ... than to myself. I have a weakish head and a great inclination to please people, and I am therefore as likely as any man that ever came into office to do great jobs. I hope ... and ... feel sure that allowance must be made for the temptations in which we are placed. I am only placed in it because I thought that it was an imperative duty upon me to take office. And had I not thought so I should at the present moment be a happier man. I must however now buckle to and forget what I was and what my pursuits were ... I have hoisted the standard of reform in my advertisement to the freeholders of Northamptonshire.
Fitzwilliam mss, Althorp to Milton, 22 Nov. 1830.
He was triumphantly re-elected on 6 Dec. 1830,
the constant stretch in which my mind is kept very soon overcame the first terrible shock ... The necessity for the exertion very soon enabled me to make it. Our task is a very difficult one. At present we are very popular, but I suppose when it is seen how little we can do our popularity will be at an end. With respect to the corn laws, nothing can be done with them in an unreformed ... Commons. If we carry reform, as I feel pretty confident we can ... then will be the time for us to do good; till then we can only nibble at the various abuses of the present system. I have been a pretty strenuous advocate for reform a good while, but I never knew half the importance [of] and necessity for it till I became a minister.
Fitzwilliam mss.
Robert Price* had told Milton, 15 Dec.:
Althorp bears ... [the Commons] well, and puts down opposition by a conduct as plain and straightforward as that we used to see him display when sitting on the other side ... but still he is evidently annoyed by a want of confidence too early shown, and I believe, if he could have his choice would soon again be an independent Member and out of office.
Ibid.
Next day Creevey informed Miss Ord, ‘You have no conception how our Clunch is distinguishing himself in his speaking as well as honesty’.
Althorp had set his treasury team to work on tax collection and superannuations at the beginning of December 1830.
I think we must give way. Now as to going out, I have considered it maturely, and though personally I should not be disinclined to do it, yet upon the very same principles which induced me to come in, I think we are bound to stay, if we can, till we have tried the question of reform. I think our going out just now would be producing the greatest possible danger, therefore we cannot be justified in doing so. I think the right way to retreat is to say that my opinion remains unchanged, but that I find I cannot carry it and therefore must give it up.
He offered his own resignation, but Grey refused to accept it.
A more miserable figure was never cut than his; but how should it be otherwise? A respectable country gentlemen, well versed in rural administration, in farming and sporting, with all the integrity of £15,000 a year in possession and £50,000 in reversion, is all of a sudden made leader in the ... Commons without being able to speak, and chancellor of the exchequer without any knowledge, theoretical or practical, of finance. By way of being discreet, and that his plan may be a secret, he consults nobody: and then he closets himself with his familiar Poulett Thomson, who puts this notable scheme into his head, and out he blurts it in the House ... without an idea of how it will be received, without making either preparations for defending it or for an alternative in case of its rejection ... The opposition cannot contain themselves.
Greville Mems. ii. 116-19.
The Tory Thomas Gladstone* felt that Althorp had blundered ‘in introducing what he was not determined to stand up to’ and by failing to ‘consult any of the authorities usually and naturally consulted on such occasions’.
Althorp was not one of the committee of four (Russell, Durham, Graham and Duncannon) to whom the task of drafting the English reform bill was entrusted in late November 1830, but he and Grey had a close supervisory role. In the first instance, he drew up a set of minimum proposals, which included the disfranchisement of 100 ‘seats’, of which 42 would go to unrepresented manufacturing towns, and a £10 householder franchise in the boroughs. He also wanted the ballot, and got Duncannon to advocate this in the committee’s deliberations.
I sat next to Althorp, whom I like more and more daily. He has more simplicity and honesty about him than any man I ever knew. He laughed at the badgerings he has had in Parliament and said he cared less about them than he could have imagined, talked about his farms and his calves ... and his not having a minute night or day to himself ... He spoke most satisfactorily on the cordiality and union of the cabinet. Reform is to be brought on by Lord John Russell ... The government have thought it due to him not to take the question out of his hands, Althorp said he had always considered himself a pretty good radical before, but that he was ten times more so now, since he had been in office and had a peep behind the curtain.
Hatherton mss, Littleton to wife, 3 Feb. 1831.
Greville thought giving the introduction of the bill to Russell was a ‘pretence’ of a compliment to him, but was really an expedient to take the burden off Althorp, who was ‘wholly unequal to it’; but Brougham believed that he was entirely qualified to handle the measure if necessary.
During this distraction Poulett Thomson had kept Althorp au fait with exchange rates and the state of the bullion market.
Althorp’s part in guiding the reform bill through the hot, stinking, fractious and sometimes riotous Commons, 12 July-14 Sept. 1831, restored his battered reputation as a parliamentarian and did him great credit. On 11 July he held ‘an immense meeting of reformers’ at the foreign office to urge them to hang together, ‘never quit the House’ and ‘support the government by our votes rather than speeches’. He was cheered to the echo, but ‘stupid’ and ungrateful Milton declared his intention of moving various amendments.
I stand my work very well. The hot weather does better for the House ... than the cold because we have the windows all open and have therefore fresh air. The progress ... is terribly slow and the people are becoming terribly impatient. Their fury will be directed against the opposition, but they are also beginning to blame me for not doing what is impossible ... It is not quite agreeable to be found fault with by one’s friends, but there is this advantage in the impatience of the people, that it will prove to the ... Lords that the feeling in favour of the bill is not diminished.
Ibid. 26 July; Add. 75941, Althorp to Spencer, 28 July 1831.
On 29 July he asked Hobhouse, whom he was seeing about his factories regulation bill, ‘how the devil shall we get on with the [reform] bill?’ Hobhouse facetiously replied that ‘one way was not to let the attorney-general [Denman] make bad speeches’.
The temper, good nature, the firmness, the thorough understanding of all the points of legal difficulty in the clauses, exhibited by Althorp are admirable. In great debate he is nothing. As he said to me yesterday, ‘My memory then fails me - I forget my topics, but a committee is my forte’.
Three Diaries, 123.
Another observer praised the ‘calm, unpretending good sense, excellent temper and gentlemanlike feelings’ on which his authority over the House rested.
My being in office is nothing more or less than misery to me ... I have nothing to compensate me. I take no interest in any of my work. I see all of you interested in what you are doing, looking forward to success ... and therefore recompensed for present vexations and fatigues by the hope of future satisfaction. I have no such feelings of hope ... the only thing I can look forward to ... is the time when, consistently with my duty, I can be relieved from a situation to the duties of which I know I am unequal. This ... gives me ... some advantages, because it prevents me from being so much irritated as other people are by disappointments and attacks; for instance, being told I am incapable and unfit for my place has no effect upon me at all. I only rather wish that everybody would be convinced of it, for then I should at once be relieved.
Add. 76369.
Next day he wrote to his father:
Since I have taken the management of the reform bill into my own hands, I have been so overwhelmed with work that I have not had a moment to spare. We are going on slowly, but well, in the ... Commons. I fear we have but little chance in the ... Lords, making allowance even for any number of coronation peers which is consistent with decency. The danger from the rejection of the bill, and consequent dissolution of the ministry, is great; but the relief to me will be so enormous, that my patriotism is not sufficient to induce me to look forward to it with any other feeling but that of hope. I do not consider the danger to be so great as some people do. It will undoubtedly be very difficult to govern; but the people are so accustomed to obedience to the law, that I do not apprehend any actual tumult. I keep quite well. I was knocked up a good deal last night, for I had to speak so very often ... I fall asleep the instant I am in bed, and do not wake till I am called.
Le Marchant, 335.
Macaulay dined with him on the 27th and found him
extremely pleasant ... We congratulated Althorp on his good health and spirits. He told us that he never took exercise now, that from his getting up till four o’clock he was engaged in the business of his office; that at four he dined, went down to the House at five, and never stirred till the House rose, which is always after midnight; that he then went home, took a basin of arrow root with a glass of sherry in it, and went to bed, where he always dropped asleep in three minutes. ‘During the week’, said he, ‘which followed my taking office, I did not close my eyes for anxiety. Since that time I have never been awake a quarter an hour after taking off my clothes’ ... We talked about timidity in speaking. Althorp said that he had only just got over his apprehensions. ‘I was as much afraid’, he said, ‘last year as when I first came into Parliament. But now I am forced to speak so often that I am quite hardened. Last Thursday I was up forty times’. I was not much surprised at this in Althorp, as he is certainly one of the most modest men in existence ... [and] simplicity itself ... My opinion of Althorp is extremely high ... His character is the only stay of the ministry. I doubt whether any person has ever lived in England who, with no eloquence, no brilliant talents, no profound information, with nothing in short but plain good sense and an excellent heart, possessed as much influence both in and out of Parliament. His temper is an absolute miracle. He has been worse used than any minister ever was in debate; and he has never said one thing inconsistent, I do not say with gentlemanlike courtesy, but with real benevolence. His candour is absolutely a vice in debate. He is perpetually showing excuses and ways of escape to his adversaries which they would never find themselves ... Althorp has the temper of Lord North† with the principles of [Sir Samuel] Romilly†. If he had the oratorical powers of either, he might do anything. But his understanding, though just, is slow; and his elocution painfully defective. It is however only justice to say to him that he has done more service to the reform bill even as a debater than all the other ministers together, Stanley excepted.
Macaulay Letters, ii. 89-91.
A brief illness kept him from the House on 30 and 31 Aug., but he was back there on 1 Sept., when he explained and defended the plans for the boundary commission, which was ‘rather too hard work for a convalescent to begin with’, though he was ‘not the worse for it’ next day. ‘Surprised’ not yet to have had ‘a great fall’, he supposed ‘I shall hold my popularity till we are all turned out together, and that is all ... that I can wish’.
Althorp endorsed the Scottish reform bill, 23 Sept. 1831. (He had had discussions on it with Henry Cockburn, the Scottish solicitor-general, who wrote that ‘everyone admits and admires [his] ... candour, plainness, sense and honesty ... but I am much struck with his talent’.)
A majority of 41 is not to be coped with ... The reasonable part of the country would not support us in making 50 peers. I am sure neither Grey nor myself can stay in unless we have a reasonable prospect of carrying a measure as large as the one we lost; and I do not see how we can say that we have a reasonable prospect of doing this ... According to ... [the] ordinary rule, we ought to resign. I am inclined to think ... that this is the only mode of carrying reform [which] will never pass the ... Lords unless it is brought forward by its enemies, as the Catholic question was. There is a great meeting of reforming Members ... today ... and much may depend upon it. I am sure our cabinet will break to pieces; but if I saw my own course clearly, which at present I do not, I should ... take my own line and form a government, if the means were placed at my disposal, whichever of my colleagues resigned; or, if the means were not placed at my disposal, state that this was the reason why I did not do so.
Le Marchant, 354; Baring Jnls. i. 89-90; Lady Lyttelton Corresp. 263.
The cabinet agreed that on Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct., Althorp should, as the only minister to speak, declare that the government would resign unless they were able to bring in a new reform bill at least ‘as efficient’ as the last one. (Grey was to say the same in the Lords.) Palmerston, a reluctant reformer, unhappy with this, protested to Grey and argued that the only realistic way to secure reform was to modify the bill significantly. Althorp assured the premier that he ‘never had an idea of pledging Palmerston to anything’, but had been aware of his unease and would not say a word by which he would be ‘individually compromised’.
The Tories are now very much frightened by what they have done; and the leaders of the political unions are equally frightened, as they find they have set a machine in motion which they cannot control ... The speech I have to make tonight is terrific; one word in its wrong place may produce the most disastrous consequences. If we can weather the next fortnight without a convulsion, everything will do. But just now the crisis is rather awful.
Le Marchant, 355.
His speech, in which he asserted that ‘by temperance, steadiness and perseverance, the cause of parliamentary reform must ultimately triumph’, was a great success.
at his dinner, and so hurried and uneasy a meal I never saw ... He looked fagged and ill, just out of a long cabinet sitting, and before he had eaten one cutlet, arrived the governor of the Bank ... I felt quite oppressed with the air of Downing Street, and envying for Althorp every dandy and lounger I met afterwards with no responsibility on his mind.
Lady Lyttelton Corresp. 264.
In the House, 19 Oct. 1831 Althorp (who was reported to General Dyott to have had ‘the strongest propensity to republicanism’ since his boyhood) said that the Birmingham Political Union’s petition for a creation of peers, though a marginal case, should be received, and, moving the prorogation, reiterated ministers’ determination to introduce a new reform bill at least as extensive as the one rejected by the Lords.
His period of rural respite was brief, for with Bristol in flames and unrest rife throughout the country, he was obliged to be back in London by 31 Oct. 1831. He organized precautions, which included bringing up guns from Woolwich and supplying the Bank with hand grenades, in case the White Conduit meeting on 7 Nov. went ahead. He was pleased that the new National Political Union, of which Burdett somewhat reluctantly became the president, did not seem to be flourishing, believing that such ‘associations are really revolutionary’, for ‘revolutions do not originate in riots like those at Bristol’.
an amusing account of the manner in which the late bill was drawn and prepared. He seemed to speak of Mr. Gregson’s draft of the bill in terms of very qualified praise - ‘It was drawn decently enough ... and yet when we came to get the great lawyers to look at it, they pulled every clause to pieces. I was obliged to make them all meet at my house, and to work with them, and so little would they pull together, when I was not with them, that ... [when] I returned from a cabinet ... I always found them disputing about the very point which was under discussion when I left. The consequence was we were ill prepared, and obliged to make daily changes in the bill, as we advanced, and it frequently happened that at the hour at which the House met the amended clause was not drawn ...’. All this he said with much merriment ... [and] the same glee that he would have formerly talked of direful scrapes with his fox hounds after they were well got over.
Hatherton diary.
During November he worked with Russell in a bid to improve the bill and make it more palatable to the ‘Waverer’ peers. He successfully resisted Russell’s wish to transfer urban freeholders from the counties to the boroughs, but made some other concessions. Their attempt to eliminate the single Member constituencies (schedules B and D) came to nothing.
I feel what I believe to be an insurmountable objection to overwhelming the ... Lords by a large creation ... but ... if it was clearly proved to me that a revolution would be the consequence of not taking this step, and that not only the ... Lords, but every other thing of value ... would be overturned, it would be a very strong thing to say that it ought not to be taken. I should prefer making use of the privileges of the Commons for the purpose of forcing the ... Lords, to using this prerogative of the crown ... Both, however, are desperate expedients ... If ... [Graham] perseveres in bringing the matter forward, and with the intention of resigning in case of failure, our days are numbered ... We are supposed by the reformers to have the full support of the king to the utmost extent of his prerogative ... I do not feel so much objection to requiring of the king that he should put this power in our hands - the possession of it would render the use of it unnecessary. If the king refused to give it to us, and we resigned now, our measure is carried; for no other ministry could be formed, and we should come back with such an overwhelming strength that the ... Lords must give way at once.
Le Marchant, 370-2.
Receipt of a letter from his father which advocated ‘making a great many peers’ surprised him, but he did not immediately change his mind. Yet he argued to Grey that if Graham went out ‘the people will desert us because we have not followed his advice and the peers, knowing we have not secured the power ... will be totally unmanageable’. In that case, with no ‘reasonable chance of carrying the bill’, he and Grey were ‘pledged to resign’.
was instructing himself and his legal supporters ... how to defend his bill. He gave a dinner to ten lawyers, friends of the bill, among whom ... [was] Gregson ... After dinner Althorp and Gregson challenged the party to attack the bill. They went through it clause by clause, Campbell being the its acutest attacker; but Althorp always, except in two clauses, which were altered, being voted victor.
Hatherton diary.
On the address, 6 Dec. 1831, he defended the early recall of Parliament, said that renewal of the Bank and East India Company charters would be attended to in due course, declared that the revised reform bill would ‘satisfy the just expectations of the great majority of the people of England’ and accepted an amendment to the paragraph dealing with the treaty with Belgium. On 11 Dec. he was present at the inconclusive interview between Wharncliffe, Harrowby and Chandos, and Grey and Brougham: Chandos reported that he ‘sat saying nothing, with his hands in his pockets, and then, after an hour, went away to Fishmongers’ Hall’, where he and Russell were sworn in as members of the Company.
On issues relating to his department, he told Grey that conceding ‘anything like prohibition’ to distressed Coventry silk weavers ‘would be ruinous to all our hopes of friendly commercial intercourse with France’ and would ‘injure the manufacturers of every other place’; and that the pensions of the widows of officers of the German Legion were probably indefensible, as ‘pensions are the greatest grievance that presses upon the finances of the country’.
out on both sides of my account both in receipts and expenditure ... Instead of my having a surplus of £493,479 as I stated in October, I have a deficiency of £698,858. This is much too large, but we must endeavour to meet it by reduction of estimates. I must admit that my financial operations have not been brilliant, and you would have done just right ... if you had thrown me overboard as I recommended the day after my budget. You cannot do so now, at least until we have got the reform bill through, and you will therefore suffer for my rashness.
Add. 76373.
He was ‘full of sorrow and alarm’ about the finances and this latest blunder, of which opposition soon got wind.
Althorp had been worried about the state of Ireland and O’Connell’s intransigence since mid-December 1831, but he was eager to avoid coercion if at all possible.
Althorp opened the business. Surely never was there such a figure for an orator - especially to my eye - who had seen there on similar occasions Castlereagh, with his elegant and well-dressed figure and high-bred carriage, and Canning, with his air of quickness and intelligence greater than ever distinguished man. There stood Althorp at the top of the room, with his stout, honest face, and farmer-like figure, habited in ill-made black clothes, his trousers rucked up in a heap round his legs, one coat flap turned around, and exposing his posterior, and the pocket of the other crammed full of papers - his hat held awkwardly in one hand and his large snuff box in the other, with which he kept playing the devil’s tattoo on his thigh - while he briefly and bluntly told his plain, unsophisticated tale with his usual correct feeling and stout sense, and was warmly responded to by the whole party.
Three Diaries, 205-6.
In the House that evening he supported Smith Stanley’s motion to consider and reform Irish tithes, which was carried by 314-31; but he feared the consequences of Sheil’s ‘covert attack’ on the Irish reform bill.
Althorp, who frankly and disarmingly admitted in private to the ‘strongest prejudices of the old Tory school’ which he had cast off at Cambridge, got the Commons into committee on the English reform bill on 20 Jan. 1832. A week later he told his father that having just obtained Hansard for the period 18 July-13 Aug. 1831, he was ‘amused at seeing my name in the index with such a string of numbers to it’ as indicated that he had ‘spoken 292 times’.
[He] avowed that, though it was a very shocking doctrine to promulgate, he must say that he had never sacrificed his own inclinations to a sense of duty without repenting it, and always found himself more substantially unhappy for having exerted himself for the public good! We all combated this atrocious heresy the best way we could; but he maintained it with an air of sincerity, and a half earnest, half humorous face, and a dexterity of statement, that was quite striking. I wish you could have seen his beaming eye and benevolent lips kindling as he answered us, and dealt out his natural familiar repartee with the fearlessness as if of perfect sincerity, and the artlessness of one who sought no applause, and despised all risk of misconstruction, and the thought that this was the leader of the English House of Commons, - no speculator, or discourser, or adventurer, - but a man of sense and business, of the highest rank, and the largest experience both of affairs and society.
Cockburn, Jeffrey, i. 322; ii. 243-4.
Althorp carried by 215-89 the proposal to divide a number of counties, 27 Jan.; successfully resisted amendments to the £10 franchise (now based on rates rather than rent), 3 Feb.; saw off Hunt’s attempt to lay the cost of booths and hustings on local authorities, 15 Feb., and secured the disfranchisement of Appleby (by 256-143), 21 Feb., and the partial disfranchisement of Helston (by 256-179), 23 Feb. He opposed and defeated (by 316-236) a Conservative amendment to get rid of the metropolitan districts, 28 Feb. On 2 Mar. he denied having stated that the bill was ‘not to be considered as a final measure’. On the 10th he presented the report and then went for a ride. There was serious talk in cabinet of his taking a peerage to conduct the bill through the Lords, as neither Grey nor Brougham felt equal to the task. The idea held strong appeal for him, not least because it would free him from the trammels of the ‘odious’ exchequer, but it foundered on the lack of a suitable man to replace him as leader of the Commons.
From the beginning of the year Althorp had been tormented by the problem of whether to seek a creation of peers to get the measure through the Lords, which divided the cabinet and put him at odds with Grey, whom he had come almost to venerate and was reluctant to oppose. The king’s acquiescence in mid-January in the cabinet’s request that he pledge himself to create as many peers as proved necessary provided a temporary respite; but by the middle of February, when Althorp was determined to resign if the government were unable to send the bill to the Upper House without ‘a moral certainty’ of carrying it, and Grey, hoping that the ‘Waverers’ would secure the second reading, was now quite averse to pressing mass creations on the king, they seemed to be on a collision course. Althorp, who had removed his pistols from his bedroom to avoid the temptation to shoot himself in despair, and still spoke to Hobhouse of suicide as a way out of his torment, perceived that his own resignation would wreck the government, but that the likely outcome of that would be his succession as premier of a reform ministry kept in power by popular pressure, a prospect which appalled him. But he decided that he had no choice but conscientiously to try to convince Grey of the imperative need to insist on a creation and to resign, whatever the consequences, if this was refused. The cabinet was still divided and the issue unresolved when the bill passed the Commons, but Althorp was initially persuaded by Grey’s plea for caution and threat to resign to try the Lords without the promise of a creation.
I am not sure that we shall be justified in going on till Monday [9th, when the second reading in the Lords was due to start] unless His Majesty gives way, for we must have the power of acting instantly, or we shall be ruined in our characters, in case we are beaten. I think by resigning now we might save a rag of character, but it is very doubtful whether we ought to give up our chance of success, considering that our resignation will be almost as bad as the defeat itself for the peace of the country. I think I must secure a passage in some packet for New York and have four horses to my carriage ready for the division in the ... Lords.
He anticipated a ‘small majority’ for the second reading, but an early defeat in committee, whereupon ‘they would propose 60 peers, the king would refuse, they would resign’, and Peel would ‘come in and ... propose a moderate reform bill, which they would support’.
I was led up to his dressing-room, where I found him sitting on a stool in a dark duffle dressing-gown, with his arms (very rough and hairy) bare above the elbows, and his beard half-shaved and half staring through the lather, with a desperate razor in one hand and a great soap-brush in the other. He gave me the loose finger of his brush hand, and with the twinkle of his bright eye and radiant smile, he said, ‘You need not be anxious about your Scotch bill for tonight, for I have the pleasure to tell you, we are no longer His Majesty’s ministers’.
Jeffrey later recounted that on the following day Althorp bought plants for his garden at Althorp and wrote detailed ‘plans for their arrangement’.
If it fails it will facilitate the formation of a new government, and if it succeeds will ensure the dissolution of Parliament and lose the great advantage we have gained in keeping the reform bill in existence so that it may be passed by the Lords, mutilated perhaps, but still must come back to us in a form to give to popular rights a great advantage. I am naturally in a state of considerable excitement, but it does not disturb my sleep, and I am quite well.
He failed to stop Ebrington from making his motion, 10 May, but made clear his disapproval of its timing when he spoke for it. He also said, ‘in the most impassive manner, plainly and resolutely’, as Hobhouse described it, that the ‘advice’ which had been spurned had been for the creation of enough peers to carry the bill: ‘here the most tremendous cheers burst out from all quarters of the House’.
got upon the table to speak ... [and was received] with shouts and huzzas that must have been heard down to St. James’s Palace. I took a decided line against the proposal ... and succeeded ... in bringing them to my opinion. This is very satisfactory, as it shows that my influence is complete and that it will depend upon me what line our party will take ... Wellington’s having accepted office, pledged as I believe he is to carry through our reform bill with very few alterations, is ... the most disgraceful act of political profligacy ... ever ... recorded. But we must not let our anger get the better of our honesty and we must support the bill in whosoever hands it is.
Life of Campbell, ii. 10; Three Diaries, 251; Le Marchant, 429; Add, 75941, Althorp to Spencer, 14 May 1832.
He stressed this in the House, 14 May, speaking ‘with more warmth than usual’.
On 31 May 1832 he deplored press libels on public figures, but said government would not prosecute the publishers. He had to convince the king that it would be foolish to proceed against his libelers.
On 5 Oct. 1832 Althorp replied to Milton’s argument that it was his ‘duty to live at Althorp’ during the election campaign:
It is the endeavour to perform my duty which has placed me in the situation I now hold ... which makes me so miserable that my wish for death is only mitigated by the sanguine hope that I shall not remain long in this situation, and the intention whenever I can get out of it without producing mischief to others of returning to private life. This you will say I ought to have thought of before I took office. I did so. I expected that I should sacrifice my happiness, but I certainly did not expect to acquire so much positive misery ... No one who has not tried what it is for a man accustomed to the habits of a country life to tie himself up in laborious office has a right to be the judge.
Wentworth Woodhouse mss G17/2.
At the general election of 1832 he was returned unopposed for Northamptonshire South, having considered an invitation from the reformers of Tower Hamlets when an expensive county contest briefly threatened.
Greville, who did not know him well, but had ‘a great respect and esteem for him’, wrote:
No man ever died with a fairer character, or more generally regretted. In his county he was exceedingly beloved and respected ... He had neither the brilliant or even plausible exterior which interests and captivates vulgar imaginations, but he had sterling qualities of mind and character which made him one of the most useful and valuable, as well as one of the best and most amiable men of his day. He was the very model and type of an English gentleman ... Modest without diffidence, confident without vanity, ardently desiring the good of his country, without the slightest personal ambition, he took that part in public affairs which his station and his opinions prompted, and he marched through the maze of politics with that straightforward bravery, which was the result of sincerity, singleness of purpose, the absence of all selfishness, and a true, genuine, but unpretending patriotism ... The greatest homage that ever was rendered to character and public virtue was exhibited in his popularity and authority during the four eventful years when he led the Whig government and party in the ... Commons. Without one showy accomplishment, without wit to amuse or eloquence to persuade, with a voice unmelodious and a manner ungraceful, and barely able to speak plain sense in still plainer language, he exercised in the House ... an influence and even a dominion greater than any leader either after or before him ... His friends followed the plain and simple man with enthusiastic devotion, and he possessed the faculty of disarming his political antagonists of all bitterness and animosity towards him; he was regarded in the House ... with sentiments akin to those of personal affection, with a boundless confidence and a universal esteem.
Greville Mems. v. 230-2.
In an article written soon after his death, Russell observed:
His diligence was indefatigable, his sagacity quick, his judgement seldom at fault ... If he ever fell into a mistake, it was from ... a trusting, believing, hoping nature ... His views were large and comprehensive ... Above all, his opinions upon questions both speculative and practical, were guided by a humble reliance on the goodness of God; and a conviction that he was bound in whatever he might think or do ... to follow the law of Christ ... The simplicity of his character ... made him understood, beloved and trusted beyond any man in [the Commons]... This was the more remarkable, as his tongue was far from eloquent; and, although his arguments were sound and comprehensive, he was so often wanting in words as to be obscure ... But the confidence of his friends, his party, and the country, supplied all deficiencies, and gave to his few and simple expressions, as much influence over his audience as had ever been obtained by the most admired eloquence of our greatest orators.
Edinburgh Rev. lxxxiii (1846), 251.
Brougham paid tribute to him in his autobiography:
Nobody ever hated office as he did ... He often said, when he got up in the morning, he wished he might be dead before night, but he always went through his duty manfully. There never was a man of real merit who had an opinion of himself so unaffectedly modest. Without a particle of cant, he was most deeply imbued with religion, and this, perhaps as well as any other part of his nature, indisposed him to exert himself to attain the usual objects of earthly ambition. Always undervaluing himself, he never could comprehend why he had attained so high a position in public life, and frequently expressed his astonishment at the great power he was conscious of exercising over men of all kinds and natures ... which proceeded from the complete conviction which all men felt in his thorough honesty and simple love of truth ... His powers were great. His ability was never so remarkably shown as in the reform bill ... He had a knowledge of all its details, and of all the numberless matters connected with it, that was almost supernatural.
Brougham, iii. 253-4.
His career, Greville wrote, personified ‘the simple and unostentatious practice of public and private virtue’.