John Dunning began his legal career in the office of his father, a country attorney, and ended as the foremost advocate of his day. Shelburne, his political patron, wrote of him:
He had the greatest power of reasoning which can be conceived, and such a habit of it that he could not slight a cause, no more than an able artist could suffer a piece of work to go imperfect from his hands. He could not pass a link in the chain, and had such a faculty of arrangement that he would take an absolute chaos of matter and return it to you in an instant so clear and distinct as of itself to present a proper judgment without need of discussion ... His industry, his liberality, his acuteness added to his capacity, procured him the personal confidence, reverence, and attachment of almost all the great families, who always found him no less a gentleman than he was a lawyer. The only doubt was whether he excelled most at equity or common law. There was none as to anybody’s coming up to him in either.
Chatham, who met him for the first time in December 1770, had an equally high opinion. ‘Mr. Dunning ... is another being from any I have known of the profession’, he wrote to Shelburne on 3 Dec. 1770.
Dunning became prominent in 1764 as a result of the law cases which followed Wilkes’s arrest, and about this time he became friendly with Shelburne. On 9 Nov. 1765 he wrote to inform Shelburne that he had been offered through a friend (presumably authorized by the Rockingham Administration) a silk gown and a seat in Parliament—‘your Lordship’s wishes will determine mine either to do so [accept] or break off the treaty entirely’, he wrote.
Dunning’s appointment in January 1768 to be solicitor-general surprised contemporaries, for Shelburne’s influence in the Administration was declining rapidly. It probably owed a good deal to Camden, who was Dunning’s close friend. At the general election of 1768 Dunning was brought into Parliament by Shelburne, but did not resign with Shelburne and Barré in October. He hesitated a good deal, consulted Barré, talked about his wishing to resign, and finally allowed himself to be persuaded by Camden to stay.
He remained for over a year in office under Grafton, an awkward and anomalous position, for Shelburne was in open Opposition. On 8 Nov. 1768 he made his first recorded speech in the House.
Both Grenville and Burke attacked the chancellor violently [Rigby reported to Bedford
9 Nov. 1769, Bedford mss 57, f. 224. ] as having with Lord Chatham been the principal cause of the American disturbances. Dunning defended his friend, but not with such abilities as I think promise to make so great a figure in the House of Commons as he does at the bar.
Similarly, Walpole writes that his ‘fame did not rise ... in proportion to the celebrity he had attained at the bar’;
When in December 1768 the affair of Wilkes’s libel was about to come before the House, Dunning, writes Grafton,
differed in opinion with most of the King’s servants as to the mode of conducting the accusation. This offended Lord North much more than it need have done: he complained to me the next day most bitterly, and entreated me to desire Lord Camden to see Mr. Dunning upon it; which I did, though very reluctantly, seeing that Lord North was so much affected.
Camden took Dunning’s part; but, continues Grafton:
The prejudice of Lord North against Mr. Dunning was not removed by this explanation of ours, nor could he be brought to treat him with that confidence which the situation of the other had a right to expect from the minister of the House of Commons.
North had good reason to complain, for Dunning gave little assistance in the House of Commons; and when he did speak was trimming and inconclusive.
On 9 Jan. 1770, when the Middlesex question was renewed after the re-emergence of Chatham, Dunning voted with Opposition and shortly afterwards resigned. Henceforth he adhered strictly to Shelburne. During the greater part of North’s Administration Dunning and Barré were Shelburne’s only followers of consequence in the Commons. Dunning, though an inferior debater to Barré, was of great weight in the House, and seems to have reserved himself for the more important debates. Yet he never quite attained the front rank of parliamentary speakers.
After the defeat of Burke’s economical reform bill in March 1780, Dunning took the lead in the Commons of the movement to reduce the influence of the Crown. On 6 Apr. he introduced two resolutions, designed to secure the widest measure of support: ‘that the influence of the Crown has increased, is increasing, and ought to be diminished’ (the famous ‘Dunning’s motion’);
On 25 Mar. 1782 Dunning announced to the House the formation of the Rockingham Administration.
I have always given myself the credit enough with your Lordship to have it believed, and not imputed to a silly affectation, that instead of desiring I have a perfect dread of any office of any sort, proceeding from a perfect satisfaction with my present situation, an apprehension that I cannot change it with credit to myself or advantage to my friends, and that as far as such talents as mine can be of any use they may be better employed where I am.
But Shelburne’s wishes prevailed. Dunning was made a peer and entered the Cabinet; and the duchy of Lancaster, with a pension of £4000 p.a., was conferred on him until the chief justiceship of the King’s bench should become vacant. His acceptance of a pension was criticized in the House, and his profession of disinterestedness, made when he was in opposition,
In the interregnum following Shelburne’s defeat in Feb. 1783 Ashburton was frequently consulted by the King.