STEWART, Patrick Maxwell (1795-1846), of Ardgowan, Renfrew and 11 Upper Brook Street, London; later of 11 Chapel Street, Grosvenor Square, London

From a Scottish landowning family, Stewart, a West India merchant, sat as Liberal MP for Lancaster in the 1830s and Renfrewshire in the 1840s. He was described by The Times as ‘upright, candid, and independent’, and fellow MPs asserted that ‘no other representative from Scotland possessed the same influence’ in the House, aided by Stewart’s ‘affability and good humour, accompanied with an incessant flow of unlaboured wit’.1The Times, 22 Jan. 1836; Glasgow Post, cited in The Times, 3 Nov. 1846. Displaying ‘graceful, sprightly, and vigorous eloquence’ in the chamber,2The English Presbyterian Messenger (Dec. 1846), 324. he was ‘the very mouth-piece of the Colonial interest’.3This was Sir George Strickland’s description of him: Hansard, 29 Mar. 1838, vol. 42, c. 46. He also became ‘a great Free Church hero’, defending its interests after the Disruption of 1843.4Morning Post, 28 July 1845.

The Shaw Stewart family had long been settled in Renfrewshire, where Stewart’s father inherited extensive estates (and a baronetcy) in 1812, including considerable property in Greenock. These passed to Stewart’s brother Michael in 1825, as did the plantations in Trinidad and Tobago which their father had developed after switching from the Baltic to the West India trade on Stewart’s advice.5HP Commons, 1820-32, vi. 75, 283. A London-based merchant, Stewart became agent for Tobago in 1826 (although this was not formally ratified for some time) and joined the standing committee of West India planters in 1829. He decided against contesting Lancaster in 1830, but was returned unopposed as ‘a decided reformer’ for a vacancy in March 1831 and again at the general election two months later.6Ibid, vi. 284. Alongside his involvement in the West India trade, Stewart acquired numerous other commercial interests during the 1830s and 1840s,7He was the unsuccessful candidate for the chairmanship of the committee of Lloyd’s Register of Shipping in 1834: The Times, 22 Jan. 1834. becoming a director of at least two insurance companies and several, mostly Scottish, railway companies.8Morning Post, 27 Dec. 1832; London Gazette, 9 June 1843; H. Tuck, The railway directory for 1846 (1846), 7, 56, 100, 133; H. Glynn, Reference book to the incorporated railway companies of Scotland (1847), 29. He was chairman of the West India Steam Navigation Company and (from 1845) of the Peninsula and Oriental Steam Navigation Company.9Morning Post, 7 Aug. 1845. He was also a director of the Royal Mail Steam Packet Company: PP 1840 (287), xliv. 241.

Stewart had, meanwhile, been re-elected unopposed for Lancaster in 1832. Although on the hustings he promised to support ‘measures, and not men’, he endorsed the Grey ministry’s ‘liberal and enlightened principles’. He called for the speedy abolition of the window tax and the ‘taxes on knowledge’, the removal of commercial monopolies and a readjustment of the currency. Striking a self-justificatory note, he described it as ‘his misfortune, not his fault’ to be involved with slavery. While he ‘hated and detested slavery in itself’, he warned of the difficulties of dismantling such a long-established system. Decrying those who courted popularity by advocating immediate abolition, he promised to vote for emancipation once ‘it would be a boon and not a curse’ to the slaves.10Lancaster Gazette, 15 Dec. 1832.

Reviewing his first Reformed Parliament, Stewart described himself as ‘generally a supporter’ of Whig ministers, but ‘had given more than one substantial proof of independence, by opposing some of their most favourite measures’.11Lancaster Gazette, 10 Jan. 1835. Never particularly assiduous in the division lobbies, he voted against the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, and shorter parliaments, 23 July 1833. He divided for a low fixed duty on corn, 17 May 1833, 7 Mar. 1834, and endorsed opening the universities to Dissenters, 17 Apr. 1834. A ‘clever and active man of business’,12Caledonian Mercury, 5 Nov. 1846. Stewart proved useful in the committee-rooms, sitting on the select committees on the sale of corn, the bankrupts’ estates bill and the bankrupts (Scotland) bill.13PP 1834 (517), vii. 2; PP 1834 (262), xviii. 200; CJ (1834), lxxxix. 420. He also served on the inquiry into the grievances of Lower Canada, where he had interests as a founder and director of the British American Land Company.14PP 1834 (449), xviii. 240; Public Ledger & Daily Advertiser, 11 Feb. 1832, 20 Aug. 1833.

Stewart’s ‘courteous manners’ secured ‘a patient and attentive hearing’ for his Commons speeches. Relating largely to his own commercial concerns, they were delivered ‘with much fluency and ease’.15Caledonian Mercury, 5 Nov. 1846. His first contribution in this Parliament backed Matthias Attwood’s proposed inquiry into the monetary system, 24 Apr. 1833. Unsurprisingly, most of his interventions in 1833 focused on the abolition of slavery. In a lengthy speech, 30 May 1833, he was unafraid to make the ‘unpopular’ assertion that ‘the planters had a right of property in their slaves’, and asked ‘what species of property could be considered safein this country, if their property in slaves, which had been secured by Acts of Parliament since the days of Elizabeth, was not to be considered legal and secure property?’ Even the leading abolitionist Thomas Fowell Buxton commended the ‘sincerity, and the great power and good humour’ with which Stewart ‘so ably advocated the cause of the West Indians’.16Hansard, 30 May 1833, vol. 18, c. 157. Stewart routinely attended meetings of the West India interest,17See, for example, Morning Post, 13 May 1833; Morning Chronicle, 20 May 1833. and participated in private negotiations with Lord Howick in the hopes of securing better compensation terms for the slave-owners.18I. Gross, ‘The abolition of negro slavery and British parliamentary politics’, HJ, 23 (1980), 69; N. Draper, The price of emancipation (2009), 97-9. (He would himself receive £2,293 8s. 3d. compensation for slaves in Tobago in 1836.)19https://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/27895 He spoke on the related issue of foreign competition for colonial sugar, 17 & 24 July 1833, 28 Feb. 1834. As chairman of the London and Westminster bank, which began trading in March 1834,20Morning Post, 22 Aug. 1833; J. W. Gilbart, The principles and practice of banking (1871), 462. he attended to its interests in Parliament, backing the second and third readings of the London and Westminster bank bill, 7 and 26 May 1834.21He was a majority teller when the third reading was carried: CJ (1834), lxxxix. 329. This measure, intended to give the bank powers to sue and be sued in the names of its officers, foundered in the Lords: Gilbart, Principles and practice of banking, 462.

Spared a contest in 1835, Stewart expressed his desire to go to Parliament ‘free and unfettered’, although his political sympathies lay with the late Grey ministry. He was scathing about the Tamworth manifesto, describing the Tories as ‘mocking-birds’ copying Whig measures. He reassured his constituents that he would reform but not destroy the Church, applying surplus revenues to supporting and educating the poor.22Lancaster Gazette, 10 Jan. 1835. Having asserted on the hustings that ‘he would neither be factious in his opposition, nor should he blindly attach himself to any government’, Stewart divided for the Whig James Abercromby as speaker, 19 Feb., but supported Peel’s ministry on the address, 26 Feb. 1835. Explaining why he was ‘reluctantly … voting against thosewith whom he was wont to co-operate’, he declared that the government should receive ‘an honest and just trial’, although he would not be ‘a passive tool to all their measures’. He again voted with Peel on the malt tax, 10 Mar., but divided for Russell’s motion on the Irish church, 2 Apr. 1835, which brought Peel’s ministry down. He subsequently backed Melbourne’s ministry on the Irish church and Irish municipal reform in 1836.

Increasingly active in the committee-rooms, Stewart chaired the committee on the Ipswich election petition, which also prompted several contributions to debate in 1835, as the Commons dealt with individuals who had absconded to avoid giving evidence.23PP 1835 (286), ix. 89. See his speeches of 10, 11, 12, 15, 26 and 29 June, 22 July and 3 Aug. 1835. His name appeared with that of James Loch on a bill to amend the law on salmon fisheries in Scotland, and he sat on the related select committees, but this measure did not come to fruition.24PP 1835 (232), iv. 138; PP 1835 (601), xx. 875; PP 1836 (56), v. 12; PP 1836 (561), v. 22; PP 1836 (393), xviii. 2; PP 1837 (26), iv. 138. Stewart was one of two names mooted to be added to the select committee on fictitious votes (Scotland), but the House selected Edward Divett instead, 17 Feb. 1837. He also sat on the select committees on charities in England and Wales; the Weights and Measures Act; arts and manufactures; standing orders on railway bills; and slave apprenticeships in the colonies.25PP 1835 (449), vii. 632; PP 1835 (292), xviii. 490; PP 1835 (598), v. 376; PP 1836 (568), ix. 14; PP 1836 (511), xxi. 233; PP 1836 (560), xv. 2; PP 1837 (510), vii. 746. Having served on the inquiry into the timber duties, he dissented from its recommendation that the level of colonial preference should be reduced, 3 Sept. 1835.26PP 1835 (519), xix. 2.

Stewart made occasional interventions on Scottish questions in this Parliament, but it was commercial and colonial matters which preoccupied him. He downplayed the grievances expressed in petitions from Lower Canada, 9 Mar. 1835, and presented a counter-petition a week later. He spoke in support of Russell’s resolutions on Canadian government, 6 Mar., 14 and 21 Apr. 1837. He continued to be an articulate spokesman for the West India interest, arguing against the equalisation of the sugar duties until the planters had recovered from abolition, 19 June 1835, 22 June 1836. He was also attentive to British mercantile interests elsewhere, warning Lord Palmerston, the foreign secretary, against being too trusting of Russia, whose aggrandisement threatened trade with Turkey, 19 Feb. 1836. One report described this speech as ‘a cruel hit from a zealous and consistent, but independent Whig’.27Blackburn Standard, 2 Mar. 1836. He again highlighted Russian aggression, 20 Apr. 1836, but dropped his motion after Palmerston, who praised Stewart’s ‘very able and eloquent speech’, agreed to send a diplomatic mission to Cracow and promised attention to British commercial interests around the Black Sea.28Stewart later pointed out, 30 June 1842, that while he had been branded a ‘visionary alarmist’ for highlighting Russian aggression in 1836, subsequent events had vindicated him. He presented a petition from Glasgow’s merchants urging ministers to compel the Dutch to adhere to an 1824 treaty regarding British trade with Java, 27 June 1836, and pressed the matter, 12 Aug. 1836, 7 Mar. 1837.

In 1837 Stewart faced his first contested election at Lancaster. His hustings speech was much applauded, but he finished third in the poll, with the Conservatives taking both seats.29Kendal Mercury, 29 July 1837. Following his defeat it was rumoured that he would offer for North Lancashire, and he was mentioned for potential vacancies at Glasgow in 1837-8 and Perth in 1840, but none of these transpired.30Preston Chronicle, 29 July 1837; Derby Mercury, 6 Sept. 1837; The Times, 15 June 1838, 31 Mar. 1840. In February 1841 the Edinburgh Gazette reported that he was on ‘a borough hunting expedition in the north’.31Lancaster Gazette, 20 Feb. 1841.

That June Stewart began canvassing in Renfrewshire, which his brother Michael had represented until his death in 1836.32Some reports suggested that Stewart may initially have been canvassing on behalf of his brother Houston, a naval captain serving in the Mediterranean: The Times, 19 June 1841. Lauding Stewart as ‘a real Reformer’, the Caledonian Mercury recorded that his ‘abilities, eloquence, and amiable manners’ had won him ‘the good opinion even of his opponents’.33Caledonian Mercury, 1 July 1841. On the hustings at the general election he endorsed the Liberal ministry’s proposals to reduce the sugar and coffee duties and introduce a fixed duty on corn, although he counselled that cheap bread alone would not resolve all the country’s problems.34Caledonian Mercury, 10 July 1841. Stewart subsequently ascribed his victory over his Conservative opponent to his ‘unflinching’ advocacy of free trade and his defence of the Church of Scotland’s ‘independence’.35Hansard, 25 Aug. 1841, vol. 59, c. 224. The latter secured him support from the non-intrusionists, who objected to the right of lay patrons to appoint ministers in the Church of Scotland against the wishes of parishioners.36Glasgow Herald, 2 Nov. 1846.

Again active in the committee-rooms, Stewart chaired the committees on the Weymouth and Ipswich election petitions.37The Times, 16 Mar. 1842; PP 1842 (516), vii. 276. The Ipswich committee was that on the petition relating to the 1842 double by-election rather than the 1841 general election. The Conservative press considered their subsequent unseating of four Conservative MPs unnecessarily harsh and mocked Stewart’s ‘rigid virtue’.38The Standard, 9 Aug. 1842. See also Ibid, 4 Aug. 1842. He defended the Ipswich decision, 8 Aug. 1842, which had put him in the ‘painful situation’ of unseating ‘one of his oldest friends’, Thomas Gladstone. He also served on the inquiries into the Lagan navigation bill; economic distress in Paisley; Scottish prisons; the printing of material by the Commons; and the colonial accounts.39PP 1842 (537), xiv. 418; PP 1843 (115), vii. 113; PP 1845 (460), xiii. 396; PP 1845 (520), viii. 2; PP 1846 (685), xv. 144. He was subsequently discharged from attendance on the committee on colonial accounts. He generally joined the Liberals in the division lobbies. Reversing his earlier vote, he divided for the ballot, 21 June 1842. However, he entered the opposite lobby from many of his party to vote against a ten hour factory day, 13 May 1844, and was in the minorities against the Dissenters’ chapels bill, 6 and 28 June 1844, and the Maynooth grant, 18 Apr. and 21 May 1845. For Stewart, Peel’s action on Maynooth – trying ‘to cure a grievance of which the Roman Catholics never complained’ –contrasted starkly with his failure to address the Church of Scotland’s concerns, 15 Apr. 1845.

Scottish affairs, particularly religious matters, increasingly drew Stewart’s attention, and he spoke fairly often in this Parliament, except in the 1843 session, which he considered ‘dreary’.40Hansard, 10 Aug. 1843, vol. 71, c. 522. Having, as he told his constituents, ‘taken my stand by the kirk and her people, in their demand for ... spiritual independence in matters purely ecclesiastical’, he was a minority teller for the second reading of the church patronage (Scotland) bill, 4 May 1842.41Morning Chronicle, 7 Jan. 1842. He again rallied to the non-intrusionist cause as a minority teller for considering a petition from the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland, 8 Mar. 1843. When the Disruption took place, creating the Free Church of Scotland in May, Stewart became one of its ‘ablest and most unflinching supporters, both in the House of Commons and in private life’.42Glasgow Post, cited in The Times, 3 Nov. 1846. He was a regular presence at Free Church gatherings in London: Caledonian Mercury, 1 July 1843; Morning Post, 26 Feb. 1844; Morning Chronicle, 13 June 1844. He launched a bitter attack on the ‘ill-timed and ill-advised’ Church of Scotland benefices bill, 10 Aug. 1843, which would ‘shut the door for ever against the possibility of any future conciliation of those who had quitted the Church’. Opposing the division of parishes (Scotland) bill, 7 June 1844, he condemned the ‘irreparable mischief’ the ministry had done and queried why the Church of Scotland’s accommodation was being extended after nearly a million people had seceded.43The king of Saxony was present during this debate on a visit to Parliament: The Times, 8 June 1844. The Free Church, in contrast, faced problems in obtaining sites to construct churches, a matter Stewart raised, 25 July 1845.

Stewart intervened on several other Scottish questions. As chairman of the committee of deputies of joint stock banks, he had lobbied Peel against granting the Bank of England a monopoly over the issue of new banknotes in England and Wales under the 1844 Bank Charter Act.44Morning Chronicle, 2 Apr. 1844; Leeds Mercury, 18 May 1844; The Times, 16 July 1844; A record of the proceedings of the committee of deputies from the joint stock banks of England, Wales, and Ireland (1845). For Stewart’s correspondence with Peel on banking legislation, see Add. 40539, f. 305; Add. 40540, f. 244; Add. 40544, ff. 285, 289-91; Add. 40548, ff. 185-7. He strongly objected to Peel’s efforts to legislate on Scottish banking, 25 Apr. 1845, fearing that the premier’s ultimate aim was ‘the suppression of all local and provincial issue’, 5 June 1845.45See also his speech of 29 July 1845. He had attended a meeting of Scotch peers and MPs on this question that April, and also corresponded with Peel: The Times, 17 Apr. 1845; Add. 40540, ff. 110-17; Add. 40568, f. 191. He made several speeches against the poor law (Scotland) bill,46See his speeches of 12 June, 3, 11 and 17 July 1845. but backed the universities (Scotland) bill, which Peel’s ministry opposed, 9 July 1845. He was a minority teller for the turnpike roads (Scotland) bill, 24 July 1845. Alongside his attention to Scottish interests at Westminster, he was treasurer of two major Scottish charities in London, the Scottish hospital and the Caledonian asylum.47The English Presbyterian Messenger (Dec. 1846), 324.

Fiscal policy also remained a key interest. Speaking on the address, 25 Aug. 1841, Stewart urged that a fixed duty on corn should have a fair trial. After Peel’s ministry took office, he prompted controversy with what The Times condemned as a ‘frothy party harangue’, warning Peel not to prorogue Parliament until action was taken to relieve economic distress, 24 Sept. 1841. Doubts were cast on the veracity of Stewart’s evidence from Renfrewshire,48The Times, 25 Sept. 1841. and opponents accused him of ‘propagating mischievous statements, for factious purposes’.49Lancaster Gazette, 9 Oct. 1841. He joined the minority for Villiers’ amendment to end all duties on corn, 24 Feb. 1842, having suggested two days earlier that England’s farmers might profitably emulate Scottish agricultural improvements. His commitment to total and immediate repeal of the corn laws was reinforced by his appearance at what Cobden deemed a ‘very glorious’ free trade meeting at Glasgow in January 1843, and he duly voted steadily for repeal in 1846.50R. Cobden to C. Cobden, 12 Jan. 1843, in A. Howe (ed.), The letters of Richard Cobden. Volume I 1815-1847 (2007), i. 309.

When it came to the sugar duties, however, Stewart found it difficult to reconcile his free trade views with his commitment to the West India interest, and instead advocated a preferential duty on colonial sugar, 3 June 1842. He urged that as West India proprietors had not received the promised supply of free labour after emancipation, it was unfair to expect them to compete with foreign slave-grown sugar.51See his speeches of 3 and 10 June 1844. At a meeting of West India proprietors in May 1844, he lamented that if protection was withdrawn, they might as well ‘abandon the colonies at once’.52The Times, 22 May 1844. He divided for Philip Miles’s successful amendment retaining a greater preferential duty for colonial sugar than the Peel ministry’s proposals, 14 June 1844, and was a minority teller when Peel reversed this vote, 17 June. With a growing sense of fighting a losing battle against free trade in sugar, Stewart nonetheless continued in 1845 and 1846 to press the need to improve the West Indian labour supply.53See his speeches of 14 Mar. 1845, 20 and 31 July 1846, 8 and 10 Aug. 1846.

Stewart was among the names proposed by Gladstone to serve on a select committee on railways, 6 Feb. 1844, but objections were raised to him and other MPs on the grounds that they were railway directors.54Stewart had spoken in support of appointing this committee, 5 Feb. 1844. He did serve as chairman of a private bill committee on various railway bills in 1845: The Times, 20 May 1845. Objection was taken to his voting in committee on the Glasgow, Dumfries and Carlisle railway bill grounds that he was a director of the Caledonian railway, but his vote was allowed by 120-116, 16 June 1846: PP 1846 (723-II), xxxiii. 115. Although Stewart asserted in 1844 that he was not a large holder of railway stock,55Hansard, 6 Feb. 1844, vol. 72, c. 294. He was, however, closely involved with the affairs of the Greenock railway company, which thanked him later that year for his ‘uniform and zealous attention’ to its interests in Parliament: The Standard, 12 Sept. 1844. by 1846 he had £153,730 in railway investments.56PP 1846 (473), xxxviii. 275. He made several interventions that year on the Commons’ handling of railway bills, and endorsed James Morrison’s motion for a select committee on railways, 19 Mar. 1846.57See also his speeches of 29 Jan., 12 Feb., 23 and 25 Mar. 1846. One of his key concerns was the effects which tying up capital in railway investments might have on the money market, 6 Apr. 1846, while he also pressed the need to settle on a uniform gauge, 6 and 12 Aug. 1846.

Stewart died in October 1846 at his mother’s residence at Carnock House, Stirlingshire,58Blackburn Standard, 11 Nov. 1846. having suffered from ‘British cholera’ for the previous fortnight.59Glasgow Herald, 2 Nov. 1846. He was buried in the family vault at Inverkip parish church, Renfrewshire.60Morning Post, 26 Nov. 1846. Unmarried and childless,61There were reports in 1838 that Stewart was to marry the wealthy heiress Angela Burdett-Coutts, and in 1844 that he would marry Mrs. Langford Brooke, but neither came to fruition: B. Disraeli to S. Disraeli, [17 Nov. 1838?], in M. G. Wiebe et al, Benjamin Disraeli letters (1987), iii. 839-40; Morning Post, 9 Dec. 1844. he bequeathed his Tobago estates to his brother, Houston. His executors were to dispose of his Scottish estates as they thought fit, adding the proceeds to the residue of his estate, which included personal property estimated at £30,000 in England. He left £8,000 and half the residue of his estate to the children of his late brother John, and the other half to Houston, who was briefly MP for Greenwich in 1852.62The Times, 17 Nov. 1846. Stewart’s nephew, Sir Michael Robert Shaw Stewart, 7th bt., sat as a Conservative for Renfrewshire, 1855-65.