JAMES, William (1791-1861), of 15 Regent Street, London and Barrock Lodge, Lowe Hesket, Cumberland

James, an outspoken radical whose opinions were ‘the steady results of fearless inquiry and upright conviction’, was born in Liverpool, where his paternal grandfather William James (1735-98) had made his fortune as a West India merchant.1J. Saunders, Portraits and memoirs of eminent living political reformers (1840), 167. Resident at Barrock Lodge in Cumberland since 1813, James had been elected to the Commons at the Carlisle by-election of May 1820 and thereafter made parliamentary reform his priority. He had consistently followed Joseph Hume into the division lobby and backed the main details of Grey’s reform bill, but was ‘too bold, radical and self-opinionated’ to support the ministry on most other issues.2HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 839-44. As a prominent West India planter, he had professed support for the abolition of slavery, but did nothing to aid the cause, preferring to highlight the plight of ‘white slaves’ in England.

Aged four when his father died, in 1798 he had become heir to the Jamaican estate and mercantile fortune of his grandfather, which was entrusted to his maternal grandfather and uncles until he reached the age of 26.3Ibid. The estate comprised 237 slaves and in 1835 James was awarded £4713 14s. 9d. in compensation, an amount he believed to be wholly insufficient to protect his commercial interests.4Information provided by Legacies of British Slave-ownership project, www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/ Thereafter he became a staunch defender of West Indian planters, consistently opposing legislation that would diminish preferential tariffs, though he took care to stress that he was a proprietor ‘not through any fault of his own’.5Hansard, 10 June 1844, vol. 75, c. 423.

A popular figure in Carlisle, James topped the poll at the 1832 general election and seconded the address in the ensuing Parliament. An occasional speaker whose attendance was far from reliable, he generally confined his contributions to issues of slavery and constitutional reform. He gave his qualified support to the ministerial plan for the abolition of slavery, but insisted that it would be a mistake to pay wages to emancipated slaves in lieu of an allowance, 29 July 1833. Attacking the ‘exaggerations and falsehoods’ of the Anti-Slavery Society, he restated his belief that ‘the slaves in the West Indies were better off than the labourers’ in Britain, 31 July 1833. He ultimately backed the government’s proposal to award £20 million in compensation to planters, 31 July 1833, although he later claimed that ‘it was a great mistake to suppose that it would afford anything like an adequate compensation to the owners of slaves’ given their loss of property.6Hansard, 30 Mar. 1838, vol. 42, cc. 156-171; 10 June 1844, vol. 75, cc. 423-28. A zealous advocate of reform who believed that ‘an extension of the franchise and the ballot were the only effectual means of remedying the evil of corruption’, 5 Mar. 1834, he argued for universal suffrage, 5 Mar. 1834, and pressed the case for shorter parliaments, 15 May 1834. After some equivocation over the repeal of the Union, 22 Apr. 1834, he rejected O’Connell’s arguments and declared his support for its maintenance, 29 Apr. 1834.

At the 1835 general election James made way for another Liberal at Carlisle, but was returned unopposed at Cumberland East on a vacancy in September 1836.7Morning Post, 30 Aug. and 5 Sept. 1836. At the 1837 general election, he declared that he had ‘still the same detestation of Tory principles and Toryism as ever’ and, following a tumultuous contest, defeated the ‘turncoat’ Sir James Graham.8The London dispatch and people’s political and social reformer, 6 Aug. 1837. In the ensuing debate on the address, he called for an elected House of Lords, warning that if its members ‘stood upon their own rights rather than the wishes and wants of the people, the downfall of their order would be the natural consequence’, 31 Jan. 1837. He supported Melbourne on most major issues, including the ministerial plan for church rates, 3 Mar. 1837, and voted for the ballot, 7 Mar. 1837, and for the equalization of the borough and county franchises, 4 June 1839. He opposed the ministry, however, by supporting Sir George Strickland’s motion for the immediate abolition of slave apprenticeships. Significantly, James viewed the question of abolition from the planters’ perspective, arguing that immediate abolition would ‘enable them to discharge from their properties all the idle, disorderly, and ill-conditioned persons, and relieve them from the maintenance of weakly and impotent hands’, 30 Mar. 1838.

Although James remained a trenchant advocate of extensive parliamentary reform, he was noticeably equivocal on the corn laws. An outspoken supporter of total repeal in the pre-Reform parliament, his views had modified by the end of the 1830s. After calling for the free admission of corn at a moderate fixed duty, he backed Villiers’ motion for the House to go into committee to consider the corn laws, 18 Mar. 1839, but the following year he insisted that this had not been ‘a vote in favour of ... unqualified repeal’ which he considered ‘tantamount to giving a vote in favour of the immediate and total injury and ruin of a vast number of persons’, 26 May 1840. He nevertheless continued the dual strategy of supporting Villiers’ annual motion while insisting that the landed interest were ‘honestly entitled’ to protection’, 26 May 1840, but in 1843 he abstained from the vote, explaining that while he opposed the Peel ministry’s sliding scale, he was no longer prepared to be seen as supporting the ‘extremity’ of total repeal, 12 May 1843. After further abstentions, though, he finally voted for repeal, 15 May 1846.

At the 1841 general election James was returned in second place and thereafter devoted his energies to opposing the equalization of the sugar duties. For James, the proposed removal of duties on slave-grown produce would ruin the competitiveness of the West Indian planters’ produce, and therefore ‘the question of the consumption of slave-grown sugars was one which should be deemed an exception to the general principles of free trade’, 22 June 1843. In one particularly revealing speech, he declared that ‘the West India proprietors had been most cruelly and unjustly treated – they had been treated worse than ever the slaves had been treated by the West India planters in the worst times of slavery’, 10 June 1844. This self-righteous sense of injustice coloured his subsequent contributions to debate, as he pressed the government to exempt the West Indian proprietors from the establishment of a free trade system until ‘the disabilities under which they laboured’ had been removed, 22 June, 28 July 1846. His efforts, however, were ultimately frustrated, and his amendment to ensure that a significant differential duty was maintained between colonial and slave-grown sugar came to nothing, 31 July 1846.

James retired from Parliament at the 1847 general election, unable to sustain the cost of a contest.9HP Commons, 1820-1832, v. 839-44. Having begun his political career as ‘an out-and-out radical’, his views had undoubtedly become more moderate, and, appearing in public at the 1859 general election, he stated that the necessity of universal suffrage and shorter parliaments no longer existed.10R.S. Ferguson, Cumberland and Westmoreland MPs from the Restoration to the Reform Bill of 1867 (1871), 389-90. He died at Barrock Lodge in May 1861, leaving estate valued at under £30,000.11England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1861-1941, 28 May 1861. A Carlisle public house was named after him. He was succeeded by his eldest son William Edward, who as heir to the estates had assisted him financially at the 1841 general election.12Gent. Mag. (1861), i. 708. His correspondence with Sir James Graham is located at the British Library, London.13BL Add. Mss. 79731, ff. 45-47.