ATTWOOD, Matthias (1779-1851), of 27 Gracechurch Street, London, Mdx., Dulwich Hill House, Surr. and The Leasowes, nr. Halesowen, Salop.

In the reformed Commons, Attwood remained a powerful advocate of currency reform. However, despite their joint campaign against monetary orthodoxy, on political questions Attwood was ‘diametrically opposed’ to the views of his Radical brother Thomas Attwood (1783-1856), MP for Birmingham, 1832-9, and was an ‘unflinching Tory’.1The assembled Commons (1837), 8 (first qu.); C.M. Wakefield, Life of Thomas Attwood (1885), 157. He was also much more of a party man than his brother, often reluctantly dividing for liberal economic measures he had subjected to withering criticism in his orations. ‘Long well-known in Parliament as one of the best informed and ablest debaters on questions of finance and currency’, Attwood was a regular presence on committees on banking, agriculture and monetary policy.2Morning Post, 13 Nov. 1851. He was ‘a solid and useful member of the House, who never spoke on subjects he did not thoroughly understand’. 3Wakefield, Attwood, 406.

Attwood’s father and namesake had co-founded a bank in Birmingham in 1791 and at a young age he was put in control of the London branch. By 1805, under his ‘energetic management’, the London bank ‘was rapidly becoming completely independent of the Birmingham connection’.4D.J. Moss, Thomas Attwood: the biography of a radical (1990), 30-1. Attwood later diversified into shipping, founding the General Steam Navigation Company, which he chaired until resigning in favour of his only son Matthias Wolverley Attwood (1808-65).5The Standard, 13 Nov. 1851. Like his brother, Matthias was alarmed by moves to resume cash payments (that is make notes convertible into gold) after the Napoleonic Wars, believing that such a measure would prove to be deflationary and restrictive and published a pamphlet Observations concerning the distress of the country in 1817.6M. Attwood, Observations concerning the distress of the country (1817). Despite these similar views, Thomas Attwood’s modern biographer David Moss has suggested that Matthias was influenced by the perspective of the London money markets, and placed greater emphasis on the importance of stability, whereas his brother was more concerned with growth and the expansion of industry.7Moss, Thomas Attwood, 72. Having long harboured parliamentary ambitions, Attwood was elected to the Commons in 1819, and before being unseated on petition, expressed trenchant opposition to the bank bill, the measure by which the resumption of cash payments was to be effected.8Ibid., 32, 86; Wakefield, Attwood, 19-20, 70; ‘Attwood, Matthias’, HP Commons, 1790-1832, iii. 97-8.

The representative of a series of rotten boroughs before 1832, with his brother’s assistance Attwood led a campaign against the monetary system, expressed through parliamentary speeches, some of which were published, evidence to select committees and deputations to lobby ministers.9Moss, Thomas Attwood, 79, 98, 107, 119, 137, 181; HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 120-7; A. Gambles, Protection and politics: Conservative economic discourse, 1815-1852 (1999), 102, 105. However, unlike his brother, who orchestrated the out of doors agitation for the reform bills, Attwood opposed political reform.10HP Commons, 1820-1832, iv. 125-6; Moss, Thomas Attwood, 194, 210. At the 1832 general election Attwood was elected for the new constituency of Whitehaven on the Lonsdale interest and was unchallenged thereafter.11McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 313; The Times, 18 Dec. 1832.

Although Attwood thought that Thomas’s unsuccessful motion on public distress, 21 Mar. 1833, might have been better timed, he offered full-hearted support, contending that the monetary system ‘rested on a rotten foundation’.12Hansard, 21 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, c. 952. The following month Attwood raised the currency question by his unsuccessful motion for a committee on the issue, 22 Apr. 1833. After surveying distress across the country, Attwood argued that the chronic fluctuations which had plagued the economy since the war were the result of the 1819 Act which led to the alternating expansion and contraction of the circulating medium.13Ibid., 22 Apr. 1833, vol. 17, cc. 384-408. Despite being described as a ‘monotonous and tedious speaker’, whose ‘habit of thumping the box or table, before which he stands, at the close of every sentence, and sometimes on every emphatic word’ became ‘very wearisome’ in his lengthy speeches, Attwood was much more effective than his brother, who failed to adjust his out-of-doors style to the chamber.14Parliamentary Review (1833), ii. 78. Implicit in Attwood’s argument was the pointed suggestion that for all their references to political economists and citation of trade statistics, the main advocates of monetary orthodoxy, on both frontbenches, actually knew very little. This was shown by their adoption of a disastrous policy, which they did not understand or appreciate the practical consequences.15Hansard, 22 Apr. 1833, vol. 17, cc. 384-5. He particularly relished showing how statistics on consumption, regularly cited as evidence of prosperity, were so loosely employed as to be meaningless.16Ibid., 386-7; 23 Apr. 1833, vol. 17, cc. 580-1.

Attwood expressed equally trenchant views on the renewal of the Bank of England’s charter. It was a ‘most monstrous’ bargain for the public, he thought, as the government had granted the Bank great privileges yet received little in return.17Ibid., 1 July 1833, vol. 18, c. 1404. However, for all his criticism of the Bank, Attwood, unlike Radical critics, did not oppose it as a monopoly but supported it as a stabilising institution, and reluctantly endorsed the bill even though he thought many of its provisions would ‘produce only the most disastrous results’, 2 Aug. 1833.18Ibid., 2 Aug. 1833, vol. 20, c. 300. On other issues, Attwood’s paternalistic brand of Toryism was reflected by his support for factory regulation and opposition to political and ecclesiastical reforms.19Ibid., 25 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 1002-3; 3 Apr. 1833, vol. 17, cc. 107-8; 6 May 1833, vol. 17, c. 968. He cast votes for repeal of the malt duty, but resisted any diminution of agricultural protection. In 1834, after the Whigs resumed office under Lord Melbourne, Attwood offered a shrewd critique of the ministry’s focus on reform:

How had the House itself been occupied?—night after night, Session after Session, they were engaged in ameliorating, as they called it, every institution, changing every law, improving every system … as they imagined, in accordance with the spirit of the present times—satisfying the desires, and complying with the demands, of the people. But, complying as they imagined with the demands, they had lost the confidence of the people. No body of men assembled within those walls were less trusted by the country than themselves.20Ibid., 17 July 1834, vol. 25, c. 66.

In truth, Attwood argued, political discontent was rooted in distress and sustained prosperity would restore popular confidence in established institutions.21Ibid.

Although he was a regular contributor to debate, much of Attwood’s time was occupied with committee work. He was a diligent member of the inquiries on agriculture in 1834 and 1836, the investigation into joint-stock banks which ran from 1836 to 1838 and the committee on banks of issue in 1840 and 1841.22PP 1833 (612), v. 2; 1836 (79), viii, pt. I, 2; 1836 (189), viii, pt. I, 226; 1836 (465), viii, pt. II, 2; 1836 (591), ix. 412; 1837 (531), xiv. 2; 1837-38 (626), vii. 2; 1840 (602), iv. 2; 1841 (410), v. 8. Giving evidence to the 1837 Lords committee on agriculture, Attwood outlined his preferred scheme for currency reform, arguing for a bimetallic (gold and silver) standard, although he believed that as a cheaper metal, silver ‘would drive the gold coins from circulation’ and would also be able to support a larger amount of paper money and credit.23PP 1837 (464), v. 342-4 (qu. at 343). This would raise prices by 5%, and Attwood thought a further 2% rise could be achieved by restoring the old laws against the exportation and melting of coin.24Ibid., 344-5. Like members of the ‘Birmingham school’ founded by his brother, Attwood argued that the corn laws could not ‘permanently and materially enhance’ agricultural prices under the present monetary system.25Ibid., 355.

In 1842, Attwood intervened in the debates on Peel’s financial policy, which comprised tariff revision and the reintroduction of the income tax. Mounting a stinging critique, 23 Mar. 1842, he declared that to propose more ‘commercial reform … was to proceed in the hackneyed footsteps of every successive administration which had governed the country for the last twenty years’.26Hansard, 23 Mar. 1842, vol. 61, cc. 1156-65 (at 1161). The reforms of the last twenty years had made things worse and a further instalment would ignore the real cause of distress, which was nothing ‘more or less than rapid, sudden, violent fluctuations in the value of money; the standard of value, the measure of contracts, the medium of circulation and exchanges’.27Ibid., 1164. Evidently under pressure, however, he reluctantly yielded ‘to the necessity of supporting his political party’.28Ibid., 1158. He later criticised the reduction in silk duty, contending that the domestic trade had been stationary ever since ministers had exposed it to freer trade, 10 June 1842.29Ibid., 10 June 1842, vol. 63, c. 1457. Attwood’s paternalism was reflected in his opposition to the new poor law and support for the regulation of mines and collieries, although he defended those owned by his patron, the earl of Lonsdale.30Ibid., 5 July 1842, vol. 64, cc. 1004-6. His despair at the human consequences of prolonged distress was illustrated by his remark that ‘the House had no right to leave the people in their present condition. He looked forward to another winter with fear and alarm.’31Ibid., 1 July 1842, vol. 64, c. 901. The following session Attwood expressed little confidence in his government’s economic policies, and even less in those of the Whigs, who he asserted merely hungered after place.32Ibid., 17 Feb. 1843, vol. 795-802.

Attwood’s increasingly ‘feeble health’ meant that, despite the urging of the Morning Post, which had long been an admirer, he played no part in the 1844 debates on the bank charter bill or on other financial measures thereafter.33Morning Post, 9 May 1844, 13 Nov. 1851 (qu.). Attwood retired at the 1847 general election and died four years later. In later life, for reasons that remain unclear, Matthias and Thomas became estranged.34Wakefield, Thomas Attwood, 406. The estate of the significantly wealthier Matthias Attwood, including Dulwich Hill House in Surrey and his shares, passed to his son Matthias Wolverley Attwood, Conservative MP for Greenwich, 1837-41.35Burke’s landed gentry (1937), i. 65-6; Morning Post, 19 Nov. 1851; HP 1820-1832, iv. 127.