WHITMORE, William Wolryche (1787-1858), of Dudmaston, Shropshire

A Shropshire landed gentleman and farmer, Whitmore was a self-taught political economist and early free trade campaigner. Although generally regarded as a Whig or Moderate Reformer, Whitmore ‘refused to identify himself with the prescribed policy of any particular party’.1Shrewsbury Chronicle, 13 Aug. 1858. However, on economic and social questions there was a close affinity between his views and those of Liberal Tories such as William Huskisson or Sir Robert Peel. Indeed Boyd Hilton has written that ‘Whitmore was a moralistic and retributive type of free-trader’ and an Evangelical who ‘treated the poor with characteristic harshness in his role as chairman of the Bridgnorth Poor Law Guardians’.2A.J.B. Hilton, A mad, bad and dangerous people?: England, 1783-1846 (2006), 545-6. In Parliament Whitmore generally limited himself to his areas of expertise. As he explained in 1832:

I have no turn naturally for public speaking … Except that when from previous study he may have real information upon the subject under discussion, or where the interests of his constituents are more immediately involved, it appears to me the duty of such an individual to abstain from speaking in debate.3William Wolryche Whitmore to Joseph Barker, 30 May 1832, Dudmaston MSS, held by Dudmaston Hall, National Trust, DUD 8/11.

An observer commented that Whitmore used ‘plain language & speaks with decision and fluency’, although his speeches were usually carefully prepared. He also had ‘a habit of ifting his arms above his head … which often gives a notion of solemnity not well suited to everyday matters of business’.4Wolverhampton Chronicle, 13 June 1832, quoting from an earlier, anonymous parliamentary sketch of Whitmore.

Descended from a junior branch of the Whitmores, of Apley, Whitmore had succeeded to the Wolryche estate of Dudmaston on his father’s death in 1816, and became a progressive landlord and farmer who experimented with improving methods on his relatively small estate.5VCH Salop., iv. 209. He was returned for Bridgnorth in 1820 on the interest of his cousins, and represented the constituency until 1832.6HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 744. ‘A zealous free trader’, he quickly established his reputation through motions to revise the corn laws, equalise the duties on West and East Indian sugar and open the Indian and China trade.7A.J.B. Hilton, Corn, cash, commerce: the economic policies of the Tory governments, 1815-30 (1977), 150; HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 745-50. Privately he described the East India Company’s monopoly of Chinese trade as ‘as bad as possible & without a leg to stand on’.8William Wolryche Whitmore to Charles Babbage, 6 Aug. 1832, Add. 37187, f. 68. Elected to the Political Economy Club in 1824, Whitmore’s 1826 pamphlet on the corn laws, Letter to the electors of Bridgnorth, was praised by the Times as ‘a clear and able production’.9Political Economy Club, Minutes, Members, Attendances and Questions 1821-82 (1889), ii. 63; The Times, 3 Oct. 1826. Influenced by the theories of Thomas Malthus, Whitmore argued that it was only by accessing overseas food supplies and extending trade that the increasing population could be fed and employed.10HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 745. Unlike his Tory cousin and colleague Thomas Whitmore, he supported Catholic relief and the reform bills.11Ibid., 749, 750-1.

Whitmore accepted an invitation to contest the new constituency of Wolverhampton at the 1832 general election, although he was concerned about the cost, remarking that:

I do not expect to obtain a seat in Parliament without expense, but I am from peculiar circumstances both unable and unwilling to purchase it at the cost which to some habituated to election expenses may appear [to be] of no moment.12Whitmore to Barker, n.d., Dudmaston MSS, DUD 8/10.

Despite his free trade credentials, Whitmore was strongly opposed by radicals on account of his unwillingness to support the immediate abolition of the corn laws.13Staffordshire Advertiser, 6 Oct. 1832. Attacks on his supporters led him to shun the nomination, but he noted privately that ‘the more moderate electors rarely attend radical meetings & their voice would be only heard in the polling booth’.14Staffordshire Advertiser, 15 Dec. 1832; Whitmore to Babbage, 6 Nov. 1832, Add. 37187, f. 203. He was proved correct, as he topped the poll, although his Radical colleague, Richard Fryer complained that ‘he had heard Mr. Whitmore and had learnt nothing’.15Staffordshire Advertiser, 22 Dec. 1832.

In the reformed Commons, Whitmore continued to focus on economic and social questions. He called for the equalisation of sugar duties, 6 Mar. 1833. However, the chancellor of the exchequer, Lord Althorp, argued that such a major change in policy was inexpedient when slavery was about to be abolished in the West Indies and the East Indian trade was about to be opened.16Hansard, 6 Mar. 1833, vol. 16, cc. 325-6. Whitmore rejected the arguments of the Attwood brothers that distress was caused by the monetary system, 23 Apr. 1833. Tampering with the currency would immediately lead to ‘depreciation of the most alarming kind’.17Hansard, 23 Apr. 1833, vol. 17, cc. 480-3 (at 480). Like other supporters of the orthodoxy, Whitmore selectively used trade statistics to argue that distress was not widespread.18Ibid., cc. 480-1. The Malthusian influence was evident in his support for a ‘judicious system of emigration’ to drain off the surplus population and relieve pressure on wages and food supplies, but Whitmore asserted that the only remedy for distress was the extension of trade.19Ibid., c. 481.

He reprised these themes when proposing a 10s. fixed duty on corn, 17 May 1833, admitting that his speech was ‘of a very dry unentertaining nature’.20Hansard, 17 May 1833, vol. 17, cc. 1349-56 (at 1349). He argued that the existing sliding scale magnified price fluctuations in corn instead of evening them out.21Ibid., cc. 1351-2. Intended as a first step to eventual abolition, Whitmore’s proposed duty would cease when corn reached a certain price.22Ibid., cc. 1353-4. He argued that his plan would avert famine, boost trade and prosperity, and would not damage agriculture.23Ibid., cc. 1354-6. The government avoided taking a position on the motion, which they claimed was proposed at an inexpedient time.24Ibid., cc. 1366-7. Combined with strong protectionist opposition, this was enough to ensure its defeat by 106-305.25Ibid., cc. 1378-9. Whitmore backed Fryer’s call for an alteration of the corn laws, 18 June 1833, briefly remarking that protection injured agriculturists as well as other interests.26Hansard, 18 June 1833, vol. 18, c. 975. He was generally critical of the East India Company’s new charter, advocating limiting the term of the charter to ten rather than twenty years and also complaining about the protection given to East Indian sugar, 26 July 1833.27Hansard, 26 July 1833, vol. 20, cc. 40-1. The following year, Whitmore endorsed Hume’s motion for a low fixed duty on corn, 7 Mar. 1834, contending that protection was based on the ‘fallacy’ that a monopoly for domestic producers could be created without prohibiting imports.28Hansard, 7 Mar. 1834, vol. 21, cc. 1324-8 (at 1325). However, although he ‘spoke at some length’ there was ‘such noise and interruption, that it was difficult to understand more than the general purport of his speech’.29Parliamentary Review (1834), i. 256.

A critic of the poor law, which he described as ‘that incubus which pressed upon the land and ate it bodily up’, Whitmore strongly supported the imposition of a stricter system of public welfare effected by the Poor Law Amendment Act of 1834.30Hansard, 7 Mar. 1834, vol. 21, c. 1327. The generosity of the old poor law, he asserted, encouraged population increases and taught labourers to look to the poor rates instead of their own efforts, 1 July 1834.31Hansard, 1 July 1834, vol. 24, cc. 1037-9. Fears of overpopulation also prompted Whitmore’s involvement in Edward Gibbon Wakefield’s scheme to establish a colony in South Australia. In 1831 Whitmore had chaired the inaugural meeting of the South Australian Land Company.32E.G. Wakefield, The new British province of South Australia (1838), 1. In 1834 he introduced a bill based on Wakefield’s plan, which involved selling off land to fund emigration from Britain. At a public meeting in Exeter Hall, 30 June 1834, Whitmore claimed that the project would perform ‘a high duty by at once extending civilisation abroad and relieving embarrassment at home’.33Ibid., 153. All great nations and empires had employed a ‘system of colonisation’, he asserted, the difference was that South Australia would contain a ‘judicious admixture’ of social classes.34Ibid., 150, 152. In a Commons speech that was ‘quite inaudible in the gallery’, Whitmore rebutted criticism that the scheme was the brainchild of ‘philosophers, experimentalists, theorists’, and insisted that it would allow British talent and energies to flourish in the colony, 29 July 1834.35Hansard, 29 July 1834, vol. 25, cc. 700-11 (at 704); Parliamentary Review (1834), i. 1118; PP 1834 (482), i. 67-76. The bill’s progress was eased by thin attendance and the support of the colonial secretary Thomas Spring Rice, a school friend of Wakefield, in the Commons, and the duke of Wellington in the Lords.36R.C. Mills, The colonisation of Australia, 1829-42: the Wakefield experiment in empire building (1915), 229-30 (The South Australia Foundation Act (4 & 5 Will. IV, c. 95) received the royal assent 15 Aug. 1834.37CJ, xxxix. 604.) The colony was established in 1836, under a resident commissioner with the power to dispose of land, who was accountable to three public commissioners, and a governor who was answerable to the colonial office.38Mills, Colonisation of Australia, 232-3, 242.

Whitmore retired at the 1835 general election and did not seek a return to Parliament. He was considered but passed over for appointment as one of the new commissioners for South Australia.39Ibid., 233-4. He did, however, continue to write and publish pamphlets even though he confessed that it was ‘a costly and nearly useless proceeding, as they are rarely read’.40W.W. Whitmore, Letter to the agriculturists of the county of Salop (1841), 24. He later observed that: ‘Writing pamphlets is a bad trade – troublesome to the writer, and of very little benefit to those for whom they are written’: A few plain thoughts on free trade, as affecting agriculture (2nd edn., 1849), 3. Aimed at agriculturists, the main theme of Whitmore’s pamphlets between 1839 and 1846 was that the abolition of the corn laws would not damage the British farmer.41W.W. Whitmore, A letter on the corn laws to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce (1839); Letter to the agriculturists of the county of Salop (1841); A second letter to the agriculturists of the county of Salop (1841); A third letter to the agriculturists of the county of Salop (1846). Positioning himself as a moderate in a polarised debate, he argued that both sides had exaggerated the likely impact of free trade on food prices.42Whitmore, Letter to the agriculturists of Salop, 4-5; Second letter, 66. Contrary to the claims of the Anti-Corn Law League, Whitmore did not think that free trade would lead to an influx of cheap foreign grain that would permanently lower the price of corn.43Whitmore, Letter to the agriculturists of Salop, 7. Britain’s needs were largely met by domestic agriculture and transport costs meant that foreign corn was unlikely to undercut British producers.44Whitmore, Letter to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 12-13; Letter to the agriculturists of Salop, 7-9, 13; Second letter, 10-20, 36-7, 65-6. If the country required a greater quantity of foreign corn than before, such supplies would have to come from greater distances, from the interiors of the United States or Russia, which would push up the price significantly.45Whitmore, Letter to the Manchester Chamber of Commerce, 14; Second letter, 21; Third letter, 6-9. A second reason why Whitmore argued that farmers would thrive under free trade was his belief that ‘high farming’, the application of science and agricultural improvement, would increase the productivity and profitability of land.46Whitmore, Letter to the Manchester Chamber of commerce, 10-11; Second letter, 9, 34.

Whitmore gave up his London residence in 1844, writing to a friend that ‘the fact is, for some time I have found London anything but a pleasurable residence, hardly but few acquaintances & scarcely any society there & as life advances & health declines I find the comfort of domestic society more than ever needful’.47Whitmore to Babbage, 31 Jan. 1844, Add. 37193, f. 9. He authored a defence of free trade in 1849, but the following year a Shropshire gentleman wrote that ‘I fear he is one of those who are now feeling the change of prices’.48W.W. Whitmore, A few plain thoughts on free trade, as affecting agriculture (2nd edn., 1849); V.J. Walsh ed., ‘Diary of a country gentleman: Sir Baldwyn Leighton’, Transactions of the Shropshire Archaeological Society, lix (1971-2), 127-70 (at 136) (Oct. 1850). A visit to southern France stimulated Whitmore into print for a final time in 1853 to lobby for a reduction in the wine duties which, he argued, restricted trade between Britain and France and promoted adulteration.49W.W. Whitmore, The wine duties (1853), 3, 9-12, 27-33. In 1856 the banker and economist Lord Overstone commented, after visiting Whitmore, that he had lost much of his mental sharpness, ‘twaddling calmly & agreeably about anything & everything’.50Lord Overstone to G.W. Norman, 21 Sept. 1856, qu. in The correspondence of Lord Overstone, ed. D.P. O’Brien (1971), ii. 657-8.

Whitmore died childless two years later. The Dudmaston estate, encumbered with debts of £40,000, and a personalty of £14,000, passed to his nephew Rev. Francis Henry Laing, of Forthampton, Gloucestershire, who assumed the names of Wolryche and Whitmore.51HP Commons, 1820-1832, vii. 752; Burke’s landed gentry (1908), 1800-1. Although his heir did not pursue a political career, Whitmore’s cousins continued to represent Bridgnorth until 1870.