YOUNG, George Frederick (1791-1870), of 72 Cornhill, London

Said to have been ‘born with an anchor or a cable in his mouth’, Young was the second son of Vice-Admiral William Young, a partner of Robert Curling in the firm Curling, Young & Co, which specialised in building East Indiamen.1Daily News, 19 July 1851. Educated mainly at home, he became a senior partner in the firm in the 1820s, when it was one of the most prominent in the London shipping industry. By the 1830s, the firm was also producing passenger steamships and gunships, and Young had acquired extensive interests in colonial trade and shipping, especially in whaling. A member of the committee of Lloyd’s (Shipping Register) 1824-34, he was a founding member of Lloyd’s new permanent committee in 1835, on which he proceeded to serve for 32 years. He was also a leading force in the General Ship Owners Society, which he chaired on an unprecedented six occasions. Unlike many of his fellow shipowners, Young lived near to his yards in the East End of London, where he became a noted philanthropist and social reformer. He was chairman of the house committee of the London Hospital, 1842-4, helped to create Victoria Park, and, as chairman of the Stepney board of guardians, established the Limehouse children’s establishment in 1838.2A.C. Howe, ‘Young, George Frederick (1791-1870)’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com.

At the 1832 general election Young came forward for the new constituency of Tynemouth as a spokesman of the shipping interest. Opposed by an advanced Liberal, Young claimed that he belonged ‘to no political party, nor ever will’.3Election handbill, 19 July 1831, A collection of leaflets relating to parliamentary elections for the borough of Tynemouth, 1832-1841, British Library. His stance, however, was one of a ‘moderate’ and ‘independent’ Liberal, although, as an opponent of free trade, he enjoyed support from the local Tory press. Returned to the Commons with a sound majority, he voted for repeal of the malt tax, removal of Jewish disabilities and a revision of the pension list but was against the ballot.4Parliamentary Test Book (1835), 179. He continued to assert that he was an ‘independent man’ and was re-elected unopposed in January 1835. He was, however, a member of the ‘Derby dilly’, divided for Manners Sutton as speaker, 19 Feb. 1835, and was in the minority with Peel on the address, 26 Feb. 1835.5R. Stewart, The foundation of the Conservative Party, 1830-1867 (1978), Appendix 3, 376.

Young’s allegiance, though, was far from fixed. At a meeting in Carlton Gardens on 11 March, he pressed Stanley to declare in strong terms his want of confidence in Peel’s ministry, and after abstaining from Russell’s motion for Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, he supported the Whig ministry thereafter, but continued to sit on the opposition side of the house.6A. Hawkins, The forgotten Prime Minister: the 14th earl of Earl of Derby. Volume i: Ascent, 1799-1851 (2007), 171-2; Random recollections of the House of Commons (1837), 168. He spoke in favour of the ministry’s municipal reform bill, 30 June 1835, and, believing that a ‘substantive proposition’ for reform of the Irish church had finally been produced, he announced his conversion to appropriation, stating that it would prove to be ‘a real bond of union between England and Ireland’, 21 July 1835.

A prolific debater who spoke ‘very rapidly, as sometimes to pronounce four or five words as if all one word’, Young, according to Charles Dickens, earned the reputation of ‘a prodigious bore in Parliament, by speaking immediately before every division, great or small, to the anguish and horror of all parties’.7Random recollections, 166-7; The letters of Charles Dickens, ed. G. Storey and K.J. Fielding (1981), v. 6-8. A more sympathetic contemporary observed that he was ‘an expert debater’ who was ‘listened to with attention by the House’, although ‘sometimes his ideas’ were ‘overloaded with verbiage’.8Random recollections, 166-7. Not surprisingly, he spoke frequently and at length on the shipping interest, but his interventions were generally unsuccessful. His motion for leave to bring in a bill to repeal the Reciprocity of Treaties Act, in order to restore to Parliament its control over all treaties with foreign powers and thus offer more protection to the British shipowner, was defeated, 5 June 1834, and his attempt to introduce a bill to restrict the mortgaging of ships came to nothing, 28 Feb. 1837.

Narrowly re-elected in 1837, Young was unseated on petition after an election committee ruled that a number of his votes were ineligible. He remained in the public eye, however, and by the late 1840s, he was one of the leading forces in protectionist politics. Over a period of five days, he gave influential evidence to the select committee on the navigation laws, defending the shipping interest against free trade with ‘industry and talent’.9PP 1847 (556), x. 439-526; S. Palmer, Politics, Shipping and the Repeal of the Navigation Laws (1990), 102. He also wrote a number of pamphlets, most notably Letters on the Navigation Laws (1848) and Free-Trade and the Navigation Laws, practically considered (1849). His writing demonstrated concern not only for the fate of shipping and empire but also for ‘the producing classes’, and by setting up the National Association for the Protection of British Industry and Capital in May 1849, he attempted to construct an alliance of shipowners, agriculturalists, merchants and working men.10Howe, ‘Young, George Frederick’. Young’s move into the wider protectionist movement was exceptional for a shipowner, however, and he struggled to gain support, leading him to complain that his fellow shipowners were ‘recreants, deluded and blind to the destruction impending upon them’.11Quotation taken from Palmer, Politics, 173. Nevertheless, he was a genuine force to be reckoned with, and he arguably forced Disraeli on to the defensive over his perceived lack of support for protection.12Howe, ‘Young, George Frederick’.

Seeking a return to Parliament, Young came forward in the protectionist interest at the 1851 by-election at Scarborough. Backed by the local shipping interest, he defeated the sitting member, the earl of Mulgrave, who was defending his seat upon his appointment as comptroller of the royal household.13Morning Post, 19 July 1851. Immediately upon returning to the Commons, Young gave a lengthy discourse on the navigation laws, but, giving his full support to Derby, he did not argue for their complete re-imposition, 24 July 1851, and had his health not broken, it is likely that he would have become vice-president of the Board of Trade in the Conservative government of 1852.14Howe, ‘Young, George Frederick’. Nevertheless, his equivocation on the navigation laws cost him his seat at Scarborough at the 1852 general election.15Palmer, Politics, 173. He retired from public life thereafter, although in 1860 he published The French treaty, a mockery, a delusion, and a snare, a savage attack on the Anglo-French commercial treaty which he felt sacrificed British imperial interests.

Ridiculed for his verbosity, Young was never unequivocally lauded by his contemporaries. Disraeli believed him to be ‘a man of great energy, and of equal vanity, but of ordinary abilities and no cultivation’.16Quotation taken from Ibid., 173. William Schaw Lindsay, MP for Tynemouth, 1854-59, and a free trader, was more critical, calling him ‘a most garrulous gentleman’, whose ‘absurd protectionist views’ did the shipping interest ‘much more harm than good’.17Quotation taken from Howe, ‘Young, George Frederick’. However, as Anthony Howe has noted, ‘modern judgements have treated more sympathetically the protectionist ideology’ which Young championed.

Young died at home at Wray Park Road, Reigate, in February 1870. His wife survived him. He was succeeded by his eldest surviving son, Frederick, a leading member of the Royal Colonial Institute. Young’s correspondence and papers are located in the British Library.18BL Add MSS 46712, ff. 68-183b.