WHITE, James (1809-1883), of Rochester House, Little Ealing, Mdx. and 2 Queen’s Gate, Hyde Park, Mdx.

White, ‘a very tall man with rather an imposing presence’, had served his political apprenticeship as a city of London alderman in the 1830s, rubbing shoulders with radical veterans such as Sir Matthew Wood MP and John Humphrey MP, both founding committee members of the Reform Club established in 1836, to which White was admitted that year.1J. McCarthy, Portraits of the Sixties (1903), 189. His subsequent removal to China, where he lived for many years, also left its mark, however, and although he retained most of his radical sympathies, as an MP he frequently broke rank with his radical and Liberal colleagues on matters of foreign policy, earning himself a reputation as a ‘staunch independent’.2Morning Chron., 21 Mar. 1857, 20 June 1859. One study of voting in this period places him among a handful of radical independents ‘who voted at least 40 times against the Liberal majority’ in 1861, most notably on issues of defence.3See V. Cromwell, ‘Mapping the Political World of 1861: a multidimensional analysis of House of Commons’ division lists’, Legislative Studies Quarterly, vii (1982), 281-97, at 290-3.

By the mid-1830s White was in partnership with John Batt as a London silk merchant, operating as White and Batt out of 38-9 Broad Street.4Post Office London Directory (1838), 635; (1839), 1013. A member of the London livery company of weavers, in December 1835 he stood for election as an alderman for Bassishaw against Thomas Tegg, the infamous cheapjack publisher, whom he beat by 34 votes to 24.5A. Beaven, Aldermen of the City of London (1913), i. xlv, 21, ii. 145, 205. An active magistrate and local radical campaigner, in 1840 he played a leading role in supporting Benjamin Wood, Sir Matthew’s brother, in the Southwark by-election.6The Times, 13 Feb. 1840. The previous year he had appeared before a parliamentary committee and argued at length in favour of repealing the bounties on thrown silk restricting the British silk trade, which he believed was becoming ‘daily more important and must increase’.7PP 1840 (29) xxxvii. 162-3. By 1841 he was a member of the Metropolitan Anti-Corn Law Association.8Morning Chron., 26 Apr. 1841. On 8 May 1841 a ‘good deal of bustle was caused in the Guildhall’ by White’s unexpected resignation as an alderman, which took effect three days later. He had evidently run into financial difficulties and ‘stopped payment’, but no record of a subsequent bankruptcy has been found. He left England on an Oriental steam-frigate bound for India via Alexendria, 2 Sept. 1841, and did not return for over a decade.9Morning Post, 10 May, The Times, 15 May, The Standard, 6 Sept. 1841.

At the 1857 dissolution White was introduced to Plymouth by local Liberals, who explained that he had ‘throughout life been most extensively engaged in commerce, and has for some years lived in China, where he acquired an ample fortune, and having returned to England he now seeks to represent a large constituency’. A ‘thorough reformer’, he declared his support for an extension of the suffrage, the secret ballot, and abolition of church rates, but took issue with Cobden and pledged his fervent support for Palmerston, endorsing his prosecution of the Chinese war. He was returned in second place, evidently with treasury and naval backing.10Morning Post, 21 Mar.; Morning Chron.; 21 Mar., Standard, 30 Apr. 1857. True to his word, in his second known speech in the Commons he defended the policy adopted by ministers towards Canton, applauding their use of warning shots and the localisation of their quarrel with the province, which he urged should now be occupied by the Christian powers, 17 July 1857. By the end of the year, however, he had joined those seeking Palmerston’s removal and was part of the majority that ousted him from office over his conspiracy to murder bill, 9, 19 Feb. 1858.

A fairly frequent contributor to debate, who intervened at least 60 times during his sixteen years in the Commons, White was credited by one observer with speaking ‘just well enough to provoke criticism, but not nearly well enough to disarm it’. His habit of sitting on ‘one of the front benches below the gangway’, with his ‘head resting on the back of the bench and his long legs stretched out ... half way across the floor of the House’, along with his ‘ponderous’ manner in debate, made him the butt of many an in-House joke, which was always taken in ‘good humour’.11McCarthy, Portrait of the Sixties, 189-90; Birmingham Daily Post, 15 Jan. 1883. A steady presence in the lobbies, he voted consistently against the Maynooth grant, for the secret ballot, for the abolition of church rates, triennial parliaments, and for greater economies and retrenchment. His earlier speeches included warning against the proposed clampdown on nudity proposed by the obscene books bill, citing the potential ban on a book of nude statues, 19 Aug. 1857, and defending his public criticism of the military tactics deployed in the Crimean war, insisting that he cast no slur on the troops themselves, 8 Dec. 1857. On 28 Mar. 1858 he attacked Disraeli’s plans for the new government of India. ‘White’s criticisms of the mixed nominee and representative constitution of the proposed India government are sound’, noted the Liberal MP Sir John Trelawny, ‘the two parties will, probably, soon be in hostile array’. Two months later, however, he was apparently one of those who ‘persuaded’ the Whigs not to upset the Derby ministry by continuing with their censure of Lord Ellenborough over his handling of the Indian mutiny.12The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, ed. T. A. Jenkins (1994), 33, 44. On 2 Mar. 1859, at a meeting of the London Parliamentary Reform Committee chaired by Samuel Morley, White proposed resolutions condemning the ministry’s ‘inadequate’ reform bill.13LLoyd’s Weekly Newspaper, 6 Mar. 1859. He was one of 56 ‘independent Liberals who profess to follow no particular leader’ who voted in the majority against it, 31 Mar. 1859.14Morning Post, 2 Apr. 1859.

At the ensuing general election White offered again for Plymouth, where ‘the extreme views of reform which he entertains’ and his ‘independence’ had alienated many of his former supporters. Unaided by government, he was beaten into third place behind his less radical colleague and a Conservative.15The Times, 29 Apr., 2 May 1859. When a vacancy arose at Marylebone that June, the ‘opportunity of replacing this champion of the people’s cause in the Commons’ was rumoured, but came to nothing.16Daily News, 20 June 1859. He had to wait until July 1860 for a suitable opening at Brighton, where he found himself accused of ‘failing to pay his creditors’ by a rival Liberal candidate, in a highly-charged by-election. Insisting that this was a ‘lie’, he promised to nevertheless support the ‘complete emancipation’ of his opponent’s Jewish co-religionists and ‘return good for evil’. After claiming connections with the late Joseph Hume MP, membership of the council of the Anti-Corn Law League, and citing his role as ‘president of the Constitutional Defence Association’, he topped the poll. The press hoped that he would do something to improve Brighton’s ‘abominably evil-odorous’ sewerage problems.17Morning Chron., 10 July; Morning Post, 16, 17 July; The Era, 22 July 1860.

White resumed his activity in the lobbies, voting for the county and borough franchise bills of 1861 and 1864, annual ballot motions, and the abolition of university tests, 16 Mar. 1864. His own amendment for parliamentary reform, 5 Feb. 1861, was soundly rejected, 129-46.18Trelawny Diaries, 147. He remained outspoken on foreign policy, attacking John Arthur Roebuck’s defence of Austria in a manner that Trelawny deemed ‘unfounded and unwarrantable’, 7 Mar. 1861, lambasting ministers for neither pursuing rigid non-intervention or active intervention, 18 Mar. 1862, and seeking clarification of their policy in the American Civil War, 15 May 1865.19Trelawny Diaries, 158. On 24 Mar. 1862 he moved unsuccessfully for the abolition of flogging in the army.

One of sixty Liberal Members who signed the memorial to Palmerston for retrenchment in February 1861, White’s growing preoccupation with finance, which he unsuccessfully proposed to have one day a week set aside for, 7 Mar. 1861, increasingly began to test the patience of the House.20Birmingham Daily Post, 5 Feb. 1861. On 11 Mar. 1862 he accused Members of apathy on the estimates, warning that they ‘would be alone responsible should the masses of their countrymen be forced to believe that Parliamentary Government, as now administered, is nothing, after all, but the cunningest device which the selfish subtlety of the governing classes could contrive to extract the largest amount of taxation from the hard-working, overburdened, but unrepresented portions of our community’.21Trelawny Diaries, 190. He criticised the expenses at the foreign office, 28 Apr., and advocated further military reductions, 19 May 1862. On 10 May 1864 Trelawny complained about being subjected to ‘a most tedious speech on finance delivered by J. White’ for a more equitable distribution of taxation, which ‘occupied more than an hour and a half’. ‘Great was the patience of the House’, he remarked, adding, ‘White’s speech, delivered with the air of a person propounding obvious truth ... is a good evidence of the unwarranted confidence with which advanced reformers ... speak on finance’.22Trelawney Diaries, 277.

At the 1865 general election White was re-elected for Brighton, where the Liberals managed a rare display of unity, as ‘an honest, independent, outspoken democrat’, and on the hustings paid tribute to his late ‘friend’ Cobden.23Daily News, 1 July; Morning Post, 12 July 1865. He supported the Liberal government’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and featured in most of the Liberal and radical minorities for amendments to Disraeli’s reform bill, including the enfranchisement of women, 20 May 1867. He backed Gladstone’s resolutions on the Irish church, 3 Apr. 1868. Re-elected at that year’s general election, he gave general support to Gladstone’s first ministry, but Brighton’s drift into Conservatism cost him his seat at the 1874 election, and he is not known to have sought re-election thereafter. White died in January 1883 at 8 Thurloe Square, Kensington, leaving all his estate, proved under £18,938, to his wife, who was his sole executrix.