MUNTZ, George Frederick (1794-1857), of Briton Ferry House, Glamorgan

A Birmingham metal roller, iron merchant and inventor, it has been said that Muntz ‘fitted no political mould’, but stripped of his belligerent public persona and independent rhetoric, throughout his political career he remained a ‘zealous advocate of the views of the Birmingham school’ and the principles articulated by its chief Thomas Attwood, whom he succeeded as MP.1C. Flick, ‘Muntz metal and ship’s bottoms: the industrial career of G.F. Muntz’, Trans. of Birmingham and Warwickshire Archaeological Society (1975), lxxxvii. 69-88 (at 74); Illustrated London News (1849), xiv. 196; S.G. Checkland, ‘The Birmingham economists, 1815-1850’, Economic History Review, 1 (new series, 1948), 1-19 (at 3). Muntz possessed a ‘remarkable and handsome’ personal appearance: he ‘was tall and exceedingly muscular, and must have possessed enormous physical power’, and was further distinguished by a thick black beard at a time when ‘shaving was universal’.2E. Edwards, Personal recollections of Birmingham and Birmingham men (1877), 81; see also J. Grant, Portraits of public characters (1841), i. 87-8 (at 87). Long baggy woollen trousers (worn even in summer) and a wooden stick completed his ‘singular appearance’, which would ‘promptly disperse a whole gang of banditti’.3Ibid., 92-3. His contrariness and eccentricity were notorious, as one local critic recalled:

He was bold and fearless physically, but there his courage ended. He avowed himself a Republican, and yet was an innate aristocrat. He was always declaiming against despotism and tyranny in the abstract, yet he was domineering and arbitrary in his household, in his family, and in his business. He affected primitive simplicity, yet was the vainest of men. In fact, his whole nature was a living contradiction.4Edwards, Personal recollections, 87-8.

Although of Polish origin, Muntz’s forebears had settled in France as landowners ‘of very aristocratic position’, but his father fled during the Revolution to Amsterdam, where he became an merchant, before moving to Birmingham where he became a partner through marriage in the firm of Mynors and Purden.5DNB (1894), xxxix. 313. Fluent in French and German, Muntz was largely self-taught aside from one year at a local school and the educational efforts of his mother.6Ibid.; Edwards, Personal recollections, 82. On his father’s death in 1811, Muntz took over the management of the family metal works and merchants, and in the 1830s developed an alloy of copper and zinc, later described as ‘one of the most brilliant inventions that has ever been made in modern times’, which was far superior to copper for sheathing ships’ bottoms.7Edwards, Personal recollections, 83; Flick, ‘Muntz metal’, 74. The comment was made by a witness to the Lords’ committee on extending the 1850 Designs Act: PP 1851 (145), xviii. 701. Due to a lack of interest, Muntz initially sold at a loss, but as the metal’s excellence became widely known, he struggled, ultimately successfully, to meet demand and uphold his patents, and by 1846, when the latter had expired, he had earned £70,000 from his invention and secured a dominant market position.8Flick, ‘Muntz metal’, 76-84.

Muntz claimed in 1836 that the 1815 corn law had turned him from a ‘Tory, but not a back-bone Tory’ into a ‘Reformer’, but he first achieved political renown as a leading member of the Birmingham Political Union, founded in January 1830 to campaign for parliamentary reform.9Proceedings of the important town’s meeting convened by the Political Union and held in the Birmingham Town Hall on ...Jan. 18, 1836 (1836), 10; C. Flick, The Birmingham Political Union and the movements for reform in Britain, 1830-1839 (1976), 22-3; D. Moss, Thomas Attwood: a biography of a radical (1990), 95, 155-7. His pamphlet of the same year reflected the currency principles of the Union’s leader, Thomas Attwood, and Muntz’s imposing physique, ‘strong and manly voice’, and rugged oratory proved popular at public meetings.10Ibid.; Edwards, Personal recollections, 84; G.F. Muntz, Three letters to the duke of Wellington (1830). Muntz resigned from the Union’s political council in early 1832 (after a spat with a colleague), but soon rejoined, and after Attwood’s election as MP later that year, Muntz became leader in his absence.11Flick, Birmingham Political Union, 76, 89, 103. He shared his chief’s criticism of the reformed Parliament, which ‘had given Ireland coercion not justice’ and done nothing to alleviate distress.12Report of the proceedings of the great public meeting of the inhabitants of Birmingham and its neighbourhood held... on...May 20, 1833, convened by the Council of the Political Union for the purpose of petitioning His Majesty to dismiss his ministers (1833), 3. Until his removal to South Wales in November 1837, for business reasons, Muntz was active in local politics, notably sparking a church rates riot at a vestry meeting, 28 Mar. 1837, for which he was later found guilty of affray.13He was acquitted on twelve other charges: Edwards, Personal recollections, 85-6; The Times, 31 Mar. 1837.

Muntz returned to Birmingham to be elected as Attwood’s successor, 25 Jan. 1840, defeating an absent Conservative in a low turnout. Given his radical opinions, it came as a surprise to some when Muntz took his seat behind Whig ministers, 29 Jan. 1840, prompting one Conservative MP to speculate whether the new MP ‘must have his price’, at which Muntz protested his independence and complained that the government ‘had too nearly followed the principles and practices’ of Peel’s party.14Hansard, 29 Jan. 1840, vol. 51, cc. 759, 760-2 (at 759, 762). The Conservative MP was John Pakington. Muntz’s critique of the Whigs was regularly repeated, e.g. 26 May 1840, vol. 54, cc. 547-8, and reprised themes of his out of door speeches of the 1830s. As observers noted, Muntz was ‘not a party man’, and he supported the Whigs over Peel’s motion of no confidence, 4 June 1841, with little enthusiasm.15Grant, Portraits of public characters, i. 97. Although he continued to sit behind the Whig or Liberal frontbench, he did so from the ‘darkness of the backbench under the gallery’ near the gangway, which accurately reflected his political distance from their leaders.16J. Spellen, The inner life of the House of Commons (1854), 37. He was elected in first place at the subsequent general election, and was described in 1844 as being ‘as Radical as any man can be who is not an out-and-out pledged Chartist’.17Leeds Mercury, 13 July 1844. However, his independence and unwillingness to endorse William Scholefield as his running-mate at the 1847 general election annoyed local Liberals, who threatened to challenge him, provoking a characteristic retort from Muntz, who topped the poll:

What have been my votes and speeches for eight sessions that I’m sneaked at and treated as the scum of the earth? Come and fight it out now. I am here … Where now are the vile miscreants who have traduced me? You poor vile, pusillanimous wretches, come out.18Daily News, 14 July 1847.

He faced no challenge thereafter but relations with local Liberal committees, who thought Muntz increasingly Conservative, remained strained.19Edwards, Personal recollections, 86-7; The Standard, 27 Mar. 1857.

Muntz was difficult to place in conventional party terms because of his faithfulness to the principles of the Birmingham school, especially during a time when MPs were increasingly divided into free trade or protectionist camps over financial and economic policy. Partly for this reason, his contributions in debate were often ‘thinking aloud’, explaining and qualifying his votes, although critics sniped that this was ‘speaking one way and voting another’.20Illustrated London News (1847), xiv. 197; Edwards, Personal recollections, 87. Like Attwood, Muntz believed that the restrictive and deflationary monetary system established by the resumption of cash payments in 1819 was at the root of the distress and fluctuations which had afflicted the country since that time. However, although he shared Attwood’s ends, remunerating prices, high wages and full employment, he differed over means, telling Peel, 20 Jan. 1843, that an inconvertible paper currency was ‘a principle which I can never support, and do not see a necessity for’.21George Frederick Muntz to Sir Robert Peel, 20 Jan. 1843, Peel Papers, Add. 40523, f. 247b. His preferred remedy was a silver or bimetallic standard, which he advocated to the parliamentary inquiries on agriculture and banks in 1836 and 1840 respectively, as well as in pamphlets, public and private letters and parliamentary speeches.22PP 1836 (79), viii, pt. II, 393-415; 1840 (602), iv. 106-15; Letters upon corn and currency written during the recess of 1840 (1841); Hansard, 16 Feb. 1843, vol. 66, cc. 732-51; 25 July 1845, vol. 82, cc. 1116-20; letters to The Times, 21, 30 Oct. 1847, 2 Nov. 1847. On the general interest in a silver or bimetallic currency in the 1840s, see F. Fetter, Development of British monetary orthodoxy, 1797-1875 (1965), 164, 177-8, 181-2. Muntz believed that the corn laws and ‘money laws’ were incompatible: the first attempted to keep agricultural prices high, whilst the latter made money scarce. The choice policy-makers faced was whether ‘to reduce all prices to the Continental level by a total repeal of the corn laws, or to raise wages on to the price of corn’, with Muntz favouring the latter, which he believed could be achieved by a silver standard, based on European wheat prices, 1700-90, which would underpin prices.23Muntz to Peel, 24 Jan. 1843, Peel Papers, Add. 40523, f. 250.

Although he had consistently opposed the corn laws, he believed that their abolition without first repealing the ‘money laws’ was ‘to put the cart before the horse’, as it would depress prices and reduce wages.24The Times, 23 Oct. 1847. Muntz remained critical of the ‘excessive zeal’ of the Anti-Corn Law League, and sceptical about the benefits of free trade, and when wages began to rise in the early 1850s, he attributed it to the ‘unexpected and marvellous increase in the production of gold’, principally through discoveries in America and Australia, which had provided the measure of currency reform which should have accompanied repeal of the corn laws.25Muntz, Letters upon corn and currency, 9; Daily News, 26 July 1852. For his belief in the impact of gold, see also Hansard, 26 Nov. 1852, vol. 123, c. 620. Although there was little parliamentary opposition to the monetary system by the end of his career, Muntz still moved, unsuccessfully, for a select committee on the issue, 28 Feb. 1856.26Hansard, 28 Feb. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 1481-7, 1544.

Underlying the currency views of Attwood, Muntz and Joshua Scholefield, MP for Birmingham 1832-44, was a profound scepticism about policy based on abstract theory, and their hostility to the new poor law, ambivalence to Cobdenite free trade, as well as Muntz’s opposition to limited liability, which he complained was ‘purely philosophic’, 6 Feb. 1856, were all of a piece. They also had a positive conception of the role of the state, whether through promoting full employment through a managed currency, or regulation of working conditions. Despite his manufacturing background, Muntz, like Attwood and Scholefield, was a strong supporter of the Factory Acts, and was dismissive of laissez-faire objections. Disgusted by what he saw on a visit to Manchester, he argued, 10 Feb. 1847, that the real question was ‘whether the master should gain a trifling per centage more or less profit by the destruction of the brains, flesh and bones of these poor women and children?’27Hansard, 10 Feb. 1847, vol. 89, c. 1133. However, Muntz thought that it was impossible to prevent smoke from foundries and furnaces, and opposed legislation to achieve this, 20 Feb. 1845, having earlier made some practical suggestions on how the problem might be mitigated to an 1843 committee.28Hansard, 20 Feb. 1845, vol. 77, c. 832; PP 1843 (583), vii. 390-4.

Like other early Victorian Birmingham MPs, Muntz generally cast votes in favour of radical political change as he found the reformed Parliament to be full of unrepresentative ‘theoretical philosophers’, although unlike his colleague William Scholefield, he divided against Feargus O’Connor’s motion for the People’s charter, 3 July 1849.29Letter to The Times, 30 Oct. 1847. A supporter of a property tax, which he, like Joshua Scholefield, thought would redistribute the burden of taxation from the poor to the wealthy, Muntz supported the reintroduction of income tax (which came with a property tax), 18 Apr. 1842, a vote he soon regretted, although his motion for readjustment of the taxation system was defeated, 8 Apr. 1856.30Hansard, 23 Mar. 1841, vol. 57, cc. 558-9; 18 Apr. 1842, vol. 62, cc. 708-9; 8 Apr. 1856, vol. 141, cc. 640-3, 658. Like his predecessors Muntz was critical of coercion measures for Ireland, and although he reluctantly supported the suspension of habeas corpus, 6 July 1848, he reversed his position the following year.31Hansard, 22 July 1848, vol. 100, cc. 740-1; 6 Feb. 1849, vol. 102, cc. 358-9. A churchman who has been described as ‘anti-Catholic’, Muntz supported the extension of religious liberty, opposing all endowments (including to the Maynooth seminary in Ireland), but, unlike William Scholefield, he supported Russell’s action against Papal aggression in 1851.32Hansard, 18 Apr. 1845, vol. 79, cc. 949-55; 14 Feb. 1851, vol. 114, cc. 696-7; Moss, Thomas Attwood, 212. His belligerence during the Crimean War and ridicule of the ‘peace-at-any price foolery’ of Bright, owed something to Attwood’s earlier Russophobia, but such views were now much more respectable amongst parliamentary Radicals.33Hansard, 16 Aug. 1853, vol. 129, cc. 1794-5; 22 Feb. 1854, vol. 130, cc. 1121-3; The Standard, 27 Mar. 1857. On Russophobia amongst parliamentary Radicals see M. Taylor, The decline of British radicalism, 1847-1860 (1995), 223-32.

In other respects too, Muntz held progressive views, opposing the death penalty, arguing for divorce to be made easier for the working classes, and for a change in the law to prevent husbands squandering their wives’ money.34Hansard, 5 Mar. 1840, vol. 52, cc. 939-40; 14 Mar. 1848, vol. 97, cc. 590-1; 7 May 1856, vol. 142, cc. 175-6; 10 June 1856, vol. 142, c. 1279. The main practical achievements of his parliamentary career were to successfully lobby the government to adopt perforated postal stamps, whilst his amendment to the 1852 steam navigation bill, which required all ships to have self-operating safety valves, was a significant improvement to maritime health and safety.35He championed the perforating machine of Mr. Archer, successfully moved a select committee on the issue, which he chaired, and which recommended that the government adopt the method: Hansard, 16 Mar. 1852, vol. 119, cc. 1156-9; PP 1852 (386), xv. 3-4. On steam ships, see Hansard, 25 July 1851, vol 118, cc. 1532-3; DNB (1894), xxxix. 313-14.

Although Muntz had given a typically combative speech at the 1857 general election, when he was returned, it was soon discovered that he had cancer, and he died three months later, by which time his ‘fine frame was diminished to a mere skeleton’.36The Standard, 27 Mar. 1857; Edwards, Recollections, 88. Muntz’s antagonism of Birmingham’s emerging Liberal civic elite meant that his reputation suffered posthumously, most notably through Eliezer Edwards’ 1877 character assassination (which was nonetheless perceptive), whilst other local accounts unfairly cast doubt on his claims to be the true inventor of the metal alloy which made his fortune.37Flick, ‘Muntz metal’, 85-6; Edwards, Recollections, 79-88. He was succeeded by his eldest son George Frederick Muntz, jun., who purchased the Umberslade Hall estate in Warwickshire which the family had rented since 1850. George unsuccessfully contested North Warwickshire as a Liberal on three occasions, but his brother Philip Arthur Muntz (1839-1908), with whom he carried on the family business, represented that division and its successor division as a Conservative, from 1884 until his death, and was created a baronet, 1902.38Flick, ‘Muntz metal’, 87; M. Stenton and S. Lees, Who’s who of British MPs, ii. 261; McCalmont’s parliamentary poll book, ed. J. Vincent and M. Stenton (8th edn., 1972), 302; ibid., pt. II, 246. Muntz’s brother, Philip Henry (1811-88), was Liberal MP for Birmingham, 1868-85.