LONGFIELD, Robert (1810-1868), of Merrion Square, Dublin

The youngest of three sons (by the first marriage) of the vicar of Desertserges, Longfield was born near Bandon in 1810. His grandfather, John Longfield of Longueville (1741-1815), represented Mallow in the Irish parliament, 1790-1800, and, as a supporter of the Union, at Westminster, 1801-02.1His uncle, also John Longfield (1767-1842), represented Philipstown, 1795-7, and Ballynakill, 1797-1800: E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002) v. 114-5. Longfield was one of nine brothers and half-brothers, the eldest of whom, Mountiford Longfield (1802-84), was a noted jurist, economist and Conservative intellectual.2R.D. Collison Black, ‘Longfield, Mountiford’, Oxford DNB, xxxiv. 390-2; Sean P. Donian, ‘Longfield, Mountiford’, Dictionary of Irish Biography, v. 564-5.

After excelling as an undergraduate at Trinity College, Dublin, Longfield was called to the bar in 1834 and established a practice in Dublin, though he was also a landlord in the neighbourhood of Skibbereen, county Cork.3Hansard, 21 Feb. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 582-5. His cousin, Richard Longfield of Longueville, had been Conservative MP for County Cork, 1835-7 and, at the 1841 general election, unsuccessfully contested Mallow. Robert himself stood as a candidate against Daniel O’Connell at the County Cork election and, with his fellow Conservative Nicholas Leader, subsequently brought forward a petition after coming fourth in the poll which came to nothing.4A. Barron & A. Austin, Reports of Cases of Controverted Elections, in the Fourteenth Parliament of the United Kingdom (1844), 534-51.

Thereafter Longfield returned to his legal practice and published several legal works, chiefly on the law of landlord and tenant, and was appointed Queen’s Counsel in November 1852.5His works included A Treatise on the Action of Ejectment in the Superior Courts of Ireland (1840), The Law of Distress and Replevin in Ireland (1843), The Fishery Laws of Ireland (1863), The Game Laws of Ireland (1868), and The Origin of Freemasonry (1857). In 1859, he came forward for Mallow as a ‘consistent, though moderate, Conservative’ and supporter of Lord Derby. With the advantage of family influence and support from the Catholic clergy, he overturned the long-standing Liberal domination of the borough, defeating Sir Charles Jephson Norreys by a clear margin. Following his return, he was appointed a party whip.6Irish Law Times & Solicitors’ Journal, ii (1868), 216.

An active member, Longfield made 200 contributions to debate in six years. Like many Irish Conservatives, he was a critic of the national education system, arguing that ‘it did not possess the confidence of the Protestant community’. In 1860 he called for the English system of denominational education to be extended to Ireland, and opposed legislation which proposed to open endowed schools to Dissenters.7Hansard, 22 July 1859, vol. 155, cc. 300-1; 14 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, c. 1301; 11 July 1861, vol. 164, cc. 767-8; 21 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 983-4. More surprisingly, he opposed the renewal of the 1856 Peace Preservation (Ireland) Act, which he regarded as ‘exceptional and degrading legislation’ that was often used as ‘a mere excuse for laziness on the part of those whose duty it was to enforce the general law’. He also criticised the party emblems bill, arguing that ‘ridiculous displays of religious feeling’ would be more effectively put down by public opinion rather ‘than penal laws’.8Hansard, 10 Aug. 1860, vol. 160, cc. 1140-1, 1154.

Longfield took a keen interest in electoral reform. In March 1860 he gave evidence on the administration of parliamentary elections in Ireland to the select committee on the 1854 Corrupt Practices Prevention Act.9PP 1860 (329) x. 1 [234-41]. He objected strongly to the clause of the government’s reform bill of 1860 that would have permitted Irish peers to represent Irish constituencies, which he regarded as contrary to the Treaty of Union.10Hansard, 1 Mar. 1860, vol. 156, c. 2080. He advocated one general measure that would incorporate franchise reform with ‘an equitable redistribution of seats’ across the United Kingdom, and calculated that, based on its population and revenue, Ireland was entitled to at least 118 seats in the Commons.11He drew particular attention to the underrepresentation of County Cork which, while having a population nearly equal to that of Wales, returned only eight members compared to the principality’s 28: Hansard, 7 June 1860, vol. 159, cc. 52-5. In 1864 he sat on the inquiry on county voters in England and Wales, having already served on the Great Grimsby and Berwick-upon-Tweed election committees.12PP 1864 (203) x. 403; PP 1862 (169) xvi. 1; PP 1864 (127) x. 35. On foreign affairs, Longfield asked parliamentary questions relating to the island of San Juan, the government of New Zealand, and the military campaign on the Gold Coast. He spoke in defence of Admiral Augustus Kuper, whom he believed to have been made a scapegoat over the retaliatory bombardment of the Japanese city of Kagoshima in August 1863.13Hansard, 30 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 1616-7; 19 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, c. 1607; 12 Apr. 1861, vol. 162, c. 531; 23 June 1864, vol. 176, c. 159; 9 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 354-7. That year he also moved an amendment against the accidents compensation bill, which placed a cap on the amount of compensation that could be claimed by those without life insurance according to the passenger class of the victim, denouncing it as ‘an appraisement of human life according to the valuation of railway directors’.14Hansard, 13 May 1863, vol. 170, cc. 1677-80.

In 1861, Longfield helped to prepare measures to regulate Irish markets (sitting on the relevant select committee), and to repatriate the destitute Irish residing in England and Scotland.15PP 1861 (136) iii. 369; PP 1861 (424) xiv. 235; Hansard, 20 Mar. 1862, vol. 165, cc. 1875-89; 1 May 1862, vol. 166, cc. 1106-10; PP 1863 (86) iii. 495. He had taken a close interest in the land question and, during 1862-4, assisted with bills to authorize the issue of debentures chargeable on land, and to facilitate the redemption and extinguishment of rents.16Hansard, 29 Mar. 1860, vol. 157, cc. 1568-9; 11 June 1860, vol. 159, cc. 286-8; PP 1862 (71) i. 625; PP 1864 (1) iv. 139. In 1864 he criticised the mismanagement of a 200,000 acre estate in Connemara purchased by the Law Life Assurance Company and moved the second reading of the chief rents (Ireland) bill.17Hansard, 27 May 1864, vol. 175, cc. 746-54; 20 Apr. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 1397-400. He also prepared a measure to amend the Landed Property Improvement (Ireland) Act of 1860 (Cardwell Act), commending the subsequent report of the select committee as one which might ‘put an end to the question of tenant-right forever’, and thus prevent ‘the tenants from looking to tenant-right as a sort of panacea which was to make them rich and happy’.18PP 1864 (2) ii. 553; Hansard, 4 May 1864, vol. 175, cc. 12-6; 23 June 1865, vol. 180, c. 758.

In 1863 Longfield attacked the government’s Irish salmon fisheries bill, introducing his own measure to assimilate the Irish and English laws and, having served on the select committee on the Irish fisheries bill, took an active part in the subsequent debate.19Hansard, 11 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 240-2; 25 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 1898-901; 12 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 797-804; 30 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 1755-63; 3 July 1863, vol. 172, 166-73; PP 1863 (1) iv. 13; PP 1862 (360) (360-I) ix. 289, 439. He was also involved in legal reform and assisted with Irish bills to amend the laws relating to attorneys and solicitors, charitable donations and bequests, and the Admiralty Court, 1861-3.20PP 1861 (207) i. 65; PP 1862 (41) i. 181; PP 1863 (45) i. 5. In June 1864 he described the government’s plans to reform the Irish court of chancery as ‘senseless and extravagant’, and was ‘very busy’ in the factious divisions which eventually thwarted the measure.21Hansard, 2 June 1864, vol. 175, cc. 1093-8; 22 June 1864, vol. 175, cc. 95-7, 24 June 1864, vol. 175, cc. 285-90; T.A. Jenkins (ed.), The Parliamentary Diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865 (1990), 291 (24 June 1864). As an advocate of matrimonial law reform, he assisted with Irish bills to amend the laws relating to marriages and married women’s property, in order to secure the property of wives separated from their husbands.22Hansard, 5 Mar. 1863, vol. 169, c. 1120; 2 Apr. 1864, vol. 166, 411-24; PP 1863 (40) iii. 11; PP 1863 (88) iii. 19; PP 1865 (6) iii. 11.

Longfield served on the 1863 select committee on Thames conservancy, having earlier sat on committees to consider bills for Leith harbour and docks, the transport service, burials, and the registration of births, deaths and marriages in Ireland.23PP 1863 (454) xii. 1; PP 1864 (373) viii. 431; PP 1860 (412) xv. 1; PP 1860 (480) xviii. 1; PP 1861 (380) xii. 377; PP 1862 (306) xvi. 573; PP 1861 (425) xiv. 13. In 1864 he served on the important select committee on Irish taxation, where he was among the minority to support the chairman’s recommendation for substantial reductions. He took the position that since 1852, and in spite of a decline in Irish output and population, a rapid and uniform growth of taxation on the country had ‘depressed its energies and diminished its resources’.24PP 1864 (513) (513-I) xv. 1, 55; PP 1865 (330) xii. 1; Hansard, 12 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 836-9; 26 Feb. 1864, vol. 173, cc. 1211-3; T. Kennedy, A history of the Irish protest against over-taxation, from 1853 to 1897 (1897), 17.In 1865 he moved for an investigation of appointments connected with the Leeds Bankruptcy Court and, during the debate, ‘proceeded to pour forth a flood of invective’ upon the lord chancellor, Lord Westbury, for ‘conniving at crime for his own advantage and that of his son’.25Hansard, 27 June 1865, vol. 180, cc. 879-914; Jenkins, Trelawny Diaries, 330-1 (27 June 1865). The subsequent disclosure that Westbury had misled a Lords committee prompted the chancellor’s resignation.26Belfast News-letter, 30 June 1865; Pall Mall Gazette, 30 June 1865; The Solicitors’ Journal & Reporter, xii (1867-8), 545. The matter concerned the provision of a pension for a clerk in the house who had been forced to resign for embezzling funds, the vacant post being taken by one of Westbury’s sons; R.C.J. Cocks, ‘Richard Bethell, Richard, first Baron Westbury’, Oxford DNB, v. 539-42.

In spite of his prodigious activity at Westminister, Longfield’s standing in his own constituency suffered. His defence, in 1861, of proprietorial rights regarding the notorious Derryveigh evictions in Donegal, his justification of the allegedly sectarian practices of the Royal Hibernian Military School, and his absence from the early and important divisions on the Catholic oaths bill meant that his suitability to represent ‘a Catholic and Liberal constituency’ was called into question. In February 1864, Longfield was further criticised for donating funds to an organisation regarded by the Irish Liberal press as a promoter of the ‘propaganda of Souperism’.27Hansard, 24 June 1861, vol. 163, cc. 1504-6; 28 June 1861, vol. 164, cc. 78-9, 82-3; Freeman’s Journal, 16 Feb. 1864, 5 July 1865. Though Kinsale was canvassed on his behalf in October 1864, at the 1865 general election Longfield did not seek re-election.28A. Daunt (ed.), A Life Spent for Ireland. Selections from the Journals of W.J. O’Neill Daunt (1972), 208; Belfast News-letter, 6 July 1865; Leeds Mercury, 14 July 1865.

Shortly after Derby’s return to power in July 1866 he was appointed government law adviser at Dublin Castle.29Birmingham Daily Post, 23 July 1866. He briefly entered the field as ‘a liberal and enlightened Conservative’ for a vacancy at Dublin University in July 1866, but did not persist.30Pall Mall Gazette, 9 July 1866; Caledonian Mercury, 11 July 1866. He was passed over (by agreement) for the vacant Irish solicitor-generalship and was understood to have been promised the first vacated judicial position on offer.31Pall Mall Gazette, 6 Oct. 1866, 10 Sept. 1867. After declining the position of master of the Irish court of exchequer that August, and seeing his appointment to the Admiralty Court blocked by the opposition of commercial interests, Longfield was finally appointed chairman of the quarter sessions for the county of Galway in December 1867.32Pall Mall Gazette, 10, 11, 13 Apr., 14 Dec. 1867; The Examiner, 31 Aug. 1867; Freeman’s Journal, 19 Dec. 1867. However, in spite of his reputation as ‘a well-read lawyer’, possessed of ‘sound and practical common sense’, he proved physically unfit for duties described as ‘more onerous than in the case of other counties’. Having been in delicate health for some time, Longfield died at his home in Merrion Square, Dublin on 27 April 1868.33Irish Law Times and Solicitors’ Journal, i (1867-8), 711; Pall Mall Gazette, 14 Dec. 1867; Freeman’s Journal, 29 Apr. 1868; Pall Mall Gazette, 29 Apr. 1868; The Times, 30 Apr. 1868.