BLAND, Loftus Henry (1803-1872), of Blandsfort, Queen’s County of 33 Merrion Square North, Dublin

Born at Blandsfort House, Queen’s County, Bland was the youngest son of a local landowner and former soldier. He was descended from a Yorkshire gentry family which had settled in Ireland in the mid-1660s, his grandfather, John Bland, having inherited the family property from his uncle, General Humphrey Bland, who was governor of Gibraltar and commander-in-chief in Scotland in the 1750s.2J.A. Houlding, ‘Bland, Humphrey’, Oxf. DNB, vi. 158-60; W. Bruce Bannerman (ed.), Miscellanea Genealogica et Heraldica, 4th ser., v (1914), 232. His maternal grandfather, Robert Birch, had been ‘a political adventurer and financial speculator’ who had sat in the Irish parliament for Belturbet, 1771-83.3Originally a grocer, Birch become a money dealer and trafficked in the purchase of pensions before going bankrupt in 1778: E. Johnston-Liik, History of the Irish Parliament 1692-1800 (2002), iii. 188-90.

Educated at Dublin and Cambridge, Bland travelled widely on the continent as a young man. He was called to the Irish bar in 1829 and practised on the home circuit, becoming well regarded in Irish legal circles and obtaining silk in January 1854.4Standard, 5 July 1828; Belfast News-letter, 10 Nov. 1829; P.F. Meehan, The Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly (Queen’s and King’s Counties), 1801-1918 (1983), 132; The Times, 24 Jan. 1872; Belfast News-letter, 30 Jan. 1854. Bland appears to have been well-connected in society and was presented to the king at St. James’s in November 1830.5Morning Post, 4, 11 Nov. 1830. He regularly attended royal and vice-regal levees in London and Dublin over the following three decades. He was married in 1840, but his wife died after delivering a still-born child in March 1842. He remarried in the following year and inherited ‘a handsome estate’ at Blandsfort upon the death of his eldest brother in 1849.6Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 5 Sept. 1840; Freeman’s Journal, 29 Mar. 1842, 6 Dec. 1843. His second wife was an active philanthropist and assisted with famine relief at Skibbereen, county Cork. Bland was highly regarded as a farmer and considered an excellent resident landlord after ameliorating his rents in 1850.7Freeman’s Journal, 30 May 1850; Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 132.

Bland came forward for King’s County at the 1852 general election, when he declared himself ‘a friend of progressive legislation, reform of the representative system, a modified tenant-right, civil liberty, and religious equality’.8Morning Post, 24 Jan. 1872. He argued that most of Ireland’s ills could be attributed to ‘the present vicious system of laws’ regulating landlord-tenant relations, but also contended that the landed interest, in lieu of a restoration of the corn duty, should be relieved of excessive burdens. His unequivocal opposition to the Ecclesiastical Titles Act having secured him the support of the local Catholic clergy, Bland defeated his Conservative challenger, and he subsequently vowed to enter parliament ‘as the friend of the poor man’.9Freeman’s Journal, 23 Mar., 21 June, 26 Aug. 1852. However, shortly after attending a banquet for John Sadleir at Carlow he fell dangerously ill and underwent a ‘very slow and protracted’ convalescence at his home in Ireland.10Freeman’s Journal, 13, 17 Sept., 29 Nov. 1852; Daily News, 13 Sept. 1852; Morning Chronicle, 13 Sept. 1852; Standard, 21 Sept. 1852. He nevertheless voiced his support for the Tenant Right conference held in October 1852, and was sufficiently recovered to join 36 other Liberal MPs at a meeting of Irish members in March 1853.11J.H. Whyte, The Independent Irish Party, 1850-9 (1958), 89; Freeman’s Journal, 11 Aug., 30 Oct. 1852, 5 Mar. 1853. He opposed Gladstone’s budget, 2 May, and supported efforts to exempt Ireland from the income tax, 6 May. That June he voted for the ballot (and later spoke in its support, 22 May 1855) and, offended by Lord John Russell’s questioning of the loyalty of Catholic subjects, he ‘took up his hat and walked over to the opposition benches, thus most significantly and practically protesting against the leader’s policy’.12Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 99; Freeman’s Journal, 6 June 1853. He opposed the government over advertising duty, 1 July, and voted against the Irish crime and outrage bill, 26 July. He does not, however, appear to have conformed with the line of the Independent Irish party after 1854.13Whyte, Independent Irish Party, 180.

Bland made more than 50 contributions to debate, and was an increasingly regular attender, voting in 66 of the 257 divisions of the 1853 session, and 91 of 198 in 1856.14Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions in the House of Commons during the last session of parliament (1857), 29. In February 1854 he attended a meeting of Liberal MPs to discuss Lord John Russell’s proposed reform bill.15Daily News, 22 Feb. 1854. The following year he attended a meeting between Liberal MPs and Lord Palmerston: Freeman’s Journal, 24 July 1855. As an ‘Irish Protestant Churchman’ he opposed the nunneries inquiry in March, arguing that the working of these establishments was better understood in Ireland than in England.16Hansard, 28 Mar. 1854, vol. 131, c. 1459; Morning Chronicle, 29 Mar. 1854. In May he introduced bills to assimilate English and Irish methods for the collection of average prices of Irish agricultural produce and for determining the annual variation of Irish tithe rent charges, and divided against the ministry on the oaths bill, 25 May. He sat on the select committee on the management of crown forests and supported the abolition of church rates, 21 June 1854 (and would again, 8 June 1858).17PP 1854 (101) i. 21; PP 1854 (103) vi. 387; Hansard, 16 May 1854, vol. 133, cc. 460-2; PP 1854 (377) x. 429. Bland also championed the influential Irish vintners lobby and in December 1854 assisted Vincent Scully with a bill to prevent the unlicensed sale of spirits and suppress illicit distillation in Ireland.18PP 1854-55 (8) vi. 149; PP 1854-55 (160) vi. 153. In March 1855 he spoke out against the reduction of Irish poor law officers, which he claimed had borne disproportionately on Catholic appointees, and in May defended the Maynooth grant, counselling members to ‘consider that they were at war with a foreign State, and they should pause before they produced the slightest degree of discontent in Ireland’.19Hansard, 30 Mar. 1855, vol. 137, cc. 1418-20; 1 May 1855, vol. 137, cc. 2086-8. He strenuously opposed the second reading of Spooner’s Maynooth College bill in 1856, arguing that the repeal of the grant would place Irish Protestants ‘in the position of persecutors’, and would be the first step towards ‘the destruction of the Irish Church’: Hansard, 25 June 1856, vol. 142, cc. 1950-1. Nevertheless, he consistently backed the ministry over the conduct of the Crimean War, supporting the enlistment of foreigner’s bill, 19 Dec. 1854, opposing Disraeli’s critical motion, 25 May 1855, and Roebuck’s motion of censure on the cabinet, 19 July, dividing in favour of the Turkish loan, 20 July, and standing behind the Liberals over the fall of Kars, 29 Apr. 1856.20Hansard, 22 May 1855, vol. 138, c. 941; Freeman’s Journal, 24 July 1855.

Bland was concerned with legal reform and supported the Irish chancery bill in February 1856, arguing that the business of the Incumbered Estates Court should be transferred to the reformed court. However, a year later he objected strongly to the judgments and execution bill, which he claimed would disadvantage ‘the Irish commercial community’ and ‘be used as an instrument to compel people to pay what they never owed’. By extending the principle of centralisation, he contended, it would deprive Irish people of ‘a ready means of obtaining justice’, by putting ‘them to the expense of defending cases in the metropolis which might be tried on the spot’.21Hansard, 18 Feb. 1856, vol. 140, cc. 944-5; 11 Feb. 1857, vol. 144, c. 505; 18 Feb. 1857, vol. 144, c. 765; 8 May 1857, vol. 145, c. 99; 13 May 1857, vol. 145, cc. 226-7. He backed the government over the budget, 26 Feb. 1856, but was in the minority for an investigation into Irish church temporalities, 27 May, and voted against the Irish peace preservation bill, 17 June. He opposed the equalisation of the borough and county franchise, 19 Feb. 1857, and Disraeli’s efforts to abolish income tax, 23 Feb., and, believing that peace should be ‘consistent with honour and dignity, abroad’, he paired against Cobden’s motion of censure on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857.22Freeman’s Journal, 22 Apr. 1859.

In spite of doubts expressed within his own constituency about the degree to which he was independent of Palmerston’s ministry, Bland had proved a reliable supporter of Irish land reform and, having undertaken ‘to oppose any government not advocating a tenant-right bill’, he was re-elected unopposed for King’s County in 1857.23Freeman’s Journal, 12 Mar., 14 Apr. 1857; Standard, 26 Mar., 3 Apr. 1857; Morning Post, 13 Apr. 1857. He returned to Westminster eager to reform the laws relating to bankruptcy and insolvency. He regarded previous legislative attempts to balance the interests of company shareholders and creditors as unfair, and assisted the attorney-general with a bill to amend the Acts for winding up the affairs of insolvent joint stock companies in May 1857.24Hansard, 6 June 1856, vol. 142, c. 1151; PP 1857 session 2 (26) ii. 343. He also assisted the Irish law officers with a bill to shorten prescription times in certain cases in Ireland: PP 1858 (81) iv. 87. However, he opposed unsuccessfully the bill’s third reading on the ground that, in the light of the recent Tipperary Bank scandal, the measure had not been adequately discussed and amended at the committee stage.25Hansard, 9 June 1857, vol. 145, c. 1488.

Bland voted for Jewish emancipation, 15 June 1857, and voiced support for the second reading of the oaths bill, 10 Feb. 1858.26Hansard, 10 May 1858, vol. 148, cc. 1105-6. He displayed a measure of independence by voting with the small minority in favour of repealing the Septennial Act, 20 Apr., but divided in favour of Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, 9, 19 Feb. 1858.27Morning Post, 19 Mar. 1857; Daily News, 15 Apr. 1859. That May he moved for leave to introduce a bill to assimilate the laws of Ireland and England relating to conspiracy to murder in Ireland, arguing that by no longer making the offence a capital one, the chance of securing convictions would increase.28Hansard, 18 May 1858, vol. 150, cc. 879-81, 883. In June he spoke in support of the tenants’ compensation bill, arguing that it was necessary for ‘the purpose of checking the minority of landlords in Ireland – those who were harsh and oppressive’, and in January 1859 joined other Irish Liberals in opposing calls from Irish proprietors for coercive measures to quell agrarian violence.29Hansard, 9 June 1858, vol. 150, cc. 1816-7; The Times, 27 Jan. 1859.

Bland supported the removal of ‘taxes upon knowledge’ and joined a deputation to the prime minister, Lord Derby, to urge the necessity of repealing the paper duty, 11 Feb. 1859.30Daily News, 12 Feb. 1859. The following week he pressed the government to state its intentions regarding a reform bill for Ireland.31Hansard, 17 Feb. 1859, vol. 152, c. 472. He also wished to see all ‘coercive’ measures in Ireland withdrawn, and was disturbed by the means employed to secure the conviction of members of the nationalist Phoenix Society. He assisted with a bill to consolidate and amend Irish jury laws, chiefly to prevent the routine exclusion of Catholic jurors, 17 Feb., and served notice that he intended to bring the subject before the Commons.32PP 1859 (25) i. 807; Freeman’s Journal, 19 Jan., 6 May 1859. He voted against Derby’s reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859, and at the ensuing general election advocated ‘real Reform, which would give to the working classes, with others, a voice in the Legislature’.33Freeman’s Journal, 22 Mar., 6 May 1859. Having utterly denied that he was a ‘model Whig’, and despite attracting the support of some local Catholic clergymen and the Licensed Grocers’ and Vintners’ Society, he was defeated by a Catholic Conservative in a four-way contest. An attempt to petition against the result came to nothing.34Standard, 14 May 1859; Freeman’s Journal, 10, 14, 17 May 1859.

Bland was employed for many years as senior crown prosecutor for counties Meath and Carlow, and, after rumours had circulated that he was to be a judge of the bankruptcy court or baron of the Irish exchequer, he ‘subsided into the comparatively insignificant berth’ of a chairmanship of quarter sessions.35Standard, 18 Feb. 1865; Belfast News-letter, 9 Aug. 1859; Morning Post, 18 Jan. 1861, 5 Oct. 1864. He nevertheless served in three different counties after 1862 and became a ‘highly revered judge’.36The Times, 15 Mar. 1862, 4 Mar. 1865; Freeman’s Journal, 9 Jan. 1864, 1 Feb. 1866; Standard, 25 Jan. 1872; Meehan, Members of Parliament for Laois and Offaly, 132. He devoted much of his time to the improvement of his estate, which he had expanded through the purchase of crown lands in county Roscommon in 1854, and established a reputation in the field of livestock breeding.37Essex Standard, 18 Dec. 1863; Daily News, 2 Dec. 1854. He became a member of the Cattle Plague Committee in 1866: Freeman’s Journal, 12 June 1866. He died in Dublin in January 1872 and was succeeded by his eldest son, Captain John Loftus Bland (1841-1908), a military officer and magistrate of Queen’s County.38His grandson Humphrey (1869-1929) was a noted sportsman and horticulturalist and ‘a Unionist of the old school’: The Times, 1 Mar. 1929.