MACLEAN, Donald (1800-1874), of 24 Berkeley Square, London; Witton Castle, Bishop Auckland , Co. Durham and 28 Upper Brook Street, London

Remembered for his ‘frequent speeches in favour of the Carlists in Spain’, as well as ‘his tall, slim figure, aristocratic appearance and agreeable manners’, Maclean was a rising star of the Conservatives in the 1830s and tipped for ministerial office under Peel, but in 1846 he was forced to abandon politics and flee abroad to escape his creditors.1Morning Post, 25 Mar. 1874.

His father, a noted army general ‘from a family pre-eminently distinguished in the military annals of Scotland’, had succeeded as 24^th chief of the Highland clan of Maclean and to his elder brother’s baronetcy in 1818. He served for 28 years in the West Indies, including as a lieutenant-colonel with the 82^nd regiment in Barbados, where Maclean was born.2The Assembled Commons (1837), 118; J. P. Maclean, A History of the Clan Maclean (2009), 230.

Sent to Eton in 1811, Maclean associated with the so-called ‘intellectual Etonians’, including William Mackworth Praed MP, with whom he produced the Etonian.3Morning Post, 25 Mar. 1874. He took first class classical honours at Oxford in 1823, allegedly ‘in a shorter period of residence than was ever known by any other member of the university’, and was a founder member of the Oxford Union Society, serving as its first president and presiding over its inaugural meeting, 23 Apr. 1823.4Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 24 May 1823, 16 Mar. 1833; H. A. Morrah, The Oxford Union (1923), 11, 14. Called to the bar in 1827, he ‘registered on the equity side of Westminster Hall’, but ‘did not follow his profession very seriously’, instead seeking a seat in parliament.5Morning Post, 25 Mar. 1874. In March 1833 he was adopted by the Conservatives for a vacancy at the venal borough of Oxford, where he was said to have addressed the electors ‘in a strain of eloquence, and with a clearness and candor’ that was ‘seldom surpassed’. Praising the British constitution, he asked if the efforts of those who had ‘defended it with tongue and sword’ were ‘to be sported with by every upstart demagogue?’ and refused to be ‘shackled by pledges’, arguing that to be sent to the Commons ‘as a machine’ would be to ‘resign the power with which you delegated me’.6Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 16, 28 Mar. 1833. He was defeated in third place, but stood again at the 1835 general election as an upholder of Protestant principles, in a contest against a Catholic Liberal, and was returned in second place.7Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 8, 13, 20 Dec. 1834, 10 Jan. 1835.

A frequent attender and speaker in his first parliament, Maclean loyally supported the Conservatives on most major issues. His first known speech was in support of the Peel ministry’s address, 26 Feb. 1835, when with legal precision he pointed out contradictions in the Whig opposition’s reasons for seeking an amendment. ‘There are some very promising young barristers in the House’, commented a ‘Heidelberg student’, noting that ‘Maclean has a showy fluency’.8Legal Observer, 23 May 1835. He voted with Peel’s ministry on the speakership, 14 Feb., address, 26 Feb., and Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835. Rallying to the defence of the freemen that summer, by when the Whigs were back in office, Maclean denounced the municipal reform bill’s proposed curtailment of their long established rights and privileges, which were to be sacrificed on the report of a commission whose ‘legality had been questioned by some of the highest law authorities in the country’.9Hansard, 24 June 1835, vol. 28, c. 1190; 20 July 1835, vol. 29, c. 763. He also objected to the Whigs’ reform of the Irish corporations, explaining that they had become ‘a sort of citadel, for the protection of the Protestant interests’ in Ireland.10Hansard, 20 Feb. 1837, vol. 36, cc. 679-690. In a subsequent debate on electoral qualifications, he protested that the ‘freemen had been treated by the government and its supporters as if they had been the scum of society’.11Hansard, 10 May 1837, vol. 38 c. 792. On 26 Feb. 1836 he launched the long-running campaign for which he became best remembered, against the ministry’s ‘unprecedented and unconstitutional’ military assistance to the Queen of Spain in suppressing the rebellion by Don Carlos. His many interventions included a critique of the costs incurred, which he estimated at £500,000, 5 Aug. 1836, and a lengthy exposition of the dangers posed to British interests and the risk of involving ‘all Europe in war’, 18 Apr. 1837.12Hansard, 5 Aug. 1836, vol. 35, cc. 946-55; 18 Apr. 1837, vol. 37, cc. 1394-1411. He voted for the abolition of military flogging, 14 Apr. 1836, and on 20 Apr. 1836 was a majority teller for the Grand Junction railway bill. Speaking in support of the West India interest later that month, he called for restrictions on trade to be abolished as ‘compensation to the West-India proprietors for the sacrifices they were called upon to make’.13Hansard, 29 Apr. 1836, vol. 33, c. 472.

Maclean was a frequent contributor to discussions about improving the newly established voter registration system. In a debate on one abortive bill, he successfully moved for the appointment of more experienced revising barristers of three years’ standing at the bar, 16 June 1836. He called for greater measures against fraudulent voting, 21 June, and objected to the creation of a registration court of appeal headed by the Whig judge Thomas Erskine and the proposed appointment of revising barristers by ministers, because of their party bias, 4 Aug. 1836. He continued to highlight the technical inconsistencies and partisan implications of subsequent registration bills.14See, for example, Hansard, 19 Feb. 1838, vol. 40, c. 1251. On 1 Aug. 1836 he called (unsuccessfully) for an inquiry into the working of the poor laws. In May 1837 he was part of the committee assisting the Tory convert Sir Francis Burdett in his by-election campaign at Westminster.15The Times, 12 May 1837.

At the 1837 general election Maclean offered again for Oxford, where his criticism of the new poor law, especially its separation of man and wife, and the conduct he had pursued on Spanish affairs were warmly applauded at Conservative meetings. In a ‘powerful speech’ on the hustings he again berated ministers for interfering in Spain’s ‘domestic quarrel’ and, explaining his opposition to the ballot, said that he ‘never wished to see Englishmen ashamed of declaring their opinions in the face of day’. He topped the poll.16Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 15, 29 July 1837. He was far less prominent in the lobbies and in debate during his second parliament, but continued to vote with the Conservative opposition when present and divided against the ballot, 15 Feb. 1838. He was in the minority against the immediate cessation of slave apprenticeships, 22 May 1838, and on 6 May 1839 delivered a lengthy harangue against the government’s policy towards Jamaica. On 24 July 1840 he charged ministers with failing to protect and promote British mercantile interests around the world. ‘Found Maclean on his floundering legs destroying English commerce’, Disraeli recorded that day, in a possible reference to some form of physical infirmity.17Disraeli Letters, ed. M. G. Wiebe (Toronto, 1987), iii. 1081. It was a speech de omnibus rebus commented the next speaker. He was in the majority on the confidence motion which brought down the Melbourne ministry, 4 June 1841.

At the 1841 general election Maclean offered again for Oxford as ‘a Conservative’, citing his support for the established church and agricultural protection, but also his willingness to see ‘the loom speed equally with the plough’. Pressed further on the hustings, he declared his preference for a sliding scale rather than a fixed duty on corn imports, and was returned in second place behind a Liberal.18Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 12, 19 June, 3 July 1841. A fortnight later he seconded the nomination of the Conservative James Farrer at South Durham, only to find his property qualification as owner of Witton Castle and its colleries, which he had purchased from Sir William Chaytor in August 1839, publicly called into question for having defaulted on the agreed payment of £96,000. Although it was eventually determined that the few hundred pounds he had laid down as a deposit were sufficient to qualify him as a freeholder (and as Farrer’s seconder), the scandal marked the start of a series of financial embarrassments that were to undermine the rest of his political career, and eventually end it.19Morning Chronicle, 16 July 1841; W. Fordyce, History, topography and directory of the county palatine of Durham (1856), 338; The Times, 24 Mar. 1848.

An increasingly lax attender thereafter, he continued to vote with the Conservatives when present, but spoke far less frequently. Rumours that he would be promoted to ministerial office came to nothing.20See, for example, Morning Chronicle, 16 July 1841. In April 1845 he broke ranks with Peel over his ‘shocking’ proposal to increase the Maynooth grant, which he denounced as ‘the first step towards an endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy’.21Hansard, 17 Apr. 1845, vol. 79, cc. 930-31. He joined the Ultra-Protestant National Club the following year and divided steadily against Peel’s repeal of the corn laws, although he was absent from the bill’s third reading, 15 May 1846. In his last known vote he opposed Peel on the factories bill, 22 May 1846. The following month all his effects at Witton Castle, where he had allegedly ‘maintained a splendid establishment’, were put up for sale on the order of the receivers, including furniture formerly owned by the duke of York.22Fordyce, Durham, 338; The Times, 24 June 1846. In September 1846 he was declared bankrupt and fled to Rome, from where he refused to return, claiming that his ‘state of health required residence in a southern climate’.23London Gazette, 1 Sept.; The Times, 4 Sept. 1846, 22 June 1847. In a case at Queen’s bench held in his absence the following year, a witness stated that as early as 1842 an investigation into his accounts at the Marylebone bank, of which he was a director, had shown that Maclean was insolvent, ‘had never had any property of his own’, and had been committing frauds on the bank, by making false entries. At some point there had been a meeting of his friends at the Carlton Club to try to assist him. Notwithstanding his debts, in March 1846 he had attempted to purchase two paintings, one a Titian, allegedly for Oxford University, for which he had agreed to pay £7,000 in coals at 7s. per ton from his Durham collieries. In June 1846, with the receivers at the door, he had also acquired a coal business.24The Times, 19 Nov. 1846, 24 Apr. 1847. Another case involving Maclean’s non-payment of 4,000 tons of railway rails was heard in 1849.25Reports of cases decided in the High Court of Chancery (1852), iii. 656-60.

Maclean remained in Italy for almost three decades, dying at the Hotel ‘Constanzi’ in Rome from bronchitis in 1874.26Jackson’s Oxford Journal, 21 Mar. 1874; Morning Post, 25 Mar. 1874. His estate was valued under a paltry £100. He had been mentioned as a founder of the Oxford Union at its Jubilee the previous year, but had not attended.27The Times, 23 Oct. 1873. On its centenary the historian of the society observed that Maclean had gone on to ‘make a name in politics ... but in time he fell out, defeated in the race, a victim of financial and other disasters’.28Morrah, Oxford Union, 18.