BARKLY, Henry (1815-1898), of Sparrows Herne, Hertfordshire and 50 Eaton Place, London

Barkly, who was known in the Commons as ‘sugar plum’ due to his unwavering defence of the West Indian sugar-planting interest, sat briefly for Leominster before embarking on a career as a colonial governor, in which he earned a reputation as a skilled mediator.1M. Macmillan, Sir Henry Barkly: mediator and moderator, 1815-1898 (1970), 17. The only surviving son of Aeneas Barkly, a West Indian merchant, he left school at the age of seventeen to enter his father’s London-based business, Davidson, Barkly and Co. He later regretted his decision, musing that ‘residence at a university was in those days so much a matter of course among those who entered public life, that I felt myself at a disadvantage as a Member of Parliament, and afterwards as a colonial governor’.2Cited in ibid, 6-8. Following the death of his father in 1836, he inherited a failing estate in British Guiana, and in 1838 spent six months in the colony, before visiting Jamaica.3Ibid., 8. Following the 1837 Slave Compensation Act, he was awarded just over £6,500 for his additional interest in estates in Grenada and Tobago.4Legacies of British Slave-ownership, http://www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/10612. He subsequently gave important evidence to the 1842 select committee on West Indian colonies, where he displayed a deep knowledge of the region.5PP 1842 (479), xiii. 196-220.

In April 1845 Barkly offered as a Conservative for a vacancy at Leominster created by the resignation of the sitting member, Charles Greenaway.6Standard, 25 Apr. 1845. He had no prior connection to the constituency, though, according to The Times, the local electors were used to ‘being unacquainted with a candidate’.7The Times, 26 Apr. 1845. Barkly declined to hold any meetings, and issued a notably ambiguous address, which stated his support for the established constitution and the continuance of the Maynooth grant, but offered no indication as to his position on the corn laws.8Ibid. After an initial canvass, James Acland, an agent for the Anti-Corn Law League, declined to come forward, and the eventual Radical candidate withdrew after being proposed at the nomination, leaving Barkly to be returned unopposed.9Standard, 28 Apr. 1845.

In the Commons Barkly quickly established himself as an authority on imperial issues who was not afraid to criticise the colonial office. In an assertive maiden speech, he gave his staunch backing to the New Zealand Company, and attacked Peel’s government for being ‘as totally destitute as any of [its] predecessors of a comprehensive system of Colonial policy’, 18 June 1845. His contribution won him the acclaim of his fellow MPs Charles Buller and Sir William Molesworth, who were also prominent members of the New Zealand Company.10Macmillan, Barkly, 13-14. He subsequently opposed Peel’s ministry by voting for a select committee of inquiry into New Zealand, 18 June 1845. After initially opposing corn law repeal, 10 June 1845, he backed Peel’s change of policy in 1846, and in a lengthy speech which was constantly interrupted by taunts from the opposition, he asserted that free trade was more conducive to the interests of the British empire, 20 Feb. 1846. He duly voted for repeal, 27 Mar. 1846 and 15 May 1846, thus joining a small but significant minority of merchants and bankers who had received slave compensation, but were supporters of corn law repeal.11N. Draper, The price of emancipation: slave-ownership, compensation and British society at the end of slavery (2009), 251.

Barkly moderated his free trade instincts when it came to the controversial issue of the equalisation of the sugar duties. Following the formation of Russell’s ministry in July 1846, Barkly pressed the new premier to ensure that, in reforming the sugar duties, the legislation was made ‘a little more palatable to those who had been well nigh ruined by the attempts to suppress slavery’, 20 July 1846. Although he insisted that he supported free trade in sugar, he was adamant that planters should not be immediately ‘exposed to free competition with all the world’, 28 July 1846, and described the government’s proposals to delay the introduction of the legislation until 1851 as a ‘rag of protection’ that was a ‘mockery to the producer, and a robbery of the consumer’, 31 July 1846. As a planter whose estates were failing, Barkly felt that the government had abolished slavery ‘badly, unadvisedly, by impulse, not according to reason’, and this, coupled with the equalisation of the sugar duties, was ruining the Caribbean economies.12Hansard, 28 July 1846, vol. 88, cc. 137-47. Like many MPs with West Indian interests, Barkly never attacked emancipation as a point of principle, but was quick to regret the way in which it had been implemented.13R. Huzzey, ‘Free trade, free labour, and slave sugar in Victorian Britain’, Historical Journal, 53 (2010), 373. His response was to doggedly press the government to facilitate the emigration of free labourers to the West Indian colonies, a policy that he later promoted as a colonial governor.14Hansard, 19 Feb. 1847, vol. 90, cc. 248-9; 13 May 1847, vol. 92, cc. 786-7.

Returned unopposed at the 1847 general election, Barkly dedicated his energies to defending the West Indian planter interest.15Henry Barkly to Sir Robert Peel, 1 Dec. 1848, BL Add. 40600, f. 538. He appeared as a key witness before the crucial 1848 select committee on sugar and coffee planting in the East and West Indies, where he argued that planters were unable to cope with free competition, and needed a greater degree of protection.16PP 1847-48 (206), xxiii. 191. Barkly was also appointed to the 1848 select committee on the slave trade: PP 1847-48 (366), xxii. 284. He echoed these views in the debating chamber, warning that, given the financial ruin facing the planters, the equalisation of the sugar duties would result in the abolishment of slavery being viewed by ‘posterity as an abortive experiment, for which fourteen flourishing colonies and twenty millions of money were rashly sacrificed’, 29 June 1848. He duly voted against the 1848 sugar duties bill, which proposed to delay the introduction of equalisation until 1854 rather than 1851, arguing that the legislation was mere ‘tinkering’ and would not afford ‘effectual protection’, 29 June 1848.17P.D. Curtin, The British sugar duties and West Indian planters’, Journal of Economic History, 14 (1954), 157-64. His subsequent attempts to introduce a differential protective duty favourable to colonial sugar came to nothing.18Hansard, 21 July 1848, vol. 100, cc. 642-65; 31 July 1848, vol. 100, cc. 1045-6. In his last known speech in the Commons, Barkly delivered a bitter attack on the government, denouncing their ‘extraordinary vacillation of purpose’ in failing to adequately protect the West Indian planters, 31 July 1848. With his estates on the verge of financial ruin, it was a speech that reflected his own personal frustration at the plight of the Caribbean economy.

His financial and politics prospects seemingly moribund, in December 1848 Barkly readily accepted from the Liberal ministry an offer of the governorship of British Guiana. In private correspondence with Peel, he admitted to his ‘own want of experience’, but stated that he felt it ‘impossible to decline the appointment’. He then suggested that Peel’s son be brought forward for the vacancy at Leominster, though nothing came of the idea.19Barkly to Peel, 1 Dec. 1848, BL Add. 40600, f. 538. Barkly had not been the ministry’s first choice for the governorship, but Earl Grey, the colonial secretary, believed that he ‘would command the confidence of the colonists from having been one of the ablest advocates of their interests in Parliament’.20Cited in Macmillan, Barkly, 18. Barkly’s appointment also reflected the growing culture of professionalisation in the colonial office, where an emphasis on civilian expertise and statistical knowledge, rather than patronage, was shaping its approach to imperial governance.21Z. Laidlaw, Colonial connections, 1815-1845: patronage, the information revolution and colonial government (2005), 39-54.

Given the exacting tasks he faced in a variety of colonies, it is not surprising that Barkly’s record as a governor was mixed. In British Guiana, his sensitivity to the economic problems facing the planters won him crucial local support, and displaying, in Earl Grey’s words, ‘remarkable skill and ability’, Barkly widened the franchise of the electoral college, and promoted the introduction of indentured labourers from Asia.22Earl Grey, The colonial policy of Lord John Russell’s administration, (1853), i. 154. His success brought him a knighthood and a promotion to the governorship of Jamaica in 1853, where he introduced a limited measure of constitutional reform the following year. Beyond that moderate success, however, he was unable to overcome the unsolvable paradox at the heart of governing Jamaica: how to reform its constitution along liberal democratic principles while checking the growth of black political expression.23T.C. Holt, Problem of freedom: race, labor, and politics in Jamaica and Britain, 1832-1938 (1992), 215. A firm believer in the introduction of responsible government to the colonies, he enjoyed greater success as governor of Victoria from 1856 to 1863, where he secured a stable government and showed shrewd judgement in his choice of premiers.24Australian Dictionary of Biography: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barkly-sir-henry-2936. Personally reticent, many in Victoria apparently found Barkly rather aloof,25Ibid. but this may be explained, in part, by different cultures of colonial government. In Jamaica, for example, where he travelled widely, he was praised by the press for the use of his ‘practical’ and ‘common place language’.26Falmouth Post, 25 Oct. 1855. He was moved to Mauritius in 1863, where he understandably struggled to cope with a near-bankrupt crown colony facing a serious malaria epidemic, and in 1870 he was appointed governor of the Cape and high commissioner in South Africa. Although his skills at wooing colonists were again evident, he drew the hostility of the secretary of state, Lord Carnarvon, when he refused to promote the idea of South African union. He was recalled in March 1877, whereupon he retired.27J. Benyon, ‘Barkly, Sir Henry’, Oxf. DNB, www.oxforddnb.com.

Though his skills as a statesman were arguably limited, as a colonial administrator with an ability to smooth a colony’s transition towards responsible government, Barkly was invaluable to successive British ministries, and he was one of the more successful former MPs who became colonial governors in this period.28J.W. Cell, British colonial administration in the mid-nineteenth century: the policy-making process (1970), 50-1. Reflecting his importance, in 1879 he was nominated to the royal commission on colonial defence.29Australian Dictionary of Biography: http://adb.anu.edu.au/biography/barkly-sir-henry-2936. Thereafter he indulged his passion for scientific pursuits, and undertook committee work for the London Library.30Ibid.

Barkly died from heart failure at his London residence at Bina Gardens, South Kensington, in October 1898.31The Times, 22 Oct. 1898. He left effects valued at £12,842 0s. 2d.32England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administration, 1858-1966, 1 Feb. 1899. He was survived by his second wife, Anne Maria, and the only daughter from his first marriage, Emily Blanche Barkly. His eldest son, Arthur Cecil Stuart Barkly, who had died in 1890, had served as lieutenant-governor of the Falkland Islands, 1886-7, and was the last British governor of Heligoland, 1888-90.33Benyon, ‘Barkly, Sir Henry’. Barkly’s papers and correspondence are held by the National Library of Scotland.34National Library of Scotland, Barkly Papers, Acc. 9907.