BARING, Francis (1800-1868), of The Grange, nr. Alresford, Hampshire; Place Vendôme, Paris and 82 Piccadilly, London

The international financier Alexander Baring had originally anointed his second son, Francis, who was born in Philadelphia, as heir to the family banking house of Baring Brothers.1P. Ziegler, The Sixth Great Power: Barings 1762-1929 (1988), 91. According to the merchant Vincent Nolte, ‘bountiful nature had endowed [Francis] ... with so lavish a hand, that it might almost be termed spendthrift profusion’.2V. Nolte, Fifty years in both hemispheres (1854), 280-1. As planned, Baring joined the family bank shortly before his eighteenth birthday and was made a partner in 1823. However, a catastrophic fact-finding mission to Mexico two years later effectively ended his career in finance. Finding the South American climate oppressive, he took to drink and, in a shooting accident, killed his English friend Augustus Waldegrave.3Ziegler, Barings, 104. Encouraged by a rather dubious set of acquaintances, he then made a series of disastrous speculations in Mexican land and mining shares, at great financial cost to Baring Brothers.4Ibid. His father was incensed:

We are a house of trade and have no business with any adventure of the kind. ... One of your bad qualities, my dear Francis, and I do not attribute many to you, is that you are a bad taker of advice.5Alexander to Francis Baring, quoted in ibid.

Thereafter, although Baring remained a partner, he was not allowed to play an active role in the family bank.6J. Orbell, Baring Brothers & Co. Limited. A history to 1939 (1985), 26-7. Even when he became a senior partner in 1830, the position was only a nominal one, and he refused to treat his role seriously, though he occasionally recorded his offence at being neglected.7Ziegler, Barings, 91. In a letter to his cousin Thomas Baring, he complained that ‘I suppose I am not thought of sufficient consequence to be written to’.8Baring to Thomas Baring, 1 Jan. 1858, quoted in ibid., 159.

At the 1830 general election Baring had come in for Thetford, where the family held extensive estates, in place of his elder brother William Bingham. He divided for the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 19 Apr. 1831, much to the displeasure of his increasingly Conservative father, who, at the subsequent dissolution, turned him out and instead put himself up for the borough.9HP Commons, 1820-32, iv. 178-9.

At the 1832 general election, however, his father, who came in for Essex North, brought him forward once again for Thetford, though Baring was careful to give little away concerning his politics. Standing ostensibly as a Conservative, he refused to offer a position on the questions of Ireland, banking reform and slavery. Returned unopposed, he delivered only this explanation of his political loyalties:

Though a few idols should be removed from their niches, and some party walls be broken down, the foundations of the fabric of the constitution should remain unmoved for ever.10Norfolk Chronicle, 15 Dec. 1832.

Baring’s poor attendance in the division lobbies did little to shed further light on his party loyalties, though he voted against radical motions for the ballot, 25 Apr. 1833, and shorter Parliaments, 15 May 1834. He also opposed currency reform, 24 Apr. 1833.11R. Gooch, The book of the reformed Parliament: being a synopsis of the votes of the reformed House of Commons (1834). He voted against awarding £20 million in compensation to slave owners, 31 July 1833, though he later counterclaimed, unsuccessfully, with his Baring Brother partners as assignees for the compensation on the Spring Garden plantation in British Guiana. The banking house did, however, intercept the compensation awarded on the estates of Wolfert Katz, a major debtor to the firm, in British Guiana.12British Guiana: Legacies of British Slave-Ownership, www.ucl.ac.uk/lbs/person/view/1299741814.

At the 1835 general election Baring described himself as a ‘moderate Tory’ with the ‘same principles as my father’.13Parliamentary test book (1835), 12. Re-elected without opposition, he divided with Conservative ministers on the speakership, 19 Feb. 1835, the address, 26 Feb. 1835, and Irish church appropriation, 2 Apr. 1835, the issue which brought down Peel’s short-lived ministry. Thereafter he steadily opposed the Melbourne administration’s Irish policy. Having inherited his father’s ‘stuttering, hesitating delivery’, Baring spoke little in debate, though the exact extent of his contributions is difficult to measure as he was easily confused with both his father and his better known cousin Francis Thornhill Baring, MP for Portsmouth.14Nolte, Fifty years, 287-8. The majority of speeches credited to ‘Mr Baring’ in Hansard’s Parliamentary Debates, 1833-1835, are those of Alexander Baring, while most of those credited to ‘Mr Francis Baring’ or ‘Mr F. Baring’, 1833-1841, are those of Francis Thornhill Baring. There remain a small number of contributions that are impossible to credit to any individual Baring. His select committee service in his first two Parliaments is also uncertain, though he probably sat on the 1833 committee on public documents.15This committee lists two different Francis Barings as members: PP 1833 (44), xii. 16.

What is clear, however, is that Baring’s earlier penchant for pursuing land investments in foreign countries had not deserted him, and following his unopposed return in 1837, he became a zealous promoter of Britain’s colonisation of New Zealand. His service on the 1836 select committee on the disposal of waste lands in British colonies had first stirred his interest, and the following year he helped found the New Zealand Association, becoming its first chairman.16PP 1836 (512), xi. 500; E. J. Wakefield, The hand-book for New Zealand (1848), 61-2. The purpose of the association, which included fellow MPs William Hutt, Philip Howard, William Molesworth, Henry Ward and Sir George Sinclair, was to lobby the British government to establish an authority in the islands with a view to colonisation. Following deputations from Baring and his colleagues, however, the Whig ministry refused to grant the association a charter.17The Times, 29 May 1838. Worse was to follow when the New Zealand bill, introduced to the Commons by Baring, 20 June 1838, was defeated by 92 votes to 32, with members of the cabinet opposing it. Appearing before the 1837-8 House of Lords select committee on New Zealand, Baring, showing deep knowledge of the region, argued that colonisation was ‘indispensable’ and that a ‘large gathering of Europeans’ was essential to maintain order.18PP 1837-38 (680), xxi. 476-86. Such views, however, still found little support among the government and were attacked in the national press, with a leading article in The Times despairing that Baring, along with Sir George Sinclair, had ‘unaccountably got themselves mixed up with the adventure’.19The Times, 6 Nov. 1838. In 1839 the association was resurrected as the New Zealand Company, with Baring its first deputy governor.20Wakefield, Hand-book, 62.

Baring’s devotion to the colonisation of New Zealand was not matched by a commitment to his parliamentary duties, and he continued to attend irregularly. When present, he generally followed Peel into the division lobbies, though he voted against him in favour of the bonded corn bill, 9 May 1838. He backed Peel’s motion of no confidence in the Whig ministry, 4 June 1841. At the 1841 dissolution he made way for his brother, William Bingham, who after falling out with his supporters at Staffordshire North sought a return to Thetford.21Staffordshire Advertiser, 2 Jan. 1841; Norfolk Chronicle, 3 July 1841. He then retired to his palatial home on the Place Vendôme, Paris, which he had bought following his marriage to the daughter of Bonaparte’s former minister, the duke of Bassano, in December 1832. He was therefore not involved with the key Commons’ debates concerning the future of the New Zealand Company that took place in 1844, following the suspension of its operations.22The Times, 27 Apr. 1844.

Baring returned to the Commons as Member for Thetford in August 1848, when he replaced his elder brother, who had succeeded as second Baron Ashburton on their father’s death. In contrast to his earlier ambiguous statements on the hustings, Baring was now unequivocal in his political stance, vociferously attacking free trade principles which, ‘as a mercantile man’, he believed would ruin British agriculture and commerce.23Morning Post, 5 Aug. 1848. He was elected without a contest. He voted for the reduction of public expenditure, 26 Feb. 1849, against the repeal of the navigation laws, 23 Apr. 1849, and against the repeal of the malt tax, 8 May 1851. His attendance, though, was consistently poor, and he does not appear to have made any contributions to debate during the second phase of his parliamentary career.24In the 1849 session Euston was present for 11 out of 219 divisions; in 1853, 17 out of 257; and in 1856, 10 out of 198: Hampshire Telegraph, 20 Oct. 1849; Daily News, 21 Sept. 1853; J.P. Gassiot, Third letter to J.A. Roebuck: with a full analysis of the divisions of the House of Commons during the last session of Parliament (1857), 13. Hansard, 2 Aug. 1855, vol. 139, c. 1649, incorrectly credits a speech from Francis Thornhill Baring to this Baring.

Baring’s return to the Commons did, however, reawaken his interest in New Zealand and colonial reform. By 1849 he had joined the Canterbury Association, founded by Edward Gibbon Wakefield and the High Church Tory John Robert Godley, which sought to establish a denominational colony in the southern island of New Zealand.25The founders of Canterbury: being letters of the late Edward Gibbon Wakefield to the late John Robert Godley, and to other well-known helpers in the foundation of the settlement of Canterbury in New Zealand (1868), 165. Between 1850 and 1852 the ‘Canterbury pilgrims’ formed a group of over 3,500 settlers, and as a recognition of Baring’s role in the association, the town of Ashburton, in the Canterbury region of New Zealand, was named after him.26The Oxford History of New Zealand (1992), ed. G. W. Rice, 62; K. Sinclair, A history of New Zealand (1961), 77, 84. Baring was also a founder member of Wakefield’s Colonial Reform Society in 1850.27E. Beasley, Empire as the triumph of theory (2005), 54.

At the 1852 general election Baring conceded that, although he still had misgivings about free trade, it would be ‘unwise’ to reverse the policy. He stated his support for any measure for the relief of the agricultural class but refused to give an opinion on the Maynooth grant.28Daily News, 10 July 1852. Re-elected unopposed, he voted against Villiers’s motion praising corn law repeal and was in the die-hard Protectionist minority that opposed Palmerston’s motion endorsing free trade, 26 Nov. 1852. After being absent from the crucial vote on Disraeli’s budget, 16 Dec. 1852, he rather surprisingly divided for Gladstone’s economic proposals, 2 May 1853. He then backed Palmerston’s handling of the Crimean war, voting against Roebuck’s censure of the cabinet, 19 July 1855. Although he was listed as pairing off for Cobden’s censure motion on Canton, 3 Mar. 1857, at the subsequent general election he insisted that the government had ‘adopted the only course they could’ and praised Palmerston’s leadership.29Norfolk Chronicle, 4 Apr. 1857. He was returned unopposed for the seventh time, only to take the Chiltern Hundreds at the end of year, 30 Nov. 1857, on account of his health being ‘not equal to a residence in London’.30Standard, 10 Dec. 1857. He was replaced by his son, Alexander Hugh Baring. Thereafter he took little part in public affairs, owing to ‘increasing infirmities’.31The Times, 9 Sept. 1868. He succeeded his brother as third Baron Ashburton in March 1864, the same year that he resigned his partnership in Baring Brothers.32Orbell, Baring Brothers, 39, 44.

Ashburton died at Hazelwood, near Watford, in September 1868.33The Times, 9 Sept. 1868. Apart from the minor and brief success of the Canterbury Association, his financial and political career had failed to live up to the hopes that his father had invested in him. As Vincent Nolte remarked in 1854:

Fate seemed to deny Mr Francis Baring success, in everything he undertook, where his natural, and assuredly not reprehensible ambition, made the object desirable.34Nolte, Fifty years, 288.

He left effects valued at under £250,000 and was succeeded by his only surviving son, Alexander, MP for Thetford 1857 to 1867.35England and Wales, National Probate Calendar, Index of wills and administrations, 1858-1966, 22 Dec. 1868. Ashburton’s papers and correspondence are held by the Baring Archives, London.