ARKWRIGHT, George (1807-1856), of Sutton Hall, Sutton Scarsdale, Derbyshire

A great-grandson of the inventor and pioneering capitalist Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-92), Arkwright was a Conservative who gave generally silent support to Protestant, paternalist and protectionist causes at Westminster.

Arkwright’s grandfather Richard Arkwright junior (1755-1843) had settled great wealth and land on his five sons, and Arkwright’s father Robert (1783-1859) was described as a ‘high Tory millionaire’ by the Morning Chronicle in 1834.1Morning Chronicle, 12 Dec. 1834. When ill health prevented Robert contesting Derbyshire North, in which his family seat of Sutton Hall was situated, at the 1837 general election, his heir George took his place. Promising to resist ‘all revolutionary schemes’, Arkwright stood on Tory rather than Conservative principles, and advocated a ‘very great alteration’ of the poor law.2Derby Mercury, 12 Apr. 1837, 12 July 1837; Morning Chronicle, 5 Aug. 1837. The influence of the Whig duke of Devonshire meant that he was easily defeated and had to look elsewhere to further his parliamentary ambitions.

In February 1842 he replaced his brother-in-law James Wigram as MP for Leominster, a borough in which his uncle John Arkwright possessed great influence. His reliance on his uncle’s influence prompted the Examiner to snipe that ‘this is a man of few words’ who published an address ‘the sum and substance of which is, my name is Arkwright’.3The Examiner, quoted in Hereford Times, 20 Nov. 1841. He was returned unopposed at the nomination, where he declared his opposition to political reforms and his confidence that Peel’s yet to be announced revision of the corn laws would prove satisfactory.4Hereford Times, 12 Feb. 1842.

In his first session Arkwright loyally supported Peel’s revised sliding scale on corn and reintroduction of income tax, but his paternalist sympathies placed him at odds with his leadership over the new poor law. He voted in favour of curtailing the authority of the poor law commissioners and allowing guardians to grant outdoor relief, 27 June, 12, 20 July 1842, and supported the autonomy of Gilbert’s Unions, 18 July 1844. He later told electors that he had felt compelled ‘to oppose the government in their endeavours to extend and continue the power of the poor law commission’.5Hereford Times, 31 July 1847.

However, Arkwright voted with Peel rather than Conservative dissidents on both the factories bill and the sugar duties in the 1844 session, suggesting that he was essentially a loyalist. His opposition to a ten hour day for factory workers, 22 Mar., 13 May 1844, which was a departure from his paternalist views, perhaps owed something to his family’s association with cotton manufacture. Arkwright parted company with Peel over the 1845 Maynooth college bill and opposed his repeal of the corn laws the following year. His maiden speech was a brief question about the system of auditing the stationery office, 28 May 1847.

Although his uncle and patron was a liberal Tory who supported the repeal of the corn laws, this did not affect Arkwright’s electoral prospects and he was returned unopposed at the 1847 general election.6C. Beale, Champagne and shambles: the Arkwrights and the downfall of the landed aristocracy (2006), 22. Arkwright declared that he had disliked Peel’s revision of import duties in 1842, but had supported the revised sliding scale on corn as a ‘final settlement of the question. In this I was deceived’. Free trade would not boost domestic industry because foreign countries wanted British gold rather than manufactured goods in exchange for their foodstuffs. He also believed that the influx of cheap American corn would make it impossible for farmers to maintain rural wages.7Hereford Times, 31 July 1847. He later expressed satisfaction that Peelite cabinet ministers had lost their seats and argued that the protectionists would form a strong, cohesive minority in the next parliament.8Ibid.

It was no surprise that Arkwright sided with the Derbyites in the key divisions of the 1847-52 period, including opposing the repeal of the navigation laws in 1849 and supporting Grantley Berkeley’s motion to reconsider the corn laws, 14 May 1850, as well as Disraeli’s motions for agricultural relief. He was unimpressed with the arguments put forward in favour of allowing the Jewish Lionel Rothschild to take his seat, 12 Mar. 1850, and opposed Jewish relief. As a strong Protestant he endorsed the 1851 ecclesiastical titles bill introduced in response to the Pope’s establishment of a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England.

Having found his feet in the House, Arkwright made more spoken interventions than hitherto. He complained of the ‘unnecessary expense’ incurred by the tours of the lords of the admiralty, which were ‘merely an excuse for very jovial parties’ rather than inspections of the fleet, 8 Apr. 1850. He sought guarantees that no public money would be granted to the Great Exhibition, 7 May 1850. He unsuccessfully proposed reducing the number of workhouse inspectors from thirteen to eight, 27 May 1850. Arkwright’s protectionist principles influenced his opposition to the 1851 Designs Act extension bill, which offered protection for the designs of foreign manufacturers and designers at the Great Exhibition. He objected that foreigners would be placed in an advantageous position by the measure. British inventors at the Exhibition could be granted a British patent, but nothing would prevent foreign competitors from copying their designs and taking them back to their countries, while at the same time foreign exhibitors were protected from British competition. Reflecting the broader protectionist critique of free trade, Arkwright argued that without reciprocity between countries, British producers would be placed at a disadvantage, 3 Apr. 1851. His wrecking amendment was easily defeated, however, in a thin House.

Arkwright topped the poll at the 1852 general election, after reaffirming his support for agricultural protection, although he conceded that it could not be reinstated until popular feeling changed. While he respected the religious rights of Catholics, he called for their political pretensions to be firmly resisted. He strongly backed Derby’s government, not least because the alternatives were so unappealing. He derided Russell’s ‘family party cabinet’ and the leading Peelite Sir James Graham who had been ‘everything by turns, and nothing long’.9Hereford Journal, 7 July 1852.

Arkwright seems to have made no further speeches, nor does he appear to have served on any committees. He was one of the candidates considered for appointment as secretary of the poor law board by the Derby ministry in autumn 1852.10Benjamin Disraeli to Lord Derby, 19 Sept. 1852: Benjamin Disraeli letters, eds. M. G. Wiebe et al (1997), vi. 152, Although he was passed over, he sided with the Derbyites in opposing Villiers’ free trade motion, while supporting Disraeli’s budget, 26 Nov., 16 Dec. 1852. He backed Spooner’s anti-Maynooth campaign, while also continuing to cast votes against Jewish relief and the abolition of church rates. He was in the majority that voted Aberdeen’s government out of office, 29 Jan. 1855, and backed the censure motions of Disraeli and Roebuck on Palmerston’s handling of the war, 25 May, 19 July 1855. Later in the same year, Arkwright wrote to his uncle and patron, recommending that his uncle’s heir be brought in for Leominster, as ‘he would not be so likely to get into bad company in the House as he might elsewhere (though I have no great opinion of the m[ajorit]y of the MPs)’.11George Arkwright to John Arkwright, 22 Nov. 1855, Herfordshire Record Office, A63/IV/9/6, quoted in Beale, Champagne and shambles, 23.

Arkwright died after a short illness at his London residence before the start of the 1856 session. A lifelong bachelor, he was childless and predeceased his father. The Hereford Journal lamented that ‘Leominster has lost an able representative and good friend ... who by his honourable and consistent conduct in Parliament, his amiable disposition, and urbanity, won for him the respect and esteem of every person who had the pleasure of his acquaintance’.12Hereford Journal, 13 Feb. 1856.