LINDSAY, Hugh Hamilton (1802-1881), of 22 Berkeley Square, London

class="MsoNormal" style="text-align: justify; text-justify: inter-ideograph; line-height: 115%;">A prominent member of the East India China lobby and one of very few MPs to be proficient in the Chinese language, Lindsay represented Sandwich as a Conservative during the first opium war. As a vocal advocate of the war, who believed that the ‘alleged evils’ of opium had been ‘greatly exaggerated’, he focused his parliamentary efforts on securing a favourable settlement for British merchants in China.[1]" class="link">[1]

By the beginning of the nineteenth century, Lindsay’s extended family was ‘tightly woven into the fabric of Britain’s global empire … [and] embedded in domestic public life’.[2]" class="link">[2] Lindsay’s father, the eighth son of the fifth earl of Balcarres and a director of the East India Company, had represented the venal borough of Perth Burghs as a ‘pro-Catholic Tory’ between 1820 and 1830.[3]" class="link">[3] Little is known about Lindsay’s early life (aside from speculation that he possibly studied at Vienna), but he had secured a position (at his father’s behest) as a salaried writer for the East India Company in China not long after his eighteenth birthday, where he also earned an additional £100 annual allowance over the subsequent decade as a ‘Student of Chinese Language’.[4]" class="link">[4]

Lindsay first came to the attention of Westminster in 1833, following the publication of his account of a secretive trade mission to China’s northern ports in 1832 on the Lord Amherst.[5]" class="link">[5] Fancying himself as a sinologist, during the voyage he had distributed self-penned pamphlets in ‘pidgin Chinese’ that promoted the ‘English Character’ to locals, before experimenting with violence as a means of expanding British trading opportunities beyond the Qing approved, East India colony in Canton. Following the cessation of the East India Company’s China monopoly in 1833, Lindsay established his own trading and banking firm, Lindsay & Co., which was operating out of Canton by 1836.[6]" class="link">[6] In the same year he established himself as a leading advocate of naval intervention in China, by publishing a pamphlet addressed to Palmerston calling for ‘direct armed interference’ to ensure British merchants could enjoy the ‘liberty of trade at two or more of the northern [Chinese] ports’.[7]" class="link">[7]

As chairman of the Canton Chamber of Commerce, Lindsay had returned to Britain in May 1839 to lobby the government for armed intervention to establish better trade conditions, and to secure compensation for British merchants whose opium stocks had recently been confiscated and destroyed by the Chinese authorities.[8]" class="link">[8] Following the commencement of naval operations in Canton in November 1839, Lindsay continued to make the case for war to Westminster and the British public.[9]" class="link">[9] Notably, his pamphlet Is the War with China a Just One?, which had been published by May 1840, responded to widespread criticism over the ethics of the war by claiming that ‘the injury to health and morals inflicted by the use of gin in England, surpasses that of opium in China’.[10]" class="link">[10]

By July 1840 Lindsay had turned his efforts to obtaining a parliamentary seat, initially courting Aberdeen’s Conservatives with a donation of £100 to the city’s public charities.[11]" class="link">[11] He returned to address the constituency’s Conservatives in November, after having spent the previous months formulating a position on the Scottish Church question, which he had discovered a necessary prerequisite of standing for the burgh.[12]" class="link">[12] Lindsay eventually decided against standing for Aberdeen, and in April 1841 secured the backing of the Deal and Walmer Conservative Association for a future candidacy at Sandwich.[13]" class="link">[13] Within days of his announcement, the unexpected suicide of one of Sandwich’s representatives prompted a by-election. Following a successful canvass, in which the ‘Deal Boatmen’ reportedly turned in his favour, he delivered an extensive, but confident, hustings speech in which he avowed his Conservatism and attacked the Melbourne ministry’s Irish policy, recent conversion to free trade and failed diplomatic efforts in Constantinople, America and China.[14]" class="link">[14] He viewed his victory in the ensuing contest as emblematic of a wider national swing towards the Conservatives, particularly given that he had been ‘a stranger’ in the constituency only three weeks earlier.[15]" class="link">[15]

Lindsay’s only act in his first, brief parliament came during the debates on Peel’s no confidence motion in the Melbourne ministry, for which he voted, when he made a ‘loud’ denial of O’Connell’s insinuation that bribery had secured his return, 3 June 1841. He was re-elected uncontested for the constituency at that year’s general election, little over a month after his by-election victory.[16]" class="link">[16]

Lindsay was only noticeable at Westminster during the first two sessions of the subsequent parliament. In 1842 he attended 82 divisions (the average was 67) and made a handful of speeches. Over the next five years he only attended a further 39 divisions, but did make a number of verbal contributions during 1842 and 1843. He claimed persistent poor health as an excuse for his non-attendance. However, the decline in his parliamentary activity corresponded with the signing of the Treaty of Nanking in August 1842, which had secured many of his previous demands for trade in China, aside from his desired level of opium compensation (over which he continued to lobby Peel privately).[17]" class="link">[17] He sided with the party leadership in the majority of divisions that he attended during his parliamentary career, including in favour of the third reading of the Maynooth College bill, 21 May 1845. However, he did cast several votes in favour of the twelve hour day, 18 Mar., 22 Mar. 1844, and paired against the third reading of the repeal of the corn laws, 15 May 1846.[18]" class="link">[18]

When present in the Commons, Lindsay spoke occasionally on issues relating to commercial and colonial issues. As well as voicing his objection to corn law repeal he called for an alteration in corn importation conditions that might induce increased speculation among British and American merchants, 21 Feb. 1842, and subsequently spoke in favour of the government’s Canadian corn law bill, 26 May 1843. Somewhat contradictorily, he failed to convince the government to reduce the level of tea duties, 13 June 1842. He also called for it to be made mandatory that Indian ‘hill coolies’ be provided with a full explanation of their conditions of employment before they were sent to Mauritius, 1 Mar. 1842.

He was most vocal in his support of the opium trade between China and India. He moved a failed motion, in opposition to the government, that the House consider the level of opium compensation for British merchants in China, advocating that merchants, rather than the government, be able to fix the value of compensation, 17 Mar. 1842, 21 Mar. 1842. One year later he expressed opposition to the government’s proposed opium compensation levels and called for a ‘full and searching inquiry’ to establish a more favourable reparation. However, he failed to divide in the minority (which included Palmerston and Russell) that sought to achieve this end, 4 Aug. 1843. Finally, he rejected calls for the suppression of the opium trade and argued its ‘alleged evils’ had been ‘greatly exaggerated’, citing letters he had personally received from several physicians who had reportedly informed him that ‘opium used in the state of smoke is neither morally or physically so destructive as the use of ardent spirits’, 4 Apr. 1843.

Lindsay announced his resignation on the basis of ill health in an extended address to Sandwich’s electors ahead of the 1847 election. In it he hoped for a ‘Liberal Conservative’ majority, defended his opposition to corn law repeal but advocacy of free trade elsewhere, offered his support to the Maynooth grant and heralded an apparent cross-party consensus on education, sanitation and the poor laws.[19]" class="link">[19] Following his retirement, Lindsay sought to ensure that Lindsay & Co. made the most of new trading conditions in China, and expanded his colonial ambitions, becoming a director and then chairman of the Eastern Archipelago Company and its mining operation in Borneo. While Lindsay & Co. for a time became one of the most extravagant, and successful, merchant houses in British-opened China, the Eastern Archipelago Company proved a costly failure for Lindsay (both financially and in terms of his reputation), before the bursting of the Shanghai bubble in 1865 forced Lindsay & Co. into bankruptcy.[20]" class="link">[20] He lived out the final sixteen years of his life as a registered broker in London, and in 1867, he and his wife Anna, who he had married in 1852, adopted their niece, Emma Jane MacDonnell.[21]" class="link">[21] He died aged 78 on 29 May 1881. His will was proved at £780 9s 4d, and he left all of his property to his wife, including their London residence at 14 Wyndham Place.[22]" class="link">[22]