FitzHarris in the Commons was little better than a cypher for his father, the ablest English diplomat of his age and a devotee of Pitt. He was promised a seat in Parliament by Pitt as soon as he came of age, and the Speaker, Henry Addington, offered to help in this objective, but his father preferred ‘some other channel’, to secure him ‘a vote perfectly unfettered’. Meanwhile FitzHarris, who had never given his father ‘a single moment of uneasiness’, was sent to Thomas Grenville at Berlin, not intended for a diplomatic career, for his father wished to have him within reach, but to pick up ‘habits of business’. Thence he proceeded to Vienna to his uncle Lord Minto, with whom he ‘lived and worked for a year in a confidential way’. He became ‘a good modern linguist’.
Soon after his return home, Addington succeeded Pitt and his father was relieved that Lord Pembroke had not been able to oblige FitzHarris with a seat, ‘as your first vote there would have been a very difficult one to give right’.
FitzHarris was duly returned for Helston; but gave up his Home Office salary of £600 (his father allowed him £800). In January 1803 Pelham reported that Addington was inclined to give him office; Malmesbury’s response was that he would rather support than oppose government, but deprecated their subservience to Buonaparte. Canning had wished to draw FitzHarris into his conspiracy to reinstate Pitt at the helm and on 3 June 1803 he voted in the minority for Pitt’s question in favour of the orders of the day. He was listed a Pittite in March 1804, when he left the House on Wrottesley’s motion and voted for Pitt’s naval motion. He confirmed it by his votes of 13, 16, 23 and 25 Apr. in the defence divisions that brought Addington down.
The quest for a seat for FitzHarris proved difficult. Lord Minto tried to dislodge Lord Glenbervie from his, but Pitt wanted him to remain in the House. The Irish borough of Carlow turned out to be a mirage. On 13 June FitzHarris informed his father that in view of the current difficulties of the government he wished to offer to resign office and wait for ‘a private bargain’ for a seat. The offer was made next day and declined by Pitt. Soon afterwards negotiations for a Cornish seat on the Buller interest fell through and William Wickham refused to vacate Cashel for him, Pitt’s pleas notwithstanding.
You inclined to forego all these bona externa, ... public service both in Parliament and in office, pre-eminence of situation, connection with the leading persons in the country (consequently their goodwill), all of which you have been so fortunate as to attain without any effort or trouble, and at an unusually early period of life; partly I gladly acknowledge from your own excellent character, but partly also ... from the favourable position into which you were thrown ... Were you to relinquish the distinguished station you now stand in ... the regrets, at the loss of the prize you would have thus voluntarily flung away, would be infinitely beyond and very different from those you now experience from being occasionally debarred of recreations ... which from the particular circumstances of the moment are not compatible with your official attendance.
Six weeks later Pitt’s death relieved him of the burden of office.
FitzHarris went into opposition to the Grenville ministry with Pitt’s ‘staunch friends’, with whom he met on 19 Feb. and 10 Mar. 1806. He voted in the minorities of 3 Mar. and 30 Apr. and was teller against the Chelsea Hospital bill, 12 June 1806. On his marriage his father allowed him £2,000 a year plus the expenses of his seat ‘which I think it most essential for you on every account to retain’. Pitt’s death had deprived him of the prospect of a seat for Lostwithiel and negotiations for Heytesbury were just afoot when Parliament was dissolved. FitzHarris, with Lord Palmerston in tow, sought re-election at Horsham, his father agreeing to pay £4,000 when he was returned. A double return ensued and the decision of the House, surprisingly, went against him. At the general election of 1807 he came in for Heytesbury on the A’Court interest for £4,000.
The Duke of Portland on taking office gave Malmesbury ‘the choice for FitzHarris either to be under-secretary of state for the Foreign department or to hold a seat at the Treasury’. FitzHarris (according to his father’s diary, 25 Mar. 1807) ‘without hesitation, chose the under-secretaryship, from thinking that confinement with business was better than confinement and no business’; and he himself recorded, ‘I did not hesitate to select [the Foreign Office] under one [Canning] whom I had long known as an intimate friend of my family, and whose brilliant talents had always called forth my admiration.’ But Malmesbury, in his letter of 12 July 1807 to Portland, took upon himself the full responsibility for his son’s decision, made
entirely in deference to my opinion, his own being decidedly ... that a due attention to the duties of this laborious office and a regular attendance in Parliament would be more than he could undertake either with credit and satisfaction to himself or without materially affecting both his constitution and his domestic comforts—I urged him to try—and now after four months’ experience, he declares to me and I am sure it is an honest and genuine avowal that the fatigue and constant sedentary life is more than he can bear—that it impairs his health and oversets all his comforts and this, I am sorry to say, I already perceive that it does.
FitzHarris later told his son that the main reason for his resignation was the seizure of the Danish fleet, which business passed chiefly through his hands: ‘the insincerity of politics was little suited to his susceptible feelings of morality and honour’. But neither FitzHarris nor his father could bear the ‘idea of perfect idleness’; nor could Malmesbury give him what he considered an adequate allowance, so he requested a seat at the Treasury or the Admiralty for him. Portland hoped to find a seat at the Treasury and FitzHarris declined a mission offered him by Canning in July, at Berlin. A solution presented itself with the death of Lord Bolton, 30 July 1807: Portland offered his appointments to Malmesbury, who suggested that his son should take the governorship of the Isle of Wight (worth over £1,300 p.a.), giving up his reversionary pension (£1,200 p.a.). On appointment FitzHarris immediately resigned his office but remained in Parliament, being re-elected for Heytesbury.
When a vacancy arose for a Hampshire county seat late in 1808, Portland suggested FitzHarris to his father as his first choice for it, but Malmesbury demurred: it would be ‘heaping too many Hampshire honours on the same family’. As it was, FitzHarris had to deny publicly an allegation of William Cobbett’s that he was still entitled to the reversionary pension. His dislike of ‘the daily dirty work of the House’ increased; he deplored ministerial handling of the Duke of York’s case, but welcomed the failure of Madocks’s motion against ministerial corruption, 11 May 1809.
I felt that when I accepted a confidential office under Canning, that I was attaching myself to him, and said so at the time. Were I now to support those with whom he is at variance, I break with him, and form a new connection, with the intention of breaking that as soon as the present ministers lose their places.
He considered Perceval’s ministry as ‘in a political view ... weak and insufficient in the mass’ and did not expect it to survive: if he supported it in office, he told his father, 24 Oct. 1809, he must either follow it into opposition,
or once more tack about without knowing whither to steer, becoming either a courtier or a no party man.
I do not approve of non attendance in Parliament, but I really think, in my individual instance, it is the only method I can pursue with a view to my own feelings, or to my public character.
His father argued that FitzHarris owed his office to Portland, who had resigned only through ill health: they should therefore continue to support it. FitzHarris, regarding their link with Canning as broken ‘beyond redemption’, replied (20 Nov.):
It appearing ... to me to be your confirmed intention of supporting Perceval’s administration, I shall certainly (as I feel it my duty to do) accede to your wishes on the subject, as no middle line you state can be pursued. I must also adopt, in a choice of difficulties, Perceval as my political leader, for it comes to this at last:—Support him for six weeks (and longer he will not need it) in the next session of Parliament, and I am enlisted in his ranks for ever. For on what plea could I desert then? He goes into opposition; is attacked for the measures of his government; he calls for my support in adversity, can I refuse it? You may, however, now consider me as having decided to take this line.
Malmesbury Letters, ii. 169-71, 181, 190-1, 195-6.
FitzHarris accordingly rallied to Perceval’s ministry on the address, 23 Jan. 1810, and on the Scheldt question, 26 Jan., 23 Feb., 5 and 30 Mar. He did so reluctantly, having suggested to Perceval that a constant attendance on his part was out of the question. It was his father who urged him to stand by Pitt’s brother Lord Chatham when his conduct was impugned on 5 Mar. and he next day complained that he had voted in three minorities against his opinion, in support of a temporizing administration:
my situation is really a very unpleasant one—I do not go down to the House any longer zealous in the cause I am supporting, or admiring the men I support—when I get there instead of being able to mix with those with whom I’ve been accustomed to sit—I must keep aloof for even amongst friends a difference of opinion must produce a shyness within these walls—for there can be no confidence amongst those who disagree.
He admitted that but for Canning’s personal slight of them, he would in all probability have followed his line. His father cajoled him: he need not support Perceval ‘one jot farther’, but he ought to stay for the question of aid to Portugal, for Wellington’s sake. He stayed longer and was listed ‘against the Opposition’ by the Whigs. At the end of March he favoured the adjournment on Burdett’s conduct. Illness prevented him from voting on it on 5 Apr. but he sent his father sarcastic reports a few days later of Burdett’s pretensions and the House’s pusillanimity in the face of them.
FitzHarris was pressed to resume attendance in the autumn of 1810 not by his father but by Lord Palmerston, to further the ministerial wish for an adjournment before settling the Regency. He did so and on 1 Jan. 1811 voted with ministers, despite his dislike of the proposed restrictions. His father approved, though abstaining himself to be consistent with his conduct in 1788, and regretted only that FitzHarris did not deign to explain to Perceval that father and son were not at loggerheads on the question.
FitzHarris was nevertheless returned to Westminster by Lord Pembroke on a vacancy at Wilton in November 1816. The death of his wife a year before had affected him extremely and he was not to be got out of his habit of living at Heron Court ‘for ten months out of the twelve’, though his friends doubtless intended that he should. On 12 Mar. 1817 he made his first reported speech, to state what happened at the Hampshire meeting on parliamentary reform. He voted against Catholic relief, 9 May 1817. Next session he supported ministers on their employment of informers against sedition, 5 Mar., and on the ducal marriage grant, 15 Apr. He had his father’s acquiescence in his apathy about reviving the family interest in the borough of Christchurch, or standing for the verderership of the New Forest, on the death of George Rose. He attended to vote against Brougham’s motion for inquiry into popular education, 3 June 1818. In February 1819 Frederick John Robinson urged him to attend the House, adding ‘I know you do not much like to be disturbed in your country retreat’. He had thoughts of resigning his seat in April, but his father gently dissuaded him. He proposed attending to oppose Catholic relief and also opposed Tierney’s censure motion, 18 May. He took his second leave of absence that session on 27 May. On 10 June he voted for the foreign enlistment bill after a further plea from Robinson and on 21 June paired in favour of it. He was besieged with pleas to attend in October 1819 and did so: but on 18 Dec. received a Treasury request to return to town and support them.
He died 10 Sept. 1841, ‘a Tory of the purest school, and of unbending politics’.