By 1820 Denman, who was tall and imposing, and had been born with the gift of a golden voice, was making a decent living at the bar; but he had many mouths to feed (the last of his 15 children, of whom 11 survived him, was not born until 1823) and was not financially secure, despite an inheritance of landed property from an uncle in 1812.
The greatest of all political evils I have always thought was ... injustice deliberately perpetrated or wilfully persisted in by the state. Paramount ... has ever been to my mind the question of parliamentary reform. The perpetual fraud upon the people, the audacious belying of the constitution, the shameless effrontery and cunning with which the multiform and outrageous abuse was at once avowed and concealed, the frightful small fry of peculation daily engendered in the huge midden of corruption, the license to degrade and oppress, the charter to demoralize and plunder the mass of our countrymen.
Sir J. Arnould, Mem. of Lord Denman (1873), i. 389.
A natural Whig (though he never joined Brooks’s), he had been taken up by Lord Holland, whose uncle, Charles James Fox†, he had been raised to revere, and who secured him the deputy recordership of Nottingham in 1816. On his return for Wareham on the Calcraft interest two years later, which was financed by the duke of Devonshire and Lord Lansdowne, he had been expected to ‘make some figure’ in the Commons, but his declamatory speaking style did not take there. He later admitted that he had not done well enough in his first Parliament ‘to induce the party to bring me in a second time ... for a close borough’ at the 1820 general election.
In the 1820 Parliament he continued, either side of his annual absences on the spring Midland circuit, to vote steadily with the advanced wing of the Whig opposition to the Liverpool ministry. He of course supported Catholic relief and parliamentary reform, and he was often in small minorities for economy, retrenchment and reduced taxation, and against coercive legislation for Ireland; he sometimes acted as a teller. He persevered as a speaker and enjoyed occasional moments of success. On 2 May 1820 he seconded Taylor’s motion for a select committee to inquire into methods of reducing factory smoke and steam nuisance, commending the Parkes’s apparatus at Warwick, which he had inspected after his election.
In April, at Henry Brougham’s* request, he had become solicitor-general to Queen Caroline, which enhanced his status at the bar, perhaps to the tune of £1,500 a year.
Most gracious queen, we thee implore
To go away and sin no more;
But, if that effort be too great,
To go away at any rate.
He later admitted that these features of his speech, for which he was to pay dearly, were foolish and indiscreet.
Denman presented the contentious Nottingham petition in support of the queen, but disclaimed responsibility for its strong language, 26 Jan. 1821. Presenting one from Sutton-in-Ashfield, 31 Jan., he described the exclusion of her name from the liturgy as ‘a most gross and irreparable injury’, perpetrated in defiance of popular opinion; and on 1 Feb. he declared that she was ‘the most persecuted woman ... in the history of the world’. In what the radical Whig Member Grey Bennet considered ‘a forcible and powerful speech’, he made a personal attack on Castlereagh, 8 Feb.
In the early part of the 1823 session he was a fierce critic of the repressive Irish legislation, but the conservative Whig George Lamb*, visiting Ireland at this time, remarked that ‘the patriotism of a Cockney like Denman, who for no other reason but to show himself off delays the return of quiet as long as he possibly can’, cut no ice with worried local squires.
On the address, 4 Feb., Denman demanded more convincing assurances that ministers had done all possible to prevent French aggression against Spain, and on 7 Mar. 1823 he denounced ‘the extravagant feats of folly and despotism’ perpetrated by the Allies, ‘those monsters of men’. Privately, Brougham thought he had been too bellicose.
Denman, who was in the minority of 30 for papers on the Franco-Spanish conflict, 17 Feb., expressed worries about the potentially ‘monstrous powers’ of magistrates, 27 Feb., 2 Mar., 27 May 1824, when he defended Hume on this issue. He voted for repeal of the usury laws, 27 Feb. He supported Heron’s proposed bill to end the necessity of a renewal of offices on the demise of the crown, 4 Mar. Next day he said that free trade principles could not be humanely applied to the distressed silk trade. He gave ‘cordial support’ to Lamb’s plan to allow defence by counsel in felony trials, 6 Apr.; he had recently published some of his own views on legal reform.
On the address, 4 Feb. 1825, Denman argued that the Catholic Association, which he felt had a good case against the ‘undue administration of justice’ in Ireland, should be curbed by law rather than force. He denounced the bill to suppress it as ‘the most unjust, the most unfair, the most mischievous, and the most destructive measure that had ever been proposed in Parliament’, 10 Feb. He presented a petition in support of the Association, 24 Feb. He of course voted for Catholic relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May, but, as he told Brougham on the circuit, 20 Mar., he was ‘strongly’ opposed to the disfranchisement of Irish 40s. freeholders, which he feared would be ‘a sure recipe for reviving the cry of "No Popery" and extending it to the reformers’;
On the address, 2 Feb. 1826, Denman called for speedy relaxation of the corn laws (for which he voted on 18 Apr.) to help relieve the workers’ suffering, complained of the ‘partial application’ of free trade principles for the benefit of the wealthy, blamed the ‘detestable’ 1819 currency settlement for distress and demanded ‘the most rigid economy’ and ‘a reduction of taxes’. He was in Hume’s minority of 19 against the promissory notes bill, 27 Feb., and next day denounced it as ‘a most impolitic interference with the principles of free trade’. He opposed the Bank charter amendment bill, 14 Apr. On 2 Mar. he moved a vote of censure on the Jamaican slave trials, urging ministers to end ‘this system of judicial abuse’; he got 63 votes to 103. He supported Smith’s motion on the ‘grievous oppression’ of slaves in Demerara and Berbice, 20 Apr., and was added to the select committee on the Mauritius slave trade, 12 May. Backing Hume’s call for information on the dean and chapter of Westminster, 13 Apr., he condemned ‘the subtleties and refinements of the government, when they were thus urged in support of existing abuses’. He gave a very guarded welcome to Peel’s criminal justice bill, 17 Apr. Three days later he exulted in the abandonment after 33 years of the ‘unjust and oppressive’ Aliens Act. He again supported defence by counsel in felony trials, 25 Apr. He voted for inquiry into Buckingham’s renewed petition, 9 May, and was named to the select committee. He asserted that ‘there were more flagrant and enormous abuses’ in chancery than in ‘any tribunal of justice in any other country’, 18 May 1826. Next day he combined with Canning, the foreign secretary, to force Inglis to drop his motion for information on the exercise of Protestant worship in Catholic countries; but his speech in support of Brougham’s motion on colonial slavery was prematurely terminated ‘by the impatience of the House’.
Denman, whose seat had been considered vulnerable in the autumn of 1825, could not afford even an unopposed return for Nottingham at the general election of 1826, when he announced his retirement, having decided that it was wise in any case to ‘give more time to my profession’; he declined, so he later claimed, ‘a borough for which Brougham procured the promise from the duke of Norfolk’. He was nominated by the anti-corporation party at Leicester at the last minute and polled respectably, although he took no personal part.
Denman had declined a ‘flattering invitation’ to stand for Carlisle in July 1827, and, having acted as counsel for the electors of East Retford against the disfranchisement bill in March 1828, he had been considered by Lord Fitzwilliam as a potential candidate for the borough if a new writ was issued.
He presented numerous petitions for the abolition of slavery, 3, 4, 10, 15, 16 Nov. 1830. According to Campbell, he received ‘great applause’ for his speech on the address on the 3rd, when he attacked Wellington’s declaration against reform and said that ministers’ ‘frightful silence’ on the issue ran the risk of goading a frustrated people to violence.
I ... feel no alarm at all for the fate of the country. Never did the popular part of the constitution exercise such a powerful influence ... The duke’s intemperate declaration on reform stakes his power on that question. We expect to beat him on it ... I really believe they will endeavour to keep their places ... I fully expected the duke would have followed his own example on the Catholic question, and compelled the Whigs to support his proposition for reform. But he has now driven them to war, and has compelled them to turn out himself and all his incapable followers. However these early speculations may terminate, my hopes rest on the intelligence and patriotism of the people, to which scarcely anyone does justice.
Howick jnl. 7 Nov.; Add. 51564, Brougham to Lady Holland [8 Nov. 1830]; Add. 56555, f. 42; Arnould, i. 320-1.
He was in O’Connell’s minority of 24 for repeal of the Irish Subletting Act, 11 Nov., and the opposition majority on the civil list which brought down the ministry, 15 Nov. That day he made clear to his constituents his serious doubts about the wisdom of the secret ballot, as he did to the Commons, 22 Nov., when presenting the Nottingham reform petition, though he said he remained ‘open to conviction’.
First reports on the change of ministry were that Denman was to be ‘one of the three new judges’; but at the instigation of Brougham, the new lord chancellor, he was made attorney-general, on the premier Grey’s ‘condition’, according to Brougham’s secretary, that ‘if the chief justiceship should fall vacant within the year he should succeed to it’.
Brougham encouraged him on New Year’s day 1831 to improve himself as a speaker:
You must succeed, and you can ... by taking it more to heart. You are far too careless, you trust to the moment, you don’t prepare, you often don’t take the trouble (even on law matters) of knowing the subject of debate before.
The advice may have fallen on deaf ears, for Brougham later reflected that while Denman’s ‘great talents and revered virtues were of infinite service’ to the ministry, ‘he did less in Parliament than was expected’.
It is the loudly expressed opinion of the great body of the intelligence and respectability of the country, that it is high time to put an end to that debasing, and degrading, and corrupt influence, which has had such demoralizing effects upon the lower orders, and which is the natural and inevitable result of a system which is founded on corruption.
He tried to play down the significance of the moderate reform petition sent up from Cambridge University, 30 Mar., and, amid noisy scenes, closed the debate for ministers on Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment to the reform bill, 19 Apr. 1831, when he declared that ‘if you expect the people to continue to place confidence in the legislature, you must carry this or some measure of the sort’. Gladstone thought his tone was defeatist, but Denman told his daughter that the dissolution had ‘pronounced the doom of the boroughmongers’ who had ‘exhibited in death the malignity and shabbiness which have disgraced their last days’.
In the House, 28 June 1831, Denman, resisting pressure to take action against the libellous Tory press, observed that it was ‘throwing away the strength of government to prosecute publications against which the public can better protest themselves’.
Who would have dared to believe this possible on November 1 1830: who would have ventured to call it probable even on the 1st of last March, when the House was required to condemn and correct itself, acting as judge and executioner on its own demerits? The event I really believe to be unique in the history of the world ... It proves that public spirit is active and energetic in England, even there where it is least expected, and where corruption has done the most to extinguish it ... I believe the Lords grow reasonable, and will pass the bill.
Arnould, i. 350-1.
He voted against the issue of the Liverpool writ, 5 Sept., but opposed the opposition motion to suspend that for Pembrokeshire as ‘an improper interference both with the prerogative of the crown and the rights of the people’, 26 Sept. Later that day he defended the Lords’ amendments to Gordon’s bill to regulate lunatic asylums. He successfully resisted inquiry into the Deacles’ allegations against William Bingham Baring* and explained the ministerial plan for the resumption of the charities commission, 27 Sept. Next day he secured the first reading of Brougham’s bill to reform bankruptcy administration, which he rather uncomfortably steered through committee. He denied that government was trying to rush through the Scottish exchequer bill, 6 Oct., or the interpleader and arbitration bills, 7 Oct. He was in the ministerial majority for Lord Ebrington’s confidence motion, 10 Oct. During the disorderly trades procession to St. James’s, 12 Oct. 1831, he and the solicitor-general, Sir William Horne*, were mistaken for bishops and were ‘hooted and pelted ... to their great fright at the time, and amusement afterwards’.
Denman vindicated the compromise of the prosecution of a London silk house for smuggling, 9, 15 Dec. 1831. He tried to overcome Wetherell’s resistance to the speedy passage of the limitation of actions bill, 14 Dec. According to Edward Littleton*, when Peel succeeded in embarrassing ministers on the Russian-Dutch loan, 16 Dec., Lord Althorp, the leader of the House, ‘said angrily to the lazy attorney-general, sitting about four yards from him, "Denman, defend your opinion", amidst a little laughter’. He briefly did so, but his performance on 26 Jan. 1832, when the ministry came close to defeat on the issue and were rescued by Lord Palmerston, the foreign secretary, was generally considered lamentable.
The only opposition to the bill is founded upon ignorance of the real character of the people of England. Education is extending amongst them every day. Unfortunately, the higher orders are acquainted with the people only as voters for those miserable boroughs, which, under the present system, may be bought and sold.
He voted for the third reading of the bill, 22 Mar. He endorsed Warburton’s anatomy bill, 17 Jan., 11 Apr., 11 May, and the fines and recoveries bill, 20 Jan. He called the opposition motion on interference in the affairs of Portugal, 9 Feb., a censure of ‘the whole line of foreign policy’. On 22 Feb. he dismissed O’Connell’s complaints about the powers given to Irish magistrates to strike the lists of special jurors and defended the Irish master of the rolls bill against his strictures. He told Hunt that he was talking rubbish about the sentences imposed on himself and others after the Peterloo incident, 15 Mar. He explained a measure to rectify an omission in the 1823 Death Sentence Act, 20, 23 Mar. He voted with his colleagues for the navy civil departments bill, 6 Apr., and against the Irish registry of deeds bill, 9 Apr. Next day he vindicated the retirement allowances for judges of the Scottish exchequer court. There was talk of his being put up by ministers for the Speakership, but he disclaimed any interest in it; he was aware that he was seen as the likeliest successor to the ailing Lord Tenterden as lord chief justice of king’s bench.
Notwithstanding the loss of my City office, and the interruption of my professional engagements by special ones, I cannot doubt that I should hold a good situation at the bar, and this is much more to my wild taste than judicial elevation. The bench may be a desirable asylum, but while health and strength last I much prefer the exertions and rewards of this humbler position. My political friends were meditating to place me in the Speaker’s chair. I would rather die ... Yet the loss of large emoluments cannot be indifferent to the father of eleven children ... For twenty-four hours I was labouring under intense anxiety, in fear that some degrading compromise would be accepted ... Such was my relief on hearing that the unanimous cabinet had ... resolved on resignation, that I felt more grateful to Lord Grey for the step which deprived me of office than even for promoting me.
Ibid. ii. 8; Arnould, i. 361-3.
Back in office with his colleagues, Denman, who voted against the Liverpool disfranchisement bill, 23 May, and for the Irish, 25 May, and Scottish reform bills, 1, 15 June, landed himself in a scrape by stating, 21 May, when attention was drawn to recent press libels on the royal family, that he had no intention of instigating ex-officio prosecutions, that it was impossible to ‘dive into men’s hearts’ and that he had always regretted the legal necessity of imprisoning people for the expression of sincerely held but illegal opinions. The last remark, which was twisted by opposition into a declaration that sincerity should give immunity from prosecution, alarmed and vexed the king, to whom Denman was compelled to submit a grovelling memorial of explanation and apology.
On 24 Aug. 1832, the day before making his maiden rail journey, from Liverpool to Manchester, Denman wrote to Merivale that the failure of the ‘vexatious and sordid opposition to the very principle of reform itself’ meant that
no opposition can now turn us out but one disposed to carry liberal opinions to a far greater length than the present cabinet can ever dream of ... The unhappy consequence ... is that the conservative powers are all formidably damaged in the estimate of that public opinion without which they are all nothing, and which has learned the fatal lesson of its own irresistible power ... We had no choice whether to bring it forward or not. The choice lay not between reform or no reform; but between reform proposed by the government and peaceably carried through, or reform proposed by the clubs and hurried forward by convulsion. I heartily lament the dangerous assemblies that have been held, and the inflammatory language that has been employed, but the senseless cry of reaction was a constant challenge to vehement demonstrations.
Arnould, i. 390-3.
He had turned down a requisition inviting him to stand for North Derbyshire at the impending general election; but when he got a hostile reception at Nottingham in early August on account of the execution of three of the convicted rioters he considered changing his mind. In the end he decided to persevere at Nottingham and became increasingly confident. In late October 1832 he appeared for the crown in the unsuccessful prosecution of the mayor of Bristol and replied powerfully to the vicious attack on the reform ministry made by Scarlett, counsel for the defence.
On Tenterden’s death, 7 Nov. 1832, Brougham decisively intervened with Grey to press Denman’s pretensions to succeed him. The king’s strong objections were, with some difficulty, overcome, and Denman was thus removed from the Commons.
The reputation of Denman as a lawyer is not high, and he has been one of the most inefficient attorneys-general who ever filled the office ... Denman is an honourable man, and has been a constant politician; latterly, of course, a radical of considerable vehemence, if not of violence ... By one of the most extraordinary pieces of good fortune that ever happened to man [he] finds himself elevated to this great office, the highest object of a lawyer’s ambition.
Three Diaries, 282; Greville Mems. ii. 329-30.
In March 1834 Brougham, in need of professional assistance in the Lords, persuaded Grey to make Denman a peer. Greville sourly commented that his elevation was ‘much abused’, for he had ‘no fortune and a scamp of a son to succeed him’.
there was something I liked about him, serious, impassive, of inflexible integrity, agreeable in society. He seemed to repel all that was frivolous ... As a man, I believe he was most estimable. His scholastic acquirements were considerable. No quality about him could be called brilliant, all was safe, rational, and perspicuous. Intrepid in moral feeling, nothing seemed capable of making his mind swerve from the dictates of an honest conviction. Straightforward, simple, and clear in conversation, massive rather than elegant, he won attention by the solidity of his judgement. He did not waste words, but used those which were proper in proper places. When the subjects of conversation were trivial, he was silent.
Lansdowne mss, Rice to Lansdowne, 8 Sept. 1827; C.Redding, Fifty Years’ Recollections (1858), ii. 62.
At Nice in December 1852 a final stroke, precipitated by over-excitement in the anti-slave trade cause, deprived Denman, who had been widowed the previous June, of the powers of speech and original writing, though his intellect remained intact.