‘Kit’ Hely Hutchinson, a ‘violent declaimer’ noted for his long speeches of ‘monotonous energy’, had in 1818 regained his seat on the family interest for Cork, where he was known locally as ‘the Papist’ on account of his support for unqualified Catholic emancipation. His elder brothers Richard, 1st earl of Donoughmore, and John, Baron Hutchinson, both inveterate placehunters, had long since abandoned any attempt to control him, it being well known that they had ‘no influence’, but still regularly came to his rescue financially, especially following his second marriage to a spendthrift mistress in 1818.
At the 1820 general election he offered again for Cork amidst expectation of a contest, in which, as Charles Arbuthnot* observed, he ‘must, of course, be opposed’ by the Liverpool ministry.
though I feel as I ought most grateful for that expenditure ... I never considered the seat for Cork worth money, but only (considering that I was an idle man) worth my own exertions, of which I have not been sparing, to recover if possible for the family, what in a great degree was lost perhaps by my own conduct in Parliament.
TCD, Donoughmore mss D/43/45.
He persevered, appealing to the ‘Protestant electors’ to contribute their ‘essential’ votes to those of the Catholic freeholders, and after a six-day contest was returned at the head of the poll.
After the first exchange of shots it was supposed that neither had taken effect and the pistols were again put into the hands of the parties, when Daniel Callaghan, perceiving blood dripping from Christopher’s hand, exclaimed that his brother could not fire at a wounded man. Christopher instantly replied that it was a mere scratch. He felt no pain ... and was ready to ‘go on’. Daniel Callaghan then said, ‘My brother is perfectly satisfied’. The Callaghans then left the ground and the affair terminated ... Christopher is as well as ever he was, except the great apprehension he feels lest Mrs. Hutchinson should think of coming over, which makes him not a little uneasy.
Donoughmore mss D/43/46.
It was later remarked that after the Callaghans had halted proceedings, Hely Hutchinson ‘held up his hand in derision, with a finger hanging to it’, and exclaimed, ‘What sir, is your ... honour satisfied by a scratch like that?’
I ... cannot divest myself of a dread that a man so delicate as Hutchinson will fall victim to the illness which must proceed from the amputation of his finger. What on earth was the cause of this unfortunate business? The stupid papers give no detail ... I hope ... your letter ... will give me a more satisfactory account of our patriot ... Hutchinson is honest and that is his fault. They would wish to put him out of the way ... I anxiously entreat of you ... to take care of yourself. I know your friendship for Hutchinson.
O’Connell Corresp. ii. 836.
A few days later The Times reported that ‘one of the fingers of the left hand ... has since been amputated, but we understand he is going on well’.
An assiduous attender, Hely Hutchinson voted with the advanced wing of opposition on all major issues, especially economy, retrenchment and reduced taxation.
but Hutchinson opened a broadside upon us, which in the earlier stages of the bill might have sunk the whole concern, inasmuch as he characterized the second bill (now consolidated with the first) as a bill of pains, penalties, degradation, etc., imposed on the Roman Catholic clergy. The attack, however, recoiled upon the promoter of it, and the discussion was so conducted as to assist the bill.
Buckingham, Mems. Geo. IV i. 145.
‘I don’t think that Hely Hutchinson will do you any harm’, Buckingham replied.
a long set speech, very tiresome and heavy, travelling over every part of the subject and doing justice to none, the principle good and sound, although at times somewhat extravagant and rather tending to embroil us in foreign disputes ... The numbers were for the motion (which was remarkably ill drawn up, and as awkwardly worded as it could be) 28 to 117.
HLRO, Hist. Coll. 379, Grey Bennet diary, 102.
Speaking in similar terms, he charged Lord Castlereagh*, the foreign secretary, with abetting the Alliance’s ‘system of tyranny’, 29 June 1821, and of lending his ‘best support to the unholy cause of slavery and injustice’, which if he ‘knew anything about foreign affairs, he must be well aware of’, 5 Feb. 1822. He demanded repeal of the ‘disgraceful and insulting’ Seditious Meetings Act, 8 May 1821. Ignoring interruptions by coughing, he defended the John Bull journalist Collier against charges of a breach of privilege, 11 May.
Hely Hutchinson condemned the ‘severe measures’ to suppress Irish disturbances outlined in the king’s speech, 5 Feb., and demanded inquiry into the causes of unrest, warning that ‘hanging, transporting, imprisoning or scourging those unhappy people’ would have no effect while ‘grievances existed’, 7 Feb. 1822. That day he was a minority teller against the suspension of habeas corpus and the Irish insurrection bills, against which he campaigned and voted steadily thereafter. He divided for inquiry into the Scottish royal burghs, 20 Feb. He was granted three weeks’ leave on urgent private business, 27 Mar. He demanded abolition of the ‘intolerable’ Irish potato tithes, 15 May, welcomed the appearance of the Irish tithes bill ‘without committing himself’, 14 June, but voted for Newport’s amendment to it, 19 June, when he observed that ‘a pledge of the House to reduce the calamitous abuses of the tithe system would be attended with the most beneficial results’. He praised ministers for their remission of the Irish window tax and relief of the leather tax, but regretted that there had not been further salt tax reductions, 24 May. He divided against the second reading of the Irish constables bill, 7 June. He was appointed to the select committee on the Irish linen trade, 17 June, and warned that any loss of its protection would be ‘detrimental’, 21 June. On 15 July 1822 he implored the House to condemn the ‘barbarous ferocity’ of the Turks against the Greeks and criticized ministers for their ‘degraded’ and ‘unmanly’ inaction in foreign policy. He welcomed their firmer stance in the king’s speech, 5 Feb. 1823, but believed that ‘stronger language’ would have ‘struck terror into the congregated despots of the continent’, which was ‘looking up to the conduct of this country’. ‘I am grateful that you approve of the few words I said on the address’, he informed Donoughmore, 13 Feb., adding that for the next week he had been confined to his house ‘by sore eyes and pains in the head’.
Hely Hutchinson voted for information on Catholic burials, 6 Feb., and presented a petition against the Catholic burials bill, with which he disagreed, 1 Apr. 1824. He divided for returns of the number of Irish Catholic office-holders, 19 Feb. Next day he warned that without concessions, the Irish people ‘might at length’ be driven to ‘dangerous extremities’. He opposed a motion for papers on ribbon men as ‘injurious to the best interests of Ireland’, 11 Mar. He was in the minority against the grant for Protestant Irish charter schools, 15 Mar., but welcomed that to the Royal Cork Institution as a ‘great boon’, 19 Mar., and defended that given to the Kildare Place Society, 29 Mar. He warned that Irishmen engaged in coarse linen manufacture would be ‘reduced to starvation and driven to acts of outrage’ by repeal of the linen bounties, 18, 22 Mar., 3 May, and was a teller for the minority of 26 against the third reading of the related customs bill, 27 May. On 23 Mar. he defended his use of the ‘strongest language’ in ‘reprobation of the miscalled Holy Alliance’ and condemned the aliens bill as ‘unnecessary’ and part of the same ‘system of tyranny’; he complained of the bill’s ‘injustice’ to emigrants who had sought asylum in England, 5 Apr. Next day Canning, the foreign secretary, informed his wife that ‘Hutchinson announced last night that on ... the third reading he should answer my speech point by point’, but in the event he was prevented ‘by indisposition’ from speaking or voting as intended, 12 Apr.
I was quite guarded and inoffensive to anybody and was well heard ... In reference to that part of Trench’s speech against O’Connell, I said that I desired to repeat to O’Connell what I had years before said in the House, namely that I was happy to avow him as one of my friends ... The Chronicle in its wisdom adds, ‘my dearest friend’.
Donoughmore replied that he was ‘most happy that he had taken up O’Connell’s cause so manfully’.
On 20 Jan. 1825 Lord Hutchinson complained to his brother Francis that Hely Hutchinson’s wife had ‘wanted to purchase a house in London and furniture with £3,200 ... [of] my money ... in Kit’s name’, adding
I tire of having the most disagreeable discussions with poor Kit ... He is entirely under the dominion of that terrible woman and it becomes absolutely necessary for me to endeavour to restrain her, or she would ruin by her extravagance her husband and her children.
Ibid. F/13/105.
Hely Hutchinson deprecated the suppression of the Association, which had ‘done more than any previously constituted body to promote the tranquillity of Ireland’, 4 Feb., remonstrated against the ‘crying injustice’ of a hostile Protestant petition, 15 Feb., and presented and endorsed a supportive one from Cork, 24 Feb. 1825. He voted accordingly, 15, 21, 25 Feb., when he ignored attempts to shout him down, saying hecklers ‘would only compel him to remain ten times longer on his legs’, and questioned the wisdom of insulting seven million Irishmen in the current state of foreign affairs. On 18 Feb. he voted for allowing the Association to be heard at the bar of the House. That day O’Connell reported arriving at the Commons, ‘into which and under the gallery Kit Hutchinson conducted us with the permission of the Speaker’.
I am quite ashamed of myself for the violence of my conduct ... but you have not scrupled to abuse her to everyone in the most unqualified terms ... At one time the charge you brought against her was that she had bought furniture, in the intent of taking a house, in which I assured you and am still convinced, she was perfectly right ... Another charge, that of our having kept improper company and of improper scenes having passed in Bulstrode Street ... is false and barbarous ... Anne is represented as having such unbounded influence over me, that I am not responsible for anything ... I had not the most remote idea of troubling you ... but to my simple enquiry where my son had gone, you dragged me and mine before your judgement seat ... and pronounced sentence of condemnation.
Bodl. Bruce Ms. Eng. c. 5753, ff. 74-80.
Hely Hutchinson complained of ministers’ inattention to Ireland, 3 Feb., and contended that a ‘greater degree of misery and degradation’ existed there ‘than in any other portion of the world’, 16 Feb. 1826. Replying that day to a letter from Michael Bruce* expressing concern for his health, he declined to ‘retire’ and ‘be quiet’:
Although I may continue to strut a little longer on the stage of public life as unprofitably to the community and to my family as heretofore, yet, there my lot having cast me, I think I should continue a zealous labourer, at least for a short while longer.
Ibid. ff. 81-84.
He protested that the ‘system of government was too expensive’, 15 Feb., and that going into committee on the estimates without an account of the financial state of the country was ‘absurd’, 17 Feb. He was appointed to the select committees on Irish tolls, 21 Feb., and the Irish butter trade, 9 Mar. He spoke and was in the minority for the disfranchisement of Irish non-resident borough voters that day, but hoped that ‘no existing interests’ would be disturbed ‘without giving all parties concerned the fullest opportunity of being heard’. On the 10th he urged withdrawal from Sierra Leone, where the ‘deadly maladies by which it was infested’ necessitated sending two officers to each appointment, which was a ‘wanton waste of human existence’. He denied that the Catholic clergy neglected the scriptural education of their flocks, 20 Mar. On 10 Apr. 1826 he was ‘accidentally locked out’ of the division on the salary of the president of the board of trade, which he had intended to oppose.
At the 1826 general election he offered again, regretting that his health would prevent him leaving London and deputing John to act for him. Rumours of a contest came to nothing and he was returned unopposed in absentia.
assiduity of his attendance in Parliament ... as attested by the record of his name in all the divisions which have taken place ... upon great questions of foreign and domestic policy ... So paramount was his sense of public duty ... that, contrary to the urgent remonstrances of his medical friends, he insisted upon quitting Brighton last spring to take an active part in the business of the Irish committees, an effort so much beyond his strength as to produce the fatal relapse which followed.
The Times, 28 Aug,; Southern Reporter, 31 Aug. 1826.
Donoughmore privately lamented that ‘poor Kit was so wild a politician and so much under the influence of his crazy wife, that he never could have been of use either to himself or to anybody else’, and later noted that ‘Kit and his family have cost me an enormous sum, owing to his folly and the perverse wickedness of his wife’.