Pearse and his brother Brice were the senior partners in J. and B. Pearse and Company, and operated as Blackwell Hall factors at 41 Lothbury and as army clothiers at 98 Long Acre. He continued in business in this period, enjoying lucrative contracts through his connection with the duke of York, the commander-in-chief, and served as a director of the Bank of England until 1828.
He vindicated the Bank’s conduct over the issuing of exchequer bills, 31 May, and spoke against reducing the size of its public balances, 13 June 1820. He denied the respectability of the Devizes petitioners in support of Queen Caroline, 24 Jan. 1821, but did not vote in the division on the opposition censure motion on this affair, 6 Feb. He muttered something about agricultural distress, 8 Feb., and moved for a return of the number of bank notes in circulation, 20 Mar., to show, ‘together with the prices of gold, that the currency had no reference to the distresses of the country’. On 19 Mar. he expressed his surprise that those, like David Ricardo*, who had advocated the resumption of cash payments in 1819 should now object to it, and he opposed going into committee on it, 9 Apr., because he was ‘convinced that it was the political events in Europe, and not the report of the committee of 1819, which had brought about the state of things so much complained of’. He confirmed that the Bank would issue sovereigns instead of bank notes, 26 Mar., 12 Apr., partly as a precaution against forgery, which he claimed the Bank was doing everything it could to prevent, 9 Apr., and for which he wished the death penalty to be retained, 4 June.
Pearse defended the policy of the Bank in comparison with the high interest rates charged by the Bank of Ireland, 8 Mar. 1822, when he stated that
although a director, he had no great interest in the profits of the Bank; for to confess the truth, he had not much more Bank stock than was necessary to give him a qualification. Indeed, upon seeing the effects of the war, he had made it a point of honour not to increase his stock beyond the amount which he possessed upon first entering into the direction.
On 1 Apr. he ‘contended that overproduction was the real cause of the distress, and that the rate of interest had always been governed by the price of the funds’. He spoke in justification of the Bank’s monopoly, 31 May, and rebutted Ricardo’s allegations that it had purchased too much gold, 12 June, asserting that as between 1797 and 1817, ‘the Bank had never forced an issue, so neither had there ever been any depreciation in the value of their notes, with reference to the price of gold’. He commented privately that the suicide of Lord Londonderry* that summer had occasioned ‘universal dismay in London’ as ‘a great national loss’.
was on its deathbed and its chief heroes were fast sinking into decay. The lower classes, who had been made the dupes of these political itinerants, were returning to their former sober and religious habits, and again manifesting their love of our excellent constitution.
Devizes Gazette, 3 Oct. 1822.
Pearse, who made an interjection on behalf of the Bank on 18 Apr., voted for inquiry into the legal proceedings against the Dublin Orange rioters, 22 Apr. 1823.
says the king is violent for [the Irish attorney-general William] Plunket* from thinking that the duke of York interferes with the division on Tuesday [22 Apr.] and giving as his proof, Pearse, the Bank director, voting against the government which he knows he would never have done but at the instigation of the duke of York.
Creevey mss.
Pearse defended the £4,000,000 balance held by the Bank, 19 Feb. 1824 (and again, 23 Feb. 1825). He voted against the abolition of flogging, 5 Mar., and spoke and voted in the minority against the exportation of long wool, 21 May.
Rebutting the attacks made on the Bank for its role in the recent financial crisis, 2 Feb. 1826, he stated that it had ‘acted with the utmost prudence and consideration in the whole of the late tremendous convulsion’, and a week later he argued that its privileges were well deserved, considering the ‘eminent services performed by the Bank for the public, when that corporation had stood in the gap, and effected what, upon emergencies, legislative interposition would have failed to accomplish’. He spoke in defence of the Bank’s charter and against the establishment of a rival bank in London, 13 Feb., when he also argued (as he did on the 20th) that it was the excessive issuing of bills of exchange, not of notes, which had led to the speculative panic. He advocated the establishment of a commission to issue exchequer bills on behalf of the government, as in 1793, in order to provide additional relief and restore confidence, 14, 15, 23 Feb. He informed John Beckett* of the decision to form one before it had been officially announced, supported it in the House on 28 Feb., and was asked a technical question about it by Peel, the home secretary.
He voted against Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, 12 May 1828. He was given a week’s leave of absence, 23 Mar. 1827, on account of illness in his family. Brought to order by the Speaker, 30 May, the following day he managed to speak in mitigation of the offence of a fellow director, a letter of whose had been unintentionally sent round as a Bank circular. He denied that there were any prevailing circumstances which might force the Bank to suspend cash payments, 14 June, and insisted that it would act with ‘perfect fairness and equity’, 29 June.
I am not a fellow to pay compliments, but I will venture to say, if you will take the chancellorship of the exchequer, it will tend more to raise the funds and give financial confidence than the restoration of poor Canning’s life.
Mem. of Public Life of Herries ed. E. Herries, i. 227.
Writing to William Huskisson* from Ireland, which he found in a flourishing state, save for the ‘Catholic, intrusive and arbitrary clergy’, he commented, 30 Sept. 1827, that
as I see a preponderance in the cabinet, of those who have entertained and put in practice principles that have saved the country in dangerous times, I augur well of the arrangements that have been made, and that at any rate radicalism will be kept down.
Add. 38751, f. 90.
He presented petitions for repeal of the Test Acts from Devizes Dissenters, 25 Feb., but voted against this, 26 Feb. 1828. He was one of the minority of nine who divided against repealing the Act which prohibited the use of ribbons at elections, 20 Mar., and he recommended investigation of the wool trade, 28 Apr. 1828.
In February 1829 Walter Long† informed Thomas Henry Sutton Bucknall Estcourt*, the son of Pearse’s former colleague, that he had entered his name on their putative Wiltshire anti-Catholic declaration, ‘which he will not quarrel with us about’.
He was listed by ministers among their ‘friends’ and sided with them on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. He was granted a fortnight’s leave on account of the disturbed state of his neighbourhood, 2 Dec., and in a letter to Bucknall Estcourt senior, 10 Dec. 1830, noted that his exertions against the ‘Swing’ rioters had made him ill. He was, however, optimistic:
At this season, fortunate in that respect, the farmers have great crops and the funds are daily rising, and I anxiously fear will rise still higher. The advantages which the farmers will thus enjoy will much exceed the expense they will incur by the increased wages, and it is yet to be proved whether the increase of wages will not diminish the poor rates to a great extent.
Sotheron Estcourt mss X63.
Despite poor health, which might have obliged him to retire from the House, he attended and voted against the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar. 1831.
I am ready to give my sanction to any well-digested measure of reform, and should have voted for a specific motion on the subject, which would have been brought forward by Sir Richard Vyvyan [the Ultra leader], in case the ministerial measure was lost.
He objected to the reduced representation of England, the sweeping nature of the bill, and the ‘domineering and dictatorial’ manner in which it had been introduced, but he was again elected unopposed.
He voted against the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill, 6 July, and at least four times for adjourning the proceedings on it, 12 July, when he was noted as leaving the House before the seventh and last division. He divided for using the 1831 census to determine the disfranchisement schedules, 19 July, and to postpone consideration of the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27 July. He announced that he would vote against the removal of one seat from Guildford, 29 July, and for Campbell’s amendment to exclude weekly tenants and lodgers from the franchise, as their inclusion would amount ‘almost to universal suffrage’, 25 Aug., but his name appears in neither of the partial minority lists for these divisions. He was one of the signatories of the Wiltshire declaration against reform.
Such was his popularity in Devizes, it was believed that if he had changed his mind on reform, he would have been returned at the general election of 1832, but by early June he had positively declined to stand again.