Price, who counted Lord Milton* and John Fazakerley* among his closest friends, had defeated another Whig, Sir George Cornewall† of Moccas Court, to come in for his native Herefordshire in 1818 with the anti-Catholic Tory Sir John Geers Cotterell.* A member of Brooks’s and Grillion’s, he generally divided with opposition, and readily expressed support for retrenchment and ‘a limited and moderate reform of Parliament’. In his long parliamentary career, he was rarely sure of an uncontested return despite the close attention he paid to patronizing local causes, the Agricultural Society, race meetings, the Herefordshire Association in London, and county and city meetings. Knowing that some of his erstwhile supporters were pro-Catholic ministerialists, he issued a conciliatory canvassing address at the 1820 general election in which he acknowledged past and present political differences and reiterated his commitment to the county and to ‘promoting the general welfare and preserving unimpaired the constitution of the state’.
In the 1820 Parliament, which until 1824 Price attended assiduously (voting in most of the reported divisions), he divided consistently with the Whig opposition to Lord Liverpool’s ministry on most major issues, including parliamentary reform, 18 Apr., 9, 10 May 1821, 20 Feb. 1822, 25 Apr. 1822, 20 Feb., 24 Apr., 2 June 1823, and Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr. (a vote commonly misattributed to Pryse Pryse), 10 May 1825, for which he also presented a petition from Kingsburn, 21 Apr. 1825.
Bringing up a radical distress petition from Ross, 15 Feb., he said that ‘trifling reductions’ were of no avail and called for the ‘most rigid and severe economy throughout every department of the state’; but he now rejected the petitioners’ demand for a ‘reduction of the interest of the public debt’ as unsound. On parliamentary reform, which the petitioners advocated, he added:
I have never been of opinion that it would be advisable to make any immediate and comprehensive change in the whole system of our representation, in the nature as well as extent of our elective franchise; but at the same time I have thought that it would be consistent with a sound, safe and wise policy to undertake a gradual and temperate reform of those abuses which in the lapse of time have crept into our representative system, and have disfigured … our constitution … Every succeeding year has confirmed me in my opinions and when I consider the number of petitions which have been laid upon the table of this House, and the great anxiety which prevails out of doors on this important subject, I cannot help thinking that such a reform would not only be of advantage to the country, but is due to the earnest wishes and repeated supplications of a suffering, but of a patient and loyal people.
TNA C110/96 (ii), Price to T. Jay, 3 Mar. 1818; The Times, 16 Feb.; Hereford Jnl. 20 Feb. 1822.
Supporting Althorp’s resolutions criticizing the ministry’s inadequate relief proposals, he countered Wolrych Whitmore’s arguments and asserted:
Nobody in opposition said … that the present low prices of agricultural produce were caused by the weight of taxation … [only] that as an extraordinary stimulus, which had now ceased to operate, had been given to agriculture during the war, and as the cessation of it had rendered it necessary to look for some measures whereby the farmer might be enabled to grow his produce cheap, a remission of taxation appeared at once to be the most practicable and the most natural way of proceeding.
Intervening later, he endorsed Althorp’s call for greater reductions and a temporary abandonment of the sinking fund, and called for an end to ‘every useless place … no matter what might be the parliamentary influence of the party who held it, or of any of his near relations’. Referring again to the Ross petition, he confirmed that he had had a change of heart, if not opinion, and was now prepared to dispense with the sinking fund for a short period as a ‘conciliatory measure’ to afford ‘immediate relief’ to the agricultural interest.
Possibly under duress, Price signed the unsuccessful requisition for a county meeting to petition for further action against distress, and attended that convened in lieu by the lord lieutenant Lord Somers, 17 Jan. 1823, when a petition based on proposals for abolishing the sinking fund, the placemen system, the hop duties and agricultural taxes, put to the meeting by the liberal Edmund Lechmere Charlton† after prior consultation with Edward Ellice* and Lord Grey, was adopted in preference to the original petition from the Hereford Pitt Club and the ‘Norfolk petition’ proposed by William Cobbett†.
In 1824 Price showed less commitment to opposition and cast only a handful of votes with them: on ordnance reductions, 27 Feb., the complaint against lord chancellor Eldon, 1 Mar., the window tax, 2 Mar. (and again, 17 May 1825) and Irish first fruits revenues, 25 May. He voted in condemnation of the indictment in Demerara of the Methodist missionary John Smith, 11 June, and possibly for the Irish insurrection bill, 14 June 1824. He presented a petition from Ross supporting the county courts bill, 24 May.
I had almost determined to make my appearance on the night of Lord John’s motion on reform [28 Apr.], but it so happened that just at that moment, in addition to her usual state of suffering, my poor mother had to contend with an attack of fever which lasted some days, and made me really afraid of being absent … I have been a very impartial observer of all your conflicts with the agriculturists from this distant quarter, and in some respects I am not sorry to observe them from a distance, since just at present it would not perhaps be politic to show the bearing of my mind too strongly on the corn question. The landed gentlemen must be prepared for a change of system, and prohibitory duties must cease in respect to corn, as they already have ceased on so many other articles of commerce. What is the precise amount of protection to which we are entitled is another question. I shall probably be for a higher duty than you would concede, though I do not carry my pretensions very far. I am rather inclined to [David] Ricardo’s* plan of having a descending scale. … I have not the least reason to apprehend any disturbance in this county, but the contest for the city will be very severe.
Oxford DNB sub Price, Sir Uvedale; Fitzwilliam mss 125/16.
His return in June was unopposed. On the hustings, he reaffirmed his support for retrenchment and moderate reform and expressed his gratitude to Canning ‘for having broken asunder those ties which bound us far too closely to the more despotic governments of the continent’ and recognizing newly independent states. He acknowledged his political differences with Peel, yet spoke highly of his abilities and legal reforms, which he maintained the opposition had helped to bring about.
He continued to attend Parliament irregularly until after his father’s death in 1829. When present, he tended to act with Clive. He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., inquiry into the allegations against Leicester corporation, 15 Mar., and the spring guns bill, 23 Mar.; and voted to postpone supplies pending resolution of the succession to Liverpool as premier, 30 Mar., and to refer the Irish miscellaneous estimates to a select committee, 5 Apr. 1827. He did not apparently vote on the corn bill, but he was present at the agriculturists’ meetings that petitioned against change.
I should like to hear what Althorp says about the state of politics. I have always regretted that so much was done last session without any consultation with him, and without much with yourself; for it appears to me that both one and the other ought to have been consulted far earlier than Burdett, or many others who seem to have taken a lead in the new arrangements of last session; and that if you had been consulted much mischief might perhaps have been prevented. As matters are at present, I fear Lord Grey is separated for ever from the large body of Whigs, and that alone is a great evil. The loss of Canning, I suspect with you, will be grievously felt. He seemed to have made up his mind as to the course he was to pursue, and he had the energy and confidence in his own powers sufficient to carry his plan into effect. Our present premier, though very amiable, is of a different calibre, and moreover he is removed from the House of Commons where he would have been far more powerful than he is in his more dignified situation. Nevertheless, anything is better than having recourse again to the seceders, and I am very much of opinion that if we act wisely we shall not be too nice. I absolutely sicken at the thought of the return of Peel to power: if he were once fairly established in office again heaven knows [when] we should see the end of his reign: but you know my opinions of this great statesman, and I will say no more about politics.
Fitzwilliam mss.
He claimed that he would have rejected the baronetcy awarded to his father in December 1827 as insufficient, had it been given ‘directly to me’, but consoled himself that the inferior honour placed him under less pressure to become an ‘out and out’ ministerialist. He was in any case ‘perfectly prepared to give fair support to the [Goderich] government, firmly persuaded as I am that if we lose this administration we have very little hopes of ever getting a better’.
In opposition, he voted, 26 Feb., and presented petitions, 28 Feb., 10 Mar., for repeal of the Test Acts, and divided against sluicing the franchise at East Retford, 21 Mar. 1828. He is not known to have voted on the corn question, but he divided for Catholic relief, 12 May. He presented an anti-slavery petition from Ross, 4 June, and voted against the ministry’s expenditure proposals, 20, 23 June 1828. At the Hereford meeting, 24 Feb. 1829, Price spoke strongly but to little effect against the anti-Catholic petition adopted.
The Herefordshire Pitt Club resolved to take up the agriculturists’ cause in September 1829, and at the Hereford Agricultural Society dinner, 8 Feb. 1830, Cotterell and Thomas Smythies took Price to task for failing to vote against government on the address, 4 Feb., and his previous support for free trade and currency reform. Responding, he said that he adhered to Wellington’s view that abandoning the latter would only make matters worse, and that although he acknowledged that government had underestimated the scale and extent of the current depression, he could not support the Ultras’ petition. This caused it to be abandoned and all others were entrusted to Cotterell.
The administration counted him among their ‘foes’ and he divided against them on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. 1830. He presented many Herefordshire anti-slavery petitions 8, 12, 22 Nov.
Our ministers are going on pretty well, but not without receiving every now and then attacks from quarters that ought to be friendly: Althorp bears it well, and puts down opposition by a conduct as plain and straightforward as that we used to see him display when sitting on the other side of the House.
Although he regretted the proposed increase in the army, he was prepared to ‘trust to ministers’ knowledge’, and preferred ‘even this addition to the regular forces, to calling in … the yeomanry … popular amongst the country gentlemen’.
According to Denis Le Marchant†, Price, a ‘dull Herefordshire baronet’, thought lord chancellor Brougham’s oration on the state of his court, 22 Feb. 1831, ‘prodigiously fine indeed’ and reminiscent of ‘Demosthenes or some of those fellows one reads of at school’.
Price’s return at the ensuing general election was assured, but, with other reformers in the field and the Tories active, a contest seemed inevitable until Lechmere Charlton made way for the Whig banker Kedgwin Hoskins, and Cotterell retired.
I have always been of opinion that there were advantages in the present very varied form of our representation, which ought not to be abandoned except for the attainment of great and beneficial objects. The exercise of their franchise by persons in the very humblest class of society, by the lowest order of freemen, or even by those whose right arises from their boiling a pot the night previous to an election has never appeared to me as unattended with some good, however little disposed I might be to enlarge and extend such rights of voting. But when this bill was introduced it was clear to me that under existing circumstances we had to make our election; that it was not possible to put an end to all nomination by means of close corporations and by individuals, and not to give something of a counterbalance by establishing a constituency large in numbers indeed, but of which property would form an essential and necessary qualification … At all former periods I have found the advocates of reform sitting on the opposition side of the House of Commons, with a government decidedly averse to the consideration of the question. In such a state of things it would have been most unwise to have attempted any great change; all that could be done was to introduce measures for a gradual amendment of the representative system. These measures were resisted; the transfer of the elective franchise from boroughs convicted of corruption to large unrepresented towns was not conceded; and whilst the people were becoming every day more anxious for reform, the administration were declaring their more determined opposition to it, even in its most mitigated shape. It was under these circumstances that a change of government took place … The bill was introduced … I considered it to afford a great practical remedy for a great and crying evil, and I should have been ashamed of myself if I had allowed any minor doubts and difficulties to have had weight with me, and to have prevented me giving it my most zealous and cordial support. … In the very extent of the change there is safety, in the very comprehensiveness of the plan there is security for the future.
The Times, 9 May; Hereford Jnl. 11 May 1831.
He divided for the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July 1831, and Littleton, who dined with him on the 10th, noted that ‘as usual’ the bill was the ‘sole topic’ of conversation.
Writing to Lord Holland, 20 Aug. 1832, Price attributed the ‘considerable disinclination’ of voters to register which then preoccupied him to the shilling fee and the ‘newness of the measure’, but he was confident that it affected the parties equally, and correctly predicted that Hereford and the three Member county would return four reformers and one anti-reformer at the general election in December.