To an estate of 60,000 acres Bankes added the accomplishments of a scholar and connoisseur, married to ‘one of the most remarkable beauties of the day’. Sitting for his own close seat, he made his parliamentary debut as an opponent of Lord North and was an early adherent of William Pitt. Yet Farington the diarist was told that ‘if every measure which Mr Pitt brought forward was not previously explained to him, he opposed it’; and also reported that ‘as Bankes sometimes voted against Pitt, he was asked ... if it made any difference between them; he replied not the least’. During his 51 years in the House, Bankes acquired a formidable reputation for independence, with a place of his own on the cross-benches known as ‘Bankes’ bench’. His friend Wilberforce described him, somewhat optimistically, as one of those ‘from whose general principles one may anticipate pretty confidently how they will act in given circumstances’. His general principles derived chiefly from his insistence on public parsimony. This meant constant vigilance over administration. He deplored the cost of war with France and of continental alliances and in peacetime called for retrenchment. He fought a campaign for the abolition of sinecures and reversionary offices and for the rationalization of administrative costs, and over the years became a firm advocate of the parliamentary committee as a check on administration, as well as an acknowledged expert on parliamentary procedure. Yet he did not inspire: he was, to quote his son’s friend John Cam Hobhouse, ‘a dull dog’.
Bankes was inconspicuous in the Parliament of 1790 until he joined Wilberforce in his bid for peace, 30 Dec. 1794. He stated that he had approved the war at the outset as a defensive one: now its cost was becoming ruinous and negotiations for peace should be opened as soon as possible. Privately, he had written on 26 Dec.: ‘I have seldom felt more uncomfortable about politics than at this moment, and I am really much in doubt how to act; though I think in such a time it is not right to absent myself’. He added that in his view the French republic could not now be overthrown and it was better to treat with them before the allies deserted; if negotiations failed, ‘our people would see the necessity of continuing [the war]’.
Bankes’s ‘secession’ from the ministerial viewpoint was no passing phase. On 1 Mar. 1797, supporting inquiry into the stability of the Bank, he claimed that the cost of war had undermined it: ‘it was the nature of man to set too high a value upon the object of his heart and too little on the price he pays for obtaining it’. He became a co-editor of the Anti-Jacobin in December 1797 and approved the suppression of rebellion in Ireland, but opposed the sending over of the militia, on which he divided the House, 19 June 1798. Moreover, he was a keen critic of the project of union with Ireland, 12 Feb. 1799: Irish problems were best dealt with on the spot and ‘the state of Ireland was not such as we could incorporate with’. So he voted against it, 14 Feb. 1799. On 22 Apr. 1800, he described the Union as a ‘mere palliative, and no cure’, and on 25 Apr. spoke for the minority who voted against flooding Westminster with Irish Members. On 2 May he added that the mass of the Irish were ‘a very dangerous set’, and being unable to make common cause with them ‘we could not bring into this union the physical force of Ireland’. Besides, he thought a hundred Irish Members at Westminster was at least ten too many (5 May). On 19 Mar. 1801 he voted against the Irish master of the rolls bill.
During that Parliament Bankes had become active as a committee member. His first effort to sway the House as a committee chairman was unsuccessful when he had to abandon his project of encouraging potato growing among the poorer classes to counter the high price of provisions in March 1800. Nevertheless, he persevered as a committee man and, on his own admission, when he was not downstairs, he was upstairs.
From 7 Mar. to 25 Apr. 1804 he was in steady opposition to Addington and was listed a Pittite then and in September. On 8 June he defended Pitt’s additional force bill against Addington and Fox and on 12 Feb. 1805 approved war with Spain. But he was critical of the civil list and of the militia enlisting bill in March. Moreover, he was in the majority censuring Melville, 8 Apr. 1805, and next day informed Pitt:
I sincerely lament the transaction upon your account, as well as upon Lord Melville’s; but with such a case confessed, it was impossible that any supplemental evidence would excuse the transgression of the law.
Dacres Adams mss 6/41.
Whitbread was prepared to nominate him to his proposed committee of investigation into Melville’s conduct, 25 Apr. On 12 June he was in the majority for criminal prosecution, which he preferred to impeachment: Lady Spencer reported on 10 June, ‘Bankes says he votes with us if Lord Melville does not, contrary to his expectations, clear himself in his speech tomorrow in the House of Commons’. He had also spoken and voted against the Duke of Atholl’s Manx claims, 7 June. A month later he was listed ‘doubtful’ from the ministerial viewpoint, though a letter from him to Pitt on 19 Dec. 1805 indicates concern for the minister’s health and continued support. On Pitt’s death he was opposed to public payment of his debts and avoided the debate on the subject.
Bankes was not ill-disposed to the Grenville ministry: he voted (30 Apr.) and spoke (8 May) in defence of their repeal of Pitt’s Additional Force Act, which had failed. He thought they were as good a set of ministers ‘as could be made out of such discordant materials’, though he had some reservations, notably about William Windham. He approved the latter’s training bill, 26 June, but thought the volunteers hard done by, 11 July. He had no time for the charges raised against Wellesley’s conduct in India (8 May, 16, 18, 25 June 1806, 26 Jan. 1807, 10 Mar. 1808), though he was disposed to listen to criticism of St. Vincent’s naval administration, 14 May 1806. On Fox’s death he thought ‘some addition of strength, as well as of talent’ was needed and was disappointed that Grenville did not resort to the Pittites.
Bankes was satisfied that the breakdown of the Grenville ministry’s negotiations with Buonaparte was not their fault and he approved their ‘new plan of finance’, 19 Feb. 1807, though he wished foreign investments in British funds to be taxed, 9 Feb. 1807, 15 June 1808, and was hostile to the subsidy to Prussia, 5 Mar. 1807. Grenville had gratified Bankes by making him chairman of the committee appointed on 10 Feb. 1807 to vet public expenditure, thinking him ‘in general disposed to be right-headed’ and hoping that he could be controlled, particularly as the committee was empowered to recommend reductions.
Bankes again failed to secure the county seat in 1807, though he was nearer to success than in 1806. On 29 June he reintroduced his bill to abolish reversions, which had been interrupted by the dissolution. Ministers did not oppose it and it passed on 9 July, but was rejected in the Lords on 4 Aug. Perceval, aware of the widespread support for the bill by country gentlemen and Members for populous boroughs, personally assured Bankes that no reversions would be granted until the question was revived. On 10 Aug. Bankes carried an address to stop any such grants until six weeks after the start of the next session. The bill was again passed on 1 Feb. 1808 but, despite ministerial backing, defeated by the ultras headed by Perceval’s brother in the Lords. Bankes, egged on by the Whigs, promised to try again: he voted with opposition on the mutiny bill, 14 Mar., though he supported the orders in council. His third bid was hampered by the threat of amendments from Perceval, but on 4 Apr. he compromised with Perceval for a limitation of the bill to just over a year, pending the third report of the public expenditure committee. The bill then passed both Houses. The committee’s first reports on the pay office, 22 July 1807, had speedily caused that department to put its house in order; and the second report on the management of the national debt, calling on the Bank to reduce its charges, was implemented in Perceval’s budget of 1808. The third report on places and pensions, 29 June 1808, was more controversial. Bankes had resisted Cochrane’s bid on 7 July 1807 to restrict the inquiry to the emoluments of MPs and their families, but, as he feared, Perceval’s counter-bid to embrace all places and pensions slowed up the inquiry and Perceval’s remodelling of the select committee, 30 June 1807, enabled ministerial Members to hamper progress. The report, for which he wrote a controversial preface, was less incisive than Bankes wished, though it envisaged savings of over £80,000 p.a.; and a supplement of January 1809 revealed the interesting fact that of 76 MPs who were placeholders, 28 held sinecures. But Bankes opted out of the committee for that session, 24 Jan. 1809. Instead he attempted to cut a figure in the debates on the Duke of York’s alleged abuse of army patronage. On 10 Mar. he suggested an amendment to the proposed censure, charging the duke with immorality rather than corruption. It was supported by the ‘Saints’, but defeated. Bankes thereupon criticized the whole proceedings of the House in the affair, 17 Mar. He supported Porchester’s sale of offices prevention bill, 20 Apr. In June he failed to secure an amendment to Curwen’s reform bill and ‘moved a dozen peevish crotchetty amendments’ on the judges’ salary bill—all negatived.
When Perceval became prime minister, Bankes, who doubted if the ministry could do without Canning, remained ‘out of invitation distance’.
Bankes’s initial emphasis in his campaign against sinecures on the need to reduce the power of the crown had shifted to making it a moral end in itself, without counting the cost. On 16 May to meet his critics, he proposed to replace sinecures by a pension fund whereby government might reward services rendered. The proposal was rejected by 99 votes to 93. Nevertheless, he obtained a select committee to investigate sinecures, securing the support of Canning and his friends as well as of opposition. In this, Fremantle reported, he was ‘inexorable, and completely assumed the character of opposition by haranguing us in the lobby and imploring us to stay’.
By 1812 Bankes’s prestige was at its height. Scarcely a debate of importance occurred in which his voice was not heard. Wilberforce anticipated (mistakenly) that William Morton Pitt would resign the county seat in Bankes’s favour.
Bankes gave up the idea of contesting Dorset at the election of 1812. He was listed ‘doubtful’ by the Treasury: with justice, for he was in the minorities on the gold coin bill, 11 Dec. 1812, and the vice-chancellor bill, 11 Feb. 1813. On 29 Mar. he again induced the Commons to approve his sinecure regulation bill: it was virtually an open question there, but the Lords again rejected it. He did not try again, nor did he seek to renew the veto on reversions when it expired. Even if he had grown weary of the campaign and the House coughed him down, 15 June 1813, he had made his point. Goulburn’s colonial officers bill in 1814 was a concession to his ideas and the Liverpool administration showed marked sensitivity to them in the next few years.
who voted with Canning last year, will lead the opposition to Grattan this night. It is contrary to all general principles to employ as a leader a deserter from the enemy’s camp, but it is justifiable in this case, I think, as well as politic, and it will greatly encourage all relapsed and relapsing Protestants.
Colchester, ii. 438; Add. 40281, f. 88.
He remained militantly anti-Catholic. He also voted in favour of Christian missions to India, June-July 1813.
Although Bankes continued to press for public economy, the Whig opposition took the subject over from him henceforward and he was reluctant to join forces with them. He remained critical of parliamentary reform and in November 1813 attempted to foist a £10 franchise on Helston, if the freeholders of the neighbouring hundreds were enfranchised. On 20 May 1814 he championed the select committee on the corn trade to which he was appointed on 6 June; when he came out in favour of agricultural protection, the mob attacked Sir Joseph Banks’s house in mistake for his. He set his face against industrialization: ‘instead of having a peaceable, easy governed society, they would place the population of the country in a state that the peace of the community would depend upon their being constantly kept in employment’, 27 Feb. 1815. He defended coercion in Ireland, 23 June 1814; opposed the international abolition of the slave trade, 28 June, and favoured the continuation of the property tax provided it was extended to Ireland, April 1815. He remained vigilant against abuses in government departments and opposed the civil list and new public building programmes. He deprecated expensive alliances against the returned Buonaparte if France rallied to him, 7 Apr., 26 May 1815. After Waterloo he expected France to pay for her defeat, and after a visit to Paris advised English withdrawal from the Continent, 29 June 1815, 20 Feb. 1816. He opposed the army estimates in March 1816 and, although he voted for the renewal of the property tax on Mar. and for the civil list on 24 May, joined opposition in other divisions on retrenchment that session. On 7 May he moved for a committee of inquiry into public offices, to no avail. Bankes was named to the select committee on public income and expenditure in 1817, 1818 and 1819, but when he tried to smuggle in his own ideas, was snubbed, only Tierney supporting him; and when the ministry proceeded to replace sinecures by pensions, adopting some of Bankes’s proposals of 1812, no acknowledgment was made to him. He now voted with opposition only on questions of retrenchment and, with reservations of his own, on the resumption of cash payments by the Bank. He was in favour of the suspension of habeas corpus, 28 Feb., 23 June 1817, and supported ministers steadily on that issue. Canning, in a speech of 29 Jan. 1817, stated with respect to Bankes:
My hon. friend is well known for the independent manner in which his speeches and his votes are directed, sometimes to this, and sometimes to that side of the House; a manner the most conformable to the theory of a perfect Member of Parliament.
A year later he acquired neighbours on his cross-bench when the Grenvillite ‘third party’ moved over.
In 1818 Bankes published his Civil and constitutional history of Rome from the foundation to the age of Augustus, a reflection of his abiding interest in constitutional history. It showed him to be ‘one of the most accomplished gentlemen in England’.