A Scottish country gentleman, Sir Andrew Leith Hay, as he later became, was ‘one of the most handsome and gentlemanly-looking men in the House’, being ‘tall and well-proportioned’, with dark hair and a ruddy complexion.
Hay hailed from two ancient gentry families, the Hays of Rannes and the Leiths of Leith Hall, Aberdeenshire.
Hay was returned as a Reformer for Elgin burghs, which situated in an adjacent county to his family’s estates, at the 1832 general election, after calling for a fixed duty on corn, the opening of the East India trade, reduction of taxation and the abolition of sinecures.
Hay famously came to the rescue of the beleaguered Whig leader of the Commons Lord Althorp, 5 Feb. 1834. Althorp had alleged that an Irish MP had privately confessed that although he believed the Irish coercion bill to be necessary to preserve order, he publicly opposed it to appease his constituents. This led Richard Lalor Sheil, MP for Tipperary, to demand that Althorp identify his source for this claim. In a ‘generous and well-timed interposition’, Hay declared that he had received similar communications. He refused to name his authority, but was ready to ‘take upon himself any responsibility that might attach to this statement’. The parliamentary reporter James Grant described Hay’s brief interjection as ‘one of the noblest things I ever witnessed ... I never yet knew anything produce a greater effect on the House’. When MPs realised that Hay had effectively relieved Althorp from an embarrassing position, ‘a murmur of suppressed admiration .... was heard in every part of the House’.
Hay’s diligence in the committee rooms underlined his reputation as an effective parliamentarian. Between 1833 and 1836, he served on inquiries that recommended relaxing the relatively strict system of Scottish entails, altering the salmon fishing season and reforming the Scottish system of road-building.
Hay was re-elected at the 1835 general election after describing his former commander the duke of Wellington as ‘one of the most ignorant, opinionated, and presumptuous [politicians], that ever ruled the country’.
In addition to his official duties, Hay remained active as a private member. In 1835 he introduced legislation to construct a new harbour at Leith, which was owned by the insolvent Edinburgh corporation. The bill was defeated in a thin House, 30 July 1835, but Hay served on a committee in the same session that recommended that the government place Leith harbour under harbour commissioners.
As a private member Hay was also responsible for proposing bills to introduce elected burgh councils to burghs of barony and regality. These towns had been excluded from the scope of the 1833 Burgh Reform Act, which only applied to royal and parliamentary burghs. In 1836 Hay withdrew his first bill, while his second passed its first reading but made no further progress.
Hay was unchallenged at the 1837 general election. He was appointed governor of Bermuda in February 1838, probably as a reward for his loyalty to the Whig leadership and service in public office. It also conveniently created a vacancy that allowed Fox Maule, a leading Scottish Whig, to return to the Commons. Although Hay apparently held the governorship until November 1839, ‘circumstances, however, arose which prevented Sir Andrew from going to Bermuda’.
Hay was re-elected for Elgin burghs at the 1841 general election, amid some grumbling about his retiring in favour of Maule in 1838. He had sold out his native burghs ‘like a drove of cattle, from the grazings of Leith Hall to the pastures of Brechin Castle’ (the seat of the Maule family), complained one elector.
The uppermost concern of Hay’s second spell in the Commons was averting a schism in the Church of Scotland between Evangelical (or Non-Intrusionist) critics of lay patronage and their opponents, the Moderates. In 1834 he had endorsed a parliamentary inquiry into the matter, without committing himself to either side.
However, the home secretary Sir James Graham replied that ‘he had never in his life heard an address which gave him less satisfaction’, noting that while Hay called for ‘something’ to be done he was vague on detail. Furthermore, after the rejection of Lord Aberdeen’s compromise bill of 1840, Graham, Peel and other Conservative ministers were increasingly sceptical that any measure would satisfy the demands of the Evangelicals and their leader Thomas Chalmers.
Hay missed the entire 1845 session and later explained publicly that ‘in 1844 circumstances occurred with his private affairs, which appeared disastrous to him at the time, and were certainly most afflicting. He was not quite certain of the exact position in which he was then placed; but he resolved to remain passive till he was aware of the exact place he occupied’.
Hay resumed his attendance at Westminster in 1846, dividing for the repeal of the corn laws and speaking in favour of a generous government annuity to Viscount Harding, former governor general of India, 18 May 1846. The following year he pressed the government to lobby foreign countries to reduce tariffs on Scottish herrings and expressed millowners’ opposition to the factory bill, which he argued would make it impossible for British manufacturers to compete with overseas rivals, 5, 17 Feb. 1847.
Hay stood his ground at the 1847 general election but was challenged by a Conservative and another Liberal. Hay’s non-attendance in 1845 and his negotiations with Loch lent credence to the critique that the ‘knight-errant’ took up and dropped the representation of the burghs when it suited him.
Hay contested Aberdeen at the 1852 general election, but was beaten by another Liberal, and was not helped by rumours that he was bankrupt and consequently ineligible to sit in Parliament.