By the time Alexander Baring came of age, the prospect of a career in the family bank, founded by his great-grandfather Sir Francis Baring, was remote. While his grandfather, Alexander, had played a major role in making Baring Brothers a leading force in international finance, his father, Francis, lacked financial acumen, and following a series of catastrophic investments in Mexico in the 1820s, had been effectively removed from playing an active role in the firm.
In December 1857, shortly after graduating from Oxford, Baring was swiftly put up for Thetford, where the family held extensive estates, in place of his father, who, after representing the borough on three separate occasions since 1830, had retired from the Commons on account of poor health.
In one of his first known divisions, Baring voted with Disraeli against the third reading of the government of India bill, 18 Feb. 1858, despite the fact that it transferred authority from the East India Company’s court of directors to the secretary of state, the policy he had supported on the hustings. His vote was unlikely to have been a partisan one, as the following day he backed Palmerston’s conspiracy to murder bill, 19 Feb. 1858, the defeat of which brought down the Liberal government. Thereafter Baring, who was an infrequent attender, gave steady support to Derby’s ministry and voted for its reform bill, 31 Mar. 1859.
Described as ‘naturally shy and reserved in manner’, Baring played little part in parliamentary debates.
Re-elected unopposed at the 1859 general election, he followed Disraeli into the division lobby on most major issues, including for Charles Du Cane’s motion criticising Britain’s commercial treaty with France, 24 Feb. 1860, and voted against radical motions to reform the borough and county franchises, 13 Mar. 1861, 10 Apr. 1861. He opposed church rate abolition, 14 May 1862, and backed Disraeli’s motion condemning the Liberal ministry’s handling of the Schleswig-Holstein question, 8 July 1864. At the 1865 general election Baring justified his votes to his constituents, arguing that the government had pursued a ‘meddling policy’ in foreign affairs and that the abolition of church rates would only be ‘a preliminary to further assaults upon the church’.
Baring voted against the Liberal government’s reform bill, 27 Apr. 1866, and supported the Adullamite amendment in favour of the rating clause, 18 June 1866, the success of which brought down Lord John Russell’s short-lived ministry. His votes on the major clauses of the Conservative government’s 1867 representation of the people bill appear to suggest an increasing dissatisfaction with the Derby ministry. He divided against Disraeli in favour of Gladstone’s amendment to enfranchise compound ratepayers, 12 Apr. 1867, and for Acton Ayrton’s motion to reduce the residency qualification from two years to one, 2 May 1867. He also supported Robert Lowe’s amendments in favour of cumulative voting, 5 July 1867. Dismayed at the course the Conservative ministry had taken with respect to reform, Baring left for Nice and in November 1867 announced his retirement from the Commons, protesting that Derby and Disraeli had ‘weakened, if not destroyed, the Conservative party without settling the [reform] question’.
Baring succeeded his father as 4th Baron Ashburton in September the following year, but played no part in the business of the House of the Lords. Instead he focused his energies on modernising the family estates at The Grange, Hampshire, where he became known as a dedicated landlord.
Ashburton died at his London residence of Bath House, Piccadilly, in July 1889, having been ill for some months.