Alexander Baring, the senior partner in Baring Brothers and Company, who had played a major role in making the firm a leading force in international finance, did not consider the family bank a suitable place for his eldest son, William Bingham.
In 1826 Baring had come in for Thetford, where his father had recently purchased considerable estates, and generally supported the Whigs on most major issues. After making way for his brother, Francis, in 1830, he was elected for Callington, where his father owned extensive property, but his support for the second reading of the Grey ministry’s reform bill, 22 Mar. 1831, enraged his increasingly Conservative father, who refused to return him at the 1831 general election. He subsequently offered for Winchester, where his uncle Sir Thomas was an influential landowner, only to withdraw three hours into the poll.
Baring offered again for Winchester as a Reformer at the 1832 general election. He asserted that Grey’s ministry was best placed to remedy any defects in the Reform Act, and after his Conservative opponent withdrew on the first day of the poll, was elected in second place.
Baring, like his father and younger brother, Francis, was now a confirmed Conservative, and he followed Peel into the division lobby on most major issues.
With his defection to the Conservatives undermining his support at Winchester, Baring came forward for the notoriously corrupt borough of Stafford at the 1837 general election. He presented himself as a staunch defender of the established church and attacked Daniel O’Connell’s political influence and the new poor law, but following a bitter contest, in which he reportedly spent £2,500, he was defeated in third place.
On the rare occasions in which Baring troubled the division lobbies he continued to vote with Peel. He backed Lord Sandon’s motion blaming the government for the Canadian rebellion, 7 Mar. 1838, and opposed the equalisation of the borough and county franchise, 4 June 1839. He remained largely silent in the Commons’ chamber until an attack on his father (now Baron Ashburton) by Charles Villiers provoked him into a series of short and fierce interventions, 5 Apr. 1841. Responding to Ashburton’s contention, made in the Lords, 23 Mar. 1841, that the 1840 select committee on import duties had deliberately taken only evidence that suited their free trade philosophy, Villiers accused Ashburton of making ‘personal, offensive, and unfounded’ comments, prompting Baring to declare that Villiers’s language had been ‘inconsiderate and rash’ and ‘wholly unworthy of notice’.
Baring’s relationship with the North Staffordshire Tories had continued to sour over his reluctance to contribute towards his election expenses, and at the 1841 dissolution he was put up by his father for Thetford, in place of his younger brother, Francis.
In his capacity as the chief official at Westminster for Indian affairs, Baring performed steadily if unremarkably, and regularly defended the government’s Indian policy in the Commons. He insisted that Roman Catholic soldiers serving in India were afforded as much ‘material and spiritual comforts’ as Protestant ones, 26 Apr. 1842, declared that governors-general in India were being pressed to take steps to abolish slavery in the region, 5 Aug. 1842, and warned against military intervention to suppress the opium trade, 4 Apr. 1843. In his most prominent act at the board of control, he strongly defended Sir Charles Napier, who as commander of the British army in India had controversially annexed the Sindh Province following the insurrection of Muslim rulers. Responding to criticism, Baring assured the House that in publishing correspondence with the Napier, the board had not favoured Napier’s views over those of Major James Outram, the army’s political agent in Lower Sindh, who had opposed Napier’s actions, 12 Feb. 1844.
After three years in government, Baring’s wife, Lady Harriet, grew concerned about his political performance. Concerned that Peel would replace him with Lord Clarendon, she wrote to him that:
I want you to be cautious, and moderate – and cool – and not allow yourself to be excited – for that is your weak point. ... Clarendon is your extreme opposite – no opinions – no chivalry – no earnestness in any cause – but as the necessary consequence, mild, conciliating, persuasive.
Lady Harriet to Baring, 1844 or 1845, quoted in R. Ashton, Thomas and Jane Carlyle: portrait of a marriage (2002), 272.
In February 1845, however, Baring was promoted to paymaster-general, though he had little time to make his mark. In February 1846 he spoke in support of Peel’s controversial decision to repeal the corn laws, arguing that there was now no valid reason left to delay passing the legislation, 19 Feb. 1846. As Ashburton informed Peel, his son was ‘a devoted disciple of the School of Doctrinaires, and everything called Free Trade has with him irresistible attraction’.
At the 1847 general election, when he again stood for Thetford, Baring refused to be drawn on his support for free trade, ‘which would only promote dissension where union existed’. At the nomination he avoided all major political questions, choosing to discuss only the promotion of the borough’s railway, and was re-elected unopposed.
Ashburton died at his residence at The Grange, Hampshire, in March 1864. Although he had only recently recovered from a series of heart attacks, his death, from heart disease, was reportedly unexpected.
I had much in common with him, mainly the failure of public life, which he bore with a dignity and manliness I have never assumed, but which he felt quite as acutely.
Quotation taken from Pope-Hennessy, Monckton Milnes 1809-1851, 148.
Ashburton left £2,000 to Thomas Carlyle and the rest of his effects, valued at under £180,000, to his second wife, Louisa Caroline Stewart Mackenzie, with whom he had a daughter.