A great-grandson of the inventor and pioneering capitalist Sir Richard Arkwright (1732-92), Arkwright was a Conservative who gave generally silent support to Protestant, paternalist and protectionist causes at Westminster.
Arkwright’s grandfather Richard Arkwright junior (1755-1843) had settled great wealth and land on his five sons, and Arkwright’s father Robert (1783-1859) was described as a ‘high Tory millionaire’ by the Morning Chronicle in 1834.
In February 1842 he replaced his brother-in-law James Wigram as MP for Leominster, a borough in which his uncle John Arkwright possessed great influence. His reliance on his uncle’s influence prompted the Examiner to snipe that ‘this is a man of few words’ who published an address ‘the sum and substance of which is, my name is Arkwright’.
In his first session Arkwright loyally supported Peel’s revised sliding scale on corn and reintroduction of income tax, but his paternalist sympathies placed him at odds with his leadership over the new poor law. He voted in favour of curtailing the authority of the poor law commissioners and allowing guardians to grant outdoor relief, 27 June, 12, 20 July 1842, and supported the autonomy of Gilbert’s Unions, 18 July 1844. He later told electors that he had felt compelled ‘to oppose the government in their endeavours to extend and continue the power of the poor law commission’.
However, Arkwright voted with Peel rather than Conservative dissidents on both the factories bill and the sugar duties in the 1844 session, suggesting that he was essentially a loyalist. His opposition to a ten hour day for factory workers, 22 Mar., 13 May 1844, which was a departure from his paternalist views, perhaps owed something to his family’s association with cotton manufacture. Arkwright parted company with Peel over the 1845 Maynooth college bill and opposed his repeal of the corn laws the following year. His maiden speech was a brief question about the system of auditing the stationery office, 28 May 1847.
Although his uncle and patron was a liberal Tory who supported the repeal of the corn laws, this did not affect Arkwright’s electoral prospects and he was returned unopposed at the 1847 general election.
It was no surprise that Arkwright sided with the Derbyites in the key divisions of the 1847-52 period, including opposing the repeal of the navigation laws in 1849 and supporting Grantley Berkeley’s motion to reconsider the corn laws, 14 May 1850, as well as Disraeli’s motions for agricultural relief. He was unimpressed with the arguments put forward in favour of allowing the Jewish Lionel Rothschild to take his seat, 12 Mar. 1850, and opposed Jewish relief. As a strong Protestant he endorsed the 1851 ecclesiastical titles bill introduced in response to the Pope’s establishment of a Roman Catholic hierarchy in England.
Having found his feet in the House, Arkwright made more spoken interventions than hitherto. He complained of the ‘unnecessary expense’ incurred by the tours of the lords of the admiralty, which were ‘merely an excuse for very jovial parties’ rather than inspections of the fleet, 8 Apr. 1850. He sought guarantees that no public money would be granted to the Great Exhibition, 7 May 1850. He unsuccessfully proposed reducing the number of workhouse inspectors from thirteen to eight, 27 May 1850. Arkwright’s protectionist principles influenced his opposition to the 1851 Designs Act extension bill, which offered protection for the designs of foreign manufacturers and designers at the Great Exhibition. He objected that foreigners would be placed in an advantageous position by the measure. British inventors at the Exhibition could be granted a British patent, but nothing would prevent foreign competitors from copying their designs and taking them back to their countries, while at the same time foreign exhibitors were protected from British competition. Reflecting the broader protectionist critique of free trade, Arkwright argued that without reciprocity between countries, British producers would be placed at a disadvantage, 3 Apr. 1851. His wrecking amendment was easily defeated, however, in a thin House.
Arkwright topped the poll at the 1852 general election, after reaffirming his support for agricultural protection, although he conceded that it could not be reinstated until popular feeling changed. While he respected the religious rights of Catholics, he called for their political pretensions to be firmly resisted. He strongly backed Derby’s government, not least because the alternatives were so unappealing. He derided Russell’s ‘family party cabinet’ and the leading Peelite Sir James Graham who had been ‘everything by turns, and nothing long’.
Arkwright seems to have made no further speeches, nor does he appear to have served on any committees. He was one of the candidates considered for appointment as secretary of the poor law board by the Derby ministry in autumn 1852.
Arkwright died after a short illness at his London residence before the start of the 1856 session. A lifelong bachelor, he was childless and predeceased his father. The Hereford Journal lamented that ‘Leominster has lost an able representative and good friend ... who by his honourable and consistent conduct in Parliament, his amiable disposition, and urbanity, won for him the respect and esteem of every person who had the pleasure of his acquaintance’.