Crichton Stuart, or Lord James Stuart as he was commonly known, had replaced his uncle Lord Evelyn James Stuart as Member for Cardiff Boroughs in 1818, despite opposition raised by a faction led by the Wood family, who sought to weaken his brother the 2nd marquess of Bute’s control over the constituency and Cardiff corporation. Unlike Bute, whose heir he remained until 1847, he supported the Whig opposition, and his silent votes with them in the 1818 Parliament had brought him independent constituency support.
Crichton Stuart aligned with the main Whig opposition in the 1820 Parliament, voted against Lord Liverpool’s ministry in almost all major divisions, and was unstinting in his support for the ‘Mountain’ and Hume’s campaigns for economy and retrenchment until 1823, when he apparently abstained from voting on several issues in an endeavour to minimise political conflict with his brother and safeguard their constituency interests. A radical publication in 1825 noted that he ‘attended regularly, and voted with the opposition’.
I flatter myself that my brother now, if the votes of so quiet an individual have been attended to, can no longer be objected to by you as a thorough partisan of opposition although he acts with them on some great public questions.
Glam. RO D/DA12/94.
Talbot declared for him in February 1826 and nominated him at the general election in June, when a contest was narrowly averted through Lewis’s late resignation.
He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. 1827, 12 May 1828, and presented a favourable petition from the Catholics of Monmouth, 6 May 1828, and several for Test Acts repeal from Dissenters and others in Glamorgan, 30 May 1827, 22, 26 Feb. 1828, when he also divided for it. He voted against sluicing the franchise at East Retford, 21 Mar., and presented a petition from Cowbridge against the alehouse licensing bill, 23 May 1828. Bute welcomed Wellington’s decision to concede Catholic emancipation in 1829, and as the patronage secretary Planta predicted, Crichton Stuart divided for it, 6, 30 Mar. Bute, who already paid his constituency expenses, now granted him an additional £500 a year.
A scurrilous publication, A Peep at the Peers, reported that Bute and his family received £60,000 a year in sinecures and pensions, and when the home secretary Peel alluded to it in the debate on the civil list, 12 Nov. 1830, Crichton Stuart denounced it as ‘full of gross and infamous falsehoods’ and asserted that Bute had not received ‘6d. of public money’ since 1814. The Wellington ministry listed him among the ‘good doubtfuls’ and regarded him as ‘a friend where not pledged’, but he and his cousin Lord Dudley Coutts Stuart divided against them on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov.
Crichton Stuart presented Cardiff’s petition for the abolition of stamp duty on marine insurance policies, 4 July 1831, and unlike Bute, Glamorgan’s lord lieutenant, he interceded with lord chancellor Brougham to try to prevent the execution of the Merthyr rioter Richard Lewis (Dick Penderyn).
I have been a humble supporter of the government on all occasions; but I must say, that in this instance, I hope through inadvertence, it has acted most unjustly by those whom I have the honour to represent. The petitioners complain that the effect of the present bill will be to reduce Cardiff to a mere suburb of Merthyr, which is 25 miles off.
He spoke similarly when Gateshead’s separate enfranchisement was considered, 5 Aug. He said that he had supported the bill hitherto ‘at some inconvenience to myself’, suggested that Merthyr Tydfil had been added to Cardiff ‘for no better reason than that it happens to be in the Principality of Wales’, and said that he saw no reason why Wales should not be treated like England or why its contributory borough system should continue. He, however, conceded Gateshead’s case and said that he would vote for its separate enfranchisement in the hope that ministers would treat Merthyr similarly to do justice to Wales and the electors of Cardiff. He refuted Lord John Russell’s remark that Merthyr had already been catered for by increasing Glamorgan’s representation. He naturally voted to enfranchise Merthyr separately, 10 Aug., and would have no truck with proposals to add it to the proposed Swansea group of boroughs, or to leave the constituency intact to allow for the separate enfranchisement of Merthyr. His assertion that abolition of Wales’s separate judicature in 1830 had removed all justification for treating the Principality differently to England was shouted down. He voted for the bill’s passage, 21 Sept., the second reading of the Scottish measure, 23 Sept., and Lord Ebrington’s motion of confidence in Grey’s administration, 10 Oct., following the bill’s defeat in the Lords, to which Bute contributed. Before details of the revised bill were announced, he wrote to Brougham urging the cabinet to pay
greater attention to the arguments offered by the people of Merthyr, who, as it appears to me, independently of the hardship of sluicing the rising town and port of Cardiff, have a far better claim than many of the towns in the iron trade, to which, by the late bill Members were given.
Brougham mss, Crichton Stuart to Brougham, 10 Dec. 1831.
He divided for the second reading of the revised reform bill in which Merthyr Tydfil remained a contributory designate of Cardiff, 17 Dec. 1831, and consistently for its details. On 23 Feb. 1832, having received further memorials from Merthyr Tydfil, he announced that he would support Thomas Wood’s amendment awarding it separate representation, for which Bute now also lobbied.
Crichton Stuart expected to be returned for Cardiff Boroughs as a Liberal in December 1832 and was ‘perfectly frantic with Lord Bute’ for insisting upon returning a Conservative and forcing him to make way for John Nicholl of Merthyr Mawr.