At the beginning of his engagingly Shandyesque memoirs, Philips recorded that
the more I reflect on my own history, the more I am inclined to think its character is much to be attributed to the circumstances of my situation in early life. My father had become a follower of John Wesley, and lived almost exclusively with the sect of Methodists at the time that they were much reviled and persecuted. His society was of course very inferior to that which his station in life entitled him to frequent. I was left much to the care of the servants. I slept with one of the men-servants who, in our house, were of a very inferior order. From such society it is unnecessary to say that nothing good or useful could be learned.
Ibid. i.2.
Both his grandfather, John Philips, and his father were prosperous partners in silk and cotton manufacturing firms in Manchester, but personal and business quarrels dominated his early life. He had a poor relationship with his father, who deprived him of a good education and regarded him as a ‘sort of evil genius of the family, destined to work its ruin’.
keep my attention awake I drank green tea very copiously and used other means to prevent me from sleeping. The consequence was that I became so nervous that I trembled at the sight of strangers and was totally unfit for society. In this state I tried to go into some parties, to which I was invited, but I was so agitated on entering the room, that my whole frame was disordered and my teeth chattered in my mouth. After thus exposing myself, all that I could do was to quit the party, who of course would make me a town’s talk. I was some years in recovering from this state.
Philips mems. i. 15-16.
His autobiography also dwelt on his early lack of religious belief and hinted at many youthful indiscretions. Of particular note was an adulterous affair which he conducted in a shameless manner, openly walking arm-in-arm with his mistress in the streets of Manchester. A child, ‘that she had after my connection with her’, was secured an appointment in the East India Company’s artillery corps. However, Philips, whose personality was much influenced by his religious upbringing, subsequently experienced a conversion to the kind of faith which he had found so lacking in his enforced chapel attendance as a boy, and he enjoyed a happy domestic life with his wife.
Philips equally regretted the arrogance and vanity which had led him into many political difficulties during his life. His father’s branch of the family had been Whigs who sympathized with the revolutions in America and France. He recalled that
young and eager and inexperienced as I was, it was not surprising that I should be led astray by wild, enthusiastic hopes of an unattainable perfectibility of rulers and subjects when even the wisest, and ablest men like Fox and Sheridan partook of the general delusion.
He belonged to reform clubs in Manchester and London, and reckoned that his greatest folly was to have written a pamphlet, The Necessity for a Speedy and Effectual Reform in Parliament (1793), which advocated universal (including female) suffrage and annual parliaments, generally prefiguring the demands of the Chartists. In his memoirs he acknowledged its vigour of style, but added that ‘a more impracticable and utopian scheme never entered into any man’s head’.
for which I lent the then [12th] duke of Norfolk £50,000 at a time when there was such a demand for money, and so little in the market, that his agent Mr. [Edward] Blount* could not find any person willing to advance that sum to the duke on the security which he had to offer.
Confusingly, and probably wrongly, Philips recorded that in conformity with his agreement with Norfolk, ‘I represented under the duke’s interest first Ilchester, and afterwards Steyning’.
In 1820 Philips probably decided to resign his seat at Steyning in favour of his son, George Richard, and he turned instead to Wootton Bassett, where he owned houses and land. He was elected there on the interest of Lord Bolingbroke, despite an opposition, a scrutiny and a petition.
it was impossible that any such protection, extended exclusively to one branch of society, should not injure not only itself, but the other branches also. He was of opinion that the agriculture, the commerce and the manufactures of the country had but one common interest. Whatever injured one must also be prejudicial to others.
Referring to the debate on agricultural distress, Sir James Mackintosh* recorded, 1 June 1820, that ‘poor George Philips made two vain attempts to be heard last night, but was twice obliged to sit down. What enhanced the mortification was that [Henry] Brougham and others were patiently heard afterwards’.
Philips, an active committeeman, continued to divide regularly for economies and retrenchment in this and the following three sessions, as well as with the Whig opposition on almost all major political controversies and legal, social and foreign policy issues. He signed a requisition for a Manchester meeting on the Queen Caroline affair, 23 Nov. 1820, and in the following session voted steadily in support of the opposition campaign on her behalf.
Philips voted for parliamentary reform, 25 Apr. 1822, 20 Feb., 24 Apr., and for information on Inverness elections, 26 Mar. 1823. Arguing that domestic producers could very well compete in foreign markets, he spoke against regulation of the cloth trades, 21 Mar., and denied that Manchester cotton weavers, whose profits he claimed were higher than those of their employers, were injured by the introduction of machinery, 25 Apr. On 12 May he said that he ‘saw no hope of effectual relief but from reduced taxation’.
Philips stated that merchants would invest in Ireland as long as tranquillity was preserved, 21 Feb. 1825, but that this would not long continue unless the Catholic question was settled. As he had on 28 Feb. 1821, he voted for relief, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May, when he condemned the ‘hole and corner’ anti-Catholic petition from Manchester as a distortion of the true state of opinion there. He admitted that he had changed his mind on the Liverpool and Manchester railway bill, 2 Mar., and was now convinced that canal transportation was just as, if not more, efficient. He opposed the cotton mills regulation bill to reduce the extent of child labour, on the grounds that the scheme was impracticable, 16 May. He repeated that to reduce their hours would be to risk throwing children out of employment altogether, 31 May. He promised Brougham that he would try to get additional subscribers to the Cheshire Whig Club, 3 Oct., and when presiding at its meeting, 10 Oct., he praised ministers for the improvements in commercial policy and their recognition of the new South American countries, but advocated reform and Catholic emancipation.
Not least because of the unpopularity of his pro-Catholic votes, Philips again faced a challenge at the general election that summer, but he was returned for Wootton Bassett after a contest and survived a petition.
Philips presented petitions for repeal of the Test Acts, 21, 22 Feb., and voted for this, 26 Feb. 1828. He was named to the committee to prepare a bill to transfer Penryn’s seats to Manchester, 31 Jan., and made interventions in its favour, 14, 24, 28 Mar. He voted against extending East Retford’s franchise to the freeholders of Bassetlaw, 21 Mar., and spoke of the importance of giving the vote to manufacturing areas and the ‘tranquillizing effect of popular representation’, 19 May. He again advocated free trade in corn, 21 Apr., and expressed himself dissatisfied with Huskisson’s explanation of government policy, 22 Apr., as the new system would provide neither relief for the poor nor a good return for farmers; he voted that day to make the pivot price 60s. not 64s. He divided for Catholic relief, 12 May, but probably missed the last month of the session visiting his sick friend Richard Sharp*. As in the previous two years, he attended the Cheshire Whig Club meeting, 9 Oct. 1828, when he praised the repeal of the Test Acts.
Either Philips or his son was one of the 28 opposition Members who divided in the ministerial majority against Knatchbull’s amendment to the address, 4 Feb. 1830. He voted for a reduction of taxes, 15 Feb., and complained that no representative of the manufacturing interest had been appointed to the select committee on the renewal of the East India Company’s charter, 16 Feb. He again divided in favour of transferring East Retford’s seats to Birmingham, 5 Mar., and he paired for reform, 28 May. He voted for the production of information on Portugal, 10 Mar., and joined in the revived opposition campaign in favour of retrenchment and reduced taxation that session. He observed that the manufactures of Lancashire were improving despite the existing distress, that ministers’ domestic policy was highly praiseworthy, though he favoured greater reductions, and that he would vote against a committee on the state of the nation, 18, 22 Mar. He paired for information on the affair at Terceira, 28 Apr., and Jewish emancipation, 17 May. He sided with opposition on the civil government of Canada, 25 May, and voted to abolish the death penalty for forgery, 7 June 1830. By the general election that year, Philips had sold to Lord Clarendon his interest at Wootton Bassett, where a Tory reaction had anyway made his return unlikely. One Manchester paper noted with regret his decision to retire, ‘his health being unequal to the arduous duties which have of late devolved on the Members of the House of Commons’.
In an undated anecdote in his recollections, Philips wrote that
one day when [his son] George and Sharp and I were together, some circumstance occasioned our making a rude estimate of the cost of our seats in Parliament, which we calculated then to amount to at least £20,000. Sharp said, ‘I hope you will let Lord Grey [the incoming prime minister] and the leaders of the party know the fact’. ‘Why should I?’ I replied. ‘I want nothing from them, and will neither ask nor accept anything. Instead of blazoning the fact I would prefer concealing it, as it might be considered a culpable and wanton extravagance on my part rather than an act entitling me to credit’.
Whether or not illness or expense was a factor, he had come to realize that a reputation in Parliament could only be gained by harder work than was consistent with a tranquil domestic life, and so he quitted ‘without any reluctance, when my son, and several friends, Sydney Smith among the rest, thought I was doing what I should infallibly repent of. They were mistaken. My judgement on the subject never changed’. About this time he moved to Weston, a magnificent mansion which he had recently had built at vast expense in the Holland House style, and which was much admired by Lord John Russell*. On a visit to this retreat in October 1830, Smith wrote that the ‘evils of old age, gout and prolixity of narrative are invading the worthy and recent baronet’.
Despite being a relative newcomer, Philips had immediately become active in Warwickshire politics. He seconded the candidacy of the reformer Francis Lawley* at both the nomination meeting, 3 Aug., and the county election, 6 Aug. 1830.