For much of the 1820s Brougham, whose frenetic energy underpinned the establishment of the Edinburgh Review (1802), the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge (1825), University College, London (1823-8), the National Association for the Promotion of Social Science (1857) and a plethora of legal reforms, shared in the direction of the Whigs in the House of Commons, frequently performing the functions of opposition leader, a position he intermittently aspired to but was repeatedly denied ‘due to failures of temperament and character’.
Returned by Lord Darlington since 1815 for Winchelsea following the failure of his forays at Liverpool (1812) and Westminster (1814), Brougham coveted the status of a county Member. He attributed his defeat in 1818 by the Tory Lowthers in Westmorland, where, as in neighbouring counties, he and his brothers had forged an interest and conducted a high profile, metropolitan style campaign for reform and the abolition of colonial slavery and against ‘old corruption’, to the refusal of Cumberland’s Whig grandees, the 5th earl of Carlisle and the 6th duke of Devonshire, to back him. Assisted by the 9th earl of Thanet and his brother James Brougham*, he renewed his challenge at the general election of 1820, when he was narrowly beaten after the diversionary contest his friends fostered in Cumberland ended prematurely with the retirement of Carlisle’s son Lord Morpeth†.
The session began badly for Brougham, whose estimate of ‘14 Whig gains’ in the general election contrasted with Tierney’s of ‘six losses’; his prediction that they had 207 ‘thick and thin men’ proved wildly optimistic.
As Grey predicted, the queen ignored Brougham’s advice and embarked with the London alderman Matthew Wood* for England and a rabble-rousing reception in the City.
Trusting none but his brothers, he dispatched James to Italy in June 1820 to prepare the queen’s defence witnesses and for the six weeks before the hearing commenced he went the circuit, interrupting his return journey to London to discuss politics with Grey at Ferrybridge, 14 Aug.
Brougham attended the Whig planning meetings of 14, 18, 22 Jan. 1821, when they failed to decide whether the liturgy or censure motions on the queen’s affair should have priority, and their procedural disarray remained apparent in the House when the Tory Wetherell forced a division on the liturgy, 23 Jan.
He contributed to the general clamour against the estimates, 9, 15, 16 Feb., and, according to the ‘Mountaineer’ Henry Grey Bennet, he ‘spoke well’ for the motion deploring the Holy Alliance’s suppression of the liberal regime in Naples, 21 Feb. 1821.
Brougham is under the influence of one of his fits of political apathy. He attends the House pretty regularly, but does little or nothing. He has not decided what he means to do respecting his education bill, but will probably let it drop quietly for the present session. It will certainly not pass, being violently opposed by the great body of sectarians, who on this occasion will be joined by many Tories and high churchmen. Brougham applies very steadily to his profession; but at present he has no success in London equal to what he has obtained on the circuit, where he is now in established business though he still suffers in Lancashire from the church and king prejudices of that high Tory county.
Add. 51569, Whishaw to Lady Holland, 30 May 1821.
He joined Tierney in supporting reductions in the army, 16 Apr., and divided fairly regularly for economies thereafter, and consistently for parliamentary reform, 18 Apr., 9 May. 1821, 25 Apr. 1822, 26 Feb. 1824, 13, 27 Apr. 1826. His probing questions and refutation, with Charles Williams Wynn, of the precedent appealed to by ministers in the case of The Times reporter Collier served to confirm the involvement of Lord Londonderry (as Castlereagh had become) in John Bull’s libel on Grey Bennet, 10, 11 May.
Following the queen’s death, 7 Aug. 1821, Brougham attended the inquest and accompanied her funeral procession to Harwich, whence he informed the Whig whip Lord Duncannon* that ‘what little’ he had seen of Wilson’s attempt to force a route through the City (for which he was dismissed from the army) was ‘quite harmless’, and the behaviour of the soldiers who barred their way vulgar and disrespectful.
Speculation revived before the 1822 session that ‘Brougham would lead the country gentlemen and the agriculturists’ in the Commons.
I shall continue in Parliament to the end of the session because there are one or two things I am desirous of doing, by myself, and quite unconnected with any party; and also because I may have occasion to attack the common enemy before I go out. But as to wasting one’s life in the tiresome farce of an opposition party, which in reality is a set of ministerial supporters in disguise, I am getting too old for it, and the utmost restraint I can impose on myself will be to avoid speaking my mind to this effect before I get back to town. A secession is absolutely necessary in this state of things, I mean a secession of such men as don’t mean to play the game of ministers, and if others won’t at least I am resolved to do so. When a set of men are got into such a state, whether from vanity or spleen, that they had rather injure one another than the common enemy, it is high time for those to leave them whose only object is to make vigorous war on that enemy, and it is better to be out of the fray altogether than to be among such as them
Ibid. Brougham to Duncannon [15 Mar. 1822].
He kept Holland informed of Williams’s progress in the Lincoln by-election and dispensed venom to Creevey and Grey’s brother-in-law Edward Ellice* in letters to Duncannon from the safe distance of Newcastle and York.
The notion that Brougham had ‘retired’ spread, although he supported colleagues from all sides of the party and attacked ministers on diverse issues for the remainder of the session.
Brougham’s defence of Williams at Durham assizes, 6 Aug., a prime example of ‘forensic eloquence’, was arguably his best, and although Williams was found guilty, sentencing was evaded by an arrest of judgement and never pronounced. His speech and subsequent ‘dissertation on the law of libel and slander’ were widely printed as, it was speculated, an act of revenge against the clergy who had opposed his education bill and the Tory dean of Durham Henry Phillpotts (Eldon’s nephew by marriage), who had intrigued against Lambton at the 1820 election.
Preparing for the 1823 session, when the possibility of a French invasion of liberal Spain was the major issue, Lansdowne approved Brougham’s suggestion that the Whigs should exploit Canning’s differences with his colleagues rather than ‘commit ourselves on our points of difference with him’, and abstain from ‘all needless attack’ until the return of the lawyers at Easter. Brougham would move an amendment to the address, 4 Feb.
Away, and with pressure to make his leadership official mounting, Brougham consulted Darlington, Grey and Lambton, approved a scheme to boost party cohesion with dinners at the Beefsteak Club, kept a watchful eye on by-elections and debates, dictated Whig strategy on France, Spain, and the Irish church in letters to Creevey and Duncannon, and countered his colleagues’ ‘lapses’ by having The Times reprint his 1817 ‘state of the nation’ speech attacking the Holy Alliance.
Citing newspaper reports which he asked ministers to verify or deny, he resumed the attack on the Holy Alliance, foreign and Irish policy directly the address was read, 3 Feb., drawing Canning, who left his probing questions on Spanish South America, Austria and the Swiss Cantons unanswered, to state his views on the Catholic question, which Peel immediately qualified.
Brougham’s complaint to Holland in August 1824 that the circuit was ‘tiresome, long and laborious’ also applied to his political life at this time.
According to a radical appraisal of the 1825 session, Brougham ‘was regularly in the House and opposed the measures of the present government. His abilities are too well known to require any comment and they are not overrated, from the prejudice having gone forth of his being a political adventurer’.
Brougham did all that could be done to help me out of the difficulty about Ireland, by his most injudicious violence about the Catholic Association ... He did too exactly what I wished to be done about Spanish America, contending that we might have proceeded much more summarily and rapidly, and thereby enabling me to show how cautiously and considerately we had proceeded.
Harewood mss HAR/GC/27, Canning to wife, 3 Feb. 1825.
Called to account by Peel next day, he said that he knew that the Association did not represent all Catholics and added the word ‘virtually’ to his statement. He failed to delay the suppression bill by moving for a call of the House, which Peel refused to grant until the 21st, 7 Feb., by adjournment, 11 Feb., or by a robust defence of the Association as an open and legitimate forum of debate, 15 Feb. His attempt to have their counsel heard, 17 Feb., was defeated by 222-89 on the 18th.
was grand and terrific ... I never saw a being so prostrated as Peel, and yet he had the false taste to tell Brougham on going out of the House that it was the finest speech he had heard him make. The effect was prodigious, but being late when produced, the drowsy editors had gone to bed so that justice has not been done to our hero.
Add. 30124, f. 139.
Tierney, who privately echoed the Grenvillites’ complaint that Brougham allied himself too closely with the Association, was equally generous in his praise; and Canning realized that Brougham had made his ‘task ... more difficult than even in April 1823’.
very bad ... except in the attack on the duke of York ... [He] carried with him Lambton, Creevey, Sefton, Denman, Hume, in all I should think from 15 to 20; but after the division, stated that he should not offer any more opposition.
Agar Ellis diary, 26 Apr. 1825; Buckingham, ii. 242-3.
His decision cost him the friendship of Lambton, with whom he clashed in debate, 9 May, for the next eighteen months. The clergy bill posed ‘no problem’ for Brougham, 29 Apr., and he wound up the debate on the third reading of the relief bill with a rallying speech, 10 May, and next day took it to the Lords, where it foundered. On 26 May he reviewed ‘religious animosities’ in Ireland in a major speech and wrote to William Smith of the ‘impolicy of touching the Dissenters’ question at present’.
Brougham, according to Lansdowne, was prepared to join him in making the Catholic question a party issue in January 1826.
We have lost the time for emancipation, I fear, and must be prepared to pay a higher price for keeping Ireland ... We must make no more attempts to keep back the question, but fight it bitterly from the first day of the session, and we must not even by way of candid admission join in any attack on the priests ... We must not admit the fitness of keeping up the present Irish church establishment.
Add. 51562, Brougham to Holland [Aug]; 51813, Scarlett to Lady Holland, 5 Sept. 1826.
As the opposition spokesman on the address, 22 Nov. 1826, Brougham, whom Bedford was to call Canning’s ‘most efficient ally’, focused attention on the omission from it of Ireland.
He travelled the circuit as usual despite the uncertainty generated by Liverpool’s stroke, and, leaving Wilson to represent his interests, he made the exclusion of the anti-Catholic Tories from government his priority.
On 1 May 1827 Brougham crossed to the third bench on the government side of the House, ‘occupying Gooch’s pillar’ near Calcraft, Newport, Spring Rice, Lord Stanley and Wilson, and where Lambton later joined them.
The public loss is great in respect of the Catholic question; and of the king’s favour which he had and above all of the barrier which hatred of him placed to the return of the ultras. In other respects, the loss is not so great; for we have no enemy in the Commons, where he alone was useful. In the Lords ... he was more boastful than serviceable, and in the country the same.
Add. 52453, Brougham to Mackintosh [after 8 Aug. 1827].
Later, ill with a cold and on the circuit, he sent a supportive letter to Lansdowne hinting that Canning’s death might facilitate a reconciliation with Grey, which he duly attempted.
Our friends are worthy but too feeble. We must have some men qui ont le diable au corps by the opening of the session. I positively will no longer protect men who only blubber and bleat.
Add. 30115, f. 126.
In December 1827, with nothing settled, his alleged ‘mischief’ included ‘twisting Grey’s words’ criticizing the coalition ministries and plotting with Holland to secure the downfall of Goderich’s, which he told Abercromby he now ‘hated ... properly’, preferring a new broad-based coalition.
The position of Brougham in the ... Commons out of office and professing to support the government is too powerful, too commanding. Ministers are too much at his mercy, and he is so crotchety and so irritable that you can never be sure of him for two days, if you have him not in harness.
Add. 38753, f. 37; Add. 51578, Carlisle to Holland, 22 Dec.; Castle Howard mss, Carlisle to Morpeth, 29 Dec. 1827.
Brougham was caricatured as ‘The Political Bellman’ when Wellington replaced Goderich in January 1828, and as ‘stage manager and prompter’ of his administration.
Brougham struggled to justify Canning’s opposition to repealing the Test Acts before dividing for it, 26 Feb., and criticized the Lords’ amendments, reinstating ‘tests’ for Quakers, in a letter to The Times, 14 Apr., and in debate, 2 May 1828.
Brougham co-operated with Abercromby, Althorp, Graham, Russell and Edward Smith Stanley in the Commons and Holland and Lansdowne in the Lords to dictate the pace of Peel and Wellington’s ‘conversion’ to Catholic emancipation, and demanded ‘a full attendance’ when Parliament convened so that it could be pressed nightly for the first three or four weeks before he went the circuit.
There appear to be four distinct parties preparing for Parliament. First government. Second, a direct and entire opposition led by Lord Palmerston in the Commons and Lord Melbourne in the ... Lords, with Charles Grant and the ex-liberals, etc. ... [and] a large support from our friends, who have only made the condition that Huskisson is not to lead ... and on this point they willingly give up their leader Lord Lansdowne. The third party are what they call the Watchers, under ... Althorp in the ... Commons, and to this I fear Brougham proposes to attach himself. The fourth, the discontented and still more bitter old Tories, who will make no peace with Peel.
Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 18 Jan. 1830.
As agreed with Althorp and Russell, Brougham voted for the Ultra Knatchbull’s amendment regretting the omission of distress from the king’s speech, 4 Feb. 1830, but he insisted that it signalled no change in his views on colonial policy and the currency.
Brougham is unfettered and looks and talks like a giant released among the pygmies. Nothing but a prudent and necessary preference of his profession to his politics and occasionally the base calumnies of his enemies, or of the envious, prevent his courting them all and becoming the real and only leader of the House of Commons. It may end and perhaps will in two parties of one of which Peel, of the other Palmerston will be the leader and they may succeed alternately as Brougham or the king may choose to direct their smiles, for in real substantial power neither one nor the other can equal that of Brougham.
Add. 51786.
He did not attend that day’s meeting to invite Althorp to lead a revived Whig opposition in the Commons, but he promised ‘great activity’ on his return from the circuit, and Grey hoped for his continued support.
Acting with them, he used the Royston bankers’ petition for mitigation of the death penalty for forgery, 26 Apr., as a pretext for reviving Mackintosh’s 1821 measure, backed by further petitions, speeches and votes, 24 May, 7 June. He refused, 27 Apr., to reschedule his local courts bill to accommodate Charles Grant’s resolutions alleging undue British interference in Terceira, on which he apparently failed to vote, 28 Apr., despite contemplating a similar motion in 1829.
his object is to delay the money votes as much as possible in order that government may not be able to dissolve as soon as the king dies without settling a regency or an administration ... by taking the only nights in the week the ministers have for public business.
Howick jnl. 15 May 1830.
On 28 May, he rejected the ballot and triennial parliaments proposed in O’Connell’s scheme for the temperate and ‘general corrective reform’ and constitutional monarchy proposed by Russell. Francis Baring thought his speech ‘very good on the ballot, otherwise exceedingly dull’; and Howick, that it ‘was most ingenious, clever, amusing, but in my opinion far from conclusive and very open to reply.
Brougham seconded the address when George IV’s death was announced in an extraordinary and impudent speech, which showed him to be nervous and anxious for office, 28 June, and complained next day at the delay in taking Members’ oaths.
rather mad without a doubt; his speeches this year have been sometimes more brilliant than ever they were; but who with such stupendous talents was ever so little considered? We admire him as we do a fine actor, and nobody ever possessed such enormous means, and displayed a mind so versatile, fertile and comprehensive, and yet had so little efficacy and influence.
Greville Mems. ii. 18-19.
He narrowly avoided a duel with the defeated candidate Martyn Stapylton, whom he reputedly insulted on the hustings as ‘a paltry insect’, wrote boldly to congratulate the duc de Broglie on the overthrow of the French king Charles X, and encouraged his constituents to address him.
As author of The Result of the General Election, Brougham ridiculed the patronage secretary Planta’s original prediction of 93 Tory gains, now revised down to 21, and assumed 25-30 opposition gains - enough to enable the Huskissonites to sway the balance in the next Parliament.
but it is too bad if it is written by Brougham that he should represent himself as our leader, when he must know that there are not half a dozen people who would follow him. I fear we shall find him very troublesome next session, his return for Yorkshire seems to have increased his before intolerable vanity to the highest peak and I should not be in the least surprised if he should insist on managing everything in spite of his total want of discretion (and I cannot but think honesty), of which he has just given a remarkable proof in a speech he made at an anti-slavery speech at Newcastle in which ... he represented ... [Beaumont’s] coming in for Northumberland as one of the greatest victories achieved by the Liberal party.
Howick jnl. 27 Aug. 1830.
Collaborating with Graham, he went to Liverpool for talks with Huskisson on the eve of the ill-fated opening of the Liverpool-Manchester Railway, 15 Sept., and corresponded afterwards with Abercromby, Devonshire, Durham, Agar Ellis and the Lansdowne Whigs with a view to co-operating to bring down the ministry with Huskisson’s acolytes the Grants, Granville, Melbourne and Palmerston, whom he held in high esteem. Palmerston thought The Result ‘uncommonly able and powerful, but too violent and bitter and personal: and it savours more of resentment from neglect, than of public zeal’. Yet he surmised that Brougham’s speeches had made the enfranchisement of large towns ‘unavoidable’ and their collaboration with the Whigs more likely.
I see on all sides great jealousy of Brougham’s assumption of office of leader, great distrust of his prudence and intentions, and much apprehension of his committing some fault, which will strengthen ministers by throwing back the old Tories into their ranks.
Grey mss, Durham to Grey, 4 Oct.; Add. 51587, Lansdowne to Holland, 21 Oct.; 75940, Althorp to mother, 12 Oct; Lansdowne mss, Macdonald to Lansdowne, 22 Oct.; Earl Fortescue mss, Lord J. Russell to Ebrington [Oct.]; Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 28 Oct. 1830.
To the Russells’ annoyance, on 31 Oct. the Whigs at Althorp’s backed Brougham’s reform scheme, which, at Graham’s behest, and confirming observations that he was ‘more tractable’, he agreed to refrain from moving as an amendment to the address, and instead to seek inquiry with a view to reform on 16 Nov.
To discard Brougham is to cut your own throats instantly. He is the person who from his talents has the most power in the House of Commons and from his public services, the most influence out of it ... To make him master of the rolls is to extinguish him or else it gives him the means to extinguish you ... I cannot conceive that to make the Member for Yorkshire attorney-general and to be led by Palmerston will do. With all its objections he ought to be chancellor.
Brougham mss, Abercromby to Brougham, 18 Nov.; Add. 51575, same to Holland, 19 Nov. 1830.
Cockburn remarked, ‘What a strange and merciful event Brougham’s elevation is! The Evil the head of the church’.
As lord chancellor, Lord Brougham and Vaux, who looked as ever like a ‘half-starved Methodist minister’, was soon deemed to be ‘in his proper place’ and exceeded Whig expectations by getting through business with ‘incredible dispatch’, clearing the arrears by late August 1831 and carrying the 1831 Bankruptcy Act, which reformed his court.
It may, perhaps, not readily have been inferred by those who knew Lord Brougham chiefly from the part he took in the most stormy debates of his times, that there was in him ... an overflowing affectionateness of character ... That characteristic entered into beautiful combination with the strong, vigorous, masculine, and even ruder parts of his mental and political composition. Lord Brougham was eminently happy in the length and consistency of his career: in most of the great undertakings of his life he addressed himself to purposes in which his countrymen could not but recognize an ardent love of liberty, a determined hatred of corruption and abuse, and remarkable disinterestedness. It seemed as if a certain instinct led Lord Brougham continually to deviate from the path of mere party politics for the purpose of anticipating the wants of coming generations, and preparing the paths which after coming men were to tread. The fame of Lord Brougham is great and secure fame.
Parl. Deb. (ser. 3), cxciii. 1834-5.