Burdett, an important figure in the development of early nineteenth century radicalism, had had a turbulent career as the advocate of and martyr for parliamentary reform during the war years. Thereafter his brand of patrician radicalism, with its strong element of Tory romanticism, held little appeal for working class radicals of the provincial manufacturing districts, who turned to other leaders. Nor were his relations with the metropolitan radicals entirely cordial: in particular, Francis Place, the indefatigable campaigner and fixer, who had engineered Burdett’s triumphant return for Westminster in 1807, had never fully trusted him after his evasion of the procession arranged to mark his release from his imprisonment in the Tower in 1810. Burdett’s response to the Peterloo massacre in August 1819, when he wrote a public letter to his constituents denouncing the authorities as murderers, did much to re-establish his credibility with all shades of London radicalism and enabled him to resume his frosty intercourse with Place. His subsequent speeches in and outside the House against the Liverpool ministry’s repressive legislation, and his indictment by ex-officio information on a charge of seditious libel, cemented his position in Westminster. At the same time, he sought by espousing a moderate line on reform to convince the more advanced wing of the Whig opposition that the issue must be taken up with enthusiasm as an essential prerequisite of social and economic improvement.
In late 1819 some friends of William Cobbett†, who had just returned from America, asked Burdett to bury the hatchet with him, but he was ‘inexorable’ and would not forgive Cobbett (who owed him money) for the ‘many falsehoods’ which he had published about him down the years.
I am truly sorry to hear so bad an account of you which gives me an additional motive for wishing the speedy destruction of the infernal Pandemonium ... The weather ... spoils hunting, but I have twenty furnaces ... in my bosom which every day’s villainy more and more inflames, so that I can wallow in ... snow without so much as thinking even of summer’s heat.
Add. 36458, f. 23.
At the general election of 1820 Burdett stood for Westminster with Hobhouse (who had been released on the dissolution) in far more advantageous circumstances than those which had faced the reformers in 1819. They were opposed by the Whig George Lamb*, who had defeated Hobhouse on that occasion, but this time Hobhouse finished almost 450 votes ahead of him, with Burdett clear by about the same margin at the head of the poll.
On the address, 27 Apr. 1820, he closed the debate by declaring that he ‘would not disturb unanimity’ on this ‘empty charade’, but expressed his ‘dissent from every sentiment’ in it. On 1 May he ‘walked about a long time’ with Hobhouse, ‘talking over the fate and conduct’ on the scaffold of the Cato Street conspirators.
was one of his best. Indeed, there was more thought in it than any other which I have heard from him ... But his great merit is that of a debater, the power of personal attack and of turning common ideas in an animated and unexpected way. Besides which, he is a great actor of a speech.
Add. 52444, f. 169
On 4 July, when he voted for Hume’s motion for economies in revenue collection, Burdett spoke in support of the queen at the Westminster meeting called to vote an address to her, which he and Hobhouse presented on the 6th.
You might as well have been enjoying with me the green fields, the woods and hedges covered with honeysuckle and wild roses, and the delicious seclusion of this place ... I am persuaded the learned are quite mistaken as to the locality of Paradise, which they fix ... somewhere in Mesopotamia, which they never would have had they ever been by any chance in Ashby Pasture.
He asked Hobhouse to make his excuses to the reformers of Southwark, who had invited him to dine with them, but he attended the Middlesex pro-queen meeting, 8 Aug. 1820.
He was laid up at Bognor with a combination of ‘gout’ and ‘pox’ (he lamented being ‘deprived thus of one’s manhood’ and finding ‘one’s hose a world too wide for one’s shrunk shank’) during September, when he followed events in London through the newspapers. Prompted by Jeremy Bentham, he encouraged Hobhouse to promote a dinner in support of the Spanish liberals, but he was ‘quite vexed’ by its failure, as he told Hobhouse, 7 Oct.:
What are the gentry of England made of? ... The ministers must certainly fight for their lives [on the queen’s affair]. They ought to be impeached, but then one thinks of [George] Tierney*, Mackintosh, etc., and everything appears ludicrous.
By then he was back in the saddle, having to be ‘lifted on, but when seated I am on my throne and feel as secure as any of the Bourbons or George IV’.
To be sure, no ministry need yield to such an opposition. At the same time the body of the opposition is so good and the spirit of hatred in the country so strong that I think they must go, and possibly be called to account for all their unutterable villainy ... No one can think the queen guilty ... I had no idea of her being able to set forth such a defence. I did expect much levity and misconduct would have been proved; to me it is an agreeable surprise ... The radicals are looking up.
He did not think much of Hobhouse’s notion of calling another Westminster meeting on the subject, preferring to be ‘left at liberty’ to act as he saw fit. He lectured Hobhouse, 22 Oct.:
Our kingdom is certainly coming, but we must wait upon the Lord. Laissez faire is as wise in politics as in trade ... The very apathy and want of spirit in the opposition as well as the bold setting of all decency at defiance by ministers equally prove beneficial to the public. Nor could anything have been more providential to the queen than Hunt’s being shut up out of the way! ... I think it is good that I also have been away, necessity justifying, so that the public feeling and sentiment should appear, as well as be, unequivocal and beyond the possibility of cavil ... I think the Lords cannot pass the bill [of pains and penalties], but no matter what they do, I say laissez faire.
Add. 47222, ff. 42-47; Patterson, ii. 518-19; The Times, 28 Oct. 1820.
He caught up with Hobhouse at Battle Abbey, where he ‘looked very well’ but ‘did not speak much’ in the company, which included the duke of Sussex, in early November.
Canning’s going out and his friends staying in is a proper fudge, merely to relieve him from an irksome situation. As to ministers, who should turn them out? The Whigs not joining the reformers? ... I have just been reading ... the account of the Edinburgh town and county meetings. When the North begins to stir there’s matter in it ... It appears that reform is the real active principle, to which Messieurs the Whigs must come if they come in at all. However, I wish them in anyhow. To get rid of these fellows would be something; it would be punishment at least to them.
Add. 37949, f. 91; 47222, ff. 56, 60.
He attended the Berkshire meeting in support of the queen, where ‘everything went off as could be desired’, 9 Jan. 1821. Before going he urged Hobhouse to consider a campaign on behalf of the Neapolitan liberals, by whose success ‘legitimacy would receive its death wound and the banner of liberty wave over the civilized world’.
I never was better. Temperate living makes exercise less necessary, and my walk up and down the prison wall is quite sufficient with temperance for health. Then my mind easily conforms to circumstances and a consciousness of acting right is more than a recompense for much greater privations than mine.
Burdett mss, Burdett to Crabtree, 29 Feb. 1821.
He informed Holland, 15 Mar., that he was ‘in great spirits about Naples, and though last and least, in expectation about England’.
he made a powerful and strong speech, never getting beyond the proper feelings upon the question, and parts were performed in his very best manner. His whole speech produced a great effect in the House and is calculated to do the same out of doors.
The Times, 26 Apr. 1821; Grey Bennet diary, 81-82.
But Bankes thought the speech was ‘violent and inflammatory’, and the motion was defeated by 235-111.
Burdett judged the queen’s death in August 1821 to have given her ‘an honourable exit’: ‘She could not have remained with dignity, nor have departed in better time or manner’.
Perhaps as an investigation is going on before the coroner it may be right, certainly excusable, to wait till it is finished ... Now will the ... great Whig families stir? Or was their whole stock of virtue so exhausted by the Revolution that it is become effete? To be sure meetings ought to be held everywhere. So they ought after the Manchester massacre, but that is saying nothing. What means have we of effecting that which [we] ought? There’s the rub. I have something of the feeling of Hannibal when Carthage was about to be sacked, who, when he saw his fellow citizens crying and lamenting in the public market, fell a laughing, telling them they ought to have cried when he did, when they delivered their arms to the Romans, and not at the natural and inevitable consequence. Twenty years ago I used to be laughed at by both sides ... for dreaming, as it was then held, of such things as now make fools wonder, honest men look sad, wise men smile, and coxcombs, like The Times, blame ministers for the unnecessary and improper application of the standing army. To break the chain that has been fastened link by link from the year 1688 up to the present time, by the hands of corrupt parliaments and judges, on England’s liberty, is no easy task - a task I fear the people alone are unequal to, and one for which the gentlemen seem to have no appetite. In short, I know not what to advise, say or do ... I cannot express to you how I enjoy the complete solitude of this place. I literally have no companion but a magpie, which, could I believe in transmigration, I should take for some departed friend. He flies after me, follows me all about, and is now sitting at the window. He also defends the garden against all smaller depredators far better than Priapus with his long, pale and filthy expedient.
Add. 47222, f. 81.
In October he approved Sir Robert Wilson’s* letter to the duke of York protesting against his ‘unmerited injury’ of dismissal from the army for his part in the funeral incidents; but old Tom Grenville† worried that the affair, unless firmly handled by ministers, might ‘teach the officers and privates of the army to look up to ... [Burdett and Wilson] instead of ... to the military authorities’.
Nor can I help indulging more sanguine hopes than you express upon the subject of reform, nor can I help thinking the meetings which have taken place very important. The ability and patriotism ... [the] country gentlemen have displayed is very encouraging. As to the particular resolutions adopted, I care little about them. The feelings evinced, and sentiments expressed by the persons present are chiefly worthy of regard; and if we can once unite, under any one banner, an effect must be produced, and what can we put forward better than Yorkshire, the wealthiest and largest county in England, Lord Milton* at its head?
Broughton, ii. 170; Add. 37949, f. 101; 47222, ff. 85, 89, 91.
On the address, 5 Feb., he followed the seconder by moving an amendment to postpone consideration for two days, arguing that ministers’ talk of ‘economy’ was an ‘idle delusion’, considering that they had increased the civil list and official salaries at a time of great distress. He now condemned the 1819 currency change as ‘full of iniquity and injustice’, said that the ‘industrious’ and ‘generous’ Irish had been ‘driven to despair’ by ‘a mere parchment Union’ and a succession of broken promises, and contended that Scotland, too, with its ‘detestable’ royal burghs system of closed oligarchies, was in dire straits:
He knew not if he were as wild and visionary in his notions of reform as some had represented him to be; but of all reformers, the most wild and visionary, in is view, were those who hoped to effect ... an economical reform ... which in the present constitution of the House could never be attained ... for until that House had been effectually reformed, there could be no permanent and efficient relief for the sufferings of the people.
He praised Hume’s perseverance in campaigning for economies, but said he was wasting his time. Hobhouse seconded the amendment, which was rejected by 186-58. John Gladstone* reported to the absent Canning, 6 Feb., that Burdett ‘was all for reform, but consistent’.
that Burdett was the only man fit to be the leader [of the party in the Commons] and ... [asked] whether Burdett would be active and ... would take a great place in case the ministers were driven out. He told me that he had reason to believe Lord Grey was not averse to the arrangement and that he knew Lord Holland was not.
Hobhouse had ‘heard praises’ of Burdett’s recent conduct from John George Lambton* and other advanced Whigs, who were keen to attend the forthcoming Westminster anniversary dinner. (His attempt to have the date changed to accommodate these Whigs landed him in hot water with Place.) When he sounded Burdett
he said he would undertake anything that would forward the great cause of reform for which he had been contending all his life; that if the party thought he could serve them he would be at their disposal to lead, to take office or to do anything ... understanding always that reform was to be the basis of their whole plan. He said that he would act without reserve, considering himself in the hands of gentlemen.
Tavistock tried to secure sufficient influential support, but this fanciful project had ended in smoke by mid-June.
Burdett’s speech at the Westminster anniversary dinner, 23 May 1822, was wide-ranging, but the need for effective reform was its essential message.
Heavy snow prevented Burdett from going from Bath to Reading for a reform dinner on 17 Jan. 1823, and illness kept him also from the Berkshire county meeting on the 27th. He was delighted with the ‘glorious’ Yorkshire meeting.
I feel a sort of inward elasticity that nothing, whilst there is a struggle for liberty in the world, seems capable of depressing. I am much taken up with reading attentively the works, which I never read before, of Thomas Paine ... The style of writing appears to me to be nearly perfect ... It has been the fashion to compare and to class Cobbett with him ... In truth no more comparison exists between them than between a coarse, brutal blackguard and a well bred, well educated gentleman ... My idea [on Spain] is that success is certain from fortitude ... Every month of Spanish endurance is an earnest of final victory.
Add. 47222, f. 102.
He remained enthusiastic and optimistic about the Spanish cause, speculating that ‘their success might possibly rouse us from our state of torpid baseness and enable us to drive from the helm an administration that has disgraced and betrayed the country, and when they go by a national movement I trust their system will go with them’.
Burdett welcomed the appointment of a select committee on the state of Ireland, 10 Feb., and presented and endorsed a petition against the infliction of treadmill punishment on remand prisoners, 12 Feb. 1824. He divided in the minority of 30 for Nugent’s motion on Spain, 17 Feb., but went almost immediately to Kirby for hunting, though he did go up to vote for Hobhouse’s motion for repeal of the window tax, 2 Mar.
He stayed in Leicestershire, kept from the field by ice and snow, until the second week of February 1825.
On other issues, Burdett voted for repeal of the assessed taxes, 3 Mar, spoke at the Westminster meeting called to petition for repeal of the house and window taxes, 24 Mar., when he condemned Hunt’s ‘most unhandsome’ conduct in carrying a amendment against sending up such a petition unless it contained a resolution deploring the Irish franchise bill,
Burdett bought £200 of shares in Brougham’s London University scheme in August 1825. He was a member of the Greek committee and was largely responsible for persuading Lord Cochrane† to take command of the Greek fleet, but subsequently became disillusioned with delays and indecision and the ‘lies and perfidy’ of the Greeks, which was ‘enough to make one turn Turk’.
At the Westminster annual dinner, 23 May 1826, he observed that while gout compelled him to speak ‘standing on but one leg’, he was ‘at least in somewhat better plight than the constitution of England, which was crippled in a much more serious respect’. During the preliminaries to the general election he, like Hobhouse, took exception to the inclusion in the electors’ formal invitation a reference (Place’s handiwork) to ‘the two political factions’ which had once corruptly dominated Westminster, and vowed that he would not be ‘lugged into’ attacking the Whigs. Place mollified them, but noted privately that they were now ‘little if any better than mere drawling Whigs’. Burdett, who postponed at the last minute his plan to join his sickly wife in Paris, and Hobhouse were returned unopposed after nothing had come of a bid to nominate Canning and of a threatened challenge to Hobhouse from Cobbett. On the hustings Burdett, who was criticized for not having voted for Russell’s resolution condemning electoral bribery, 26 May 1826, declared that the people must at once ‘drop all considerations of minor importance’ and ‘proceed peaceably, yet firmly, to demand that complete and thorough reform, without which this country could never hope to enjoy long a state of prosperity’.
Burdett was in the minority of 21 for Hume’s amendment to the address, 21 Nov. 1826. He dismissed as nonsense Place’s letter to Hobhouse, 6 Dec., accusing him of wanting ‘habits of business’, and approved his colleague’s spirited reply (which was not sent). He also observed that the ‘retrenchment and economy’ line pursued by Hume, whom Place held up as a shining example, was ‘very inferior to the old constitutional career in Parliament’. In mid-December Hobhouse found him very critical of Canning’s recent speech on foreign affairs and blaming him ‘for making part of that ministry which had allowed all the infractions on liberty and independence throughout Europe’. He ‘compared the honour of England to the honour of Helen, who had been ravished half a dozen times before she was run away with by Paris’.
On 15 Apr. 1827 Agar Ellis noted that Burdett ‘seems disposed to Canning, but not very decidedly’.
By such an arrangement everything seems to me, if not instantly gained, eventually secured ... it appears to me not only the most fortunate and unlooked for event, but the only chance in our time of effecting any great practical good; for however I may be attached to theoretic principles, no one is more alive than I am to the wisdom and necessity of seizing on every opportunity that presents itself for obtaining practical benefits. I cannot think it wise to reject a great deal that is most desirable, because all that is to be desired cannot be, and at once, obtained ... A greedy, bigoted, narrow-minded faction has ... oppressed the country ever since ... [1760] and so exhausted it ... that it had lost the power, and almost the will, to shake it off. This their strength, however, probably produced their overthrow ... [and] they unseated themselves ... Having done so, are we to endeavour to set them up again?
Canning’s Ministry, 209.
Holland, a supporter of the coalition, told Lansdowne that he suspected that Burdett would find a peerage ‘acceptable’ and that ‘the offer could not but please, and his pleasure conciliates large classes of persons’; but nothing came of this for the moment.
It is no small good to have removed from the king’s councils that narrow-minded, bigoted part of the administration ... [who] for a long time ... have weighed heavily on the best interests of the people, while they clogged the superior intellect of their colleagues, and prevented their advance, in conformity with the advance of public opinion. Thank God, the incubus is removed - the administration is purged of that dross.
Hobhouse thought Burdett’s speech was ‘admirable’, as did Agar Ellis and Lady Cowper; but Canning found it ‘highly amusing and edifying to observe this transformation of character’ from radical hero to purveyor of ‘Tory sentiments’.
If these bats and owls and unclean birds, which have so unexpectedly quitted their perch on fortune’s top and taken flight, with an evident purpose to return, can be prevented from ever returning, an evident public good will be obtained, and ... no effort ought ... and none shall on my part be spared to effect it.
Patterson, ii. 559-60.
At the Westminster anniversary dinner, 23 May, Burdett was denounced as ‘a traitor to the cause of the people’ by a drunken Cobbett, who accused him of angling for a peerage. Burdett defended himself, claiming that he had ‘done a great benefit to the public interests’ which ‘would finally advance the great object of reform’, even though he acknowledged that Canning was hostile to it, and declared that his own ‘long-established principles he never would forgo, whether he should slip into a peerage or not’. The meeting came close to a riot, and Burdett, while insisting in private that Cobbett had not won the day, advised Hobbhouse to keep quiet about the episode.
In his wife’s absence Burdett had become indiscreetly entangled with a young woman, described by Hobhouse as his ‘doxy’, with whom he appeared brazenly in public in the summer of 1827. He ‘confided ... the whole story of his most strange passion’ to Hobhouse, lamenting in late July that ‘I have indulged myself fatally in a delicious stream these five months and [on] waking find myself undone’. In September he tried to explain his foolishness:
The strange circumstances in which I ... have long been placed respecting my own family ... have produced at last their consequence, but for this I am alone answerable ... Life goes heavily where she is not ... Mine is a passion, not an appetite, and it is irresistible. The cold ceremonial rules of society, and those who dwell in decencies for ever and judge accordingly may censure ... [but] even they have no right as yet to find fault.
Add. 47222, ff. 192, 194, 209; 56552, ff. 8, 9, 11, 13, 14.
He apparently extricated himself from the affair before the year was out. In late August 1827 he gave Hobhouse permission to propose to his daughter Sophia, but, after lengthy consideration, she turned him down.
On about 11 July 1827 Lambton, at Canning’s behest, sounded Burdett as to his willingness to accept a peerage if offered. A few days later he gave Hobhouse, whose first thought had been that ‘it would do great mischief, though he might do so honestly’ an account of
his real feelings ... He said he never had but one passion, that of serving the public in his own station. That this passion was now stronger with him than ever, that he quite agreed with me that to become a peer would render him powerless in comparison with his present means of utility, and would besides be so little intelligible generally as to do mischief to the public cause. That he should never hesitate for a moment to reject the offer, but he owned that he should like to have the offer made to him in order that he might give the people a proof of his constancy. All these just sentiments I endeavoured to strengthen him in ... I told him that if the administration were a reform administration he might choose his post in the Lords as well as the Commons, but to take a peerage from and under George Canning! Impossible! If I had ever doubted my friend’s integrity and disinterestedness, which I never had for an instant, his conversation would have removed every suspicion.
Broughton, iii. 208-10.
Burdett ‘felt no grief’, only ‘regret’ at Canning’s death a month later.
In my particular circumstances doubts are a purpose I put forward ... to serve as pioneers, and prepare the way ... I have no doubt in my own mind ... that this pitiful cabinet (the king’s own handiwork) could not and ought not to stand. At the same time, having got myself into ... a false position, some address is required in withdrawing from it, or rather in preparing the mind of others for the movement ... My doubts known having apprised everyone of this, no surprise will be the consequence of whatever I may think it right to do. I have moreover written to Huskisson [leader of the Commons] to acquaint him with my sentiments and to say I would call on him, if he wished it, for fuller explanation. So that I have prepared my way for whatever line of conduct it may be advisable to adopt, always, however, keeping in view kindness, as far as it is possible, towards those I can no longer support.
On Hobhouse’s suggestion that he might make a ‘reform speech’, he said that he was ‘principally deterred by the fear of playing the game of the old faction more effectually, for I cannot conceal from myself that it is playing it, in some degree, to knock up the present administration’:
A display of strong reform views would, I fear, aid them greatly, perhaps reconsolidate them, and reconcile them with the king. I rather think reform must come, if at all, like the lord of hosts, like a thief in the night, and that the country must be led blindfold to the point when the steps must be taken, and from which there will be no power of retreating. A great splash would run the risk of drowning it ... My present impression is ... to be vigilant, but quiet ... I stand in great awe of energetic folly. One ought to be very clear before taking a very decided step, and we are far too little informed, at present, to be able to determine anything very satisfactorily.
Add. 47222, f. 227; 56552, f. 53.
He told Hobhouse that ‘when Huskisson heard his reasons for not continuing his support to the administration he allowed that he had nothing to oppose to them’. He urged Hobhouse to ‘take a line the first day of the session and said he would support me’.
On the address, 31 Jan. 1828, he applauded Navarino as ‘one of the most fortunate circumstances that could have happened, highly creditable to the character of the country’, approved the Treaty of London but expressed regret that the ministry which had concluded it had expired ‘of its own diffidence’ and lamented that Ireland was ‘in the most unsatisfactory state possible’. On 14 Feb. he seconded Hobhouse’s motion for a vote of thanks to Admiral Codrington and his sailors, but advised Hobhouse to withdraw, as he had made his point and carried the House with him.
He was in Paris at the turn of the year, and in January 1829 wrote to Place (whom he authorized to subscribe £50 to the fund for William Hone):
I have no opinion of the duke except at the head of an army. As to the Irish, they always mar their own concerns, their talent and wrong-headedness combined adapt admirably for that end; but our whole administration seems such an unaccountable mass of inconsistent acts and absurd or contradictory principles or no principles that I confess I am unable to form even a conjecture.
Add. 35148, ff. 31, 34.
Macdonald, who was also in Paris, advised Lansdowne to get Holland or some other staunch Whig to write to Burdett, whose ‘only, but constant political correspondent’ was Calcraft, now a member of the ministry.
A few days later a family financial crisis took him to Paris, but he was at Calais on his way back on 30 June, when he wrote to Hobhouse:
As to the duke, certainly the elements of a powerful opposition seem to be gathering thick around him, and as he has declared himself against reform, against considering the currency, and against any very large retrenchment, and as his foreign politics are very odious, and nothing defensible about him except the carrying the Catholic question, as he cannot satisfy new friends or appease old ones, as the king will not have Whigs, and he cannot retain Tories, there is every prospect of a blessed confusion, out of which chaos may arise reform. This I expect as religiously as the Jews the Messiah.
Add. 36465, ff. 183; 47222, 241.
His mother-in-law the duchess of St. Albans helped him out of the ‘crisis’, and he and his wife took a house near Twickenham from July until October, when Hobhouse dined with him and met the future King William IV.
He voted for Knatchbull’s amendment to the address, 4 Feb. 1830. Next day he unsuccessfully appealed to Lord Blandford to withdraw his parliamentary reform amendment, criticized Wellington for his speech in the Lords, which had shown him to be ‘totally insensible’ to the extent and degree of distress, called for the currency to be settled once and for all and declared that he could no longer abstain from attacking the ministry on account of its carrying of Catholic emancipation: ‘unless this House ... of representatives of peers, who have acquired an influence inconsistent with the spirit of the constitution ... [and] unless this gross system of corruption be put an end to by ourselves, it will be terminated by the people’. Hobhouse, who suspected that he had ‘dined well’ before he made his ‘philippic’, was embarrassed by the speech, for he was prepared to support the government when conscience allowed. O’Connell and the radical Colonel Leslie Grove Jones were said to be trying to ‘get Burdett’ for their projected ‘Wednesday dining club to reform the nation’.
In early May 1830, without consulting Hobhouse or the leading Westminster committee men, he agreed to chair a constituency meeting promoted by Silk Buckingham to air his grievances against the East India Company. When Hobhouse pointed out his folly, he repented and ‘offered to give up going’, but instead acted on Hobhouse’s advice to have the meeting legitimized. On the appointed day (8 May), however, he developed a convenient ‘swollen face’, which obliged the long-suffering Hobhouse to take his place.
A hunting accident to his ankle put him out of action in mid-October, and by the first week of November 1830, when he was at Brighton, he was additionally ‘taken aback’ and ‘ill’ with ‘pains all over me’ and ‘a sickness at stomach’, and was ‘unable to guess when I shall be fit for anything’:
What figures ministers make. It can’t go on ... The duke has added to his other wise declarations that on reform; he must go, it is not to be borne - ignorance and presumption personified ... It would be a pity to have any division before the reform question ... Grey seems to have made a good speech, notwithstanding his sophistry about abstract right. He declares for efficient reform ...The [king’s] speech has disappointed and disgusted the country generally, if I can rely on my information from different quarters, and the king’s tide of popularity is already on the ebb.
Add. 47222, f. 264.
He saw Brougham in Brighton on 6 Nov. and next day assured Hobhouse that he would do his best to get to London ‘as soon as possible’ in order to support his planned motion on non-interference in the Belgian crisis, which he saw as the likeliest means of turning out the ministry.
Burdett pleaded for a more conciliatory policy towards Ireland, 8 Feb. 1831, but asserted that the government’s ‘most awkward predicament’ was worsened by the intemperate and factious antics of some Irish Members, who professed to be their friends but were seeking to undermine the Union. In particular, he deplored Mahon’s rant against English Whigs. He now claimed never to have portrayed Catholic emancipation as a ‘complete remedy’ for the problems of Ireland and alleged that ‘the lower orders’ there ‘cry out for repeal’ [of the Union] only because O’Connell had ‘told them that it will provide them food and clothing’. Greville thought this was a ‘good’ effort, but O’Connell, replying to a correspondent who had named Burdett as an ally, asked, ‘of what importance if the opinion of poor Sir Francis Burdett to any rational being?’
When the Commons took the address to the king, 24 June 1831, Burdett, who had never participated before, wore ‘full court dress’.
In the first week of September 1831 Grey offered Burdett a coronation peerage, but he declined it, replying that as ‘the affairs of this country have by a long course of corrupt government been brought to such a state, that all its present interests as well as institutions demand investigation ... it is in the Commons under these circumstances [that] I have the greatest chance of being serviceable to you’. Bedford thought him ‘quite right’.
the parties of Whigs and Tories are now pretty well broken up, and I think it is tolerably clear that no such parties will exist after the reform bill has passed into a law. I supported the administration of ... Canning, because it was the breaking up of that Tory phalanx which had so long been in domination ... There is but one feeling in the country ... a steady and firm determination to have the bill, or a measure as efficient in every respect.
On the 19th he defended the political unions and said that Wellington now saw that he had placed himself in ‘a false position’ by his resistance to reform and that ‘nothing can throw the country into confusion but the rejection of this measure’. He asserted that the opponents of reform included ‘a parcel of intriguing gentlemen at the west end of the town’, abetted by their ladies, who ought not to leave ‘the domestic circle’. He regretted that at the last election ministers had not advised the king to authorize the withholding of writs from all ‘decayed boroughs’, deplored the Tory peers’ defiance of the wishes of ‘the whole people of England’ and told ministers that they must ‘stand or fall’ by the bill, for with ‘public support’ eventual success was assured. On 20 Oct. 1831 he encouraged ministers to dismiss from office peers who had voted against reform and urged Irish Members to attend on the first day of the next session to support the new bill. When Place complained to him that Grey had refused the request of his deputation of metropolitan reformers for a brief prorogation and swift renewal of the reform bill, Burdett argued that
our only chance of success immediately and peaceably is to give firm and undiminished support to king and minister. Strange it is that the boroughmongers should be strong enough to contend with us all united ... Grey has honestly and boldly grappled with them, and though not so energetically as you or I think we should do in his situation, yet let us not forget that we are not such good judges of that as if we were in his situation. He alone can know all the difficulties and means of surmounting them ... whilst we believe him honest, we cannot do better than support him, in the way he thinks most advantageous. Any show of suspicion can lead to no good, nor produce any other effect than weakness to our cause and champion, and of course give strength to our enemies ... We must trust him, and above all we must not weaken him by any appearance of wavering in our line ... Let us remain firm and confident, and he must succeed, unless he prove treacherous, which, I believe, neither of us suspect possible.
Add. 35149, ff. 101, 103; Broughton, iv. 144, 148-9.
Burdett privately asked Grey to be as conciliatory as possible towards O’Connell, but the premier replied that while ministers were bending over backwards for him, all ‘must depend upon his conduct’. On the subject of a creation of peers to carry the bill through the Lords, which Burdett was investigating on his own initiative, Grey said that a ‘creation so numerous as to overbalance the majority’ there was ‘out of the question’. He was, however, ‘gratified to the highest degree’ by Burdett’s ‘kind expression of ... confidence and good opinion’, and had a meeting with him and Ellice at the end of October.
In the House, 7 Dec. 1831, he agreed with Hume that the threat of persecution under the Newspaper Stamp Act deterred potential pro-reform pamphleteers. On the address, he defended the ministry on reform and foreign policy, attacked Hunt, took issue with Robert Cutlar Fergusson for saying that political unions were ‘contrary to law’ and said that all other issues, such as Irish tithes, should be subordinate to reform. He voted silently for the second reading of the revised reform bill, 17 Dec. 1831. Ministers evidently persuaded him not to bring on a motion for repeal of the Foreign Enlistment Act which was intended to vindicate Lord Dundonald (Cochrane) and have him restored to the navy list. He broached the matter privately with Grey, and Dundonald was reinstated later in the year.
He roused himself to an extent during the crisis which followed the defeat of the reform bill in the Lords and the government’s resignation. He paired for Ebrington’s motion for an address asking the king to appoint only ministers who would carry reform unimpaired, 10 May, but on the 11th he chaired the Westminster meeting in support of the Grey administration. He expressed confidence that the cause would triumph and said ‘there was little left for them to do, but to declare their reliance on their representatives, and their unabated confidence in that honest ministry which His Majesty, unfortunately for himself and the country, had discarded from his councils’.
Burdett, like Hobhouse, refused the request of a Westminster electors’ deputation to pledge himself to support the ballot, shorter parliaments, and repeal of the house and window taxes and the newspaper stamp duty, ahead of the 1832 general election. De Lacy Evans was put up by the radicals, but Burdett topped the poll.
He is one of the largest and most prosperous landed proprietors in England. He receives above forty thousand a year from his land. He does not owe a shilling, and has money in the funds. He has discovered that they have gone too far, and thinks it not unlikely that the destruction of one description of property, will draw after it the destruction of all. I happen to know that his opinion upon the state of affairs does not much differ from my own.
Wellington Pol. Corresp. ii. 100; Croker Pprs. ii. 206-7, 211.
He continued for a while to ‘make a profession of Liberal principles’, but ‘the substance or reality’ was ‘wanting’.