Ellice, who was born in London, was his father’s business heir and a successful trader to the North Americas, Canada and the West Indies, where his failure to sell out in time eventually cost him £70,000.
a City organ ... By marriage ... related to Lord Grey ... a very tall man, more than six feet high, as big as ... Hume about the shoulders and breast, but with a frame tapering downwards ... a forehead falling back on the sides ... the eye, set in a shallow socket ... large, round dull and of downward cast ... The voice of Ellice is ... soft and fat. He has nothing of the keenness of ‘Change Alley about him. He would seem to have taken lessons to acquire the Bond Street Croak. In short, imagine a great schoolboy of forty, and you have the man fully about your eyes.
Pol. Reg. 25 Mar. 1820.
Nicknamed ‘Bear’ Ellice on account of his size and stake in the North American fur trade, or, as Carlyle put it, ‘rather for his oiliness than for any trace of ferocity ever seen in him’, Brougham considered him a ‘clever, sensible and most kindly disposed person, but not always very wise. He had that most pernicious kind of good nature that made him at all times wish to play the part of Mr. Harmony’.
As a spokesman and occasional teller for the Whig opposition on trade and commerce in the 1820 Parliament, Ellice divided against administration in almost all major divisions, and occasionally in the ‘Mountain’s’ small minorities for lower taxes and retrenchment. He attended the House unstintingly until 1823, when disillusionment briefly set in, but soon rallied on behalf of the silk trade and the Greek Patriots. He was especially active in the select committees on foreign trade (1821-24) and a major contributor to the debates on agriculture, 1821-2, and corn and the currency, 1825-6. He approved and voted for a scot and lot franchise for Leeds under the Grampound disfranchisement bill, 2 Mar. 1821,
He supported the 1820 parliamentary campaign on behalf of Queen Caroline, but the ‘radical fever’ and uncertainty it generated and the prospect of subjecting the bill of pains and penalties to ‘the labyrinth of Mr. Hume’s cross-examinations, motions of adjournment, committal of non mi ricordo to Newgate, etc.’ in the Commons perturbed him. He observed to Grey’s son-in-law John Lambton*, 14 Sept.:
If all parties, as the saying is, had their deserts, the ministers should be taken to Tower Hill, or rather, as they have been merciful to the radicals at York ... transported to Botany Bay, and His Majesty carried to a horse-pond. But guilt or punishment is now out of the question, and the cry is, show us the way out of it, how are we to escape?
Lambton mss.
He voted against the prorogation proposed by the queen’s radical partisans, 18 Sept., but stated his future commitment to opposing the bill. Following its abandonment, he watched the queen’s procession to St. Paul’s with Burdett, 29 Nov., and attended the Covent Garden meeting, 7 Dec. 1820, but left early to disassociate himself from its radical address.
He stressed the high commercial cost of government indecision on the timber duties, but refrained from accusing the vice-president of the board of trade Thomas Wallace I and the select committee of neglect for failing to announce the duties promptly, 14, 15 Feb. 1821.
From Wyke, Ellice corresponded almost daily with Grey during the Dowager Lady Grey’s final illness in the winter of 1821-2.
I am sick beyond all description at reading the newspapers of yesterday, giving accounts of the debate on Monday. Ellice must be plainly told that if he from mere vulgar vanity and flattery will get up and attack Hume, he must expect the most severe punishment. I assure you if I had been in the House I should have made an example of him, which neither he nor the House would have forgotten for a twelvemonth.
Bessborough mss F53.
As a principal speaker and minority teller for ordnance reductions, 25 Mar., Ellice observed that the distressed petitioners’ pleas had been ‘useless’, and he delivered a harsh verdict on the 1822 agriculture committee report, based entirely on the 1821 evidence, 3 Apr. 1822. Replying, Lord Londonderry accused him of changing his views since 1819, which of course he denied. He resumed his criticism of the report and the ‘agricultural bank’, 2, 6, 13 May. Objecting to the report being brought up that day, he expressed support for Huskisson and Ricardo’s ‘suggestions, but not their conclusions’, and attacked the sinking fund as a complicated, ineffectual and outmoded device for taking money from men’s pockets, encouraging loans and foreign investment, that pandered to the City and operated a ‘perpetual transfer of capital’.
To thwart Cobbett and his distress petition, he prepared resolutions for Lord Althorp’s* friend Edmund Lechmere Charlton† to propose at the Herefordshire reform meeting of January 1823.
There was at one time a large party of my way of thinking with Burdett at our head. Lord Lansdowne and Mackintosh have now attached many of our supporters, and the only doubt I have on the subject is whether we can make our objection effectual to them, and carry the bill on its presentation or second reading.
Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 15, 20, 26 Feb.; Ellice mss, Grey to Ellice, 23 Feb. 1823.
Opposing the national debt reduction bill as a principal speaker and minority teller with Hume, 17 Mar., he acknowledged that they could not object to its provisions for abolishing the old sinking fund machinery, but ridiculed the allusion to a £2,000,000 surplus. He found fault with and was a minority teller against the silk manufacture bill which ended the prohibition on imports, 9 May, 11 June, but maintained that the combination laws and restrictions on artisan emigration were more damaging, 22 May, 9, 11 June. He welcomed the two-year adjustment period secured.
Ellice spent November in Durham with Lambton and was unable to avoid that autumn’s endless intrigues over the ‘mad’ Northumberland Member Beaumont, whose seat Grey coveted for his heir Lord Howick*.
When in March 1825 he received a £200 demand from Harriette Wilson to keep his name out of her Memoirs, Ellice forwarded it to the press.
That summer Ellice took a Norfolk mansion, Snettisham, near King’s Lynn, which provided refuge for his family and Hobhouse while the furore generated by the Greek loan was at its height. Creevey, an early guest, predicted that the scandal would bankrupt Ellice.
Out of Parliament, Ellice communicated regularly with Denison, Grey, Hobhouse and Wilson, started to put his own and Lambton’s finances in order and advised Grey on land sales following Howick’s defeat in Northumberland.
Two good ‘No Popery’ men cannot be spared out of a majority of four, and more especially where two Catholics will help repeal them, and these are the principles of justice on which one has to rely in such a tribunal.
Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 14 Nov. 1826, 8 Mar. 1827.
The political turmoil of the next twelve months convinced him that any seat would have been a bad investment, although he again toyed with the idea when considering an alignment with Althorp in July 1827 and with the liberal Tories when Huskisson was leader of the House in Lord Goderich’s short-lived ministry.
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, or as others will have it, to have anything to do with the party 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, and are probably the most formidable, backed as they will be by the distress and loud complaints from every part of the country.
Grey mss, Ellice to Grey, 18 Jan. 1830.
Largely through Howick, he also monitored attendance that session at Brooks’s and at meetings of the revived opposition in Althorp’s rooms.
Ellice was of course listed among the ministry’s ‘foes’ and voted to bring them down on the civil list, 15 Nov. 1830. Offering to assist Grey in office, 19 Nov., he advised:
What you have most to avoid is the appearance before the public, of rather providing places for worn out, useless people than providing proper and efficient persons, even for the lowest office. For God’s sake, have none of the followers and retainers of the last 20 years’ governments, where it is possible to do without them. They will always be jealous of newcomers; and their diminished hope of advancement [means that they will be] incessantly endeavouring in concert with their old allies and the press, to undermine all your arrangements.
Grey mss.
Grey made him his patronage (treasury) secretary at £2,500 a year, and he was immediately lampooned as ‘Mr. Jobbery’ and as one of Grey’s family cabinet.
He was named to the public accounts committee, 17 Feb., assisted with the contentious seaborne coal bill, 16, 21 Feb., brought his knowledge of Canada to the debate on emigration, 22 Feb. 1831, and was directed to bring in the assisted emigration bill with the colonial under-secretary Howick. He had John Stuart Wortley added to the East India Committee that day and dealt with irregularities in the Liverpool-Leeds railway bill, 23 Feb. When he presented petitions for parliamentary reform, 26 Feb., The Times maliciously commented: ‘There is one person, in particular, unfavourably known in the City for his connection with the celebrated Greek loan. This person should have shrunk from public life altogether, but particularly he should not have been placed in a situation connected with the revenue of the country!’ He decided against treating it as a libel. He brought up two Coventry petitions favourable to the government’s reform bill, 15 Mar., and thereby succeeded in marginalizing local concern over the voting rights of serving apprentices and a third Coventry petition, for the ballot, entrusted to Hunt. He presented further reform petitions, tabled several reports and accounts and had the sugar duties bill deferred, 19 Mar. He had had it circulated privately that the timber duties would probably not be carried.
Everything is put upon me, and I am blamed for anything that goes wrong, or rather that does not accord with the particular wishes or feelings of any person connected with the government ... I cannot find candidates, and what is still more difficult, the persons exactly suited to the particular places requiring them, and above all, men that know their own minds with money to fight any borough and almost any county in the kingdom ... All is going right where we have people of nerve and determination to deal with, something wrong where we have undecided and weak candidates on our hands ... I must go back in the mail to Coventry tonight to prevent mischief.
Brougham mss, Ellice to Brougham [2 May 1831].
Forwarding the returns to Brougham before leaving London, 17 May 1831, ‘partly for a holiday, but more especially to avoid dunning for money’, he reckoned on a ‘majority of 150 at least. Tolerably good accounts from Scotland - 13 of 15 burgh returns, 9 gains altogether’.
Deputizing for Althorp, Ellice ordered papers for the public accounts committee and announced the Irish tobacco bill, 23 June 1831. He naturally divided steadily with his colleagues for the reintroduced and revised reform bills and was dismayed by their defeats on Saltash, 26 July,
By June, preliminary arrangements for the 1832 general election were in place for England and Wales, but the lord advocate Francis Jeffrey* complained that he had been ‘warning Ellice of trouble in Scotland in vain for the last couple of months and that government may suffer’.
It may have its attractions for younger people, or other men having higher views than I aspire to. It has none for me and I would not have the last 12 months over again, if you will give me the choice of all the offices under the government. But possibly any change will have a bad appearance during the remainder of the Parliament. Whether I go or stay, I will manage the next election for you, it being also understood that George Ponsonby is to assist in the management of the present House during the remainder of the session. In the state of Hannah’s health, I must be considered a free agent to go and come, as I am able. My retirement will eliminate all objections to [Charles] Wood’s* appointment to either situation ... You must have an infusion of younger, more active, and intelligent men, who will take an interest in what is going on in the House, make themselves acquainted with the newcomers and lay themselves out to conciliate and satisfy them. There is not a single soul except Duncannon who ever speaks to or takes the least notice of any of our most zealous and steady supporters.
Ibid. Ellice to Grey, 17, 27 Mar., 17, 24 Apr., 27 July 1832.
He retired when his wife died, 27 July, and after her funeral he ‘set off for a wandering expedition anywhere, to the North in the first instance ... and with the intention of not returning to town, if I can avoid it, for the next six months’.
Ellice contested Coventry successfully in December 1832 and retained the seat for the Liberals for life. He was severely challenged at the by-election following his appointment to the cabinet as secretary at war in April 1833, and became a veteran of six further polls. He resigned with Lord Melbourne in December 1834 and did not hold office again, but he remained a confidential adviser to successive Liberal ministries and was instrumental in founding the Reform Club. Noting Ellice’s high political connections, Creevey portrayed him unflatteringly in 1836 as ‘very vain (who is not?), he is a sieve, and so much the more agreeable for those who squeeze him’. His second marriage in 1843 to Thomas William Coke I’s widow ended tragically with her death in late pregnancy the following year. Ellice died in his sleep (of angina) at Ardochy, Inverness-shire, in September 1863, a week after presiding at a dinner to mark the completion of the Northern Railways. Obituarists recalled him as a gentleman of the ‘Old School’, as ready to advise on affairs of love as affairs of state.
a general favourite in the House, his readiness to oblige being as remarkable as the extent of his influence and connections. Never, perhaps, had there been a more efficient and popular (political) secretary of the treasury. He was always a firm and consistent Liberal of the radical school ... His knowledge was not derived from books, for he was too fond of society to be a deep reader, but he had picked up much useful information on the questions of the day that most engaged public attention, and he could speak readily, fluently, and plausibly on them. Courage and dexterity supplied his deficiencies. A pleasant address, and an exemption from the social prejudices of the Whigs, told also in his favour. Altogether he was a most valuable member of the party. Careless of his own personal interests, his sagacity and independence gave him deserved weight, especially when out of office, with men in power. He suggested most of Lord Melbourne’s appointments, and was concerned in many of Lord John Russell’s.
Le Marchant, 489-90.
His will was sworn and administered by his only son and heir Edward Ellice (1810-80), Liberal Member for Huddersfield, 1837, and St. Andrews Burghs, 1837-80.