By the start of this period Hume, a burly man with a massive head and virtually no neck, had established himself as an irritating and almost permanent fixture in the Commons, where he habitually occupied the same seat, against a post to the left of the Speaker’s chair.
At the general election of 1820 the Liverpool ministry tried to prevent Hume’s re-election for Aberdeen Burghs, where he had been surprisingly returned in 1818, partly as a result of the privy council’s inadvertent liberalization of the sett of Montrose the previous year. Their candidate John Mitchell*, a London merchant, seemed at first to be on the verge of success, with Aberdeen and Inverbervie definitely secured and Brechin reportedly all but committed to him. Hume, who refuted Mitchell’s allegation that he was hostile to the linen bounties, a significant local issue, explaining that he was willing in the current state of the industry to waive temporarily his free trader’s aversion to such imposts, was well received by the burgesses and populace of Aberdeen (where he never obtained the support of the council), to whom he made a promise that he ‘would always be found at his post, watching with a jealous eye every encroachment upon the rights and privileges of his countrymen’. Brechin council, possibly in response to intimidation by a pro-Hume mob, gave him their backing, which, with that of the other Angus burghs of Arbroath and Montrose, was decisive. Mitchell’s petition against the return was rejected.
Hume’s name appears in almost every extant opposition division list in the 1820 Parliament. (He was absent from only a dozen of the 310 on which he might have been expected to vote against government.) He was frequently a teller. He condemned the civil list estimates as ‘most extravagant’, 2 May, and next day got 60 votes for his motion for inquiry into civil list expenditure since 1815. He was named to the select committee on the Scottish royal burghs, 4 May (and again, 16 Feb. 1821). He wanted an investigation of the involvement of the spy George Edwards in the Cato Street conspiracy, 9 May, arguing that there was a strong suspicion of ministerial incitement. As ever, he said that the increased protection for agriculture demanded in rural petitions would bring no relief and would worsen distress in the manufacturing districts, 12 May. He supported Lord Archibald Hamilton’s motion for a return of the rolls of freeholders of the Scottish counties, 25 May. He disliked Littleton’s proposed bill to abolish truck payments and maintained that repeal of the Combination Acts would be of more benefit to workers, 1, 23 June. He criticized the size and mystification of the ordnance, army, navy and miscellaneous estimates, 2, 6, 9, 16, 19 June. On the linen bounties, 30 June, he agreed with the ministerial view that while they should be continued for the time being, they should not become permanent. On 4 July 1820 he secured a very respectable vote of 99 (against 124) for his motion for the implementation of economies in revenue collection.
Hume took up the cause of Queen Caroline as a weapon against ministers, condemning their conduct towards ‘this injured and oppressed’ woman as ‘one of the foulest and most disgraceful conspiracies which was ever formed’, 18 Sept. 1820, but opposing Hobhouse’s amendment for a prorogation. Hobhouse thought he made ‘a bad speech’, asserting that ‘the attorney-general had charged the queen with adultery during six years and proved it only for three’. On 17 Oct. he moved for Sir Robert Baker, chief magistrate of Bow Street, to be called to the bar of the House to explain his role in the escape from custody of William Franklin, who had been charged with circulating a seditious handbill, in which he discerned more governmental ‘conspiracy’; but Lord Castlereagh, the leader of the House, got the better of him, and he withdrew. Hobhouse, who seconded him, was again critical of his performance, thinking that he ‘began too high’ and ‘did not prove the connection with government and ... made an assertion or two which ministers were able to contradict’.
The system pursued by those wretched fellows ... is discountenanced by the high Whigs, and you will have perceived by the little dirty warfare on the estimates, and by the numbers in the numberless divisions upon them, that the great body of the opposition have taken little or no part in the proceedings. The whole House and the whole public are now tired out with Mr. Hume and company.
Bagot mss.
The last observation was not accurate. Hume attacked the proposed grant for the duke of Clarence as too high by £2,500, 8 June, but withdrew his amendment to that effect to allow Harbord’s against the inclusion of arrears since 1819 to be put to a vote. His own amendment to reduce the grant to £3,500 was defeated by 167-30, 18 June. He had a final defiant fling against the arrears on 29 June, when his amendment was defeated by 54-24. Grey Bennet noted that his ‘vigorous reply’ to Lord Londonderry (Castlereagh), in which he ‘threw in his ... face all the acts of government relative to Her Majesty’, notably her exclusion from the coronation, was ‘much cheered, and I never knew him so pointed and forcible’. (Hume had been one of the Members who had dined with the queen at the Guildhall on 22 June.)
The independent Whig Sir Robert Heron* reflected that the economical campaign of Hume and his associates was ‘enthusiastically supported by the nation’, and Hume was praised in the national press that summer. At the Holkham sheep-shearing in July, when he rubbed shoulders with Whig grandees, he responded to a toast to his health with the observation (after a long lecture on economy and reform) that he deserved no thanks for his efforts, because ‘his taste naturally leaned towards the prosecution of this exposure, from which he derived as much pleasure’ as his host Thomas Coke I* did from agricultural improvements.
On the eve of the 1822 session Planta reported a belief that ‘Squire Hume will let alone the servants of the public and occupy himself entirely with an attack n the emoluments of the church’, which turned out to be wide of the mark.
I have not had half the trouble with estimates this year that I had last ... We had made such large reductions that little was left for Hume to object to, and the body of the opposition did not support him much in his objections even to that little. He is going downhill very fast: indeed, so dull and blunderheaded a fellow, notwithstanding all his perseverance and application, cannot long hold his ground in the ... Commons. It requires some degree of talent, and he does not come up to the mark.
He predicted that Hume would soon ‘shrink into his proper dimensions’.
His eternal interference on every question, and the many tedious hours he occupied in attempting trifling savings, only disgusted many from attending, and prevented more important questions from being brought forward. The climax of his vulgar assurance was the bringing forward of the Irish tithe question.
Heron, 133.
Unchastened, but furious with the Whigs, Hume went in September 1822 to his constituency, where he was feted at Aberdeen and Montrose and spoke forcefully for parliamentary reform as the essential solution to the country’s difficulties. He claimed to have succeeded in ‘awakening the public to discern one great cause of their distress’, namely the enormous national debt created by ‘the Pitt system’. He urged the Whigs to ‘disclose what they would do for the people if they were in power’ and to ‘pledge themselves to what extent they would go in promoting reform’. At a Perth dinner, he ‘complained of the Whigs not having supported him as they ought to have done ... in burgh and parliamentary reform’, but exempted Hamilton from his criticism. He was admitted as a freeman of Berwick on his way south.
at Hume’s making such a stupid ass of himself ... by his stupid vanity ... His kind patronage of Archy [Hamilton] is only laughable, but to see him splitting on that rock (of egotism and vanity) is rather provoking. What right has he to talk of the Whigs never coming to his support on ... reform? I cannot reckon a man’s conduct at all pure who shows up others at public meetings behind their backs, whom he never whispers a word against in their faces. There is extreme meanness in this sneaking way of ingratiating himself at their expense, and the utter falsehood of the charge is glaring. Parliamentary reform has never once been touched by him (luckily for the question). The motions on it last session were Lord John’s and my own. His burgh reform professedly steered clear of the question. I trust he has been misrepresented, but I heard in Scotland that people were everywhere laughing at him for his arrogance and vanity.
Creevey Pprs. ii. 50-51.
The Whig James Abercromby* wanted the party to make Ireland ‘a leading topic’ in the next session, and told Duncannon, 14 Oct. 1822, that it would ‘never do to let it get into the hands of Hume. That of the Irish church is a question that requires to be very skilfully and delicately handled’.
With Hobhouse and Sir Francis Burdett*, Hume was invited to the Speaker’s pre-session diner, 9 Feb. 1823, when, in ‘uppish’ mood, he ‘amused’ many ‘by talking his politics, particularly against the church, out loud’.
Hume had outlined his scheme for Irish tithes and church reforms on the opening day of the session; and on 4 Mar. 1823 he proposed inquiry into the Irish church establishment, arguing that its property was public and as such liable to redistribution, that the income of its clergymen and their numbers, especially the non-residents, could be advantageously reduced and that Ireland would benefit from a commutation of tithes. The Whig Member George Agar Ellis thought he ‘spoke forcibly in his rambling sort of way’.
On the address, 3 Feb. 1824, he voiced his dismay that ‘the same ruinous policy which had so long distracted and divided Ireland was still to be persisted in’ and that there had been no distinct statement of intended tax remissions. He said the navy estimates were ‘extravagant’, but was temporarily appeased by Canning’s explanation, 16 Feb. On 20 Feb. he secured ten votes for his amendment against the proposed 4,000 increase in the army, observing that Lord Holland approved it because he was ‘interested as a West Indian and he could not follow him now or at any time’.
In 1822 Hume had told Place that he wished to propose and was confident of obtaining widespread support for repeal of the Combination Acts, which he believed impeded the labour market and were biased in favour of the masters. Place had him stay his hand for the moment and supplied him with detailed information on the subject. Early in the 1824 session Huskisson, president of the board of trade, persuaded Hume to drop his planned motion for a select committee on the laws in favour of one on artisans’ emigration and the export of machinery. Place disliked this compromise and persuaded Hume to stick to his original plan; and after consultation with Huskisson he moved, in one of his most accomplished speeches, for the appointment of a select committee on all three issues, 29 Feb. Hume chaired the committee and drove it hard. Witnesses from the working class were coached beforehand by Place, who briefed Hume and gave evidence in favour of repeal, as did Malthus and McCulloch. Hume persuaded the committee to submit a series of short resolutions rather than a cumbersome report, and he revealed them to the House on 21 May: they recommended repeal of the Combination Acts, consolidation of the laws governing industrial disputes and removal of the restrictions on the emigration of skilled workers. He introduced two enabling bills, 25, 27 May, and saw them speedily through the Commons. He and Place lobbied successfully for support in the Lords, and the measures became law on 21 June 1824 (5 Geo. IV, cc. 95, 97).
On the address, 4 Feb. 1825, Hume deplored the planned suppression of the Catholic Association and accused ministers of being ‘anxious to bring on a crisis’ in Ireland, where they planned ‘to use the bayonet’ in the hands of the unjustifiably augmented army. In committee on the bill to outlaw the Association, 22 Feb., he proposed a resolution to the effect that any man now holding or in future receiving an Irish office should be obliged to swear on oath that he did not and would not belong to an illegal organization; it was negatived. He spoke and voted, as previously, for repeal of the usury laws, 8, 17 Feb. He complained that the navy estimates still included ‘useless expenditure’, 21 Feb. On Robinson’s financial statement, 28 Feb., he found fault with the ‘immense military establishment’, recommended reduction of the duties on tobacco and brandy and damned the sinking fund ‘delusion’, but gave the chancellor ‘full credit’ for his continued application of liberal commercial principles. His amendment questioning the need for so large an army, 7 Mar., when he attacked Lord Charles Somerset’s† troubled regime in the Cape, was rejected by 102-8. He unsuccessfully proposed his ban on Members voting on private bills in which they had ‘a direct pecuniary interest’, 10 Mar; but on the Leith docks bill, ‘one of the most shameful ... jobs that had ever been brought before the House’, 20 May, he had Marjoribanks’s vote for it discounted after pointing out his vested interest in the scheme. He welcomed Peel’s juries regulation bill, but failed to persuade him to reform the chaos of the common law, 9 Mar., and he approved the government’s Scottish juries bill, based on the efforts of the Whig Thomas Kennedy, 18 Apr. While he gave qualified support to the bill for the sale of waste lands in Canada, 15 Mar., he argued that the ‘disgrace’ of the colonial system (for which he would impeach the secretary Lord Bathurst in a reformed Parliament) needed urgent reform. He questioned Huskisson on some colonial matters, 21 Mar., when he said that diplomatic expenditure ‘far exceeded what the country required’. His motion for inquiry into the state of the Indian army, which was aimed at the governorship of Lord Amherst, was defeated by 58-15, 24 Mar.
On the address, 2 Feb. 1826, Hume welcomed the government’s proposal to facilitate the establishment of joint-stock banks, but complained that the army was still too large and taxation too heavy, and argued that the restriction of the circulation of small bank notes would do no good and that only the eradication of ‘wasteful expenditure ... profligate sinecures and overgrown establishments’ would serve. He attacked Amherst’s Indian regime and denounced all monopolies, including the corn laws. Lord Fitzwilliam noted that ‘Hume is at work again and taking everything under his consideration’, but that ‘it is supposed that his time is short’, as a dissolution loomed.
On his way to his constituency for the general election in late June 1826 Hume was summoned from Edinburgh to backtrack to Berwick in order to vote for the ‘radical’ Sir Francis Blake*. He came in unopposed for his burghs, where he claimed to have redeemed all his pledges of 1820 and expressed some hope of a relaxation of the corn laws.
Hume presented and endorsed the petition of ‘starving weavers’ of Blackburn for repeal of the corn laws and reform, including the ballot, 9 Feb. 1827. He badgered Robinson on the navy estimates but did not divide the House, 12 Feb. On 14 Feb. he clashed with Palmerston on the case of Colonel Bradley, who had been deprived of his Honduras command without a court martial, and was obliged to apologize for one of his intemperate remarks. He thought the government’s plans for emigration would be ‘a wasteful employment of the public capital’, but that the proposed select committee might elicit some useful information, 15 Feb. Next day he denounced the granting of £9,000 to the duke of Clarence, the heir apparent, when Blackburn weavers were dying of starvation, and secured 65 votes against it. His subsequent amendment that it was inexpedient to vote supplies until ministers produced comprehensive accounts was negatived. He opposed the Clarence grant, ‘a mean and scandalous waste of the public money’, to the bitter end, 19, 26 Feb., 2, 16 Mar. His amendment to reduce the garrisons subsidy was defeated by 45-15, 20 Feb., and his usual motion against army flogging by 57-16, 26 Feb. He divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar. He voted for a 50s. import price for corn, 9 May, and on the ministerial plan, 27 Mar., proposed a fixed duty of 15s., to be reduced by 1s. annually until it became a permanent 10s. tax; he got 16 votes. His motion for information on the Barrackpoor mutiny and its brutal suppression was rejected by 176-44, 22 Mar. He divided with opposition against voting supplies until the ministerial crisis which followed Lord Liverpool’s incapacitation was resolved, 30 Mar. He moved for inquiry into the state of debtors’ prisons and the operation of the laws of imprisonment for debt, but left the former issue in Peel’s hands after a discussion. On 10 Apr. he got leave to introduce a bill to abolish arrest for debt on mesne process. He brought it in on 17 May, but it was thrown out on its second reading, 1 June. On the 21st he welcomed Peel’s small debts recovery bill, which reached the statute book. He spoke and voted for referring the Irish miscellaneous estimates to a select committee and divided for information on chancery delays, 5 Apr. On the formation of Canning’s ministry, when Peel and the seceding Tories crossed the floor, Hume stuck to his customary seat.
When presenting Irish petitions for Catholic relief, 4 Feb. 1828, Hume observed that it was ‘a true Turkish domination which is exercised by this country over Ireland’. He duly voted for relief, 12 May, as he did for repeal of the Test Acts, 26 Feb., having declared on the 19th that ‘no government can go on now that is not liberal’, for ‘the time of exclusion is at an end’. He secured a detailed account of the way in which the 1827 vote for seamen’s wages had been spent, 11 Feb., and later that day attacked the navy estimates and said he was on the whole ‘dissatisfied’ with the start made by the new Wellington ministry, though he would judge them by their measures. He urged Members to
look with most scrupulous exactness at every possible reduction. The country is overspread with crime and pauperism; and the people are taxed to their utmost bearing to support useless places and pensions and to maintain a most extravagant appropriation of the public revenue.
In a wrangle with ministers over the victualling grant he was accused of a mathematical blunder, but he retorted that if they believed that they ‘can put me down by calling me a fool ... they will find themselves very much mistaken’. His bid to reduce the grant for 30,000 seamen was defeated by 48-15. He went over the same ground the following day, and was in a minority of eight.
Hume opposed the ministerial bill to assist voluntary emigration through the poor rates as coercive, 17 Apr. 1828. On the 29th he argued for free trade in corn and reproduced his proposal for a 15s. fixed duty falling to 10s., which was defeated by 139-27. He supported Mackintosh’s motion for information on the civil government of Canada, 2 May. He spoke and was a teller for the minority of 54 against the provision for Canning’s family, 13 May; he moved an unsuccessful wrecking amendment, 22 May. On the 16th he objected to the navy estimates and defended the finance committee, claiming that it was overwhelmed with work. While he was expostulating, Croker observed to Peel, who was not best pleased with the remark, that ‘we now see the folly, as we before saw the cowardice, of putting Hume and Maberly on this committee’, for they were ‘more troublesome than ever, because being placed on the committee has redeemed their characters and increased their information’. (Billy Holmes*, the government whip, privately commented the next day that he suspected that ministers had put Hume and the dithering chairman Parnell on the committee ‘to retard all the proceedings’.)
Hume welcomed the government’s concession of Catholic emancipation, 12 Feb. 1829, though he wished it had been done with ‘a better grace’ and without suppressing the Catholic Association. He presented and endorsed favourable petitions, 2, 10, 25 Mar., insisting that they reflected majority opinion in Scotland. He voted for emancipation, 6 Mar., but divided against the second reading of the bill to disfranchise Irish 40s. freeholders, 19 Mar. On the 26th he withdrew his opposition to this ‘most objectionable and unjust’ measure - claiming to be ‘a decided radical reformer’ - in order to secure emancipation. Next day he criticized the relief bill’s outlawing of Jesuits as an ‘extreme measure of harshness’, but he duly voted for the third reading, 30 Mar. He voted to allow Daniel O’Connell to take his seat unhindered, 18 May. He was disappointed to learn from Goulburn, who evaded his question about ministerial intentions for the sinking fund, 13 Feb., that the finance committee was not to be reappointed, repeated his ludicrous notion of appointing many subcommittees and urged Goulburn to expedite the simplification of public accounts. On 20 Feb. he complained that last session ministers had ‘tided over’ some issues of economy by referring to the impending reports of the finance committee and accused them of now adopting the same stratagem to avoid grappling with high expenditure and oppressive taxation. He said that Sierra Leone should have been abandoned years ago and that half the present military force would suffice, and held out ‘no hope’ of a change for the better, 23 Feb. He ranted against the navy estimates and the dead weight pensions burden, 27 Feb., and the inflated ordnance estimates, 3 Mar. His motion to limit the number of lashes which could be prescribed by courts martial was negatived, 10 Mar. On the report of the committee of supply, 2 Apr., he called again for inquiry by select committee into feasible tax reductions, admitted that the change in the currency had damaged industry and commerce but damned the ‘odious monopoly’ of the agricultural interest, enjoyed by ‘those landlords and gentlemen who formerly kept down the voice of the people at the point of the bayonet’. He objected to pensions for officials of the Irish linen board and the ‘madness’ of continuing to pour money into Canadian defences, 6 Apr. He supported the ministerial silk bill against the protectionists, 14 Apr., 1 May, and on 2 June deplored ‘lawless combinations’ among the Spitalfields workers and brought in a bill to extend the provisions of the 1823 Masters and apprentices Act to the silk trade, which became law on 19 June (10 Geo. IV, c. 52). He questioned the need for a militia force, 4 May, reckoning that £4,016,000 had been thus expended since 1815; but in committee on them he praised Sir Henry Hardinge, the new war secretary, for producing intelligible estimates and acquiesced in the grant. He also complimented Goulburn on his clear budget statement, 8 May, but could not share his optimism: he thought treasury officials were ignorant of ‘the deplorable condition of some of the manufacturing districts’ and demanded tax cuts. Goulburn accused him of distorting the facts. Later that day he condemned the arrangement for an issue of exchequer bills as a ‘ruinous and improvident bargain’, defied attempts by rowdy Members to shout him down and declaimed that the House would ‘stultify itself if it agreed to any such stupid proposal’. Supporting inquiry into the East Indian trade, 14 May, he said:
I am accused of advocating strange opinions, and perhaps I sometimes do, but I like to see how many concur in these notions ... I have lived long enough to see measures which were rejected ... carried by the very ministers who previously had successfully opposed them. I like this well enough, but ... I like still better to carry things against ministers; because, when I do that, I am sure the people are with me. I do not say this in opposition to the government ... I am ready to make great allowances for the gentlemen belonging to it, whose difficulties are considerable. They do not know who are their friends or foes ... at present.
On 18 May he brought up a resolution signifying his protest against the exchequer bills scheme, but agreed to drop it. On the motion to pass the bill, 22 May, he moved a declaration to the effect that the conversion of £3,000,000 unfunded debt was unnecessary, which was negatived. Later that day, however, he applauded the sinking fund bill, which he hoped would mark the end of the delusion. He denounced the expenditure on Buckingham House as ‘discreditable’ and divided against the grant for the marble arch sculpture, 25 May, and on 28 May said that apart from carrying Catholic emancipation, ministers and Parliament had that session ‘done nothing for the public interest’. He voted to reduce the hemp duties, 1 June. He presented petitions for repeal of the corn laws, 28 Apr., 1, 7, 8, 14, 18, 19 May, when he spoke at great length in favour of their relaxation. He divided the House, ‘if ... only to ascertain how few there are of my opinion’: the answer was 12 (to 154).
On the address, 4 Feb. 1830, when the Ultra Knatchbull moved an amendment which seemed to place the government in jeopardy, Hume ‘and a large party of reformers’ voted with them to give them a majority. Lord Castlereagh* asked Edward Littleton*, 8 Feb., ‘who would have believed, ten years ago, that a government headed by the duke of Wellington would be saved by the support of Joey Hume and Co?’.
On 27 Apr. 1830 Hume advocated reform of the Irish church and the redistribution of all ecclesiastical property, before acting as a minority teller for O’Connell’s bill to open Irish vestries. Complaining that the recommendation of the finance committee had been ignored, he divided the House (131-59) against the grant for the Royal Military College. He welcomed the ministerial bill to open the beer trade, 3 May, and supported it steadily, though he divided for Maberly’s amendment to restrict on-sales, 1 July. On 3 May he sought leave to introduce a bill to end the obligation on army and navy officers to pay fees for the renewal of commissions on a demise of the crown, and persisted despite Goulburn’s plea for him to drop it out of ‘delicacy’. He carried a division by 11-9, but the House was counted out. He renewed the attempt, 10 May, when Goulburn persuaded him to make it simply a bill against the payment of fees, but, as Howick noted, he ‘stupidly lost a stage by not moving at once for leave to bring it in’.
In October 1829 Hume had received an open challenge to his seat for Aberdeen Burghs from Sir James Carnegie*, a young baronet with a Forfarshire estate. He recognized the potential threat, but was not unduly perturbed and, after consulting Place, made it clear to the councils of the Forfarshire burghs that he intended to stand his ground.
He was fêted on a visit to Scotland in late August and September 1830. The celebrations included a jamboree appearance in Arbroath with Ross in tow, when Hume agreed to a request that he should take charge of petitions which his constituents did not wish to entrust to the Tory Carnegie.
whether I thought Joe Hume meant mischief. I said, ‘No’. ‘What then did he mean by advising the people not to use premature force?’ said Graham. ‘He meant nothing’, said I; ‘he did not know the meaning of the word’.
Broughton, iv. 59.
Hume objected to the government’s proposal to regulate trade between the West Indies and America, which was ‘robbing Peter to pay Paul’, 8 Nov. He was a teller for the minority of 39 on this issue, 12 Nov. On 9 Nov. he criticized Peel’s under-secretary George Dawson for describing O’Connell as ‘the agitator of Ireland’ and denouncing a petition for repeal of the Union (to which Hume was opposed) as the work ‘of a mob’. He was a teller for the minority of 24 for repeal of the Irish Subletting Act, 12 Nov. He presented reform petitions from Marylebone, 10 Nov., Lanark, 11 Nov., and Perth, Arbroath and Brechin, 15 Nov., when he pointed out that in the last burgh, which had a population of over 7,000, only the 13 self-elected councillors had a say in parliamentary elections. Arguing that ministers’ refusal to reform or retrench had driven men to violence, he said that the ‘most effectual act of Parliament will be to remove the government’. He was in the majority for inquiry into the civil list, which achieved exactly that, 15 Nov., and was named to the select committee, as he was to that on the reduction of public salaries, 9 Dec. As he was declaiming on 16 Nov. 1830 that army and navy officers as well as placemen and pensioners should be excluded from the Commons, the Whig reformer General Sir Ronald Crauford Ferguson was walking through the chamber: ‘He stopped and looked up at Hume and the whole House roared with laughter’.
When the members of the Grey ministry and their supporters crossed the House to the right-hand benches, Hume, O’Connell and the other radicals remained in their old places. Princess Lieven urged her brother not to confuse ‘the men now in power with the radicals of the Lower House’, for Grey ‘hates O’Connell and Mr. Hume more than the duke of Wellington does’; and Campbell, reflecting that it would be impossible for the new administration to ‘satisfy the expectations they have raised’, anticipated that ‘in a short time Hume will be firing into them’.
The ex-minister John Herries* told Mrs. Arbuthnot, 3 Jan. 1831, that Althorp was ‘coaxing the ultra radicals’ by feeding Hume ‘and others of that stamp in small select parties’.
Hume was ‘delighted’ with the ministerial reform scheme, revealed on 1 Mar. 1831, and a few days later assured Russell of ‘his hearty support’.
On the address, 21 June 1831, Hume defended the decision to dissolve against Peel’s attack, claimed that the government’s appeal to the electorate had been emphatically answered, accused Peel of factiously opposing the timber duties and said he would swallow any changes to the details of the reform scheme which did not impair its principle. Next day he dissociated himself from the statement in the king’s speech that ministers had maintained the stance on non-interference on Belgium, but conceded that the amended budget had been ‘completely successful’. He advocated a low fixed duty on corn, 24 June, and protested at the ‘immense’ navy and army estimates, especially the ‘monstrous charge’ of £170,000 for the yeomanry, 27 June. Next day he pressed ministers to repeal the remaining coercive Acts of 1819, which most of them had opposed when in opposition. He secured the reappointment of his select committee on the king’s printers, 28 June. On the 30th he said that Hunt was not justified in saying that ministers had not retrenched: ‘I ... would not give a pin for reform, if I did not hope that the result of it would be the means of obtaining ... a good, cheap and efficient government’. He was a teller for the minority of 13 for Alderman Wood’s motion to reduce public salaries to 1797 levels. His allegation that a contributor to the Republican had close links with the Tory opposition provoked angry exchanges, 29 June, 1 July. That day he called for repeal of the duty on tiles (and again, 21 July) and soap, but welcomed the remission of that on candles. He protested again at the ‘confused and unintelligible’ way in which the accounts were presented. On 4 July he appealed to the Speaker for a ruling on etiquette after finding his seat occupied at prayers by James Lindsay. He quizzed the Irish secretary Smith Stanley on the purpose of the advance of money for capital projects, 5 July 1831.
He voted for the second reading of the reintroduced reform bill next day. On 8 July 1831 Hunt stated that Hume had written to northern working class leaders to rally support for the measure, but Hume explained that he had merely seen three delegates who wanted hostile petitions to be presented and begged them not to harm the cause. On 12 July he voted at least twice against the adjournment, having told the Tory Wetherell that in changed times ‘a popular ministry’ was ‘contending with an opposition consisting of a handful of factious men’. He voted steadily for the details of the bill, though he was in the minority on the case of Saltash, 26 July, and paired for divisions on 3, 5, 17 Aug. He had little to say on the measure as such. On 8 Aug. he objected to printing the petition, presented by Hunt, of the National Union of the Working Classes of the Metropolis in favour of the ballot and against compulsory emigration on account of its language, but said he would be ‘very glad to see the sinecurists and public-paid drones of this country transported to the Canadas’. Like other radicals, he was suspicious of the proposed division of many English counties and he pressed ministers to reconsider it; but Littleton claimed that he ‘frightened’ Hume and company ‘into support, by telling them that the county Members who wished a division ... would not compromise their principles about the due amount of the franchise, if they in return did not give way on this point’.
On other issues, he pursued his usual dogged radical line. He spoke, 6, 18 July, 11 Aug. 1831, when he was a minority teller, for disarming the Irish yeomanry. He backed O’Connell’s call for a fairer distribution of money for Irish education, 14, 15 July, 5 Sept. He urged Althorp to reduce the emoluments of the bishop of Londonderry before filling the vacancy, 18 July, but was satisfied with his promise of a general measure of redistribution, 6 Sept. On 19 July he expressed contempt for the Glasgow petition against the Maynooth grant, and on 31 Aug. described British universities as ‘little better than hot-beds for everything that is illiberal’. He divided with O’ Connell for swearing the Dublin election committee, 31 July, and against issuing a new writ, 8 Aug., but with government in both divisions on the issue, 23 Aug. On 10 Aug. he endorsed O’Connell’s complaint that ‘whatever may have been promised, nothing has been performed’ by the ministry for Ireland, where the ‘age of misrule’ still prevailed. He questioned the need for a board of public works there, but was willing to acquiesce in the grant of £1,000,000 if placed ‘on a proper footing’. His wrecking amendment to the Irish union of parishes bill was carried by 38-11, 19 Aug. He hoped for the early cessation of the grants for the Dublin Foundling Hospital, which promoted ‘bad habits and immorality’, 22 Aug., and the employment of the Irish poor, 29 Aug. He moved to reduce that for publishing Irish proclamations, 31 Aug., but withdrew when ministers promised an imminent cut. He said that Ireland would never be ‘at peace’ until ecclesiastical property was redistributed, 12 Sept. On the 16th, opposing the Irish public works bill, which would perpetuate the ‘system of jobbing’, he criticized ministers for appointing to or retaining in office men who were hostile to their measures: for example, the lords lieutenant of some counties. He welcomed their reduction in the grant for the Royal Dublin Society, 28 Sept. On 8 July he spoke and was a teller for the minority of 15 against the grant for professorial salaries at Oxford and Cambridge, where ‘poor’ people could not gain admittance and many fellows ‘drive their carriage and four, and live in great state from the funds which are placed at their disposal’. He recommended sending the inmates of the ‘useless’ Millbank penitentiary to Botany Bay. He said that to repeal the Sale of Beer Act would be folly, 13 July, 24 Aug., but he wanted retailers to be treated the same as licensed publicans, 5 Sept. He accepted the grant for civil list salaries, reserving his right to object to the inclusion of pensions, 18 July, and opposed Robinson’s amendment for a cut of £60,000. He condemned the ‘enormous’ provision for consular services and the grant for the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels, which ‘cast a firebrand of jealousy and ill will’ into the colonies, 26 July. He pressed for relaxation of the quarantine duties, 8 Aug., and spoke thus and divided in the minority of 20, 6 Sept. He asserted that by such ‘extravagant application of the public money’ as in the duchess of Kent’s annuity bill, ministers were ‘doing that which will tend to make royalty odious’, 8 Aug. He objected to the proposed increase in the duties on Cape and Portuguese wines, 8 Aug., 7 Sept., but thanked Althorp for conceding on the former, 12 Sept. On 9 Aug. he damned the ‘useless, unnecessary and extravagant manner in which the government are throwing away the public money by continuing to call out the militia’. He voted in Hunt’s minority of six for reception of the Preston petition for repeal of the corn laws, 12 Aug., and supported, by request, the Coventry petition, 12 Sept.; but on 15 Sept. he opposed as untimely and disruptive to the reform bill Hunt’s motion to consider repeal, preferring to look to a reformed Parliament ‘not only for an alteration in our corn laws, but also for many other important and most desirable changes’. He spoke and was a teller for the minority of 12 against the compensation for Lesceyne and Escoffery, 22 Aug. On the 31st he said that the proposal to spend £50,000 on the coronation, which could be carried off for £5,000, was outrageous. On 1 Sept. he denounced the requirement for Members attending to wear court dress, but admitted defeat when the Speaker pointed out that this had been recommended by a committee of the House. Littleton recorded a pertinent ludicrous episode during the deliberations of the committee earlier that day:
While we were busy with our order of procession, in comes Mr. Economy Hume, to get some papers belonging to him out of the box. We paused. I began, ‘Well ... I am assured by Rundell and Bridge that that the addition of these diamonds to the queen’s crown will cost only £25,000. It would be miserable economy to boggle about such a trifle’ ... Hume was staring at us in astonishment ... [He] left the room, went into the committee room of the civil government expenses, and out of mere ill humour cut off two aides-de-camp from the lord lieutenant of Ireland and when Wynn presented his report in the House ... attacked and ridiculed it.
Hatherton diary, 1 Sept. [1831].
On coronation day, 8 Sept., Hume turned up at the House ‘in a brand new suit, and was hailed with laughter and cheers’.
At the Middlesex meeting called to petition the Lords to pass the reform bill, 27 Sept. 1831, Hume said he looked on it as ‘carried’, for the peers would take a lesson from France on the wisdom of ‘yielding gracefully’.
Hume ... [made] an energetic speech. He condemned the trivial policy of the Whigs, their unwise plan of supporting their enemies and promoting them and neglecting their friends. He insisted that they should now and at once start on a different line of policy. He was loudly cheered.
O’Connell Corresp. iv. 1839.
At the mass Marylebone meeting called to address the king in support of ministers and reform, 10 Oct., he urged his listeners to avoid violence and tell ‘the petty, spiteful majority of the ... Lords’ that ‘an oligarchy which had usurped their rights should be compelled to relinquish their tyrannical power’:
Though ministers had not been so active in promoting the bill as they ought ... he hoped they would profit by experience and not coquet with the Tories, since it was in vain that the Tories could be induced to approve of measures favourable to the people ... There must be either reform or revolution ... It was because in case of a revolution the working and useful classes would be the greatest sufferers that he wished to effect a reform by constitutional means.
He toned down a resolution urging the king to kick the bishops out of Parliament.
saw Joe Hume and his good little wife. He is a singular fellow indeed, and persuades many people he understands all the subjects he talks about. He is to be made lord rector of Glasgow University this year, for the second time ... and a paragraph in the Herald tells how great a linguist Joe is, and how much Greek and Latin, all Oriental, and most modern tongues he knows ... If he knows Greek and Latin, it is without learning them.
Broughton, iv. 150.
Littleton was
not a little amused at a letter Duncannon ... showed me from the patriot and economist Joseph Hume, abusing him for not having given a servant of his one of the park gate keeper’s lodges in Hyde Park. He had held out with Duncannon, and would not say whether he would accept the office or not during nine months, because he thought the salary should be raised, and now is in a fury and considers himself ‘insulted’ because it is given to another. I have often been assured by secretaries of the treasury during the last 15 years that no one has dabbled in little jobs of this sort more than this blustering declaimer against patronage.
Hatherton diary, 21 Nov. [1831].
On 7 Dec. 1831 Hume clashed angrily in the House with Arthur Trevor over restrictions on press freedom, especially the stamp duties, and declared that those who hampered popular education were ‘morally responsible for the consequences that may flow from a want of proper knowledge’. He concurred in that part of the king’s speech which promised a speedy settlement of reform, but dissented from the notice of interference in Belgium and protested, as he did again on 9 Dec., at the continued excesses of expenditure and unwarranted increase in the army. He presented and endorsed a petition for the abolition of tithes, but passed no comment on the revised reform scheme. Holland, a member of the cabinet, noted that ‘the only untoward appearance was the general complaint of the Irish at the small additional number (five) granted to their representation and the sympathy expressed by Hume and ... felt by many of our friends’.
The imprudent man wrote of the reform bill as being a good measure as far as it went, and as certain of producing a better, by the destruction of our church establishment. This angered King William exceedingly, and did not add to his attachment to the Grey cabinet.
Broughton, iv. 201.
Hume voted silently for the third reading of the bill, 22 Mar. 1832.
On other issues, he remained a thorn in ministers’ flesh, though his pragmatic concern to see reform secured kept his recalcitrance largely within reasonable bounds. He demanded and received an assurance that the £75,000 earmarked for Buckingham House would complete the project, 17 Jan., but condemned the associated ‘ridiculous and extravagant bargain’ for the sale of crown lands, 19 Jan. 1832. He obtained returns to bolster his campaign for one general account of imports and exports, 24 Jan. He spoke and voted for inquiry into distress in the glove trade, 31 Jan., but only to demonstrate the folly of protectionist doctrine, and voted for inquiry into smuggling in the trade, 3 Apr., though he did not accept the premise of the motion. ‘Anxious to dry up all the sources of corruption’, he called for total abolition of the payment of officials by fees, 2 Feb., and secured a return of facts and figures, 7 Feb., when in passing he deplored ‘the many improper appointments’ that had been made in the colonies. He welcomed the ministerial promise to produce full estimates early in the session in future, 13 Feb., but criticized the half-pay element of the navy estimates. He conceded that the grant for civil contingencies was the ‘least objectionable’ for years, but still found fault with details. However, he welcomed the navy civil departments bill as a sign that ‘ministers are determined that things shall not go on as they used to’, 14 Feb., and he spoke and voted for it, 6 Apr. He wanted repeal of the duties on hemp and other shipbuilding materials, 17 Feb. Later that day he grilled Hobhouse, newly installed as war secretary, on the army estimates and complained that there were 20,000 more troops than in 1824. He did not oppose the estimates, recognizing that Hobhouse had inherited them, but registered his undiminished hostility to the grants for garrisons and the Royal Military College. Hobhouse recollected that Hume, ‘when convicted of extravagant statements, said, as usual with him, "Well, I think so, and others think differently, that’s all"’. Hobhouse ‘soon found there was no arguing with this gentleman’, for he was ‘like the bookseller’s customer, who lost one of a set of books, and could never be convinced that he ought to find the volume, or buy the whole set’.
Hume confirmed his support for the anatomy bill, 17, 24 Jan., 15 Feb., the general register bill, 19 Jan., and vestry reform, 23 Jan. 1832, when he voted in the minority for Hobhouse’s bill to expedite his Vestry Act and angrily denounced ministers for opposing it.
Hume ... said that, since the Whigs had been in office, the British flag had been disgraced in every part of the world. I often thought that this man was totally careless about his own assertions, as well as what had been said or done by others. This appeared to me strange enough in any politician; but, in a man of long experience, and much reputation, and very high popular position, I thought it totally inexplicable.
Broughton, iv. 215.
When considering their plans to reform Irish tithes in December 1831, the cabinet had expected Hume to move an amendment for inquiry into the entire Irish church establishment.
Hume deplored ‘the cry raised against these new beer shops’ and denied that the Scottish clergy were unanimously hostile to the government’s Irish education scheme, 7 May 1832. Next day he obtained returns of pluralities of benefices in England and Wales. When Althorp announced the government’s resignation on the king’s refusal to create peers, 9 May, Hume spoke ‘violently’, as the Conservative Member Sir John Beckett saw it, in approval of their action.
Hume replied to a protectionist motion for a select committee on the state of trade and commerce, 22 May 1832, denying that he was ‘one of those ultra political economists who profess doctrines to which the whole commercial community of England are opposed’. He failed to have the remit of the committee on renewal of the Bank of England’s charter and small notes extended to Scotland, 4 June, when he attacked the Bank’s monopoly. He pressed Lord Milton to save his motion for repeal of the corn laws for the first reformed Parliament, 30 May. He spoke and voted for the government’s temporizing amendment to Fowell Buxton’s motion for the abolition of slavery, 24 May, arguing that planters’ rights must receive ‘due regard’ and that emancipation should be gradual. He supported the bill to abolish the death penalty for various offences, but wished it to be extended to all crimes except murder, 30 May. To salvage something of the measure, he recommended acceptance of the Lords’ amendments, 6 July, but on 15 Aug. he decided that it had been rendered nugatory. He voted against Baring’s bill to exclude insolvent debtors from the Commons, 6 June, because, as he explained on the 27th, it did not apply to the Lords. On 7 June, fending off Sadler’s criticism, he said that he approved of his factories bill in so far as it restricted the labour of children under ten. He opposed Sadler’s motion for a tax on Irish absentee landlords to provide for the poor, 19 June, when he seconded and was a teller for the minority of 15 for Hunt’s motion to suspend army flogging. That day he raised the case of Alexander Somerville, a private in the Scots Greys, who had been flogged ostensibly for refusing to mount an unruly horse, but in reality, as his partisans believed, for radical political activities. Hume evidently discussed the business privately with Hobhouse, whom he told that he had raised it to prevent O’Connell from doing so and that ‘the less said about it the better’ if Hobhouse would secure Somerville an honourable discharge. This he did, but the process took several weeks; and Hobhouse was ‘never more surprised than when Hume [on 3 July] got up and made a bitter speech against me’ and moved for information. Hobhouse opposed this and Hume eventually dropped it; but Hobhouse, who was ‘pledged against flogging’, was embarrassed by the episode, exasperated by Hume’s ‘meddling’ and considered resignation.
At the general election of 1832 ‘the immaculate Joseph’, as Bedford disparagingly called him, sent down the ‘Benthamite baronet’ Sir Francis Knowles to oppose Holland’s son Charles Richard Fox* at Tavistock, notwithstanding the support which he received from Holland in Middlesex. Although he did not approve of personal canvassing, kept his purse strings tightly closed until the last minute and was embarrassed by public exposure of his ‘shuffling’ on slavery, he was returned at the head of the poll.
‘His body was a masterpiece; for force, endurance, speed And every kind of action perfect; beautiful indeed’.
... Who but a son would have pronounced Joe the model of beauty? This son, I hear ... had but lately returned from his harlots and his hog trough to the fatted calf when the old gentleman died.
Macaulay Letters, v. 449.
Hobhouse called him in 1827 ‘the queerest mortal, if not malicious, I ever knew’; but he later wrote that Hume was ‘essentially a part of the House of Commons for many years’ and recollected ‘a saying of Sir Robert Peel, that he could not conceive of a House of Commons without a Joseph Hume’.