Arguably the ‘best mob orator of the day’, Hunt was a great-great-grandson of the royalist Colonel Thomas Hunt of Enford, whose escape from Ilchester gaol after the Somerset uprising, to join Charles II in exile, caused the family to forfeit Somerset and Wiltshire estates they had held since the Conquest.
Hunt entered London politics as a liveryman of the Loriners’ Company in 1813. Verbal skirmishes with the ‘City Cock’ Robert Waithman* and the Whig moderates in Westminster, where he promoted Lord Cochrane’s re-election in 1814 and opposed the property tax and the 1815 corn law, made him one of the leading radical demagogues, keen to denounce, in what Lord Holland termed his ‘brawling eloquence (loquentia potius quam eloquentia)’, the failure of the Whigs in office to prune the civil list and end jobbing.
gentlemanly in his manner and attire, six feet and better in height, and extremely well formed. He was dressed in a blue lapelled coat, light waistcoat and kerseys, and topped boots; his leg and foot were about the firmest and neatest I ever saw. He wore his own hair; it was moderate in quantity and a little grey. His features were regular, and there was a kind of youthful blandness about them, which, in amiable discussion, gave his face a most agreeable expression. His lips were delicately thin and receding; but there was a dumb utterance about them, which in all portraits I have seen of him was never truly copied. His eyes were blue or light grey - not very clear nor quick, but rather heavy; except as I afterwards had opportunities for observing, when he was excited in speaking, at which times they seemed to distend and protrude; and if he worked himself furious, as he sometimes would, they became blood streaked, and almost started from their sockets. Then it was that the expression of his lip was to be observed - the kind smile was exchanged for the curl of scorn, or the curse of indignation. His voice was bellowing; his face swollen and flushed; his gripped hand beat as if it were to pulverise; and his whole manner gave token of a painful energy, struggling for utterance ... He was always beating against a tempest of his own or of others’ creating.
S. Bamford Passages in Life of a Radical ed. P. Dunkley, ii. 19.
Backed by the northern delegates, ‘Orator’ Hunt (Robert Southey’s* sobriquet) carried resolutions for reform including universal suffrage, the ballot and annual parliaments at the January 1817 Hampden Club convention and forced Cochrane to present a similar Bristol petition, 29 Jan. To distance himself from the Spencean revolutionaries, he sent ‘loyalist’ letters to the home secretary Lord Sidmouth, petitioned to ensure that these were recorded in the Journals of the House of Commons, 4 Feb. 1817, and offered to testify before the House.
Hunt first visited St. Peter’s Fields, Manchester on 18 Jan. 1819, when, deputizing for the imprisoned Stockport radical John Bagguley, he carried the radical Palace Yard remonstrance. Its rejection by the regent spawned mass gatherings and the formation of unions in the major conurbations and culminated at Peterloo, 16 Aug. 1819.
The Whigs hoped to use Peterloo to discredit the Liverpool ministry and the radicals, but Lord Grey’s son-in-law John Lambton* warned Sir Robert Wilson* and the ‘Mountain’ to ‘keep clear of ... [Hunt] as you would of infection’.
While imprisoned (on compassionate grounds at Ilchester), Hunt, who espoused Queen Caroline’s cause, was commemorated by members of the Great Northern Union at dinners and celebrations throughout the North-West. He prepared radical addresses outlining plans for the popular democratic organization he hoped to lead, and drafted his Memoirs for serialization.
On 21 Jan. 1823, assisted by the radical Sir Charles Wolseley, he addressed a Somerset agricultural distress meeting he had instigated at Wells. The sheriff threw out his eight-point amendment for reform and retrenchment, but he carried it at another meeting the following week. John Hobhouse eventually presented the petition, 16 July 1823.
No one perhaps possesses greater tact in managing a mob; he mingles an indiscriminate abuse of the rich and the great with such an affectation of constitutional feeling and disinterested patriotism, that he never fails to carry the crowd along with him; they are led away by the enthusiasm of the moment ... they listen to the professions of the orator and they lose sight of his previous conduct.
Bristol Mercury, 26 June 1826.
At Andover in September 1826, he took over proceedings at a protectionist meeting and carried a petition for corn law repeal.
Hunt had re-entered City politics as a self-professed champion of reform and the rate-paying commonalty in 1824. As at Bristol, he campaigned for publication of the corporation accounts, and following his election as auditor in 1826 he exposed the system of feasting (‘guzzlings and gourmandizing’) that prevailed and pressed for reform, retrenchment and greater accountability. He failed to secure a seat on the common council in 1827 and 1828, but exposed the malpractices of the ‘City Jobbers’ in a petition to the Lords concerning the London Bridge bill (June 1829). Before his term as auditor lapsed in December 1829 he carried resolutions compelling officials to keep receipts and produce accounts promptly.
He had advocated Catholic relief since 1819 and, nailing it firmly to reform, he opposed the restriction of the Irish freehold franchise condoned by Burdett in the 1825 bill and criticized Daniel O’Connell*, as leader of the Catholic Association, for supporting it.
Hunt’s acceptance of the office of treasurer ruined the Union. Several who had been named on the council [of 36] refused to act and nobody would subscribe money to be under the control or care of Mr. Hunt, and the Union was soon extinguished from want of money to pay its current expenses.
Add. 27789, f. 145.
He carried similar petitions in Surrey and in common hall. According to Hobhouse, at the Westminster dinner in May, Hunt met his match in the Newcasatle bookseller Eneas Mackenzie, who stifled his diatribes against O’Connell.
Information was given to the police commissioners that Henry Hunt was to lead 20,000 men from the Surrey side of the Thames over Blackfriars Bridge to Ludgate Hill to pay their respects to the king, and to let him hear the sentiments of the people. That Hunt could collect and lead twice that number I have no doubt, but I do not believe that any such a procession would have taken place.
London Radicalism, 69-70.
Bruised by a public spat with Richard Carlile and the deist Robert Taylor, he was on business in the West country, where he helped to pacify the ‘Swing’ rioters at Overton, Andover and Salisbury, when he learnt on 7 Dec. 1830 of his nomination at the Preston by-election caused by Smith Stanley’s appointment as the Grey ministry’s Irish secretary.
Thomas Creevey* quipped that Hunt was ‘the best dressed country gentleman in the House’ on 3 Feb. 1831, when he took his seat between Hume and Warburton on the opposition benches, ‘side by side’ with the Tories.
But once, and that for a moment, did his self-possession seem to fail him while going through the ceremonies ... After the Member has signed his name, and taken the oaths, he is formally introduced to the Speaker, who usually greets the new trespasser on his patience by a shake of the hand. The ceremony is generally performed by the present Speaker with a gloved hand towards those not particularly distinguished by wealth or pedigree. When the new Member for Preston was introduced to him, he was in the act of taking snuff with his glove off ... Hunt made a bow, not remarkable for its graceful repose, at a distance - apprehensive ... that the acknowledgement would be that of a noli me tangere (don’t touch me) ... He was agreeably disappointed; the Speaker gave him his ungloved hand at once in a manner almost cordial.
Crayons from Commons (1831), 67; New Monthly Mag. Mar. 1831; Proctor, 146.
A self-professed independent, Hunt made over 1,000 parliamentary speeches between February 1831 and August 1832. He claimed to be the sole parliamentary spokesman for the unrepresented poor and the working classes and, from March 1832, ‘the only self-avowed radical in the House’. He learnt to exploit his ignorance of procedure, became adept at raising procedural points and steadfastly refused to be tempted into bringing breach of privilege motions. A staunch critic of the Whigs and their reform bill, on which his stance was confusing, he alienated himself from its middle class supporters and the Midland unions and was credited with fostering a schism between them and the Political Union of the Working Classes in Manchester.
Hunt gave qualified support to a petition he presented from Thorne Falcon, Somerset, for tithe commutation and declared firmly for radical reform, the ballot, and corn law repeal, for which he also brought up a petition from Manchester, 3 Feb. 1831. As again, 4, 7, 15 Feb., he promised to legislate for it as the only true means of relief. His criticism of the civil list as ‘a bad earnest of ministers’ intentions’, 4 Feb., brought a patronizing response from the first lord of the admiralty Sir James Graham, and Thomas Gladstone* noted that his
natural enough ignorance of the forms of the House was very amusing. He constantly addressed Lord Althorp as ‘You, Sir, have said and done’ so and so, which according to the forms of the House, of course was applied to the Speaker.
Glynne-Gladstone mss 197, T. to J. Gladstone, 5 Feb. 1831.
As announced in The Times, 22 Jan., he urged clemency towards the convicted ‘Swing’ rioters, 3, 4 Feb., and, with Hume seconding, requested it in an ‘excessively prosy’ two-hour speech and lost the division (by 269-2), 8 Feb. It prompted hostile exchanges with Benett, whose property the rioters had targeted, but when Admiral Sir Joseph Yorke claimed that Hunt would have responded differently had his blacking factory been attacked, he declined to ‘treat the House with a battle between my blacking and his bilge-water’.
He speculated about the details of the reform bill with Henry Bulwer in the Commons tearoom before they were announced, and the magnitude of the proposed changes confused and confounded him.
Ever disruptive, Hunt failed to dominate or unite the Lancashire unionists at the general election and only narrowly avoided a contest at Preston, where Hume and Place, acting on behalf of the Loyal and Patriotic Fund Committee, sent the reformer George De Lacy Evans* to oppose him.
We have chosen our old Speaker again (in spite of the lies of the London press) unanimously. It would have been a great loss if he had not been elected ... He is firm, courteous, and truly impartial, for this the Whigs and Tories hate him and would, if they had dared, put in a tool of their own, Littleton. Thank God they dare not attempt it ... I shall give notice of a motion the first day to rescind the ridiculous resolution wherein we resolve ‘that it is a breach of our privileges for a peer ... to interfere in the election of Members ... This all the world must see not only as a humbug, but a fraud upon the king ... I shall take leave in spite of The Times or the Courier and all the ministerial press, to do that which I think is best to serve the cause of my country and to say whatever I think will best serve the interest of my poor and suffering countrymen and, as long as I have health and strength, I will never cease to advocate the rights of the useful, the labouring classes of the community.
Hunt mss 28.
(He vainly proposed his resolutions, 21, 22 June 1831.) On the address, 21 June, he called for assistance for the Poles against ‘Russian tyranny’ and information on the suppression of the riots in Merthyr Tydfil and Ireland. He predicted that the reintroduced reform bill would be carried by a large majority and explained that unless the Tories introduced a more extensive measure, he would vote for but speak against it, with a view to reducing the £10 qualification and amending its details. Bringing up petitions for the ballot from Preston and Somerset, 23 June, he denied O’Connell’s charge that he was an ‘enemy of reform’ who had sold himself to the Tories and deceived the people, and condemned the Parliamentary Candidates Society for interfering at Preston. Waithman’s caustic comment that he used the pronoun ‘I’ 75 times that day was caricatured in ‘Cacoathes Loquendi: the blacking bottle and the yard stick’.
the enfranchising portions of the bill, though he knows how much opposed his constituents are to the principle, and how injurious it will be to the labouring classes, to have the middlemen added to the ranks of their already too powerful opponents. We must with candour say, we cannot reconcile his acts with the sentiments which he must entertain upon the subject.
Ibid. 9 Aug. 1831.
He repeated the parliamentary radicals’ objections to the proposed county divisions, 11 Aug., especially the five Member Hampshire constituency, 16 Aug., without voting against them. However, his support for the enfranchisement of tenants-at-will, 18 Aug., with the ballot as imperative to it, 19 Aug., was wholehearted. Joining in the fray on renting and rating, he failed (by 123-1) with an amendment substituting a ratepayer franchise for a £10 householder vote, 24 Aug. (the anti-reformers opposed it as ‘Utopian’), and (by 353-10) with one for the enfranchisement of ‘ten-pounders’ paying rent quarterly, 25 Aug. His ‘compromise proposal’ to exempt the unfranchised from militia service and the payment of rates and taxes was not seconded, 26 Aug. It, however, satisfied the extreme radicals, whose support he courted in the wake of Mitchell’s declaration that month ‘for Cobbett, the bill and gradual reform’. During his ‘Northern tour’ Hunt attacked Wood, Heywood and Manchester’s wealthy mill-owning reformers and alluded to Lord Stanley by his Commons nickname, ‘Tongs’.
I told the meeting that I had no confidence in ... ministers ... because they came in on pledges of economy, retrenchment and reform, which pledges they had violated. The kind of reform which they propose I have never advocated in my life; and I am sure it will give no satisfaction to the people at large.
He delivered a litany of complaints against the bill, the civil list, government expenditure on the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels and royal residences and their refusal to concede inquiry into the Deacles’ case and treatment of the Newtownbarry rioters. He castigated the press for ‘making the people believe ministers would achieve more than they have done’:
I have all my life contended that every man in the community should have a share in the representation; and I am sure that nothing less will satisfy the people of England than householders’ suffrage and triennial parliaments. I am neither Whig nor Tory, but will join either party which will give something like a principle of reform, which will not draw an arbitrary line, saying that a man living in a £10 house shall have a vote, whilst he who lives in a £9 house shall have none. The principle of scot and lot voting would, if introduced, have had some reason to it, because it is founded on the constitution, and because a man, not then having a vote, would ... be able to see the reason why he should not have a vote.
He testified to the reform bill’s unpopularity and the differences between the unionists of Birmingham who advocated non-payment of taxes to secure its passage (which, differing from Hume, he claimed was illegal) and those of Manchester who did not, and blamed the press for inciting trouble, 12, 13, 17 Oct., endorsed the unionists’ petitions that Hume found too radical, 19 Oct. 1831, and had the Birmingham one printed. A cartoon, ‘the led Bear’, portrayed him and Attwood leading the king.
He proposed an (unseconded) amendment to the address for a 24-hour adjournment which, like his speech prefacing it, attributed distress and the attendant unrest to the 1819 currency change ‘without a correspondent reduction in taxation’, provoked by the government’s policy of ‘prohibiting the importation of necessaries and encouraging that of luxuries’, 6 Dec. 1831. He accused ministers of condoning the political unions when it suited them and turning against them when they asked for more, and confidently countered claims from both sides of the House when reform petitions were presented, 7 Dec.
As long as Tories sit on this side of the House and take up the argument they now do, I myself am a Tory; but when they go to the other side of the House again, I shall remain here with the Whigs.
When the government’s resignation over the king’s refusal to create peers to carry the bill through the Lords was announced, 9 May, Hunt accused them of gross deceit, as the people had been led to believe that they had had that power for the past 12 months. He left without voting on Ebrington’s confidence motion next day.
Hunt’s increasing radicalism and tendency to obfuscation through personal perspectives and repartee was better suited to public meetings than to the Commons, and was apparent on all issues. He voted in the minority for appointing 11 of its original members to the Dublin election committee, 29 July, was named to it, 31 July, and spoke and voted in favour of printing the evidence before issuing a new writ, 8 Aug. 1831. Impervious to Wood and O’Connell’s arguments that it was a ploy to delay the reform bill, he promised to expose corruption at the highest level in Ireland. Refusing to be silenced by Smith Stanley, he defended the Grattans, exposed the viceroy’s agent Baron Twyll’s intrigues and voted to censure the Irish government for electoral interference, 23 Aug. Nor would he condone corruption in Liverpool, although he agreed that the town should be ‘amply represented’. He voted against issuing a new writ, 5 Sept., and when it was authorized, 12 Oct., accused ministers of ‘playing a little double in this affair’. He presented and endorsed the Westminster Political Union’s petition condemning Russian aggression in Poland, 8 Aug., but refused to back the Ultra Sir Richard Vyvyan’s ‘time-wasting’ motion for papers on the French annexation of Belgium, 18 Aug. On 23 Aug. the foreign secretary Lord Palmerston* told the cabinet that he had informed the French that no party in England, from Grey to Wellington to Hunt, would bear French interference in Dutch diplomatic negotiations.
Why Master Hunt, we hardly understand this conduct of yours; do you, or do you not, approve of this reform bill, which you own will do more harm than good to the unrepresented millions, whose champion you profess to be? ... a measure which would lessen the price of bread is of paramount importance to such a canting hypocritical party measure as the middle man’s reform.
Poor Man’s Guardian, 3 Sept. 1831.
O’Connell, a fellow victim of Hetherington’s pen, tactically raised the libellous comment when Hunt’s ‘untimely’ call for corn law repeal was rejected (by 194-6), 15 Sept. Afterwards he placated the Poor Man’s Guardian by having his speech printed, preparatory to renewing the attempt and by challenging Hume and Sadler to support a motion for repeal of the assessed taxes and the malt duties, 18 Oct., 19 Oct. 1831.
Hunt’s criticism of the £170,000 grant for the yeomanry highlighted their use in recent civil disturbances and was attacked from both sides of the House, 27 June 1831. He presented and endorsed petitions against the East India Company’s monopoly, 27 June, 15 July, and charged the government with profligacy and failure to retrench, 27, 30 June, 1, 8, 11, 18, 25 July. He voted to reduce official salaries to 1797 levels, 30 June, and against ‘robbing the poor weavers’ to finance professors’ salaries, 8 July 1831, 13 Apr. 1832. He seconded a motion for civil list reductions (defeated by 142-41), 18 July 1831, and failed to curb spending on the Society for the Propagation of the Gospels (by 155-27), 25 July, the queen’s coronation robes, 3 Aug., and the queen dowager, 19 Aug. He was unsupported on the last two occasions, and failed to goad Hume (who opposed it) into seeking reductions in the coronation expenditure, 31 Aug. However, Hume seconded his motion for deploying part of the award to discharge the debts of imprisoned crown debtors, ‘as an act of grace’ 6 Sept. When he attended the ceremony, 8 Sept., Littleton observed, ‘strange to say [Hunt] seems always to dress himself with taste’.
On Irish affairs, which he complained took up an inordinate amount of Parliament’s time, 27 Sept., he drew parallels between Peterloo and the ‘affrays’ at Newtownbarry and Castle Pollard, 23, 30 June, 1, 11 July, 11 Aug. 1831, and voted that day to print the Waterford petition for disarming the yeomanry. To taunts from the government benches that he was the tool of the Tories and Irish radicals, which he denied, he introduced and supported petitions for repeal of the Union and tithe reform, 23, 27 June, 1, 4 July, 5 Aug. He refused to instigate breach of privilege proceedings when The Times repeated the allegations, 12 Aug. He agreed with Hume that land taken from Catholics at the reformation should be ‘applied’ to public purposes, 14 Sept., agitated for government assistance for the Irish poor and objected to delays in legislating for them, 25 July, 10, 12 Aug., 26 Sept. Taunted by O’Connell that day, he defended, as he had on 28 June, the principle, but not the administration, of the English Elizabethan poor law. He welcomed Sadler’s relief scheme, 11 Oct. When he praised the Royal Dublin Society and criticized Smith Stanley’s Irish grand jury bill as a cumbersome substitute for wholesale reform, Lord Sandon* informed Smith Stanley, 29 Sept., that ‘Hunt opposes you out of spite and revenge at being treated by contempt by the Whigs, and because he can be more of a personage as a radical among the Tories, than as a mere follower with O’Connell and Hume.’
His recalcitrance and verbosity were unabated. He harried ministers for a select committee on the silk industry on behalf of the Bethnal Green weavers, 9 Dec. 1831, 21 Feb., and welcomed its concession, 1 Mar., but complained that by composition it was a ‘free trade committee’, 5 Mar. 1832. He supported inquiry into the distressed glove trade, 19, 31 Jan., protested at the proposed expenditure on the royal residences, 17 Jan., 23 Mar., and criticized the general lack of retrenchment, 6 Feb.
That is not a periodical, but is called "the 3,730" in honour of the number that sent me to Parliament. One of these 3,730 published an address every week; so that though there is no continuation within the law, we are likely to have 3,730 numbers of the address before the publication is at an end.
He presented petitions from the wives of printers imprisoned for selling unstamped papers, 1 Aug. 1832.
Hunt voted in the minority for vestry reform, 23 Jan., and a reduction in the sugar duties as a means of lower sugar and tea prices to assist the labouring classes, 7 Mar. 1832. He also acknowledged the ‘real need’ of the planters and accused the Whigs of changing their mind on equalization after attaining office. He opposed the crown colonies relief bill, 3 Aug. He had no objection to awarding a pension on his anticipated retirement to Manners Sutton, ‘who has taken for his maxim that the House should be rode with a snaffle-bridle, and not with a curb’ 1 Aug.,
His call for inquiry into Peterloo was supported in petitions from the political unions, 3, 23 Feb., 15 Mar. 1832, but almost thwarted by ‘this cursed humbug of a Whig bill for reform’. Seconded by Hume, he engaged Peel and intervened at least eight times before the motion was defeated (by 206-31) after a messy debate, 15 Mar. The Manchester Guardian criticized his ‘absurd and violent speech’ and the letter ‘to the ... 3,730’ commended it. Refusing to let the matter rest, between 27 Mar. and 2 Aug. he presented petitions and took up the cause of the martyred ‘Huntites’ imprisoned after the October and November 1831 St. Peter’s Fields reform meetings (Ashmore, Broadhurst, Curran, Robert Gilchrist and John Pym) and other ‘maltreated’ detainees, including Cobbett, 21 May, 30 May, 21 June. He presented a 9,000-signature Manchester petition for inquiry into the 1819 ‘carnage’, 17 July.
He renewed his pleas for the extension of the poor laws to Ireland, tithe abolition and a redistribution of Irish church property, 23 Jan., and criticized Smith Stanley’s arguments for the government’s Irish tithes bill as ‘void’ and ‘threadbare’, 24 Jan. 1832. He voted to print the radical Woollen Grange petition for the abolition of Irish tithes, 16 Feb., and to postpone the ministerial measure, which he vainly urged the Irish Members to reject, 8 Mar., and, clashing with Smith Stanley, 13, 27, 28, 30 Mar., 16 Apr., complained that it would do nothing to alleviate poverty, 27, 30 Mar., 16 Apr. He denounced the government’s entire Irish policy that day, defended Sheil, and called for the ‘separation of church and state as in America’. He referred to the widespread opposition to tithes in England and Wales, 20 June, urged ministers to abandon the Irish tithes composition bill that Parliament and divided against it, 1 Aug. (twice), 2 Aug. Addressing Sheil before leaving the House that day ‘amid much laughter’, he complained: ‘I wish to get rid of this Irish bill, and to go home to bed. I am given the key of the door. I am locked in and I am no longer a free agent’. Sheil delayed presenting Preston’s petition against deploying troops to enforce tithe payment in Ireland until 3 Aug., when Hunt, who claimed that it had been ‘got up’ by Smith Stanley’s former supporters, endorsed it and read out its diatribe calling for his dismissal for attempting tithe enforcement, ‘for the registration of arms, and for giving a reform bill to Ireland much more restricted and inequitable than that for England’. He expressed support for Benett’s intended legislation for the labouring poor, 17 Feb., and Sadler’s scheme to provide for the poor by taxing Irish absentee landlords, 19 June 1832, but would have preferred to see the English poor law introduced in Ireland and the Union abolished. He termed The Times’s report of his speech (20 June 1832) ‘a pure invention’, but added:
The fault ... is attributable not to the editor of the paper, but to the reporter for the hour; because, in reference to what I said on the subject of flogging soldiers, I must say that my observations are fairly well reported.
Taking up the radical campaign against corporal punishment, he ordered returns on military punishments preparatory to moving to end army flogging, 16 Feb. 1832, when he had 28 in his minority. He tested opinion with similar motions, without proceeding to a division, 2, 5, 14, 28 Mar. He proposed an amendment to the mutiny bill to abolish flogging (in peacetime), 2 Apr., but much to the relief of the war secretary Hobhouse, who personally opposed the practice, he yielded to pressure and ‘either from indifference or generosity, did not press his motion to a vote’.
Hunt was defeated at Preston, where aristocratic Liberal-Tory representation was restored, at the general election of 1832 and his subsequent petition failed.
His parliamentary career was short ... It commenced at a time it might naturally have been least expected, and closed when it might rather have been expected to begin ... He was altogether a singular man ... He had something of the caprice of ... Cobbett, and a good deal of his irritable temper; but in intellect or information he could not be for a moment compared ... Hunt was not a man of much mind. He was unfitted for grappling with any great question. He never took an original view of any subject; and was altogether incapable of close and ingenious reasoning. He held certain principles of the most liberal kind, and had at his fingers’ ends most of the principal arguments which other persons had urged in their favour. When these were exhausted, so were his means of vindicating his principles. His style was not good; it was rough and disjoined. What he excelled in was ready wit: he had few equals in this respect. All parties in the House, not even excepting the most ultra-radicals themselves, laboured hard to cough him down whenever he attempted to speak ... Nothing could disconcert him ... The fact was, he had been formed for scenes of confusion, and had all his life long been accustomed to them at meetings of his radical disciples ... His manner was as bad as his diction. It had no gracefulness in it. His gesture was awkward, and his voice was harsh and croaking. The bad effect produced by the latter was aggravated by a strongly marked provincial accent.
[J. Grant] Random Recollections of Commons (1837), 173-5.
Hunt’s business suffered during his time in the House and he tried to supplement his income by lecturing on the history since 1807 of the Whig party.
of broken fortune and profligate habits, ill informed, but clever and resolute, with a fine person, and (when he pleased), rather prepossessing manners; so that altogether he was able to gain an ascendancy in the disaffected districts greater than any man of the day.
Le Marchant, Althorp, 196.
His holograph will, dated 23 Jan. 1835, by which he left his business and remaining property (the tithes of Edgerly, Somerset) to his sons, was proved under £800 by Mrs. Vince, the sole executrix.