Ward was a barrister on the northern circuit and at the cockpit, where appeals to the Privy Council were dealt with. He was an authority on international law.
His maiden speech was in support of the Addington ministry’s commission of naval inquiry, 17 Dec. 1802, but as the resumption of hostilities with France approached he was among the government’s critics, 20 May 1803, and on 3 June voted with Pitt for the orders of the day. He was the spontaneous author of a Pittite pamphlet, A view of the relative situations of Mr Pitt and Mr Addington previous to and on the night of Mr Patten’s motion (by ‘a Member of Parliament’), which included a compliment to Fox and stung Addington’s publicists into a reply. Subsequently, despite Lowther’s reservations, he was for open war with the ministry and mistakenly invited by the Speaker to a dinner he gave for the Grenvillite opposition, 5 Feb. 1804. On 7 Mar. he joined Pitt’s more rebellious friends in voting for inquiry into the conduct of the Irish government. He was a critic of the volunteer bill, 12 Mar., joined Pitt and the combined opposition on defence questions, 15 Mar., 16, 23 and 25 Apr. 1804, and supported Pitt on his restoration to power. He opposed the prize agency bill inherited from the outgoing ministry, 7 June, and next day and on 11 and 15 June spoke up for Pitt’s additional force bill. In January 1805 Mulgrave, appointed Foreign secretary, offered Ward the under-secretaryship, placing him in a dilemma, as he was earning up to £1,200 p.a. at the bar and had Pitt and Lord Eldon’s promise of the next vacant Welsh judgeship and financial security. He had just brought out a pamphlet on the history of declarations of war in Europe, which served as a manifesto for war with Spain. He opted for political office and sought to dissuade his patron from quarrelling with Pitt over the admission of Addington to office. He did not speak in the House on foreign affairs, only in defence of the suspension of habeas corpus in Ireland, 15 Feb. 1805. After voting with Pitt against the opposition censure of Melville, 8 Apr. 1805, he informed his patron that the question was best lost, though it shook the government. Before Pitt died he was to have applied to the King for a pension of £1,000 for his wife (if Ward left office and as long as he did not resume it with £2,000 p a. or more): the arrangement was then applied for by Mulgrave and ratified by the Grenville ministry, though Fox, who questioned Ward’s efficiency in office, disliked it. At this point Ward offered up his seat to Lowther, but it was not then wanted.
Ward joined Pitt’s friends in opposing the Grenville ministry on Ellenborough’s seat in the cabinet, 3 Mar. 1806, and on the repeal of Pitt’s Additional Force Act, 30 Apr. Apart from a critical question or two, he did not voice his opposition. He regretted that there was ‘no resting place between a relinquishment of office and a violent opposition’. He was prepared to follow Lowther’s line and be left in or taken out of Parliament as he pleased. He was accordingly not returned at the election of 1806 but brought in by Lowther on a vacancy for Haslemere in January 1807. He voted with Pitt’s friends in opposition on the Hampshire election petition, 13 Feb., and subsequently endorsed their readiness to resume opposition, steering clear of Canning’s negotiations for a merger with Grenville, though he emphasized that they must be able to provide an alternative government.
He committed himself to public life on the advent of the Portland ministry by accepting office under Mulgrave at the Admiralty board, expecting to take responsibility for civil business. In fact, it was he who moved the naval estimates in the House from 1807 until 1811; he also undertook the defence of the Admiralty on other questions. He warmed to his professional colleague Perceval’s performance as chancellor of the Exchequer, describing himself to him as among his most attached friends, 9 June 1809, when he made a show of offering his resignation because of his inability to support a measure of the Irish chancellor of the exchequer’s that evening.
Ward was an anxious supporter of Perceval’s administration, of which he kept a political diary. In March 1810 he was eager to resign with Mulgrave if the Earl of Chatham did not quit the Ordnance, but in public stood by the embarrassed Perceval.
When Ward was tipped to succeed Richard Wharton at the Treasury board in September 1813, he wrote, ‘As I never shone in knowledge of the finances, certainly not of my own, I am wholly at a loss to conceive whence this report has originated’.
On Mulgrave’s leaving the Ordnance in December 1818, Ward was indifferent as to his own office, being within a year of the retirement threshold. When he asked the prime minister whether the Duke of Wellington would retain him, he was surprised to be ‘disowned’ on the grounds that Wellington was to have carte blanche as to his Ordnance colleagues. Ward concluded that he was thereby supposed not to be connected with the government at large. Charles Arbuthnot, whom Ward’s friend Vansittart had informed of his wounded feelings, hastened to reassure Ward that Liverpool was not ‘indifferent’ about him.