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Lord George Bentinck and the Protectionists: a lost cause?

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

Angus Macintyre
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Extract

In The processes by which a political cause is defeated, there are significant, sometimes unexpected achievements. This proposition is as true of protectionism before and after the repeal of the corn laws as it is for example of Jacobitism or Gladstonian Home Rule. But while the supporters and fellow-travellers of free trade have had abundant attention, the protectionists have suffered from historical neglect redeemed in recent years only by the distinguished contributions of Robert Stewart and Travis Crosby. A certain absence both of historical sympathy and of interest in the arguments of the enemies of free trade has produced a widely-held view of the protectionists as mere revanchistes and political untouchables, ‘wild men of the right’ who had to be ‘dragged kicking and screaming from their last ditches’ while others made proper preparations for ‘a generation of bourgeois prosperity’. Norman Gash, the doyen of ‘the age of Peel’, while keenly aware of the mixed motives—intellectual, political and economic—which influenced men's conduct in 1845–6 and beyond, writes of the protectionists as ‘the dead weight’ of the conservative party: their cause was too monolithic, too representative of ‘a latent hostility to the other great interests of the country’, to form the basis of a national party; and their leader Lord George Bentinck was principally and destructively inspired by revenge.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 39 , December 1989 , pp. 141 - 165
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1989

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References

1 Stewart, Robert, The Politics of Protection. Lord Derby and the Protectionist Party 1841–1852 (Cambridge, 1971)Google Scholar, and The Foundation of the Conservative Party 1830–1867 (1978); Travis Crosby, L., English Farmers and the Politics of Protection 1815–1852 (Hassocks, Sussex, 1977)Google Scholar. Walker-Smith, Derek, The Protectionist Case in the 1840s (Oxford, 1933)Google Scholar, is still of value for its analysis of protectionist economic arguments.

2 Evans, Eric J., The Forging of the Modern State. Early industrial Britain 1783–1870 (1983), 269Google Scholar.

3 Gash, N., Reaction and Reconstruction in English Politics, 1832–52 (Oxford, 1965), 47–9, 137–8, 150Google Scholar. For his view of Bentinck, see his Sir Robert Peel. The Life of Sir Robert Peel after 1830 (1972), 578–9, 583, and Aristocracy and People. Britain 1815–1865 (1979), 240–1.

4 The fortunes of the protestant Ultras, Cobbettite, Philosophic, and Cobdenite radicals, the ‘Derby Dilly’, O'Connell's Irish party and the ‘Pope's Brass Band’, administrative reformers and the Peelites support this contention.

3 See Crosby, English Farmers, ch. v; Lawson-Tancred, Mary, ‘The Anti-League and the Corn Law crisis of 1846’, Historical Journal, iii. 2 (1960), 162–83CrossRefGoogle Scholar; Stewart, , Politics of Protection, 56–8Google Scholar, and Foundation of the Conservative Party, 206–12. Important treatments of protectionism in its local contexts are Davis, R. W., Political Change and Continuity 1760–1885; a Buckinghamshire study (Newton Abbot, 1972)Google Scholar, and Olney, R.J., Lincolnshire Politics, 1832–1885 (Oxford, 1973)Google Scholar.

6 Goulburn to Peel, 30 Nov. 1845, Memoirs by the Right Hon. Sir Robert Peel, ed. Stanhope, Earl and Cardwell, E. (2 vols., 1857–1858), ii. 203Google Scholar. For Peel's gradualist strategy for handling the corn law question before Ireland got in the way, see Prince Albert, memo. 25 Dec. 1845, The Letters of Queen Victoria, ed. Benson, A. C. and Esher, Viscount (First series, 3 vols., 1908), ii. 65–6Google Scholar. Stewart, , Foundation of the Conservative Party, 187–95Google Scholar, and Gash, Peel, ch. 13, take more pessimistic views of government/party relations.

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10 Gash, N., ‘Lord George Bentinck and his Sporting World’, in Pillars of Government and Other Essays on State and Society c. 1770–c. 1880 (1986), 162–75Google Scholar.

11 After 1846, he called himself a disciple of Pitt, whom he evidently regarded as far from holding ‘the cold blooded Philosophy of the Political Economists’: Bentinck to C. Eastland de Michele, 19 Oct. 1847, De Michele Papers, Bodleian Library, Ms Eng. lett. c. 667, fos. 173–8. The claim to being a Pittite was reasonable for one who was Canning's nephew by marriage and his private secretary. It must have had the powerful additional attraction of reaching back beyond Peel.

12 Bentinck to Lincoln, 6 July 1841, quoted in Stewart, , Politics of Protection, 5Google Scholar; to Portland, 17 Jan. 1846, Portland Papers, PwH, fo. 198.

13 Hansard's Parliamentary Debates, 3rd ser., lxxxvii. 183–4, 8 07 1846Google Scholar. For Boyd Hilton's brilliant analysis of the place of atonement in Peel's career, see ‘Peel: A Reappraisal’, H.J., xxii. 3 (1979), 585–614Google Scholar, and in much wider intellectual and political terms, his The Age of Atonement. The Influence of Evangelicalism on Social and Economic Thought, 1795–1865 (Oxford, 1988)Google Scholar.

14 Bentinck to Stanley, 20 Jan. 1846, Derby MSS, quoted in Stewart, , Politics of Protection, 58Google Scholar; to Portland, 20 Jan. 1846, Portland Papers, PwH, fo. 200.

15 Gash, , ‘Bentinck’, esp. 169–71Google Scholar. See also Seth-Smith, Michael, Lord Paramount of the Turf. Lord George Bentinck 1802–1848 (1971)Google Scholar. Gash's tone towards Bentinck has moderated somewhat over the years (cf.Peel, 595, 598). Robert Blake is generally more sympathetic, while attributing Bentinck's, conduct in 1846 to ‘some strange psychological upheaval which there is now no means of understanding’: The Conservative Party from Peel to Thatcher (1985), 60–5Google Scholar.

16 The Greville Memoirs, 1814–1860, ed. Strachey, L. and Fulford, R. (7 vols., 1938), v. 93–4 (6 June 1843)Google Scholar; v. 185 (5 July 1844); v. 303 (1 Mar. 1846), and esp. vi. 105–22 (28 Sept. 1848).

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19 Manners to Disraeli, 12 Oct. 1850, Disraeli Papers, Bodl. Lib., Box 106, BXX, fos. 67–70, an interesting account of Bentinck praising his ‘boldness of conception’ and administrative powers (‘a mind of the first order’). It ends by describing him as ‘the Strafford of the 19th Century’.

20 Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party. Journals and Memoirs of Henry Edward, Lord Stanley 1849–1869, ed. Vincent, John (Hassocks, Sussex, 1978), 90 (16 Dec. 1852)Google Scholar.

21 See Stewart, , Politics of Protection, 98–102Google Scholar; Foundation of the Conservative Party, 225–8, 232. For Newdegate's views and his published critiques (1849–52) of the statistics on which free traders relied, see Arnstein, Walter L., Protestant versus Catholic in Mid- Victorian England. Mr. Newdegate and the Nuns (1982), 279Google Scholar. Beresford's chief claim to fame is that technically he refounded the ‘Conservative’ party by sending out circulars on his own initiative and under that heading in Feb. 1848, to the fury of many, including Bentinck and Manners, who continued to call themselves ‘protectionists’.

22 Apart from the unmatched scale and modernity of his training and racing operations, Bentinck's interests included railway development, particularly in connection with his estate in Ayrshire and his father's properties there and in Nottinghamshire, extensive enclosure, navigation and draining schemes for King's Lynn and the Fens, agricultural improvements and hunting. The links between sport and politics in this period will bear further investigation. It was out hunting that Sir John Trollope remarked to Bentinck in Dec. 1845 that farmers and gentlemen were unanimous in their view of Peel: ‘Was there ever such a Rascal!!!’: Bentinck to Portland, 17 Dec. 1845, Portland Papers, PwH, fo. 188. Greville's, account (Memoirs, vi. 290–1, 10 04 1851)Google Scholar, of Stanley at Newmarket the ‘statesman’ in uproarious spirits surrounded by a crowd of ‘loose characters of every description’—is worth bearing in mind in thinking about populist conservatism.

23 He never married and is said, on Greville's unconfirmed testimony, to have cherished a pure and unselfish love for the duchess of Richmond. His scathing attitude to immoral behaviour or failure to pay debts makes him part of the increasingly decorous not to say puritanical face of the aristocracy discerned by Spring, David, ‘Aristocracy, social structure and religion in the early Victorian period’, Victorian Studies, vi (1962–1963), 263–80Google Scholar.

24 Quoted in Whibley, Charles, Lord John Manners and His Friends (1925), i. 241Google Scholar.

25 Bentinck to Disraeli, 14 Nov. 1847, Disraeli Papers, Box 89, BXX, fo. 42.

26 Stanley to Bentinck, 26 Dec. 1847, Derby MSS, quoted in Stewart, , Politics of Protection, 125Google Scholar.

27 Bentinck to Croker, 26 Dec. 1847, Croker Papers, iii. 157; Manners to Disraeli, 5 Jan. 1848, Disraeli Papers, Box 106, BXX, fo. 19; Disraeli to Manners, 16 Nov., 26 Dec. 1847, Monypenny and Buckle, iii. 29, 81. See also Disraeli, , Bentinck, 361–3Google Scholar.

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30 See Gash, , Reaction and Reconstruction, 192, n. 1Google Scholar; and Stewart, , Politics of Protection, 106–14Google Scholar, for the 1847 general election, when the protectionists won 42 of the 48 ‘agricultural’ and 47 of the 59 ‘mixed’ county seats. With 225–30 members they had more than held their own.

31 Times, 27 July 1847; Offer, Avner, Property and Politics 1870–1914. Landownership, Law, Ideology and Urban Development in England (Cambridge, 1981), 167–70Google Scholar.

32 Hansard, lxxxix. 773–802, 4 02 1847Google Scholar. Both the Whately and Devon Commissions had recommended state assistance for Irish railways. For the genesis of Bentinck's plan, for which he received advice from ‘King’ Hudson, George Stephenson and Samuel Laing, and his general views on policy towards the Famine, see Disraeli, , Bentinck, 89–90, 216–66Google Scholar; and Montague, R.J., ‘Relief and Reconstruction in Ireland 1845—1849. A Study of Public Policy during the Great Famine’ (unpublished D.Phil, thesis, Oxford Univ. 1976), esp. 130ffGoogle Scholar.

33 Bentinck to Portland, 19 Feb. 1847, Portland Papers, PwH, fo. 225. For the Irish contexts and consequences, see Nowlan, Kevin B., The Politics of Repeal (1965), 93–144Google Scholar.

34 Other examples of his tactical flexibility are his overtures to Russell and his part in the negotiations in Apr.—May 1846 for a moderately protectionist whig government until the plan was killed by Russell's firmness; he was then already opening up lines to Smith O'Brien and other Irish non-conservatives sympathetic to protection: Prest, , Russell, 212–16Google Scholar; Stewart, , Politics of Protection, 65–6Google Scholar; Nowlan, , Politics of Repeal, 103Google Scholar.

35 Disraeli, , Bentinck, 156–69, 187–96Google Scholar; Bentinck to Disraeli, 5 June 1846, Disraeli Papers, Box 89, BXX, fo. 3; to Portland, 9 June 1846, Portland Papers, PwH, fo. 220.

36 Stanley, to Croker, , 12 09 1847, Croker Papers, iii. 133–4Google Scholar.

37 See their correspondence in Jan. 1847, quoted in Stewart, , Politics of Protection, 99–101Google Scholar. For Bentinck's attacks on Lyndhurst, an early proponent of reconciliation, and on Ripon for an allegedly corrupt barter of patronage (an affair in which Gladstone, accused by Bentinck of having affirmed with ‘malice prepense’ what he knew to be untrue, became painfully involved), see Hansard, lxxxviii. 849–54, 18 08 1846Google Scholar; Morley, John, Life of William Ewart Gladstone (1905), i. 302Google Scholar.

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39 Standard, 23 Sept.; Times, 23 Sept. (leader); Evening Sun, 25 Sept. 1848. For the Scots protectionist William Aytoun, reviewing Disraeli's work, Bentinck stood for ‘active public virtue’: ‘Lord George Bentinck’, Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, lxxi (01 1852), 121–34Google Scholar. Intriguing links exist between the protectionist mentality and the contemporary revival of interest in chivalry and medievalism. Those upper-class, radically-minded men such as Edward Bulwer Lytton, Charles Tennyson d'Eyncourt and Col. Thomas Wildman identified by Girouard, Mark, The Return to Camelot. Chivalry and the English Gentleman (1981), 69–86Google Scholar, as prime exemplars of his theme all ended up as protectionists, as were the writers of Fraser's Magazine. Manners was heavily influenced by Kenelm Digby's The Broad Stone of Honour, one of the sources of the revival. In addition, Eglinton (of the Tournament) became a diligent protectionist whip in the Lords. He was a friend of William Aytoun.

40 Manners to Disraeli, 26 Sept. 1848, Disraeli Papers, Box 106, BXX, fo. 33. For Disraeli, it was ‘the greatest sorrow I have ever experienced’: Monypenny and Buckle, iii. 112–13.

41 [Archibald Alison], ‘Free Trade and Protection’, Blackwood's, Iv (02 1844), 259Google Scholar. His History of Europe is described by Mr Rigby in Coningsby as proving that Providence was on the side of the Tories. His baronetcy from Derby in 1852 was reasonable reward for political and literary services.

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43 Hansard, xcv. 176–7, 24 11 1847Google Scholar. Neither Stanley nor Bentinck was a high tory, but they certainly shared the ‘managerial philosophy’ which Boyd Hilton has associated with high toryism, and which he distinguishes from the more mechanistic liberal tory view: ‘Peel’, loc. cit., 607.

44 Moore, D. C., ‘The Corn Laws and High Farming’, Ec.H.R., and ser., xviii (1965), 544–61CrossRefGoogle Scholar. For Pusey, see the masterly account by Spring, David, The English Landed Estate in the Nineteenth Century; Its Administration (Baltimore, 1963), 139–51, 167Google Scholar.

45 Bentinck to Disraeli, 15 April 1846, Disraeli Papers, Box 89, BXX, fo. 2.

46 But cf. the powerful arguments and conclusions of Fairlie, Susan, ‘The Nineteenth Century Corn Law Reconsidered’, Ec.H.R., xviii (1965), 562–73CrossRefGoogle Scholar, amounting to a defence of Peel's course in 1846. Some of her statistics in ‘The Corn Laws and British Wheat Production, 1829–76’, Ec.H.R., xxii (1969), 88–113Google Scholar, e.g. those for increasing domestic wheat production to 1846 and for per capita wheat consumption (higher under the corn laws than by estimates for 1909) support a case for the success of protection. Her figures show the increase in wheat imports from 1847–8, but do not prove that demand could not have been met under the 1842 Law. It is clear that successive corn laws worked to reduce and to steady prices. See also Vample, Wray, ’The Protection of English Cereal Producers: the Corn Laws reassessed’, Ec.H.R., xxxiii (1980), 382–95CrossRefGoogle Scholar, for a picture of an increasingly effective system as between consumers and producers (and dealers) which nonetheless afforded ‘a significant degree of protection’ to producers before 1846.

47 See Almack, John jun, Character, Motives, and Proceedings of the Anti-Corn Law Leaguers (1843), esp. 40Google Scholar, and his Cheap Bread and Low Wages (1844); [Croker, ], ‘The Budget and the Dissolution’, Quarterly Review, lxviii (07–09 1841), 265Google Scholar.

48 [Alison, ], ‘Free Trade and Protection’, Blackwood's, lv (1844), 266–7, 385–400Google Scholar. Writing anonymously, he cited his own History of Europe as being the first to trace the decline of Rome to a free trade in grain. See also his Free Trade and a Fettered Currency (1847) in which he adopted the currency views of the Birmingham ‘school’, a position at variance with that of the protectionist leaders who were convertibility men, however strongly they criticised the restrictive effects of Peel's Bank Charter Act.

49 For Bentinck's views on colonial preference and revenue-producing duties, and his critique of Peel's tariff reductions and of the argument that imports governed exports, see Croker Papers, iii. 130–2, 134–6.

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51 See Read, Donald, Peel and the Victorians (Oxford, 1987), 186–241, 257–63Google Scholar, for an analysis of the newspapers' reactions to Peel, repeal of the corn laws and subsequent measures.

52 John Byles (1810–84), later Sir John, a Unitarian appointed justice of common pleas in 1858, was one of the lawyers whom Bentinck thought of bringing into parliament to present the protectionist case on his behalf.

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57 Quoted in Olney, R. J., ‘;The Politics of Land’, in The Victorian Countryside, ed. Mingay, G. E. (2 vols., 1981), i. 59Google Scholar.

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60 Arnstein, , Protestant versus Catholic, 23Google Scholar.

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69 Disraeli, Derby and the Conservative Party, intro., xiii–iv.

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