The Political Arts of Lord Liverpool

Abstract

After her third consecutive election victory in 1987, Margaret Thatcher chose as her holiday reading Norman Gash's biography of Lord Liverpool. It was a fitting tribute from one remarkably durable prime minister to another. No one now thinks of Liverpool as a mediocrity, let alone an arch one, and the fact that many of his colleagues were more flamboyant than he was merely adds to his stature. His achievements as a statesman are emphasised by Gash, who depicts him as ‘one of the great through unacknowledged architects of the liberal, free trade Victorian state’, the first exponent of a public doctrine which, in both its economic and its moral components, would be taken up triumphantly by his successors—Peel, Gladstone, and (it might be argued) Thatcher. His achievements as a politician, meanwhile, can be measured by the fact that he sustained a fifteen year premiership, broken only by his stroke in February 1827, during a period of extreme social and economic difficulty. This seems all the more remarkable in view of the fact that the eighteenth century had seemed to demonstrate that in order to run a stable administration, a first lord of the treasury needed to be in the House of Commons.

William Huskisson and the Rhetoric of Free Trade

“…To acknowledge the scope of Huskisson's achievements, an appreciation of economic conditions at the turn of the nineteenth century and, especially, in the wake of the Napoleonic Wars is required (see Gash ). As Boyd Hilton argued, ‘Liverpool's government… found itself faced with issues in which it was obliged to take sides, to decide whether it should try to roll back the war and return to “93”, or whether, by standing aside and refusing to do anything at all, it should endorse and ratify the changed relationships which war had brought’ (Hilton , p. 152). Mindful of this context, navigation, silk, and food form the focus of this brief survey of Huskisson's economic views and agenda…”

“…Moreover, in his prescriptions in the early 1820s it is clear that, as manufacturing assumed a greater importance in his overall plans for economic reform, the justification for agricultural protection subsided. Hilton has also recognised that Lord Liverpool deliberately placed Huskisson on the select committee to investigate the causes of agricultural distress in 1821 to stifle demands for increased agricultural protection (Hilton , p. 159).…”

“…Prior to that, from 1814 to 1823 he had assumed the role of Commissioner of the Woods, Forests and Land Revenues, scarcely a position which merited his labours, and so he thought, carrying out the post ‘less from a desire to hold it, than in the expectation of being removed to some other’ (Escott ). Notwithstanding his failure to enter the Cabinet until November 1823, Huskisson was amongst those privy to policymaking decisions ‘on the backstairs’ during the earlier part of Liverpool's tenure (Hilton , p. 157). Before his untimely death at the wheels of the Rocket , George Stephenson's pioneering locomotive, in 1830, he served as Treasurer of the Navy between February 1823 and September 1827, and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies between September 1827 and May 1828 (Brady , pp.…”

“…She draws on several sources: Brady (), Fay (), Wright (), and Melville (). Boyd Hilton () offers the most detailed comprehensive survey of Huskisson's economic policy and also emphasises Huskisson's importance prior to 1823 in Hilton (). More recently, Simon Garfield (), combines biographical information with an account of the construction and opening of the Liverpool–Manchester railway.…”