The Political Arts of Lord Liverpool

William Huskisson and the Rhetoric of Free Trade

“…She draws on several sources: Brady (1967), Fay (1951), Wright (1831), and Melville (1931). Boyd Hilton (1977) offers the most detailed comprehensive survey of Huskisson's economic policy and also emphasises Huskisson's importance prior to 1823 in Hilton (1988). More recently, Simon Garfield (2002), combines biographical information with an account of the construction and opening of the Liverpool-Manchester railway.…”

“…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.…”

The Economists and the Combination Laws: A Reappraisal

“… 21 This strategy could be seen as a corollary of Liverpool’s system of government, based on the separation of “policy from politics” (Hilton 1988, p. 165; see also Hilton 2006, pp. 274–286).…”