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Lord Liverpool and His Ministers

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Lord Liverpool – A Reappraisal of the First Conservative Prime Minister Synopsis Lord Liverpool was Prime Minister for an unbroken period of almost fifteen years, having previously held other high offices for ten years. It is unarguable that his government had two great achievements to its name; the triumph in the Napoleonic Wars and the wide ranging reforms during the 1820s which were without precedent in our modern history. In spite of this, he was rather taken for granted in his lifetime, his reputation declined swiftly after his death, and for many years thereafter he was disparaged if he was not ignored. Certainly, a more generous view has been taken by some recent commentators, but it is arguable that full justice is still not being done to his lengthy tenure of high office. Of course there have been reasons for the muted assessments, some fair, some less so. There is no doubt that Lord Liverpool’s performance as premier in the difficult years after Waterloo can be criticised, though the aftermaths of more recent victorious but costly wars provide evidence that political leadership in such periods is fraught with difficulty. He was perhaps fortunate to be able to call on the services of some very able people, Castlereigh, Canning, Wellington, and Peel to name a few, but it is strange that biographers and historians have extended the influence of these statesmen without real evidence into areas where they lacked interest, knowledge, or responsibility. It is of course inevitable that Lord Liverpool’s conservative outlook has reduced his chance of balanced treatment by liberal and Whig historians. This book is neither the full modern biography that Lord Liverpool lacks, nor, I hope, is it just a favourable polemic, since I give attention to weaknesses and failings as well as pointing to strengths and achievements. After a brief account of Lord Liverpool’s career, personality and beliefs, I consider different areas of government, with a view to identifying the extent to which Lord Liverpool was either the prime mover, or had a major input, and should accordingly be given credit or criticised. My main conclusions are that Lord Liverpool was a far more significant and capable figure than he has often been accounted, but that greatness probably just eluded him, as much because of the style as the substance of his lengthy premiership. 1 Lord Liverpool – A Reappraisal of the First Conservative Prime Minister Contents 1. Introduction 2. The Path to the Premiership, 1770-1812 2.1. Antecedents, Youth, and Apprenticeship 2.2. Senior Office under Addington and Pitt 2.3. Opposition, then Service in the Dysfunctional Portland Government 2.4. A Return to Effective Government under Percival 2.5. Lord Liverpool Assumes the Premiership, after a False Start 3. The Liverpool Government, 1812-1827 3.1. Securing Power 3.2. Winning the Napoleonic War 3.3. Post-War Traumas 3.4. The King, the Constitution and Ireland 3.5. A Slow-Motion Cabinet Reshuffle 3.6. Liberal Conservatism at Home and Abroad 4. Lord Liverpool’s Persona and Private Life 4.1. A Man Misjudged – Hidden Strengths and Overstated Weaknesses? 4.2. The Political Philosophy of the First Conservative Prime Minister 4.3. Lifestyle and Interests 5. War Minister 5.1. Strategy before 1809 5.2. Strategy after 1809 5.3. Military Organisation and Logistics 5.4. Retention of Public Support 5.5. A Great War Minister? 6. The Foreign Policies of the Liverpool Government 6.1. Preamble 6.2. Castlereigh and the Congress of Vienna 6.3. Castlereigh and the Later Congresses 2 6.4. The Decline in British Influence 6.5. Castlereigh’s Problematic Legacy 6.6. Canning and the Americas 6.7. Canning’s Greatest Coup 6.8. A Stabilising Influence 7. First Lord of the Treasury 7.1. The Making of Economic and Financial Policy 7.2. The Economic Storm and Government Shortcomings after 1814 7.3. Financial Dilemmas after 1814 7.4. Disputes over the Currency 7.5. The Corn Law 7.6. An Early Example of ‘Boom and Burst’ 7.7. A Last Word on Lord Liverpool’s Stewardship of the Treasury 8. The Struggle to Maintain Order in Britain and Ireland 8.1. Lord Sidmouth and the Role of a Home Secretary 8.2. From Luddism to Cato Street 8.3. Peel and Reform 8.4. Containment in Ireland 9. The Politics of Power Retention 9.1. Lord Liverpool’s Premiership – Throwback or New Type 9.2. The Struggle for Supremacy between Kings, Cabinets, and Premiers 9.3. Lord Liverpool’s Retention of Power during the Regency 9.4. The Affair of Queen Caroline and its Aftermath 9.5. The Parliamentary Balance during Lord Liverpool’s Premiership 9.6. Creation of a Dominant Premiership 9.7. Political Management during the 1820s 10. A Final Accounting 10.1. A Real Prime Minister? 10.2. An Effective Prime Minister? 10.3. A Great Prime Minister? References 3 Lord Liverpool – A Reappraisal of the First Conservative Prime Minister List of Figures 1. Charles Jenkinson, 1st Earl of Liverpool 2. Robert Banks Jenkinson 3. Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool 4. Fife House, London 5. Walmer Castle 4 1. Introduction On the list of British Prime Ministers ordered by length of service, the first two entries, Sir Robert Walpole and William Pitt the Younger will be familiar to those with an interest in British history, not least perhaps because of fairly recent popular biographies. However, the next name, Robert Banks Jenkinson, 2nd Earl of Liverpool is less well known than theirs, and certainly than some of the following names which include, William Gladstone, Lord North, Margaret Thatcher, Tony Blair, and Winston Churchill. Lord Liverpool assumed the highest political office shortly after his predecessor, Spencer Percival, was shot dead by an assassin in the parliament building at Westminster, in June 1812, and remained Prime Minister until April 1827, resigning a few weeks after suffering a stroke, which disabled him emotionally, and to a large degree, mentally and physically, for the remaining year and a half of his life. Prior to accepting the chief office he had been in government for sixteen years, holding in that period each of the three offices of state which were then next in importance, Foreign Secretary, Home Secretary, and Secretary of State for War and Colonies, and he had already declined appointment as Prime Minister twice, in 1806 and again in 1809. All in all, Lord Liverpool held ministerial office for 33 years beginning as a member of the Board of Control for India in 1793 at the age of 23, and he led his ‘party’ in the House of Lords for 24 years from 1803, for all but a few months as chief government spokesman in that chamber. Of course, to be in office for a long period is no proof of distinction as at least one name on the above list, Lord North, known to posterity with some justification, as ‘the man who lost America’, demonstrates. While not viewed as negatively as that premier, Lord Liverpool has been either ignored or denigrated by many writers about his times, not least as a consequence of Benjamin Disraeli’s description of him as ‘the Arch-Mediocrity’ in his political novel, Coningsby, written in the 1840s. I give a fuller quotation; ‘The Arch-Mediocrity who presided, rather than ruled, over this Cabinet of Mediocrities ... had himself some glimmering traditions of political science... In a subordinate position his meagre diligence and his frigid method might not have been without value; but the qualities that he possessed were misplaced; nor can any character be conceived less invested with the happy properties of a leader. In the conduct of public affairs his disposition was exactly the reverse of that which is the characteristic of great men. He was peremptory in little questions, and great ones he left open.’ 5 The wholesale condemnation of a political generation rather than just Lord Liverpool, seems the more telling because Disraeli was at least nominally of similar political inclination to his targets, even if he had his own axe to grind in wishing to steer his party away from the direction taken by Lord Liverpool and the latter’s protégé and political heir, Sir Robert Peel. Nonetheless, though some of his specific points now come over as rather cheap jibes, (meagre diligence is a strange descriptor for a man who worked himself literally to death), there are others like the claimed attitude to ‘great questions’ which require attention from anyone seeking to provide a balanced assessment. Twenty years later, in Lord Liverpool’s first and most comprehensive biography, Professor C.D. Yonge attempted a rehabilitation, but for all his industry and perhaps excessive admiration for his subject, he failed in that objective, as is well illustrated by a damning contemporary review of his work to be found in the Times newspaper archives. In fact it was to be the best part of a hundred years after Lord Liverpool’s death before more equitable assessments began to receive consideration when produced by the likes of the military historian, Fortescue, the historian of the Tory Party, Feiling, and thereafter, in studies by Brock, and Gash. Their contributions made it possible to comprehend why those who were accorded more attention and respect by historians, if not by Disraeli, for example, Castlereigh, Canning, and Peel, came to regard Lord Liverpool’s leadership as indispensable, and were content to serve for long periods in subordinate roles. Indeed by the time Briggs wrote the following lines in 1974 it appeared that rehabilitation was complete To his public life he brought qualities which, in aggregate, few prime ministers have equalled.
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