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Norman Gash (1912–2009)

Teoksen Aristocracy and People: Britain, 1815-1865 tekijä

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If asked to name Britain’s greatest prime ministers, most people with a passing familiarity with the country’s history are likely to identify such familiar figures as Winston Churchill, William Gladstone, Lord Palmerston, or Margaret Thatcher. One name that is likely to go unmentioned, however, is that of Robert Banks Jenkinson, the second Earl of Liverpool, even though an excellent case can be made that he deserves to be remembered as one of Britain’s finest leaders. As Norman Gash points out at the start of his biography of Liverpool, whereas most prime ministers are remembered for leading their country to victory in war, or for coping with economic and social turmoil, or for introducing successful domestic policies, Liverpool is almost alone in distinguishing himself in all three categories, serving as prime minister through the climax of the Napoleonic Wars and during the difficult yet ultimately successful transition back to peacetime life. Yet while leaders such as Churchill and David Lloyd George are honored today for similar achievements, Liverpool is largely forgotten.

One factor in why Liverpool isn’t better remembered may be the conventionality of his childhood and personal life. While many of his prime ministerial counterparts experienced dramatic personal lives, Liverpool experienced an upbringing typical for his time. His father Charles Jenkinson was a career politician who, as was standard for the time, grew wealthy from the various sinecures he held. With his mother’s death barely a month after his birth, young Robert spent frequent time with relatives and at boarding schools, where he applied himself to his studies. After a couple of years at Oxford University, Jenkinson spent several months in France. His time there coincided with the outbreak of the French Revolution, a momentous period his firsthand observation of which did much to shape his burgeoning political views.

With his father a friend of the king, Robert had little difficulty winning a seat in Parliament. Establishing a reputation as a convincing and effective speechmaker, he became a junior minister in William Pitt’s administration and enjoyed a rapid rise. With Pitt’s resignation in 1801 Lord Hawkesbury (as Jenkinson became known when his father was made Earl of Liverpool in 1796) became Foreign Secretary in Henry Addington’s ministry. When Pitt returned Hawkesbury became Home Secretary, and was even offered the premiership when Pitt resigned for the second and final time in 1806, but declined the opportunity. After a brief period in opposition, Hawkesbury returned to office as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, in which capacity he served until Spencer Perceval’s assassination in June 1812 created a vacuum that Liverpool (the earldom to which Hawkesbury succeeded in 1808) was selected to fill.

Gash devotes well over half of his book to chronicling Liverpool’s premiership, which covered some of the most tumultuous years in Britain’s history. Foremost on his agenda was his country’s ongoing war with Napoleonic France, to which was soon added a war with the United States. In waging both Liverpool enjoyed good fortune, as in less than three years Britain had achieved victory over France and gained a peace in America that preserved Britain’s hold on Canada. Yet the transition to peace proved no less challenging, as his government struggled with reducing defense expenditures while simultaneously coping with social unrest fueled by an economic recession. Political radicalism posed a persistent challenge, with the thwarting of the Cato Street Conspiracy in 1820 doing little to assuage the unease created by the attempt to assassinate Liverpool and his cabinet in one fell swoop. And persisting through all of this was the ongoing difficulties posed by the unpopular king George IV, whose marital woes were exploited by the radicals as a weapon against the administration.

Liverpool managed these affairs through a combination of prudent judgment and good interpersonal skills. Throughout the book Gash notes his ability to get along with people of often difficult temperament, which aided his ability to hold together a government containing ministers of conflicting viewpoints. Nevertheless, the strain inevitably told on his well-being, and the loss of his beloved wife Louisa in 1822 deprived him of his main source of emotional support. Though Liverpool soon remarried, the exhausting toll of his job undoubtedly played a role in triggering the massive cerebral hemorrhage Liverpool suffered in April 1827, which forced his retirement and contributed to his death a year later.

In his introduction Gash states that his goal in writing this book was ”simply to uncover more about Liverpool as a person and as a politician.” Though he declaims any pretensions to having written the definitive account of his subject’s life and times, his modesty shouldn’t diminish his achievement with this book. With it he gives readers a lucid account of Liverpool’s career, one grounded in both his subject’s personal papers and the author’s own masterful grasp of the politics of the era. While it may not be the comprehensive study of Liverpool that Gash believes is warranted, it is nonetheless a good overview of Liverpool’s life and one that makes a convincing case for why he deserves far greater recognition than he has received until now.
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Merkitty asiattomaksi
MacDad | Jul 22, 2022 |
Points of interest:
"In the history of political party in this country the short reign of William IV is equalled in importance perhaps only by that of Charles II."
In 1841 or 2 the Chancellor of the Exchequer refused the Chiltern Hundreds to an MP because he did not want to be a party to a corrupt compromise.
The end of Court influence in elections can be exactly dated, because in 1845 the Queen refused to intervene in a bye-election at Windsor.

As I have carried out a similar investigation with similar materials, I feel that here, for once, is a book that I can appraise with some authority.
I am not very impressed. There are plenty of facts but not much evaluation of them. There is a 32 page section on the Price of Politics, a 17 page one on Electoral Violence, a 23 page one on Corrupt Boroughs, a 30 page one on Influence and Control, a 31 page one on Compromise Elections. But all that these prove is that elections were often expensive, sometimes violent, sometimes corrupt, sometimes affected by the influence on the voters of various interests, sometimes decided by negotiation. We know all that already: what we would like to know is the relative importance of these factors. No attempt is made at assessing this.
It might be argued that the author could not have done so with the material available. For such an investigation the local press is essential, and the files at Colindale were not accessible during the years he must have been writing this book. But in that case he should have written a less pretentious volume. Certain chapters are useful - especially the ones on the Influence of the Court, 'Government' Boroughs, and Berkshire Politics - and there are plenty of interesting details in all of them. But this does not add up to a study of politics in the age of Peel - only to some contributions towards such a study. There is still room for a Namier in the nineteenth century.
(notes written 1953 or 1954)
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jhw | Apr 17, 2006 |

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