Charles James Fox

English politician

• Born: January 24, 1749
• Birthplace: London, England
• Died: September 13, 1806
• Place of death: Chiswick, Devon, England

Spending decades of his political career in opposition, Fox associated aristocratic Whiggery and the Whig Party, which he came to lead, with the defense of liberty against the exercise of arbitrary power by the king and the king’s ministers.

Early Life

Charles James Fox was the third and favorite son of Henry Fox, later first Lord Holland, who had earned a well-deserved reputation for venality as paymaster of the Forces and manager of the House of Commons. With his father’s abundant wealth placed at his disposal, Fox was reared in an atmosphere of luxury and privilege exceptional even by the standards of the eighteenth century aristocracy. He attended Eton in 1758 and four years later accompanied his father on an extended journey to the Continent. He enrolled in Hertford College, Oxford, in 1764, and in the spring of 1766 left for several years of touring in France and Italy, living a life of unfettered luxury and often of dissipation. He was a dandy, and his large frame, not yet resembling the corpulent figure so familiar from the portraits and caricatures of his mature years, was often noticed at the gaming clubs of the day. Gambling was to remain his most enduring vice, and despite his considerable wealth, it often left him in straitened financial circumstances. His dissolute life as a gambler was complemented by his sexual escapades.

Even in his early manhood, however, debauchery was tempered by more refined pleasures. He had worked hard at Oxford in mathematics and in the classics, which he mastered beyond the mere collection of felicitous Latin phrases that embellish the oratory of eighteenth and nineteenth century politicians. He had a facility for languages, read poetry, and developed a love for the theater that may well have contributed to the powerful impact he was to have as an orator, if not to his acknowledged dexterity in debate. He was, in short, an eighteenth century “man of parts.” In addition, he acquired the comforts of domesticity as a result of his prolonged liaison with his mistress, Elizabeth Armistead. Theirs was a relationship that began in the early 1780’s and lasted until Fox’s death, their secret marriage of 1795 not disclosed publicly until 1802.

Life’s Work

In March, 1768, while still underage, Charles James Fox was elected a member of Parliament for the family’s pocket borough of Midhurst in Sussex. While his career was later to be identified with relentless opposition to governmental infringement on liberty, in his early years Fox was a loyal supporter of the government and a reliable member of what was then called the court interest. Despite the repeated election to Parliament in 1769 of the outlaw John Wilkes by the defiant freeholders of the county of Middlesex, Fox supported seating Wilkes’s opponent. He argued for the independence of the House of Commons as a branch of the constitution (along with the Crown and the House of Lords) and reasserted the traditional right of the House to choose its own members. The House of Commons, in this case, was to be independent of the electorate, a member of Parliament presumably being an independent representative rather than a mere delegate executing the instructions of a constituency. Fox’s interpretation of representative government was to be expanded subsequently, but the independence of the House of Commons—albeit from the alleged influence of the Crown if no longer from the people—was to remain one of his constant concerns.

Already a junior lord of the treasury, Fox was promoted to a lordship of the Admiralty in February, 1770, in the new government led by Lord North. He seemed to be following the pattern expected of a son of a famous officeholder, well on his way to an even greater place in government. Yet even in these early years, Fox displayed considerable political independence. He opposed the Royal Marriages Act of 1772, whereby the marriage of a royal prince or princess required the approval of the sovereign. (Perhaps he was influenced by the example of his parents’ romance and elopement.) He supported the claims of Dissenters for relief of ministers and university students from the requirement of subscription to the Thirty-nine Articles. Fox resigned his office in February, 1772, possibly because of his intended opposition to the Royal Marriages Bill, but was recruited once again as a lord of the treasury in December of that year. His final departure from the North government resulted from his insistence upon punitive measures being pressed against a printer, whose paper imputed improprieties to the speaker of the House. Forcing North to fulfill a pledge and pursue the matter, Fox embarrassed the prime minister, and George III directed that he be dismissed.

After his dismissal, Fox became associated with the grievances of the American colonists. He did not question the right of Parliament to legislate for the colonies or the propriety of the doctrine of virtual representation, but he thought it inexpedient for Parliament to exercise such power. Fox seems to have been particularly influenced by the argument of Edmund Burke, then one of the marquess of Rockingham’s lieutenants, that the bonds of empire rested upon ties of custom and affection between the colonists and the mother country. He also welcomed the growing respectability of the idea of party as publicized by Burke—a body of principled and honorable men in opposition to the government. During the years of the American Revolution, Fox gravitated toward the Rockingham faction, an opposition group that supported the Americans. It also attempted, with some success, to arrogate to itself exclusively the historic name of the Whig Party, which was associated with the Revolution Settlement and the limitation of royal power.

Just as Fox had defended the independence of the Commons from the people during the Wilkite affair, he came to associate the government’s disastrous American policy with the excessive and adverse influence of the Crown upon the House of Commons. The Associations movement of 1779-1780 facilitated that argument. Various county associations, primarily composed of respectable country gentlemen, objected to excessive taxation and sought to remedy the problem by reducing the allegedly wasteful expenditure of the Crown. Fox argued that the best way to do so was to reduce the number of placemen, those who held office under the Crown and also had seats in the House of Commons. This advocacy of “economical reform,” as it was called, was taken up by the Rockingham Whigs. Fox went beyond most of his new colleagues, however, in advocating parliamentary reform, which then signified reducing the duration of parliaments and redistributing parliamentary constituencies, particularly adding members to the counties. During this time of countrywide meetings by country associations, Fox helped to organize the householders of Westminister, one of the most open parliamentary constituencies, which also contained some radical elements. Returned as a member of Parliament for the city of Westminister in October, 1780, Fox continued to represent it until his death. Thus, the man who had opposed their excessive influence a decade earlier was now hailed as a man of the people.

The North government collapsed in early 1782, humiliated by defeat at the hands of the Americans. It was succeeded by a coalition of Rockingham Whigs and followers of Lord Shelburne. The death of Lord Rockingham after only a few months in office and the personal animosity between Fox and Shelburne, however, led Fox to resign when Shelburne was chosen by George III as his prime minister. Fox justified his resignation by contending that the cabinet should be collectively responsible for recommending a minister to the king, and by inflating his differences with Shelburne about the terms of the prospective peace with America to a matter of great principle.

At the head of the Rockingham Whigs in opposition early in 1783, Fox joined forces with his old opponent, Lord North, to defeat the Shelburne government after it had negotiated the Treaty of Paris (1783). Fox and North then forced themselves on the king, who could find no other ministers to command the Commons. The alliance was looked upon as a cynical grab for power by men who had for so long opposed each other, presumably on matters of principle. Fox once again became foreign secretary, now in the coalition government nominally led by the duke of Portland. The unpopularity of the Fox-North alliance was intensified by the government’s proposed India Act in late 1783, originally drawn up by Burke. It would have replaced the existing administration of India with a board of seven commissioners, named in the bill, who, for a stipulated period, would control the vast patronage associated with Indian affairs. Each of the prospective commissioners was associated with either Fox or North. Fox, then, was open to the charge of venality. Moreover, by naming the commissioners in the bill, the ministers were perceived as having gone too far in redressing the balance of the constitution and infringed on the king’s rightful powers. George III, intent upon ridding himself of a ministry forced upon him and reclaiming the king’s prerogative to name his own ministers, persuaded the House of Lords to defeat the India Act, dismissed his ministers, and appointed William Pitt the Younger as his prime minister.

In 1783, then, Fox commenced a period in opposition that would last more than two decades. During almost all of that time, William Pitt was prime minister, and politics assumed the dimension of a personal feud between the two. Fox was unable to take advantage of Pitt’s initially weak support in the Commons, and the election of 1784 produced a majority for the king’s ministers. The opposition, composed of the former Rockingham Whigs led by Fox and many of North’s supporters who joined them, cultivated the idea that Pitt had acquired control unconstitutionally and that the king and his ministers were engaged in the flagrant abuse of power.

The Regency Crisis of 1788-1789 provided Fox with a seemingly splendid opportunity. George III had apparently gone mad. Fox, the champion of limiting royal power, now argued that the prince of Wales become regent immediately, with the full powers of the monarch. In the tradition of eighteenth century filial opposition, the prince of Wales had attracted a coterie of followers opposed to the court. Fox, foremost among them, expected to be carried into office by the prince. The king recovered and resumed power, however, and Fox, whom he detested and blamed for his son’s dissolute life, was once again consigned to the political wilderness.

Fox welcomed the outbreak of the French Revolution, which he, like most Englishmen, associated with England’s Glorious Revolution a century earlier. As it became more violent and democratic, and as radical activities by extraparliamentary groups became more widespread in England, popular enthusiasm for the revolution was transformed into opposition. When the war between Great Britain and France came to be perceived as a war for national survival, Fox persisted in defending the revolution and continued to emphasize its similarity to the Glorious Revolution and to the American Revolution. He painfully witnessed the reduction of the Whig opposition, as former colleagues began to join or support Pitt’s government. Burke had denounced the revolution as early as 1790, and the substantial group of Whigs led by the duke of Portland joined the Pitt government in 1794.

Throughout the years of revolution, Fox vigorously defended freedom of speech and association from the infringement of government. He was outspoken in opposition to such repressive legislation as the Treason and Sedition bills and opposed the prosecution of treason trials. At the same time, while he recognized that the revolution was not an unqualified benefit, he supported negotiations with France and an end to hostilities. He was increasingly beleaguered, however, and, in 1797, Fox and the rump of Whigs who had remained loyal to him seceded from Parliament. Fox remained barred from office by the animosity of George III, even when Pitt resigned in 1801 and when Pitt himself wished to recruit Fox as a cabinet minister in 1804. A realignment of political factions and Pitt’s death in 1806 finally resulted in a coalition government of the Foxite Whigs and the supporters of Lord Grenville. It was called the Ministry of All the Talents, and Fox became foreign secretary once again. He died a few months thereafter, in September, 1806, and was buried in Westminster Abbey.

Significance

Having spent most of his political career in opposition, Charles James Fox had become associated with a variety of causes: limiting the power of the Crown, maintaining the independence of the House of Commons, supporting a formed party in opposition, and advocating collective responsibility of the cabinet rather than a government of departments. He had also supported parliamentary as well as economical reform.

While his association with most of these causes was rooted in the practical political necessity of finding issues that could rally support in opposition to the king’s ministers, Fox and the Whig Party eventually came to regard some of them as important principles. Above all, Fox and his attenuated Whig Party thought of themselves as the party of liberty, which they were to defend against the arbitrary assaults of the king and his ministers—hence, Fox’s passionate defense of individual liberty, which he believed was endangered in the 1790’s by policies of Pitt’s government. Nor is it surprising that the one achievement of the Talents’ Ministry was the abolition of the slave trade, passed only a few months after Fox’s death. It was a measure that Fox had ardently supported since it had first been raised in Parliament in 1789. The slave trade and slavery, he contended, violated the individual’s fundamental right to personal liberty, much less the civil and religious liberties that he and his colleagues so eloquently defended. Fox’s passion for liberty, however, did not signify a predilection for democracy. Above all, Fox was an aristocrat. Indeed, he thought of the Whig Party as an aristocratic group that could mediate between the Crown on the one hand and the populace on the other.

Fox became at least as important in death as he had been in life. His memory was kept alive by Fox clubs that commemorated his association of the Whig Party with liberty. His nephew, Lord Holland, became a custodian of his uncle’s memory. He and others sought, successfully, to associate the Whig Party in the early nineteenth century with the name of Fox and with the defense of civil and religious liberties.

Bibliography

Carswell, John. The Old Cause: Three Biographical Studies in Whiggism. London: Cresset Press, 1954. An attempt to place Fox in the tradition of the seventeenth century Whigs who defended the “old cause” of English liberty against the arbitrary exercise of royal power.

Christie, Ian R. Wars and Revolutions: Britain, 1760-1815. Cambridge, Mass.: Harvard University Press, 1982. An outstanding treatment of the political history of the period, which diminishes the role of political parties and of Fox, who emerges as an ineffective politician, deficient in character.

Derry, John W. Charles James Fox. London: Batsford, 1972. A detailed, highly unsympathetic treatment of Fox, who is portrayed as a rogue, an opportunist, and an inept politician.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Politics in the Age of Fox, Pitt, and Liverpool: Continuity and Transformation. Houndsmills, Basingstoke, England: Macmillan, 1990. Describes how the British political system was able to withstand the challenges of war, the French Revolution, and the social and economic transformations of the late eighteenth century.

Mitchell, L. G. Charles James Fox. New York: Oxford University Press, 1992. Mitchell assesses Fox’s political achievements and contributions to the Whig Party, describing how Fox became a politician through circumstance rather than inclination.

‗‗‗‗‗‗‗. Charles James Fox and the Disintegration of the Whig Party, 1782-1794. London: Oxford University Press, 1971. Considers Fox as a man of great principle, who often sacrificed opportunities for office. The author argues that the Whigs developed their creed in these dozen years of opposition, and makes the case for Fox as an astute political leader.

O’Gorman, Frank. The Whig Party and the French Revolution. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1967. A highly detailed study of parliamentary politics in which Fox emerges favorably.

Reid, Loren. Charles James Fox: A Man for the People. Columbia: University of Missouri Press, 1969. A favorable treatment of Fox based upon an analysis of his parliamentary speeches.