Henry Brougham

Scottish politician

• Born: September 19, 1778
• Birthplace: Edinburgh, Scotland
• Died: May 7, 1868
• Place of death: Cannes, France

Known as a reform politician during his British parliamentary career, Brougham helped in the reformation of the law and began the spread of universal education.

Early Life

The father of Henry Peter Brougham (brewm), also named Henry Brougham, was a squire from Westmoreland in England. He married Eleanor Syme, the widow of a Scottish minister and niece of the noted historian William Robertson. Her connections led the young Henry—a boy of tremendous talent who spoke clearly in his eighth month and read by the age of two years—to be reared and educated in Edinburgh, which was then still basking in the glow of the Scottish Enlightenment of the eighteenth century. Brougham remained a man of that background all of his life.

Brougham left Edinburgh High School at the head of his class in 1791, and while attending the University of Edinburgh, the best in Great Britain at the time, displayed an interest and ability in mathematics and the natural sciences; throughout his life he studied mathematics for relaxation. While at university and for the decade after he left in 1795, he and a group of talented and like-minded friends explored all topics and discussed new ideas.

In the Scotland of the day, young men of talent and ambition who lacked connections with the dominant Tory Party had few chances, and Brougham, an excellent speaker, chose law as the career least affected by this problem, though his heart was never fully in it. Though he passed the bar in 1800, he did not prosper. With his friends and during the time his languishing legal career gave him, he founded the Edinburgh Review , a quarterly periodical devoted to the topics of the day and reviews of books.

As a result of Brougham’s connection, which lasted his lifetime, and an article he later contributed in 1808, the Edinburgh Review became the leading Whig journal of the nineteenth century. His wide-ranging interests led him to be a cofounder of the Edinburgh Academy of Physics and a leading member of the Speculative Society, a debating group. He also wrote An Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers (1803), which, because of the section condemning slavery, brought him to the attention of British politicians.

Lacking progress in his legal career, Brougham joined his friends and, as had many Scots both before and since, made the journey to London to seek his fortune. Though enrolled at Lincoln’s Inn to study English law and later working in the office of a future judge, Brougham still could not put his heart into the law and never was well versed in it. Rather, his interests turned to politics. The two political parties of his day—Whigs and Tories—often resembled separate connections of aristocratic and gentry families more than groups pursuing policies flowing from principles, though the Whigs had a tradition of defending various liberties that could be traced back to the troubles of the seventeenth century and progressives could be found in the generally conservative Tory Party.

Brougham spent his first few years in London working with William Wilberforce’s Tory circle in the campaign for the abolition of slavery, and it appeared that Brougham, the radical and future lord chancellor of a reforming government, was headed for the ranks of the Tories. Nevertheless, by 1806 Brougham was more often found in Whig circles and received the first tangible sign of Whig favor when he was appointed secretary to a special mission to Portugal.

Back in England, Brougham represented certain Liverpool merchants before the House of Commons in an effort to change the government’s policy interfering with trade with neutral nations as part of the Napoleonic Wars; though unsuccessful, he displayed his brilliant oratory, making him known to the political nation. This event cemented his connection with the commercial and industrial classes in England, a connection that provided the backbone of the reform movements in politics for the rest of his life. Brougham became the point at which the Whig defense of ancient liberties joined with these increasingly powerful groups. Brougham, unfortunately, threw his lot in with the Whigs at just the moment they were losing power, finding themselves out of office from 1807 to 1830. Nevertheless, as an opposition, the Whigs badly needed to have an effective speaker in the House of Commons, and in 1810 Brougham was found a seat at Camelford through the patronage of the duke of Bedford.

Upon entering Parliament, Brougham, a tall, thin man with long limbs, prominent cheekbones, and dark hair, was not impressive in appearance. Two characteristics stood out to contemporaries: his piercing eyes, which he used to good effect in his speeches, and his turned-up nose, which Punch used to good effect in its caricatures of him. In conversation, as opposed to public orations, friends found his sharp tongue bearable because of his amiable nature and obvious goodwill. Of his personal life little is known. He married Mary Ann Spalding, a rich widow, in 1819, and they had two daughters, neither of whom survived to adulthood; she predeceased him in 1865.

Life’s Work

With his election to the House of Commons, Brougham entered into the arena where his talents as a knowledgeable orator could best be displayed, but his parliamentary life, legal career, and reforming interests were all of a piece. As a lawyer, Brougham had several moments of brilliance and fame. In 1811, with the events of the French Revolution and the Napoleonic Wars in mind, the Tory government determined to suppress any efforts within England that smacked of reform or revolution and prosecuted for seditious libel Leigh and John Hunt for a publication attacking military discipline.

Brougham’s successful defense brought the support of various radicals to the Whigs, as well as enhancing the Whig tradition of defending traditional liberties. His reputation was firmly established by his relationship with Queen Caroline. Caroline, partner in a disastrous and broken marriage with the Prince Regent, the future George IV , took advice from Brougham as well as naming him her attorney general when she became queen in 1820. When George tried to divorce her, Brougham’s defense before the House of Lords brought him enormous popularity in the kingdom for opposing the “corruption” of an extravagant king with notorious morals and helped the Whigs in their pose as the party of reform.

As the spokesperson for reform and the defender of liberties, Brougham was perhaps the most popular politician in England, a popularity culminating in 1830. Since his entrance into the House of Commons, he had represented first Camelford, next Winchelsea, then Knaresborough—all small boroughs under the control of Whig magnates. In 1829, his reputation as a reformer led to an electoral victory in Yorkshire, the largest and least controlled constituency in England. Brougham’s victory justified him in his belief that he was the spokesperson for all reformers.

As a parliamentarian Brougham brought his Scottish background, utilitarian perspectives, and critical eye to bear on the confused and confusing jungle of English law, and reforming that jungle occupied much of his life. During a famous six-hour speech in the House of Commons in 1828, he rehearsed an enormous litany of problems, most of which were eliminated within the next generation.

Universal education, another of Brougham’s goals, he pursued both within and without Parliament. In 1816, he succeeded in getting the House of Commons to appoint a committee to examine education of the poor, and, during the investigations, Brougham uncovered that endowments were often misused. Brougham helped establish mechanics’ institutes for the education of working people, a scheme he furthered by forming the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge to produce inexpensive pamphlets. Brougham also helped set up London University during the late 1820’s. He submitted several bills to Parliament during the 1830’s to establish a system of national education, something not accomplished until the twentieth century.

Though a brilliant and effective speaker in the House of Commons, Brougham came to have a reputation which prevented colleagues from trusting him. He made speeches in which he claimed his party’s support when no such support existed. He changed positions, intrigued for power (and sometimes profit), and always sought to garner all the limelight. As a critic of Tory government, he was without equal, but the Whigs, either in or out of government, could not give him their full confidence. Within six months of his great triumph in the election for Yorkshire, the “tribune of the people” had accepted a patent of nobility and abandoned any realistic claim to be able to speak for the people. Contemporaries saw him as unsteady and untrustworthy, too argumentative and superficial, an intriguer without moral fiber, a man whose character had fatal flaws.

In 1830, the long period of Tory government ended and the Whigs, under Lord Grey, prepared to assume office, but what should have been Brougham’s greatest moment never occurred. First offered the office of attorney general in the new government, he declined and threatened to ruin the Whigs’ opportunity to govern. The Whig leadership knew that Brougham was too unsteady in his party loyalty to be their spokesperson in the House of Commons and too vain to serve under another there, so, after a tense week of discussions, Brougham was made Lord Chancellor and raised to the peerage as Baron Brougham and Vaux, which meant that he sat in the House of Lords and could cause no trouble to the government in the more important House of Commons. With this decision to accept a peerage, Brougham removed himself from his natural arena, the House of Commons, and never, then or later, could play the role in government that he had long imagined and anticipated.

During his four years in government, Brougham worked diligently to clean up the backlog of cases in the Chancery and to streamline its procedures, a task he largely accomplished. In matters of law reform, he established the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council—his major reform accomplishment—which heard appeals from throughout the vast British Empire.

Following the end of the Whig ministry in 1834 (Brougham’s intriguing helped to bring about that end), Brougham continued in public life for nearly three decades but without the influence he had enjoyed earlier. For several years he sought greater power within Whig circles, but his reputation for ambition and intrigue dogged him in all of his parliamentary efforts at organization or leadership. He was not, however, as one of his enemies stated, “a political Ishmael.” As a member of the House of Lords he lacked a constituency and, though he often opposed the Whigs during the 1830’s, by the 1840’s he settled into the role of an active and informed lord taking an interest in selected parliamentary business.

Brougham was active as a judge in the House of Lords and especially in the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council. He maintained an interest in other legal reforms, as, for example, divorce, where in the House of Lords he continually brought in evidence and asked for statistics, activities that kept the issue alive until Lord Palmerston’s government passed the Matrimonial Causes Act in 1857. He served as president of the Law Amendment Association, founded in 1844, and as first president from 1857 until 1865 of the National Association for Promotion of Social Science, an organization of reformers interested in all aspects of English life. Articles and reviews on the wide range of topics that had always interested him continued to pour forth, though nothing of lasting value materialized. He spent increasing amounts of time at his house in Cannes, and there he died and was buried in 1868.

Significance

Henry Brougham was one of many reformers disgusted with an England that had progressed little in a century and a half despite the growth of its world power and industrial life. His criticisms helped end that England. Being a critic and almost always out of political power meant that many accomplishments were negative—bad laws not enacted, administrative decisions abandoned—but Brougham also brought about significant change. The structure of politics being fluid, ministers often adopted his proposals in order to stop his criticisms.

Brougham’s work for the abolition of slavery well represents the moral tone of the nineteenth century, and he spoke for the desires of the growing business classes for a society based on merit, restricted government, and respect for the individual. By uniting this moral tone and these classes to the aristocratic Whigs, he contributed to what would become the Liberal Party. Neither law nor education was a glamorous area in which to make a reputation, but Brougham, nevertheless, ridiculed the abuses and suggested alternatives, laying a foundation in both subjects upon which others could build.

As a result of Brougham’s efforts, formal education was no longer limited to the Anglican landowning class, and the way to universal education was charted, certainly his most lasting contribution to British life. On a different level, a small carriage designed for him became very popular, and his name became attached to it. All of this contributed to making him the most popular man in England during the 1820’s, a popularity he used well. As a founder of the Edinburgh Review and as a master of parliamentary debate in a century that valued such, Brougham stands in that select circle that made public life, and Parliament in particular, the focus of attention by most of the kingdom and led the British to seek change through peaceful politics, not violent revolution.

Bibliography

Aspinall, Arthur. Lord Brougham and the Whig Party. New York: Longmans, Green, 1927. Reprint. Hamden, Conn.: Archon Books, 1972. A political study of Brougham that assumes much knowledge of the period and places less emphasis on reforms of law and education. Brougham’s relationship with the Whigs is seen as erratic.

Bagehot, Walter. “The Character of Lord Brougham.” In The English Constitution and Other Political Essays. New York: D. Appleton, 1884. Written late in Brougham’s life by a leading political commentator, who does a fine job of catching the spirit of the times and Brougham’s challenges to that spirit.

Ford, Trowbridge H. Henry Brougham and His World: A Biography. 2 vols. Chichester, England: B. Rose, 1995-2001. A more recent biography, written by an author who has published several articles on Brougham. The biography focuses on Brougham’s legal reforms as well as his political career.

Hawes, Frances. Henry Brougham. London: Jonathan Cape, 1957. Well-written popular biography covering important events but little detail of political struggles. Good in overall interpretation.

Huch, Ronald K. Henry, Lord Brougham: The Later Years, 1830-1868—The “Great Actor.” Lewiston, N.Y.: Edward Mellen Press, 1993. Picks up where New’s book (see below) left off. After a chapter summarizing Brougham’s life through 1829, the book focuses on the later years of his life and career.

New, Chester W. The Life of Henry Brougham to 1830. Oxford, England: Clarendon Press, 1961. Stops at 1830 because of author’s death. Detailed, factual study of major events but fails to catch Brougham’s personality or reputation. A list of Brougham’s contributions to the Edinburgh Review is included.

Sockwell, W. D. Popularizing Classical Economics: Henry Brougham and William Ellis. New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1994. Recounts how Brougham and Ellis disseminated economic ideas to middle- and lower-class people at a time when these ideas were not well developed or widely understood. Describes how Brougham used the mechanics’ institutes and the Society for the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge to provide adult education.

Stewart, Robert. Henry Brougham, 1778-1868: His Public Career. London: Bodley Head, 1986. A well-written and full-scale life of Brougham that also uses political background well. Discusses all major and many minor events of Brougham’s life and does an excellent job of describing Brougham’s energy and reputation.

Swinfen, D. B. “Henry Brougham and the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council.” Law Quarterly Review 90 (1974): 396-411. A detailed study of Brougham’s greatest achievement, the court that brought uniform justice to the empire. Brougham’s role in the creation of the court as well as its early development is given good treatment.