Читать книгу The Remarkable Lushington Family - David Taylor - Страница 17
ОглавлениеStephen Lushington’s long active life and career spanned a period of British history marked by a series of major political, social, and economic reforms. He had been born toward the close of the “glorious eighteenth century” when, despite the loss of the American colonies, the Empire upon which the sun would never set was in its ascendancy. In particular, British interests were being established in India through the East India Company. By the time of Lushington’s death, the British Empire was at its zenith and, in so many aspects, the nation had changed beyond recognition with the franchise extended to include many working-class men and much of the balance of national wealth transferred from the countryside to the new industrial centers of the North of England.
The industrial revolution, in its infancy when Lushington was born, gained momentum through the nineteenth century and resulted in enormous social and economic upheavals. Machinery replaced centuries old cottage industries, and men and women whose work and services had previously tied them to the land, suddenly found a freedom to migrate from the countryside to work in factories in cities such as Manchester, Liverpool, and Leeds.
While the wealthy entrepreneurs lined their pockets with new money, the living conditions of so many of those they employed in factories and other places of manufacture were appalling. Although Great Britain avoided the violent political upheavals and revolutions of many of her neighbors in mainland Europe, the possibility of such events was always close at hand. Frustration and anger were demonstrated in the countryside by the “Swing Riots,” which sometimes led to the destruction of agricultural machinery. This was followed by the Chartist demonstrations of the 1840s, which brought the demands of the disenfranchised to London.
There were some among the ruling classes who carried a genuine sense of conviction that their wealth and place in society was God-given, carrying with it responsibilities and duties not just to those in their employment but also to those living in the villages and hamlets on the great landed estates they owned. However, such individual philanthropic acts and enlightened responses could never be enough to address the national problem. Parliament would need to act.
Lushington’s legal and parliamentary career has been comprehensively covered elsewhere, and it is not intended to cover that ground again in such detail.1 Instead, what follows is an overview of his pursuit of reform, both in Parliament and the courts, highlighting his more significant contributions in both arenas.
Parliament
After his mother’s failure to obtain for him a government appointment, Lushington turned his eyes to the House of Commons. He sought help from the family of his university friend, Edward Harbord whose father Lord Suffield, was keen to establish an “interest” in the County of Norfolk where he had property. The parliamentary system at this time was unreformed. The franchise was limited and voting rights were restricted to “forty-shilling freeholders.”2 Moreover, the growing migration from country to town and city, resulting from the industrial revolution, led to disproportional representation in Parliament from “rotten boroughs” in which a very small electorate could be used by a patron to gain unrepresentative influence in the House of Commons.
Lord Suffield was one of many wealthy and powerful landowners who used their power to have a controlling influence in Parliament by nominating and supporting a man of his choice as the local member. Thus, it was that, in 1806, his son and Lushington were elected as the two members for Great Yarmouth. There had been some question regarding the conduct of their election campaign, and the matter was referred to a parliamentary committee. No irregularity was found, and the two men duly took their seats in the House of Commons in March 1807. Edward wrote to his father, “Lushington and myself received the warmest congratulations from every side; a hundred hands were held out to us.”3 Of course, under Suffield’s watchful eye, the two men were expected to support the Tory government. However, it was not long before both men each experienced a growing awakening of their individual political consciences. This led Harbord to declare that, were he to have the opportunity to represent another constituency, he would do so, “upon terms which will not render me amenable to any one for my political conduct.”4 Despite their differences, Lushington and Lord Suffield remained on good terms until the latter’s death in 1835.5
Like his forebears, Lushington found that his political leanings were more toward the opposition—the Whigs. The Whigs were still not a party as such at this time and had no definite program or policy. Generally, they were against crown patronage; sympathetic toward Nonconformists and the interests of merchants and bankers; and favored a limited reform of the voting system.
The Abolition of the Slave Trade
On entering Parliament, one of Lushington’s immediate major concerns was the slave trade. In 1784, four years after his election as a Member of Parliament, William Wilberforce’s increasing interest in social reform led him to try to use his influence at Westminster to end the traffic in human beings. His campaign was initially directed at the slave trade, and only later at the prohibition of slavery itself. He was supported by the Committee for the Abolition of the Slave Trade, which had been formed in 1787 by a group of English evangelical Protestants and Quakers.
Although the first Bill to abolish the slave trade, and others that followed it, were defeated, Wilberforce refused to give up his struggle and, in 1806, the Abolition of the Slave Trade Act was eventually passed by the Lords and, the following year carried by the House of Commons. Lushington, still a young parliamentarian, rose to his feet to forcibly support the Bill, expressing his surprise on hearing his opponents “enter into cold calculation of loss and gain” when for his part “he could never stop to balance imports and exports against justice and humanity.”6 Although many believed that the 1806 Bill to would swiftly lead to the end of slavery itself, this did not happen until some years later.
In 1809, Lushington proposed a motion to castigate the behavior of Sir Home Popham, his predecessor as MP for Yarmouth. Such action clearly flew in the face of his sponsor Lord Suffield and following the defeat of the motion, Lushington resigned his seat and devoted his energies to his growing legal practice.
Beyond Parliament
After leaving Parliament, Lushington continued to pursue a wide range of areas of social concern. He was particularly concerned with the plight of working children, and he supported restrictions on the hours of work for children in factories, calling the former system “revolting to humanity, and to every principle of British justice.” In 1818, he spoke to a committee of the House of Lords in favor of the protection of chimney-sweepers’ boys, a cause that he continued to promote wherever possible. The “climbing boys,” as they were known, were small enough to climb narrow flues. They were often sold by their parents to chimney-sweepers for prices ranging from a few shillings to two guineas, the smaller the child, the better the price. Their plight was highlighted in Charles Kingsley’s novel The Water Babies. For some years, Lushington served on the committee of the Society for Superseding the Necessity of Climbing Boys.
In 1819, after his appointment as a Governor of Guy’s Hospital in London, Lushington turned his attention to reform within the medical world. He used his parliamentary connections to help secure the passage of the first Anatomy Acts, which rescued anatomy from being “little better than an alliance with felony to a legitimate branch of medical education.”7 The Lushington family continued their connections with Guy’s into the next generation when Lushington’s eldest son, Edward Harbord, became Treasurer and then a Governor of the hospital. Lushington later established a nursing and convalescent home in the village of Ockham for patients in need of country air which was placed under the supervsion of his daughter Laura.
The University of London
Lushington’s interest in educational reform found the perfect outlet through the creation of the University of London, which was opened in Gower Street in 1828, and known from 1836 to the present day as University College London. The university was founded by what Jeremy Bentham called “as association of liberals” with the object of providing university education to those who were unable to graduate from Oxford and Cambridge because they were not confessing Anglicans. The university insisted that religion should play no part in its admissions policy and subsequently earned the reputation of being “the godless institution of Gower Street.” A wide syllabus was offered which included modern languages, geography, and a number of other scientific and medical subjects that were not available elsewhere.
The prime mover in the development of the new university was the Scottish poet Thomas Campbell. He was supported by Lushington’s old friend and colleague Henry Brougham who regarded himself as a Benthamite, a believer in the utilitarian principle of “the greatest happiness of the greatest number.” Brougham drew Lushington into the project leading to Campbell’s dream becoming a reality. Among the other founders of the university were two other old friends of Lushington's, Zachary Macaulay, with whom he had campaigned against slavery, and the William Tooke MP with whom Lushington had worked on behalf of the climbing boys.
Lushington, as one of the initial proprietors and shareholders in the scheme to build the university, delivered a public address at the laying of the foundation stone in 1827 in which he explained that the principal object of the new university was to make available the advantages of education to those excluded from the ancient universities by lack of wealth and by religious persuasion. The following year Lushington joined the university’s Education Committee and became a member of its governing body.
Mindful that, despite the creation of the new university, education to masses remained limited, Lushington together with Brougham, Lord John Russell and other friends, founded the Society for Promoting the Diffusion of Useful Knowledge which was aimed primarily at the working class and middle class. The Society’s publications were seen as an antidote to some of the more radical output of the popular press at that time. One significant publication was the Library of Useful Knowledge which sold for sixpence and was published bi-weekly. Unfortunately, the Society failed to reach the working-class market, and it was wound up in 1848.
Lushington also supported the establishment of a national educational system, with “separate and adequate religious instruction” for Churchmen, Catholics, and Dissenters.8 In 1849, following an invitation to lay the foundation stone for a new school in London, Lushington composed a hymn for the occasion which expressed his deep religious convictions.
Grant thy blessing, God of truth,
To instruct the rising youth:
Fix their hope on Christ alone,
Christ, the sure foundation stone.
Lushington’s sons, Vernon and Godfrey, were later involved in University Reform and his daughters, Frances and Alice, became leading women educationalists.
The Fight against Slavery Continued
In 1820, Lushington was urged by his friend, the Anglo-Irish Whig politician George Tierney, to return to Parliament. He was reluctant to do and responded:
Some three or four years since I had determined never again to engage in any parliamentary speculation however eligible: this resolution has in a degree been shaken when I have occasionally met with my political friends, and so I may have appeared inconsistent; but upon deliberation I deem it wisest to adhere to it, and to decline making any attempt to re-enter parliament.9
Following continued pressure from friends, Lushington returned to Parliament in 1820 as the member for Ilchester.10 One of his first actions was, once again, to throw himself into the antislavery cause. Although, as far the British Empire was concerned, the trade had been abolished in 1807, the evil of slavery itself remained. Wilberforce and his fellow abolitionists optomisticlly believed that once the trade was abolished, the relationship between master and slave would cease. However, this did not happen and the movement’s faith in the natural benevolence of men was severely shaken by the failure of those involved in slavery reform.
Wilberforce, hindered by advancing years, sought out the active support of young men such as Lushington to take on the mantle and, for a period of about ten years, a number of campaigns were run in attempt to end slavery itself. The Abolition Bill of 1807 had not prevented the transfer of slaves between British colonies, and it was in this area that Lushington chose to become became particularly active. He successfully fought for a new Act which effectively stopped the inter-colonial trade and this eventually paved the way for the total abolition of British slavery in 1833.
In February 1822, facing a parliamentary committee, Lushington explained that although “for a period of 30 years, several statutes had been enacted to promote the abolition of the Slave Trade” those laws were “much at variance with each other.” The time had come to consolidate those Bills and make them more effective.
Lushington’s anti-slavery work risked bringing him into conflict with the members of his family. There were strong links between the East India Company and the Caribbean slave economy and his brother, Sir Henry Lushington, had estates in Jamaica.11 Despite this Lushington remained true to himself and took an active role in the various groups and committees that were opposing slavery. He joined the influential Anti-Slavery Society, formed in 1823, and the Society for the Extinction of the Slave Trade and the Civilization of Africa, formed in 1839. One of his contemporaries in the movement, George Stephen, wrote that Lushington’s characteristic qualities were “spirit, decision, and singular quickness of perception” with “a particular tact in seeing at a glance the gearings of a case, and indefatigable perseverance in working it out to the very bottom.”12
Lushington used his legal skills to represent the noted free-born Jamaican anti-slavery activist Louis/Lewis Celeste Lecesne who was unlawfully arrested twice and transported for life from Jamaica together with a fellow activist John Escoffery. Lushington raised their case in the House of Commons and, as a result, Lecesne came to London and joined the board of the Anti-Slavery Society and later attended the first World Anti-Slavery Convention in London. He demonstrated his gratitude to Lushington by naming his son Stephen Lushington Macaulay Lecesne.
Success came to the abolitionistst in 1833 when the historic Act was passed to end the slave trade. This passing of this Act was one of Lushington’s greatest successes both within Parliament and outside. Charles Buxton, son of Lushington’s old friend and fellow campaigner, Thomas Fowell Buxton, believed that if any credit were to be awarded to his father in the conduct of the anti-slavery campaign, an “equal share must be awarded to Dr Lushington.”13 Another contemporary writer commented in 1854 “that Lushington has never been done full justice by anti-slavery writers.”14
After the passing of the 1833 Act, the abolitionists decided that a successor organization was required to tackle slavery worldwide and, in June 1840, the first World Anti-Slavery Convention was held in London’s Exeter Hall. Both Lushington and Lady Byron attended this event and can be seen in Benjamin Hayden’s painting (figure 4). A few years earlier, in 1834, Lushington was appointed as one of the original trustees of a charity created to establish schools in the West Indies for Africans who had been released from slavery into apprenticeship.15
After their success in the passing of the 1833 Act, the abolitionists turned their attention to slavery in the United States.16 In 1838, Lushington met the American lawyer, and later Senator, Charles Sumner, a major leader of the American anti-slavery movement, during his visit to England. The two men got on well and quickly became good friends. During a further visit to England in 1857, Sumner visited the Lushingtons at Ockham Park.17 Letters exchanged between the two between 1857 and 1859 reveal how their relationship quickly developed from the formality of “My dear Sir” to the less formal “My dear Friend”.18 Sumner was Ockham again in 1859 when another guest, Charles Buxton, described the American as “a noble fellow, with a fine vigorous original head & sweet expression.”19
Parliamentary Reform
As with the abolition of slavery, Lushington also played a role in the passing of the Parliamentary Reform Act in 1832. This abolished fifty-six nomination boroughs (one where Parliamentary representation was controlled by a small number of people), created new seats in populous areas, and enlarged the electorate. Lushington whole-heartedly supported the Act, arguing that “the English nation will never be contented so long as the House of Commons is not constituted by their virtual representatives.”20 The Act was “a measure on which depends the safety of the country, and perhaps the stability of the throne.” Lushington described the system of nomination boroughs, by which he himself had earlier entered Parliament, as “the mockery of representation.”21
Despite his alignment with the Whigs, Lushington was a moderate reformer. Surprisingly, he did not favour universal suffrage, although he was a great supporter of the secret ballot. His sentiments led him to support many other liberal reforms of his era including Catholic emancipation, full civil rights for Jews and Dissenters, and reform of the criminal law. In 1840, Lushington unsuccessfully brought in a Bill to abolish capital punishment.
Lushington believed that as a Member of Parliament, on accepting government office, should resign, and stand for re-election Thus, in 1838, when offered the judgeship of the Admiralty Court, he accepted it on the basis that he would give up his parliamentary seat and stand for re-election—which he did. However, in 1841, when it was proposed that judges should be excluded from Parliament, Lushington’s political career came to an end. He was offered an opportunity to re-enter Parliament yet again ten years later as a life peer in the House of Lords, but declined despite Queen Victoria’s approval. He was re-offered a life peerage in 1851, and again in 1856, but he declined because of the political controversy he believed would ensue.
The Law
Lushington not only distinguished himself in Parliament he also had a noted career as a civilian lawyer. In 1828, he was appointed judge of the most important diocesan court (the Consistory Court of London). Ten years later, he became a judge of the High Court of Admiralty. In this capacity, in 1861, Lushington was drawn into a diplomatic crisis that took place between the United States and Great Britain in 1861 during the American Civil War and which might have affected the outcome of the war.
A British mail and passenger steamer, The Trent, was stopped by a U.S. warship, and two envoys of the Southern states, Mason and Sidell, traveling to England and France to lobby for recognition of the Confederacy, were removed by force. Britain demanded reparation to the government and turned to the Admiralty Court for advice. Lushington, whose anti-slavery views made him strongly sympathetic to the Union cause, met with Prime Minister Palmerston and advised that a nation at war had the right to stop and search a neutral merchant ship if it suspected the ship of carrying enemy dispatches. It was argued that Mason and Sidell were in effect Confederate dispatches. Despite Lushington’s opinion, this violation of British neutral rights triggered an uproar in Britain and the country began preparing for war. A note was sent to Washington demanding the return of the prisoners and an apology. Abraham Lincoln chose not to push the issue and, adopting a policy of, “one war at a time,” ordered the release of the prisoners thereby adverting armed conflict with Great Britain.22
In 1858, Lushington was also made judge of the Court of Arches. As “dean of the arches” he became president of Doctors’ Commons only to preside over its dissolution when matrimonial and probate cases were transferred to secular courts and the profession of civil lawyer came to an end. This position was not full-time and so Lushington was able to manage court sittings with his parliamentary commitments.
It is possible that John Ruskin’s wife consulted Lushington concerning the non-consummation of her marriage, although no papers have survived confirming this. Although Lushington’s religious beliefs did not wholly agree with the notion of marriage as a “sacrament”, he still referred it as part of “the evident design of Divine Providence” and he spoke of adultery as able to “sever the strongest ties by which God and man can consecrate.” He is said to have shown himself, on many occasions, sensitive to the plight of individual litigants, particularly women.
In the matter of wills and probate, Lushington favored the reforms of 1837 which dealt with the way in which wills should be signed and the necessity of having two or more witnesses. Unfortunately, this legislation did not lead to the simplicity and clarity hoped for, and Lushington was often called upon to clarify issues.
The Privy Council
As a judge of the Admiralty Court, Lushington became a member of the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council which was established as the final court of appeal from the civilian courts. He was sworn in as a member of Queen Victoria’s Privy Council in November 1838. This was, and still is, a formal body of advisers to the Sovereign whose members mainly comprises senior politicians, who are current or former members of either the House of Commons or the House of Lords.
Queen Victoria recorded in her Journal that she and her beloved Lord Melbourne had, “Talked of Dr Lushington who has got 10 children; He is a very good man, a clever man; I hardly ever saw such an honest man,’ said Lord Melbourne; but a little violent and eager.”23 Once sworn in, Lushington was often in the company of the Queen and, in May 1845, she wrote, “Dr Lushington, a singular, eager man, who is of the opinion, that nothing would do such good, as to cement the union between England & France at the same time ensuring the abolition of the Slave Trade.” Lushington remained an active member of the Privy Council for twenty-nine years.
The Church
Lushington’s appointment as Dean of Arches in 1858 made him the most senior judge in the ecclesiastical courts. This was a joint appointment by the Archbishops of Canterbury and York, subject to Crown approval. Lushington’s appointment coincided with a period of high controversy in the Church of England, and he found was at the center of several major disputes in which he often found himself pulled in two opposing directions. One of the most politically controversial questions was that of church rates, which were taxes levied to support the fabric of the parish church. These were opposed by those who dissented from the Church of England. Personally, Lushington had great sympathy with the dissenters but, as an ecclesiastical judge, he had a duty to enforce the law.
In 1860 Lushington was called upon to pass judgement on one of the most important publications of the mid-nineteenth century, Essays and Reviews, a broad-church volume of seven essays on Christianity. The writers were six clergymen and one layman, all associated with a liberal view of theology and with the Broad-Church. They included Frederick Temple who later became Archbishop of Canterbury, and Lushington’s friend Benjamin Jowett, later the Master of Balliol College, Oxford. The topics covered the biblical research of the German critics, the evidence for Christianity, religious thought in England, and the cosmology of Genesis. In essence, it summed up a three-quarter century-long challenge to biblical history and prehistory.
Publication of Essays and Reviews was seen as an attack on the fundamental truths of the Christian religion. It caused a great outcry in more conservative and evangelical church circles contributing to a period of religious doubt in which two of Lushington’s sons were caught up. In 1862, Lushington wrote:
The argument in Essays and Review is concluded, having occupied nearly 10 days. The counsel very handsomely returned thanks to me for my so patiently hearing the case. This is consoling but alas my trials now commence for I have to write my judgement.24
As such, Lushington found it necessary to condemn two of the essayists. Although his decision was later overturned, it was an action with which Lushington, whose personal views inclined to those of the more liberal Broad-Church party, privately agreed.
F. D. Maurice, who had been driven from his Chair at King’s College, London, on the issue of eternal judgment, considered resigning his benefice in consequence of the original judgment and wrote to Charles Kingsley:
I know well that my dear and honoured friend Dr Lushington, who I love as much as almost any man of his age that I know, has no purpose of working this mischief to the Church or to mankind. He will be a worker of good, as he ought to be, if his simple blunders lead to the result I have supposed.25
In 1867, Lushington suffered what might a been a slight stroke and resigned his judicial offices but retained the administrative office of Master of the Faculties until his death, still hearing disputed cases at his house in his ninety-first year. He spent his remaining years at Ockham surrounded and supported by his adoring family. He continued equestrian pursuits and, on his ninetieth birthday, his sons presented him the gift of a new horse.
In December 1872, after travelling to Oxford to vote for Dean Stanley as Select Preacher for the University, he became ill and suffered a bad bout of bronchitis from which he did not recover. He died on 18 January 1873. Lord Justice James wrote to Vernon Lushington:
Your father’s last public act may have accelerated his death—but it will always be an agreeable memory for his family and his friends that it was an act of great pubic duty, well closing his life in vindication of those great principles of liberty to which throughout that long life he had shown so zealous and unswerving attachment.26
Lushington was buried in the churchyard of Ockham parish church where he had worshipped for many years. Dean Stanley traveled from London to officiate at the funeral and later, preaching at the University Church in Cambridge, paid a fitting tribute to his old friend describing him as:
A venerable judge whose career . . . was fired from first to last by a generous sympathy with human suffering, by noble indignation against wrong, by a firm persuasion of the indissoluble bond between what was highest in religion and what was greatest in morality.27
NOTES
1. S.M. Waddams, Law, Politics and the Church of England. The Career of Stephen Lushington 1782–1873 (Cambridge University Press, 1992).
2. “Forty-shilling freeholders” were people who had the parliamentary franchise to vote by possessing freehold property of an annual rent of at least forty shillings (i.e., £2), clear of all charges.
3. Richard M. Bacon, A Memoir of the Life of Edward, Third Baron Suffield (Norwich, 1838), p. 28.
4. Ibid.
5. Lushington was appointed as one of the guardians of Lord Suffield’s children. Suffield clearly held Lushington in high regard as, when considering, his children’s education, he wrote “his judgement on the matter will decide my course in the dilemma for such I must consider it. I am grateful to Jane Weare for this and other information regarding the relationship of the Suffields and Lushington.”
6. House of Commons Debate February 23, 1807.
7. Obituary of Stephen Lushington in Guy’s Hospital Gazette 1873.
8. Mirror of Parliament, June 12, 1839.
9. Stephen Lushington, www.historyofparliamentonline.org/volume1790-1820.
10. Lushington later represented the constituencies of Tregony, Winchelsea, and Tower Hamlets.
11. Henry Lushington to Stephen Lushington, May 7, 1832. SHC 7854/1/2/1a-b.
12. George Stephen, Anti-Slavery Recollections (Thomas Hatchard, 1854), pp. 67–68.
13. Charles Buxton (ed.) The Memoirs of Sir Thomas Fowell Buxton (John Murray, 1849).
14. Stephen, Anti-Slavery Recollections, pp. 66–67.
15. Frank J. Kingberg, “The Lady Mico Charity Schools in the British West Indies, 1835–1842,” Journal of Negro History Vol. 24, no. 3 (July, 1939), pp. 291–344.
16. For more on Stephen Lushington’s role in this campaign see Betty Fladeland, Men and Brothers. Anglo-American Antislavery Cooperation (University of Illinois Press, 1972).
17. Edward Lillie, Memoir and Letters of Charles Sumner: 1845–1860 (Roberts Brothers, 1877), p. 593.
18. Stephen Lushington to Charles Sumner, July 9, 1857, and October 27, 1859. Houghton Library, Harvard University. Charles Sumner to Stephen Lushington, 26 October 1859, SHC7854/1/5/33.
19. Diary of Charles Buxton, October 30, 1859. BL. Add Ms 87180. Buxton recorded how Sumner “gave an interesting account of his visit to Tennyson: who was at first very cold & gruff so that he felt himself ‘de trop’ (he had an introduction from the Duchess of Argyle). Mrs Tennyson however very cordial & agreeable & after a while a picture of Dante started Sumner on poets, & Tennyson became communication & friendly—& talked freely of his own poetry. He complained of Maud being misunderstood. Mrs T devoted to him, & they are most happy. S said it was the happiest home he had seen ‘even among the happy homes of England.’”
20. Mirror of Parliament 1831, April 21.
21. Ibid., 14 July 1831.
22. In 1866, Lushington was called upon to pass judgement on a matter relating to the seizure of seven Confederate ships. In this case, his son Vernon came before him to represent the U.S. government.
23. Journal of Queen Victoria (on line).
24. Stephen Lushington to Alice Lushington, January 16, 1862, SHC7854/1/8/44.
25. Frederick . D. Maurice to Charles Kingsley, October 12, 1862, in F. Maurice, Life of Frederick Denison Maurice, Chiefly Told in his Own Letters (London, 1885).
26. Lord Justice James to Vernon Lushington, January 20, 1873. SHC785/3/1/19.
27. A.P. Stanley, Purity and Light. A Sermon Preached before the University of Cambridge, Feb. 2. 1873 (Macmillan and Co., 1873).
