The Right Honourable Lord Francis Egerton, MP
The Bridgewater estate was commercially important in South Lancashire; its landholdings and associated tenant farmers also made it a major power in South Lancashire parliamentary elections and Egerton's succession of his Whig father as beneficiary changed the political arithmetic of the constituency. At the 1835 general election, he and another Conservative candidate defeated the two sitting pro-Reform MPs; Egerton topped the poll. At the 1837 election, the Manchester Guardian pointed out that Egerton had voted in only twenty-seven of the 171 divisions in the preceding session of the Commons: nonetheless, Egerton again headed the poll, with his Conservative colleague second. In 1841, his election address claimed he was guided by the interests of manufacturing rather than agriculture: "I presume that the man who is in the centre of a strictly rural population will look to its wishes and apparent interests. I shall do likewise: and if he looks to his ricks I shall look to my chimnies and those of my neighbours"
He opposed repeal of the Corn Laws but thought it time for a 'full careful and dispassionate' revision of the current 'sliding scale'. He was returned unopposed and his victory speech put less stress on the need for revision, but deprecated cries of 'No surrender' on the Corn Law question; it was not a constitutional issue.
Egerton was Major commanding the Duke of Lancaster's Yeomanry, who were called out to support the civil power during the Plug Plot riots of 1842; Egerton and a troop of yeomanry served in Preston in the aftermath of the riot and fatal shootings there. He later intervened in a Commons debate to defend the conduct of the Preston magistrates and of the military whilst noting that Preston was an exceptional case: in the Lancashire disturbances there had been a "general absence of a sanguinary disposition, or a spirit of wanton violence"
In June 1844, Egerton's eldest son George came of age, and a rumour was promptly reported that Egerton was soon to be made Duke of Bridgewater, with George then to stand for South Lancashire. (However Egerton was not the nearest descendant of the last Duke and it was therefore unlikely that that title would be revived for him.) Later in the year, the electoral register was revised; consequently the Anti-Corn Law League which had coordinated a registration drive of voters favouring repeal of the Corn Laws became confident that they had secured a majority for 'free trade' in South Lancashire, and that Egerton would not be re-elected.
When in 1845 Egerton voted for an increase in the Maynooth Grant, he received many letters from his constituents complaining, and accusing him of betraying all he had stood for. He wrote to a Manchester paper to defend himself. His views had been consistent throughout his career, as witness his 1825 motion; nor had he sought to hide them - in 1835 he had drawn attention to having been nominated by a Catholic. He had no intention of changing his views: he would not seek re-election. However, he was not a martyr to Maynooth, but to disease: at the moment he was unable to write with his right hand. He regretted that his views differed from those of his constituents, but if "government was to be administered on the basis that our Roman Catholic fellow-citizens were idolaters", he would be glad to be free of any responsibility for the consequences.
Peel, who had decided upon the repeal of the Corn Laws against the previous policy of the Conservatives (and against the wishes of many Conservative MPs), chose Egerton to move the Loyal Address in January 1846. Doing so, Egerton admitted his views had changed; he now supported free trade. He did so not on any theoretical basis but from his own experience:
"I myself have been compelled to be a somewhat close observer of the connexion between the prices of provisions, and the employment and happiness of the people. Accident has cast my lot in the midst of a dense population, with respect to a large portion of which, this accident has made me a distributor of work and wages; and I have seen the operation of what I believe to be the connexion between the prices of provisions, and the happiness and employment of the people in various conditions."
The last period of high food prices in 1841–1842 had seen social unrest in the manufacturing districts of Lancashire, which no one who had witnessed it could wish to see return. Furthermore, government intervention on food supply and prices was politically unwise:
" ..my observation has led me to believe that if you, as a Government, undertake to control and regulate the supply of the means of subsistence to the community, you will find that it is difficult, nay, impossible for you, spread the public table with what profusion you may, to satisfy those who would still retire from the feast with appetites not altogether satiated, and with minds not fully convinced that they have had sufficient for their health, and that all that remains for them is to pray that they may be truly thankful. The abundance, which you call sufficient, but which no man can call excessive, is, after all, but matter of comparison. "
as would be prolonged and bitter argument on the question:
"There are dark spots and weak places in various parts of our social system: let us not be blind to them, or neglect the duty of exposing them, with the view of mending and improving them. Let us not fling in one another's teeth difficulties, remedial or irremedial, for the sole purpose of party or of faction. Let us not fling in the face of one class a Wiltshire labourer; or a manufacturing labourer in the face of another. To meet the cases of both – to give them, in the first instance, food – to give them other luxuries which many of them still need – air, water, drainage – to give them all the physical and moral advantages possible; let that be our employment and our duty, and let us endeavour to perform that office by ridding the country of those subjects of angry discussion to which I have referred."
