Henry Warburton
Encyclopedia
Henry Warburton was an English
merchant
and politician
, and also an enthusiastic amateur
scientist
.
Elected as Member of Parliament
for Bridport
, Dorset
, in the 1826 general election
, he held the seat for 15 years until his resignation from the House of Commons
in 1841. He was returned to the Commons at a by-election in November 1843, for Kendal
, but did not seek re-election in 1847
.
On Parliament
he was active in the reform of bankruptcy
, the repeal of stamp duty
on newspaper
s, introduction of the penny post
and in the campaigns of the Anti-Corn Law League
.
, a timber merchant, he was educated at Eton College
, and at Trinity College, Cambridge
, where he was admitted 24 June 1802, aged 18. He was in the first class of the college examinations as freshman in 1803, and as junior soph in 1804. He was admitted scholar on 13 April 1804, graduated B.A. (being twelfth wrangler and placed next to Ralph Bernal
) in 1806, and proceeded M.A. in 1812. George Pryme
knew him in his undergraduate days, and both Bernal and Pryme were later his colleagues in politics.
For some years after leaving the university Warburton was engaged in the timber trade at Lambeth
, but his taste for science and politics ultimately led to his abandoning commercial life. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on 16 February 1809. William Hyde Wollaston
was his closest friend, and in the autumn of 1818 they made a tour together on the continent. When Michael Faraday
desired to become F.R.S., Warburton felt objections to his election, thinking that he had in one matter treated Wollaston unfairly. Correspondence ensued, and these objections were dispelled.
Warburton was also a member of the Political Economy Club from its foundation in 1821 to his death, bringing before it on 13 January 1823 the question ‘how far rents and profits are affected by tithes’. David Ricardo
was one of his friends, and often mentions Warburton in his Letters to Malthus. ‘Philosopher Warburton,’ as he was known, was one of the leading supporters of Henry Brougham
in founding London University, and was a member of its first council in 1827.
In the House of Commons he worked with Joseph Hume
, and after 1832 found fresh colleagues in Charles Buller
, George Grote
, and Sir William Molesworth. The medical reformers selected him as their advocate. He brought forward on 20 June 1827, and Robert Peel
supported, a motion for an inquiry into the funds and regulations of the College of Surgeons. He was chairman of the parliamentary committee on the study of anatomy, which began its sittings on 28 April 1828, and after one failure, through the action of the House of Lords, succeeded in 1832 in carrying an anatomy bill. A committee on the medical profession was appointed on 11 February 1834, and Warburton became its chairman. He examined Sir Astley Cooper, Sir Charles Bell, and many others; but the conclusions of the committee were not submitted to parliament.
Warburton took an active part in 1831 in debates on bankruptcy. Early in 1833 he formed a project with Grote and John Arthur Roebuck
for establishing a society for the diffusion of political and moral knowledge. He was intent in February 1835 on arranging a union of the Whigs under Lord John Russell with the followers of Daniel O'Connell
; and it was he that sent to O'Connell a bundle of circulars from Russell, asking his friends to meet him at Lord Lichfield's house in St. James's Square
, from which action resulted the Lichfield House compact. Warburton was for the repeal of the newspaper tax, and was active in the work of the Anti-Corn Law League. On the select committee of the House of Commons on postage in 1837 he strongly supported penny postage.
At the dissolution of 1847 he retired from political life, saying that the reforms which he had at heart had been made. He died at 45 Cadogan Place, London, on 16 September 1858.
England
England is a country that is part of the United Kingdom. It shares land borders with Scotland to the north and Wales to the west; the Irish Sea is to the north west, the Celtic Sea to the south west, with the North Sea to the east and the English Channel to the south separating it from continental...
merchant
Merchant
A merchant is a businessperson who trades in commodities that were produced by others, in order to earn a profit.Merchants can be one of two types:# A wholesale merchant operates in the chain between producer and retail merchant...
and politician
Politician
A politician, political leader, or political figure is an individual who is involved in influencing public policy and decision making...
, and also an enthusiastic amateur
Amateur
An amateur is generally considered a person attached to a particular pursuit, study, or science, without pay and often without formal training....
scientist
Scientist
A scientist in a broad sense is one engaging in a systematic activity to acquire knowledge. In a more restricted sense, a scientist is an individual who uses the scientific method. The person may be an expert in one or more areas of science. This article focuses on the more restricted use of the word...
.
Elected as Member of Parliament
Member of Parliament
A Member of Parliament is a representative of the voters to a :parliament. In many countries with bicameral parliaments, the term applies specifically to members of the lower house, as upper houses often have a different title, such as senate, and thus also have different titles for its members,...
for Bridport
Bridport (UK Parliament constituency)
Bridport was a parliamentary borough in Dorset, which elected two Members of Parliament to the House of Commons from 1295 until 1868, and then one member from 1868 until 1885, when the borough was abolished.-History:...
, Dorset
Dorset
Dorset , is a county in South West England on the English Channel coast. The county town is Dorchester which is situated in the south. The Hampshire towns of Bournemouth and Christchurch joined the county with the reorganisation of local government in 1974...
, in the 1826 general election
United Kingdom general election, 1826
The 1826 United Kingdom general election saw the Tories under the Earl of Liverpool win a substantial and increased majority over the Whigs. In Ireland, Home Rule candidates, working with the Whigs, won large gains from Unionist candidates....
, he held the seat for 15 years until his resignation from the House of Commons
Resignation from the British House of Commons
Members of Parliament sitting in the House of Commons in the United Kingdom are technically forbidden to resign. To circumvent this prohibition, a legal fiction is used...
in 1841. He was returned to the Commons at a by-election in November 1843, for Kendal
Kendal (UK Parliament constituency)
Kendal was a parliamentary borough centred on the town of Kendal in Westmorland. It returned one Member of Parliament to the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom, elected by the first past the post system.-History:...
, but did not seek re-election in 1847
United Kingdom general election, 1847
-Seats summary:-References:* F. W. S. Craig, British Electoral Facts: 1832-1987* British Electoral Facts 1832-1999, compiled and edited by Colin Rallings and Michael Thrasher *...
.
On Parliament
Parliament of the United Kingdom
The Parliament of the United Kingdom of Great Britain and Northern Ireland is the supreme legislative body in the United Kingdom, British Crown dependencies and British overseas territories, located in London...
he was active in the reform of bankruptcy
Bankruptcy
Bankruptcy is a legal status of an insolvent person or an organisation, that is, one that cannot repay the debts owed to creditors. In most jurisdictions bankruptcy is imposed by a court order, often initiated by the debtor....
, the repeal of stamp duty
Stamp duty
Stamp duty is a tax that is levied on documents. Historically, this included the majority of legal documents such as cheques, receipts, military commissions, marriage licences and land transactions. A physical stamp had to be attached to or impressed upon the document to denote that stamp duty...
on newspaper
Newspaper
A newspaper is a scheduled publication containing news of current events, informative articles, diverse features and advertising. It usually is printed on relatively inexpensive, low-grade paper such as newsprint. By 2007, there were 6580 daily newspapers in the world selling 395 million copies a...
s, introduction of the penny post
Penny Post
The Penny Post is any one of several postal systems in which normal letters could be sent for one penny.-London Penny Post:In England, the Post Office had a monopoly on the collection and carriage of letters between post towns but there was no delivery system until the London Penny Post was...
and in the campaigns of the Anti-Corn Law League
Anti-Corn Law League
The Anti-Corn Law League was in effect the resumption of the Anti-Corn Law Association, which had been created in London in 1836 but did not obtain widespread popularity. The Anti-Corn Law League was founded in Manchester in 1838...
.
Early life
The son of John Warburton of Eltham, KentKent
Kent is a county in southeast England, and is one of the home counties. It borders East Sussex, Surrey and Greater London and has a defined boundary with Essex in the middle of the Thames Estuary. The ceremonial county boundaries of Kent include the shire county of Kent and the unitary borough of...
, a timber merchant, he was educated at Eton College
Eton College
Eton College, often referred to simply as Eton, is a British independent school for boys aged 13 to 18. It was founded in 1440 by King Henry VI as "The King's College of Our Lady of Eton besides Wyndsor"....
, and at Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College, Cambridge
Trinity College is a constituent college of the University of Cambridge. Trinity has more members than any other college in Cambridge or Oxford, with around 700 undergraduates, 430 graduates, and over 170 Fellows...
, where he was admitted 24 June 1802, aged 18. He was in the first class of the college examinations as freshman in 1803, and as junior soph in 1804. He was admitted scholar on 13 April 1804, graduated B.A. (being twelfth wrangler and placed next to Ralph Bernal
Ralph Bernal
Ralph Bernal was a British Whig politician and art collector. His family were Sephardi Jews of Spanish origin, but he was baptised at St Olave Hart Street in London....
) in 1806, and proceeded M.A. in 1812. George Pryme
George Pryme
George Pryme was a British economist, academic and politician.Pryme was born in 1781 in Cottingham, East Riding of Yorkshire, the only surviving child of merchant Christopher Pryme and his wife, Alice Dinsdale...
knew him in his undergraduate days, and both Bernal and Pryme were later his colleagues in politics.
For some years after leaving the university Warburton was engaged in the timber trade at Lambeth
Lambeth
Lambeth is a district of south London, England, and part of the London Borough of Lambeth. It is situated southeast of Charing Cross.-Toponymy:...
, but his taste for science and politics ultimately led to his abandoning commercial life. He was elected Fellow of the Royal Society on 16 February 1809. William Hyde Wollaston
William Hyde Wollaston
William Hyde Wollaston FRS was an English chemist and physicist who is famous for discovering two chemical elements and for developing a way to process platinum ore.-Biography:...
was his closest friend, and in the autumn of 1818 they made a tour together on the continent. When Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday
Michael Faraday, FRS was an English chemist and physicist who contributed to the fields of electromagnetism and electrochemistry....
desired to become F.R.S., Warburton felt objections to his election, thinking that he had in one matter treated Wollaston unfairly. Correspondence ensued, and these objections were dispelled.
Warburton was also a member of the Political Economy Club from its foundation in 1821 to his death, bringing before it on 13 January 1823 the question ‘how far rents and profits are affected by tithes’. David Ricardo
David Ricardo
David Ricardo was an English political economist, often credited with systematising economics, and was one of the most influential of the classical economists, along with Thomas Malthus, Adam Smith, and John Stuart Mill. He was also a member of Parliament, businessman, financier and speculator,...
was one of his friends, and often mentions Warburton in his Letters to Malthus. ‘Philosopher Warburton,’ as he was known, was one of the leading supporters of Henry Brougham
Henry Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux
Henry Peter Brougham, 1st Baron Brougham and Vaux was a British statesman who became Lord Chancellor of Great Britain.As a young lawyer in Scotland Brougham helped to found the Edinburgh Review in 1802 and contributed many articles to it. He went to London, and was called to the English bar in...
in founding London University, and was a member of its first council in 1827.
In politics
At the general election of 1826 Warburton was returned to parliament in the Radical interest for the borough of Bridport in Dorset, making his first long speech on 30 November on foreign goods, and was re-elected in 1830, 1831, 1833, 1835, 1837, and 1841, all of the elections after the Reform Bill being strongly contested. On 8 September 1841 he resigned his seat for that constituency on the ground that a petition would have ‘proved gross bribery against his colleague’ in which his own agent would have been implicated. It subsequently came out that before the passing of the Reform Bill he himself had paid large sums of money improperly to certain of the electors. The question whether bribery had been practised at Bridport was referred to a select committee, but nothing resulted from its investigations. Warburton was out of the house until 9 November 1843, when he was returned for the borough of Kendal.In the House of Commons he worked with Joseph Hume
Joseph Hume
Joseph Hume FRS was a Scottish doctor and Radical MP, born in Montrose, Angus.-Medical career:He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and moved to India in 1797...
, and after 1832 found fresh colleagues in Charles Buller
Charles Buller
Charles Buller , was a British barrister, politician and reformer.-Background and education:Born in Calcutta, British India, Buller was the son of Charles Buller , a member of a well-known Cornish family, and Barbara Isabella Kirkpatrick, daughter of General William Kirkpatrick, considered an...
, George Grote
George Grote
George Grote was an English classical historian, best known in the field for a major work, the voluminous History of Greece, still read.-Early life:He was born at Clay Hill near Beckenham in Kent...
, and Sir William Molesworth. The medical reformers selected him as their advocate. He brought forward on 20 June 1827, and Robert Peel
Robert Peel
Sir Robert Peel, 2nd Baronet was a British Conservative statesman who served as Prime Minister of the United Kingdom from 10 December 1834 to 8 April 1835, and again from 30 August 1841 to 29 June 1846...
supported, a motion for an inquiry into the funds and regulations of the College of Surgeons. He was chairman of the parliamentary committee on the study of anatomy, which began its sittings on 28 April 1828, and after one failure, through the action of the House of Lords, succeeded in 1832 in carrying an anatomy bill. A committee on the medical profession was appointed on 11 February 1834, and Warburton became its chairman. He examined Sir Astley Cooper, Sir Charles Bell, and many others; but the conclusions of the committee were not submitted to parliament.
Warburton took an active part in 1831 in debates on bankruptcy. Early in 1833 he formed a project with Grote and John Arthur Roebuck
John Arthur Roebuck
John Arthur Roebuck , British politician, was born at Madras, in India.After the death of his father, a civil servant, his mother's second marriage transferred him to Canada, where he was chiefly brought-up. He came to England in 1824, was called to the bar John Arthur Roebuck (28 December 1802...
for establishing a society for the diffusion of political and moral knowledge. He was intent in February 1835 on arranging a union of the Whigs under Lord John Russell with the followers of Daniel O'Connell
Daniel O'Connell
Daniel O'Connell Daniel O'Connell Daniel O'Connell (6 August 1775 – 15 May 1847; often referred to as The Liberator, or The Emancipator, was an Irish political leader in the first half of the 19th century...
; and it was he that sent to O'Connell a bundle of circulars from Russell, asking his friends to meet him at Lord Lichfield's house in St. James's Square
St. James's Square
St. James's Square is the only square in the exclusive St James's district of the City of Westminster. It has predominantly Georgian and neo-Georgian architecture and a private garden in the centre...
, from which action resulted the Lichfield House compact. Warburton was for the repeal of the newspaper tax, and was active in the work of the Anti-Corn Law League. On the select committee of the House of Commons on postage in 1837 he strongly supported penny postage.
At the dissolution of 1847 he retired from political life, saying that the reforms which he had at heart had been made. He died at 45 Cadogan Place, London, on 16 September 1858.