Lord William Douglas
Lord William Robert Keith Douglas (1783 – 5 December 1859) was a
British politician and landowner. He was the fourth son of
Sir William
Douglas, 4th Baronet of Kelhead and younger brother of both
Charles
Douglas, 6th Marquess of Queensberry and
John Douglas, 7th Marquess
of Queensberry.
He represented the Dumfries Burghs
constituency between 1812 and 1832 and served, on a number of
occasions, as one of the Lord Commissioners of the Admiralty. He was
an active parliamentarian. He
owned sugar plantation estates in Tobago which had formerly belonged
to his father-in-law, Walter Irvine(2), whose daughter, Elizabeth, he
married on 24 November 1824. They had three sons, the second of
which, Walter, went on to continue the
Douglases of Grangemuir
line.
After William Douglas's
eldest brother succeeded to the Marquessate of Queensberry, he was
granted a patent of precedence which gave him the rank and style of
a Marquess's younger son (Lord William Douglas).
He was probably the owner of Dalhousie, in Fife.
Douglas, for whom no will has been found, died in December 1859 at
his London home in Chesham Place, survived by his wife (d. 1864) and
four of their seven children. His eldest surviving son William
(1824-68), the secretary of legation at Vienna, succeeded his mother
to the Irvine estates, took that name in 1867 and was in turn
succeeded by his brother Walter Douglas Irvine (1825-1901), who
disentailed the estates in 1872.
Lord William
is buried at Dunino, Fife, a village close to his family seat at Grangemuir, near Pittenweem.
An active parliamentarian, his full biography follows:
A London
merchant, at least until 1820, Douglas had been brought in for
Dumfries Burghs in 1812 on the joint interests of his brother
Charles, 5th marquess of Queensberry, a Scottish representative
peer, and their kinsman the 4th duke of Buccleuch. He had supported
Lord Liverpool’s administration as a pro-Catholic Tory, but
independently so, and had proved competent in debate as an advocate
of the 1815 corn law, mercantile causes and Scottish burgh reform.
The succession of the 5th duke of Buccleuch, a minor, in 1819, posed
no threat to his return for Dumfries Burghs at the general election
of 1820, but a series of letters to the Whig Dumfries and Galloway
Courier from ‘a political economist’ now warned him of the dangers
of failing to promote free trade. His parliamentary conduct in this
period was influenced by his tenure of office at the admiralty and
his marriage in 1821 to a daughter of the West India planter and
London merchant Walter Irvine, who had traded in Lombard Street
since 1798 and died in January 1824. Irvine had entrusted his Tobago
estates of Buccoo and Woodlands to Douglas and, as stipulated in
their marriage settlement, Douglas’s wife inherited Irvine’s
Fifeshire ones of Dunino, near St. Andrews, and Grangemuir House,
Pittenweem, where they later settled.
Douglas voted for
Catholic relief, 28 Feb. 1821, 1 Mar., 21 Apr., 10 May, and to
outlaw the Catholic Association, 25 Feb. 1825. He was appointed to
the revived select committees on Scottish burgh reform, 4 May 1820,
16 Feb. 1821, and defended their report and work when these were
criticized in the House by the committee’s Whig chairman Lord
Archibald Hamilton, 14 June 1821. He endorsed Lord Binning’s
amendment to the 1822 burgh magistrates bill, requiring councillors
to be resident or working within three miles of their burgh, 19 July
1822. He was against inquiring into parliamentary voting rights, 20
Feb. 1823, and opposed reform of Edinburgh’s representation, 13 Apr.
1826, insisting that no case had been made for interference with its
chartered rights or for the ‘whole principle of parliamentary reform
in its widest sense’. He voted against Lord John Russell’s
resolutions condemning electoral bribery, 26 May 1826. On the Queen
Caroline case he criticized the tactics adopted by her radical
partisans to intimidate Parliament and incite hostility to the
ministry, especially their abuse of the press, ‘unconstitutional’
mass deputations and attempts to harness ‘all grievances to the
queen’s cause’, 18 Sept. 1820. Upbraided by the presenter of the
radical Montrose petition, Joseph Hume, he reiterated his remarks
and urged ministers to act to curb the licentious press. He spoke at
the Dumfriesshire county meeting to address the king, 12 Dec. 1820;
presented two Dumfries petitions for restoration of the queen’s
rights, 26 Jan., and voted against censuring the government’s
handling of the affair, 6 Feb. 1821.
Douglas had advocated
inquiry into the distressed manufacturing districts and trades of
Scotland and elsewhere in December 1819 and he was praised by the
Dumfries and Galloway Courier and the Tory Dumfries Weekly Journal
for supporting the London merchants’ petition suggesting lower taxes
and a dual currency as remedial measures, 8 May 1820. He had
defended the petitioners’ right to promulgate what ‘they really
thought to be the sound principles of political economy and to show
how far the restrictive system of trade was contrary to those
principles’ and expressed regret at the partisan treatment of the
petition. He testified to the ‘universal feelings of surprise and
reprehension’ which the ‘extraordinary haste shown in filling up’
the vacant Scottish exchequer barony had excited and, although he
did not vote for the opposition motion condemning it, 15 May, he
supported Hamilton’s second resolution, and was applauded by the
editor of the Dumfries and Galloway Courier. He stated that he would
divide with opposition on the additional malt duty, 5 July 1820, but
if he did so, it went unrecorded. He opposed the repeal bill, 21
Mar., and voted to defeat it, 3 Apr. 1821, having defended the tax
as the ‘most general which could be selected’. He joined the
Political Economy Club in 1821, but resigned the following year. He
did not regard the corn averages as a ‘root cause’ of agricultural
distress, criticized changes to them proposed by the president of
the board of trade Robinson, 26 Feb., and joined its presenter Sir
Matthew White Ridley in endorsing a petition critical of the changes
from Leith, where he had commercial interests, 2 Apr. 1821. He
presented and endorsed the Leith ship owners’ protest against the
unfair advantage accruing to the coal traders of Newcastle-upon-Tyne
under the 1816 Act, 14 Feb. On the timber duties, he maintained that
undue preference was accorded to American produce and favoured a
variable duty on deals, 29 Mar., 5 Apr., but with immediate effect
and according to an intermediate scale, rather than after the
two-year transition period proposed, 16 Apr. He complained that
proposals to legalize game sales were a means of licensing the
disposal of stolen goods, 5 Apr. He voted against reducing the
barrack grant, 28 May, and intervened on ministers’ behalf on
supply, 15 June; but he was a teller for a motley minority of six
for increasing the compensation payment to General Desfourneaux for
his wartime West Indian losses, 28 June, brought up a petition on
his behalf, 10 July 1821, and supported others, 4 May 1829.
Douglas’s appointment to the admiralty board in February 1822, ten
weeks after his wedding and at the specific request of Queensberry
and Buccleuch’s trustees, coincided with the Grenvillite junction
with the government. A critical editorial in The Times commented:
Ministers did well to inflict this national calamity upon us in
as unostentatious a way as possible, both for the sake of their own
credit and our comfort ... The friends of the system for educating
adults for the use of the state must fervently hope, that the same
abrupt termination [of his appointment as Sir George Warrender*
suffered] will not be put to the studies of Mr. Keith Douglas, who
may otherwise, in due time, be able to aid by his learning the
ministerial writers, of the stupidity of whom, we recollect, he once
publicly complained: for when some measure was spoken of for
fettering the press, Mr. Douglas thought such a measure most
advisable; because, said he, government is brought into disesteem,
inasmuch as the journalists who write in its support are greatly
inferior in abilities to those by whom it is attacked. The friends
of retrenchment will, we trust, derive energy from even this
trifling and imperfect success.
Despite a local furore caused by
Queensberry’s libel action against the proprietors of the Carlisle
Journal, Douglas’s re-election passed without incident. He voted
against abolition of one of the joint-postmasterships, 13 Mar., but
was himself a casualty with Lord Hotham* when the House voted to
reduce the admiralty lords from six to four, 16 Mar 1822. He was
appointed to the public accounts committee, 18 Apr. On agricultural
distress, he spoke against Wyvill’s proposals for large tax
remissions, 8 May, recommended retaining a token tax on salt, 3
June, and voted in a minority of 21 for permitting the export of
bonded corn after milling, 10 June. He voted against inquiries into
Irish tithes, 19 June, and the lord advocate’s treatment of the
Scottish press, 25 June, and endorsed expenditure on a public
monument to commemorate the king’s visit to Scotland, 15 July 1822.
Irked by his loss of office, he applied to Liverpool for a place
at the treasury in February 1823, but was turned down, as were his
patronage applications to the home secretary Peel on behalf of
constituents. He voted against a proposal to raid the £7,000,000
sinking fund to finance tax cuts, 18 Mar., dismissed the wool
trade’s objections to the warehousing bill, 21 Mar., and contended
that undue importance had been attached to the regulation of the
relatively small Irish linen trade, 29 Apr. He divided with
government against repealing the Foreign Enlistment Act, 16 Apr.,
but left the House without voting on the motion for inquiry into the
prosecution of the Dublin Orange rioters when they were defeated, 22
Apr. During the inquiry, he repeatedly criticized the decision to
question Orangemen concerning their secret oaths, 8, 23 May. The
political economist David Ricardo* issued a critical review of his
speech against Wolryche Whitmore’s proposals for equalizing the
duties on East and West Indian sugars, 22 May, for he had argued
that the ‘universal application’ of the political economists’ free
trade theory was ‘not practicable’ and called on the House to heed
and safeguard the principles on which the country’s existing
commercial interests were founded. He claimed that failure to do so
and precipitate equalization in response to a temporary market
distortion caused by a glut of American sugars would ruin the West
Indian economy and its annual export trade to Great Britain and
Ireland (worth £3,560,000). He voted against investigating chancery
delays, 5 June, and the currency, 12 June, spoke and was a majority
teller for the government’s Scottish commissary courts bill, 30
June, and assisted the chancellor of the exchequer Robinson when the
distilleries bill was criticized, 8 July. He was in a minority of 20
against the barilla duties bill, 13 June, and voted against
repealing the usury laws, 17 June. As agent for Tobago, which he
never visited, he presented its legislature’s petition complaining
of economic distress, 18 July 1823.
Douglas’s appointment to
the standing committee of West India planters and merchants, 9 Feb.
1824, which he addressed that day as a supporter of the chairman
Charles Rose Ellis* and of Canning’s November 1823 standing orders
on slavery(1), postdated Irvine’s death and coincided with his return
to the admiralty. His re-election, 4 Mar., when he chaired a grand
dinner and made a speech on the constitution, which his critics
rightly deemed ‘incomprehensible’, was unanimous. On 16 May he
confirmed his support for Canning’s slavery resolutions and joined
him in expressing regret that Fowell Buxton, whose speech that day
catalogued specific cases of slave abuse since 1795, had not
‘abstained from all irritating topics’ that prevented temperate
debate. He added that, with the possible exception of Jamaica, the
colonial assemblies were being brought into line and, like Tobago,
legislating to improve the treatment and welfare of slaves.
Following lord chancellor Eldon’s declaration that the Equitable
Loan Company (of which Douglas was a vice-president and director)
was ‘illegal within the operation of the Bubble Act’, 4 Feb. 1825,
Douglas endorsed the Bubble Act repeal bill and claimed that in
Scotland the Act was already a ‘dead letter’, 2 June 1825.
Attending to Scottish and constituency business, he presented
petitions against the silk duties from St. Andrews, 17 Mar., against
taxing notaries’ licences from Dumfriesshire, 23 Mar.,
Kirkcudbright, 29 Mar., and the county, 23 Mar., and from Dumfries
to safeguard its salmon fisheries, 8 Apr. 1824. He was in favour of
proceeding with the government’s Scottish judicature bill without
the additional inquiry proposed by Hamilton, 30 Mar. He presented
petitions from Dumfries and the county for repeal of the tax on
shepherds’ dogs, 8, 9 Apr., and revision of the licensing laws, 4
May; from Annan and its presbytery against the proposed alteration
in the duty on hides and skins and against the Scottish poor bill,
24 May 1824, and from Leith for the release of bonded corn for
consumption, 28 Apr. 1825. The 1825 lowlands churches bill was
entrusted to him, 30 May, and he assisted with the Scottish
partnership societies bill, 22 June 1825. He defended the
admiralty’s decision to remove naval officers who took holy orders
from the half-pay list, 22 Feb., and brought up the report and
amendments to the officers at sea bill, 5 Apr. 1826. He privately
opposed the government’s decision to extend the inquiry into the
circulation of bank notes under £5 to Scotland, but justified his
decision not to vote against it, 16 Mar., on the grounds of the
system’s ability to withstand scrutiny. He warned that Scottish
petitions were almost unanimously against change, pointed out that
the argument for interference was flawed, as the English would not
accept small denomination Scottish notes in preference to their own
specie, and said that confining inquiry to a few selected
institutions would place individual companies at risk. He presented
a hostile petition from Dumfries, 10 Apr. Resisting pressure to the
contrary from the presbytery of Dumfries, he endorsed the
government’s West Indian policy, 1 Mar., and voted against
condemning the Jamaican slave trials, 2 Mar. He presented
anti-slavery petitions from Kent, 20 Apr., and Cupar, 11 May 1826,
praying for planters’ interests to be considered in the event of
abolition. His return at the general election in June was assured,
and from his grace and favour apartment at the admiralty he assisted
John Norman McLeod* in his abortive quest for a seat. Before
Parliament assembled in November, he consulted Henry Brougham*
concerning the Crichton bequest for a new university at Dumfries,
and the colonial under-secretary Wilmot Horton about Robinson’s
dispute with the legislature of Tobago and the transfer of their
agency, which he had surrendered formally, 21 Jan. 1826, to Patrick
Maxwell Stewart*.
Douglas was the government’s representative
on the election committee that considered the Leominster double
return and took charge of the 1827 Scottish bankrupts bill. He
divided for Catholic relief, 6 Mar., and was a spokesman for the
Scottish Dissenters in discussions on the Test Acts, 14 May 1827.
The king revived the office of lord high admiral for his brother the
duke of Clarence when Canning became prime minister, and the
admiralty board went into abeyance. Douglas was included on
Clarence’s council and, as one of his spokesmen, he defended the
appointment of commanders to ships of the line to improve naval
discipline, 30 May, and justified building work at the entrance to
the admiralty to accommodate carriages, 13 June, and Clarence’s
controversial promotions system, which included commissions by
purchase, 21 June. He divided with his colleagues against the Penryn
disfranchisement bill, 28 May, and the Coventry magistrates bill, 18
June 1827. During the recess, he attended the Portsmouth dinner in
honour of Clarence, and was reappointed by the Goderich ministry to
his council. Party feeling ran high in Dumfriesshire at the 1827
burgh elections and celebrations marking the coming of age in
November of the 5th duke of Buccleuch, as whose stooge ‘Mercator’
[John Gladstone*] portrayed Douglas in the local press. In forming
his ministry in January 1828, the duke of Wellington ignored
suggestions that Douglas’s removal from office would ‘give umbrage
to the Buccleuch connection’, and Douglas, who now took a house in
Eaton Square, never forgave the duke for the public humiliation of
being forced out to make way for Lord Brecknock*. Although excluded
from the finance committee (his name had featured on the master of
the mint Herries’s list), he refused to join in the opposition to
the navy estimates proposed by his former colleague Sir George
Cockburn, 11, 12 Feb. His failure to vote to repeal the Test Acts,
26 Feb., when he left the House before the division, provoked a
local debate on his suitability as a Member, which his readiness to
present favourable petitions, 24 Mar., 17 Apr., did little to allay.
From Dumfriesshire he presented petitions against the malt duty, 29
Feb., the stamp duty on receipts, 4 Mar., the settlement laws, 6
May, and the Scottish courts bill, 15 May. He voted for Catholic
relief, 12 May. The chancellor Goulburn ridiculed as unworkable
Douglas’s proposal for extending the provisions of the small notes
bill to Scotland to assist the cattle trade, 16 June. He in turn
opposed the measure to the last, dividing in the minority of 13
against its third reading, 27 June. Seconding Wilmot Horton’s motion
for papers on the Demerara and Berbice manumission orders, 6 Mar.,
Douglas explained that his support for Canning’s 1823 resolutions
was undiminished and, drawing on Coleridge’s ‘Six Months in the West
Indies’, correspondence from naval commanders and statistics from
captured slaving ships, he strove to demonstrate that France and
Spain were sustaining the slave market to the detriment of British
West India planters and traders. He presented a petition stating
this from planters resident in Edinburgh, 9 June, and, citing from
it, reiterated his plea for gradual amelioration and criticized the
abolitionists for arguing their case simplistically on the moral
issue of the ‘indisputable rights of man’:
As to the
compensation to the slave proprietors, I own ... I could never
acquire any intelligible idea as to what is meant by it. The mere
market price of the slaves surely would not be a sufficient
compensation ... The House would do better in confining its views to
the practical amelioration of the condition of the slaves as far as
the state of society and the circumstances of our colonies will
admit.
Douglas stewarded at dinners in honour of Buccleuch’s
first visit to Dumfries in October 1828 and was instrumental with
Lord Garlies* in reviving the Dumfries and Galloway Club of London
early in 1829. As the patronage secretary Planta predicted, he voted
for Catholic emancipation, 6, 30 Mar., and he presented favourable
petitions, 20 Mar. He also attended to his constituents’ hostile
ones, and by equating the legal status of Scottish synods and
presbyteries to those of English archdeacons and their courts, he
was instrumental in securing the receipt of that signed by the
moderator on behalf of the presbytery of Dumfries, notwithstanding
its prior rejection by the Lords and the procedural objections
raised by Charles Williams Wynn, 30 Mar. He brought up others
against the Scottish gaols bill, 7 May, and for ending the East
India Company’s trading monopoly, 14 May. The general meeting of
West India planters and merchants, 8 Apr., appointed Douglas to the
subcommittee that chose Lord Chandos* as their chairman, 13 May, and
he deputized regularly for Chandos on delegations to the board of
trade and became one of the West India Association’s chief spokesmen
in the Commons. He also supported Charles Grant’s unsuccessful
motion for a 7s. reduction in the duty on sugars, which he urged
ministers to consider seriously before the next session, 25 May
1829.
He accompanied William Burge* and Chandos to the
treasury for pre-session talks with Wellington, Wilmot Horton and
Goulburn on the commercial crisis in the West Indies, 16 Jan. 1830,
and pressed ministers relentlessly that session for information, a
full inquiry and concessions to assist the planters. Endorsing their
distress petition, 23 Feb., he testified to the losses and reduced
incomes of ‘British’ West Indian families since the abolition of
slavery in 1807 and to the inability of British planters and
merchants to compete with their French, Spanish and American
counterparts, able to replenish their workforce with slaves in their
prime. His spirited justification, later that day, of the West
Indians’ petition for better administration of justice infuriated
the colonial secretary Sir George Murray, who had trouble refuting
his claims that offices had been left unfilled. Citing from papers
ordered, 17 Feb., and his Association’s petition, he pressed their
campaign for lower tariffs on coffee and sugars, 19 Mar. His
announcement on 19 May that he and Chandos would seek a full inquiry
by select committee, the papers and statistics he had ordered (7, 8
Apr.), and the representations he made to Herries, as president of
the board of trade, on behalf of the bankrupt merchant banker Jonah
Barrington, prompted Wellington to urge Herries to confer with
Goulburn, Murray and Peel to ensure that Douglas was prevented from
‘bringing the issue to a committee of the House of Commons during
the present session’, or at least from doing so independently. On 18
May, to taunts from Hume that he had bowed to government pressure,
he postponed his inquiry motion pending Peel’s investigation into
the Barrington case. He headed a West Indian deputation to the
treasury on the matter, 29 May, and presented the Glasgow West India
Association’s petition against equalization of the duty on spirits,
12 June. He soon perceived that Chandos’s motion for reductions in
the sugar duties was doomed, and remarked caustically that Goulburn
should apply his ‘wait and see’ strategy to duties on their rum and
other spirits, 14 June. Setting aside mistrust and his private
preferences, he spoke for Huskisson’s amendment to reduce the duty
on West Indian sugars to 20s., deeming it similar enough to
Chandos’s, 21 June. He failed to have the matter deferred to avoid
defeat and when, in view of the small government majority (161-144)
and George IV’s death, Goulburn announced a reduction to 24s., 30
June, his complaints that this was less than the West Indians
deserved were disowned by Huskisson and went unsupported. He
objected to the government’s handling of the West India spirits bill
and strongly backed Huskisson’s abortive proposal for a reduction to
5s. 10d. a gallon in the duty on rum in Scotland and Ireland, 5
July. He ordered returns and presented the Glasgow West India
proprietors’ petition for legal protection for their English and
West Indian holdings, 9 July. Objecting on the 13th to Brougham’s
‘ill-timed’ slavery motion, he refused to debate the ‘abstract
question whether man may be the property of man’ or to ‘defend
individual slave-owners’, and failed to turn the discussion to
Canning’s resolutions and West Indian property rights. He voted for
the enfranchisement of Birmingham, Leeds and Manchester, 23 Feb.,
and against making forgery a non-capital offence, 7 June. Drawing on
his departmental knowledge, he criticized proposals to amalgamate or
abolish the office of treasurer of the navy to which Thomas
Frankland Lewis* had been appointed, 12 Mar., and testified to
recent improvements in accounting practices there, 30 Mar. He
presented and endorsed petitions against renewing the East India
Company’s charter from Pollokshaws, 8 Apr., Annan and Dumfries, 20
May 1830.
The anti-slavery lobby (represented in the Dumfries
and Galloway Courier by ‘Presbyter’) and the earl of Selkirk’s
coming of age, 22 Apr., had made Kirkcudbright and the Burghs harder
to manage. At the 1830 general election Douglas, who fretted over
his wife’s imminent ‘confinement’ (she gave birth to a daughter on
17 Aug.) and corresponded with Buccleuch throughout, canvassed
assiduously and was obliged to keep a high profile in the county and
the Stewartry to secure an unopposed return. He refused to pledge
his future parliamentary conduct. He corresponded with the board of
trade on West Indian issues before Parliament met.54 Calling on
Brougham to make his anti-slavery motion, scheduled for 25 Nov.,
‘less abstract’ and ‘more specific’, 8 Nov., Douglas pointed to the
denominational nature of most of the petitions supporting it, 8, 11,
23 Nov., and, replying to Lord Morpeth, he portrayed the planters as
defenders of the slaves’ interests, 23 Nov. 1830. The Wellington
ministry counted him among their ‘friends’, but he divided against
them on the civil list when they were brought down, 15 Nov. He
described retrenchment and civil list reductions as ‘useless’ unless
the populace were employed, 9 Dec., and objected to ‘striking off’
recipients of civil list pensions indiscriminately ‘as the king’s
revenue was involved’, 23 Dec. In a definitive speech, 13 Dec., he
endorsed a distress petition from the West India planters seeking
inquiry into the ‘whole state of society in the West Indies’ and the
slave owners’ right to compensation. He complained that prejudice
made it impossible for the West India interest to ‘put their case
fairly’ and, warning of the damaging effects of unrest and trading
losses, he asked ‘whether precipitate abolition would really help
the African’:
I became a West Indian proprietor about eight
years ago by succession. By the laws of my country I became
responsible for the proper management of this peculiar property. Had
I immediately manumitted my people, all industry would have ceased
on my property, and they would have become vagrants - a nuisance to
every neighbouring proprietor ... I thought it my duty to agree to
the resolutions of 1823, rather than to adopt any other course; and
I thought time would be given until a manifest improvement had taken
place in the condition of the slave.
Turning to reform, which
Queensberry was ready to support, he conceded that it was necessary
‘to a certain extent’ but ‘most pernicious and mischievous, if it is
to prevent Members from deliberating freely and fairly on the
affairs of this country, and to enter into pledges that cannot be
fulfilled, without committing the greatest injustice’. The general
committee of West India planters and merchants had commended ‘the
persevering diligence and consummate ability’ Douglas had ‘displayed
in the protection of the interests of the West India colonies’ as
chairman of the acting committee, 8 Dec. 1830, and despite resigning
from it, 30 June 1831, he deputized for Chandos at meetings as
hitherto, negotiated terms for inquiry with the board of trade, and
ordered returns preparatory to drafting papers on the sugar duties.
After discussing opposition tactics with Peel and Herries, Douglas
denounced Lord Althorp’s budget as ‘confused’ and ‘incomplete’, 11
Feb., and described the proposed tax on stock transfers as a ‘breach
of trust’, attributable to the first lord of the admiralty Sir James
Graham*, 14 Feb. Seconding Chandos’s relief motion, he delivered his
usual mantra on colonial ruin and incompetent government policy, 21
Feb., but despite their success in engaging the vice-president of
the board of trade Poulett Thomson in debate, they made little
progress. Douglas repeated his claims in discussions on trade, 11,
18 Mar., and the sugar and timber duties, 15, 22 Mar., and again
when opposing Buxton’s slavery abolition motion, 15 Apr. 1831, but
he now substituted age-specific population totals for trade
statistics.
He called for a separate Scottish reform bill, 3
Feb., and warned on bringing up a Dumfries petition, 4 Feb. 1831,
that his constituents would only accept a ‘measure which takes seats
from Cornwall to restore them to Scotland’. He successfully moved an
amendment for information on Scottish burghs with populations of
2-4,000, 3 Mar., and contended when details of the Scottish measure
were announced, 9 Mar.
that the present arrangement of
districts can no longer be continued under a reform system. To a
close system it was well enough adapted, but it will be found
cumbersome under the proposed bill. And when each individual of the
constituent body has the privilege of a direct vote, I fear the
arrangement of districts will not only be cumbersome, but
excessively expensive.
He divided against the English reform
bill at its second reading, 22 Mar. Next day, he addressed the
‘provost, magistrates, council, trades and other inhabitants of the
Dumfries District of Burghs’, where two reformers were canvassing
and his brothers’ support for him was doubtful. Confirming his
future candidature, he strove to justify his hostile vote:
[The bill] had not undergone any previous public discussion, nor was
its probable working or consequences made familiar to men’s minds by
that private deliberation in ordinary society which is the safest
mode of maturing any measure for public adoption. I therefore did
and do see so many hazards to be incurred, by suddenly changing the
whole balance of our present system of government, by displacing 168
English Members from that constituency which has hitherto returned
them, transferring 106 of these to counties and large towns, and
cutting off 62 Members entirely ... I tell you truly as an honest
man I could not bring my mind to vote by acclamation for the
principle of a measure that had so extensive an operation. Many
gentlemen have voted for the second reading with a determination to
cut down the principle of the bill by striking out its clauses in
the committee. I have considered that I was taking a more manly and
straightforward course in acting as I have done. A measure such as
the one now before the country cannot be trifled with. If a wrong
step be taken it cannot be retraced; and this constriction has had a
strong influence on my decision.
In the House, 30 Mar., 12
Apr., he objected to hurrying the Scottish measure through, cast
doubt on its suitability, notwithstanding the widespread support for
the extended franchise proposed, and poured scorn on ‘the whole bill
mantra’. Knowing that he had ‘delicate cards to play’, he approached
Buccleuch, who enabled him to see off an attempt, supported by
Queensberry, who denied it, to replace him with his brother Henry, a
reformer. After assisting with his canvass at Easter, Buccleuch’s
agent Thomas Crichton commented, 10 Apr., ‘If there is no change in
the law, Mr. Douglas I think will succeed. If the present bill
passes he will not have the least chance’. The Times, which later
described him as a ‘person of great pretensions’, observed, 18 Apr.:
Mr. Keith Douglas may well declare [that] the spirit of reform
that pervades the country is attended with great inconvenience. To
be met with the groans of the people, is very disagreeable, - to be
burnt in effigy is not at all flattering. A narrow minded man ...
who feels that he is soon to lose his political consequence, must
behold with alarm the expression of honest popular feelings.
To Lord Ellenborough and fellow anti-reformers, Douglas’s absence
from the division on Gascoyne’s wrecking amendment, 19 Apr. 1831,
was ‘shabby’. However, it encouraged reports that he was ‘for the
bill’ and briefly assisted him at the ensuing general election.63
Targeted by radicals whom he claimed were encouraged by the
pro-reform Dumfries Courier, he considered his success ‘very
doubtful. If I am back in Parliament to assist in keeping in order
many of the projects that are afloat, I must I suspect find a seat
in England’. He also deemed his return impossible without military
assistance to quell the Dumfries mob. Queensberry as county lord
lieutenant provided this and, belatedly assisted by his brothers
John and Henry, he carried the Lochmaben delegate’s election and so
secured his return. To Buccleuch, whose candidates in Dumfriesshire,
Linlithgow Burghs and Selkirkshire he now assisted, Douglas
observed: ‘My success is a great triumph. My intention is to use it
with every moderation and I shall tell my constituents that they
shall have future access to me as if nothing had occurred’. He had
recently been appointed a deputy lieutenant of Dumfries and
Fifeshire, where, as praeses, he facilitated the return of the
anti-reformer James Lindsay the following week.
He presented
and defended the Forfarshire anti-reformers’ petition, 27 June, and,
opposing the reintroduced reform bill at its second reading, 6 July
1831, condemned it as a destructive measure, devoid of a safety net,
that struck at the ‘existence of every institution in the country’.
He attributed the Wellington ministry’s defeat and the ‘current
sweeping reform’ to the duke’s refusal to concede the
enfranchisement of large towns and said that he had been prepared to
support the bill’s enfranchisement proposals (schedules C and D) and
a £10 or £15 franchise in the new constituencies, but nothing
further until this change had been properly evaluated. Challenging
ministers to explain the difference between towns of 2-4,000 and
6-7,000 inhabitants, he spoke scathingly of the schedule B
disfranchisements and complained that the bill deprived West Indians
of parliamentary influence and that the Scottish bill failed to
provide equal and adequate representation for Scotland. He voted for
adjournment, 12 July, to make the 1831 census the criterion for
English borough disfranchisements, 19 July, and to postpone
consideration of the partial disfranchisement of Chippenham, 27
July. He repeated his objections to schedule B, 2 Aug., disputed the
case for enfranchising Gateshead, which he claimed to know well,
independently of Newcastle-upon-Tyne, 5 Aug., and supported
petitions against the proposed disfranchisement of the Anstruther
Easter Burghs, 6 Aug. Unwell with ‘influenza’, he learnt with dismay
that Queensberry, who had gone over to government, was determined
not to return him again and, fearing an early dissolution, he turned
again to Buccleuch. He joined in the criticism of the three Member
English counties and pressed for second seats for the Welsh
counties, Aberdeenshire, Ayrshire, Fifeshire, Forfarshire,
Lanarkshire, Midlothian and Perthshire, 13 Aug. He refused to commit
a premature vote for Hume’s scheme for colonial representation, 16
Aug. He presented Kirkudbright’s petition requesting a transfer to
the Wigtown district of burghs, 23 Aug. He objected to using
Saturday sittings to expedite the reform bill’s progress, 27 Aug.,
voted against disfranchising non-resident freeholders of Aylesbury,
Cricklade, East Retford and New Shoreham, 2 Sept., and maintained
that two-day polls would be unmanageable in Yorkshire and the large
metropolitan constituencies, 5 Sept. He also voted that day to
suspend the Liverpool writ. He divided against the English reform
bill’s passage, 21 Sept., but for the second reading of the Scottish
bill, 23 Sept. Before doing so, he spoke of his longstanding
conviction that some reform was necessary in Scotland, his
reluctance to give the impression, by a hostile vote, that he
opposed all change, and his deep and persistent objections to the
ministerial measure as it stood. He devoted much of his speech for
Murray’s proposal to grant two Members to Aberdeenshire, Ayrshire,
Fifeshire, Forfarshire, Lanarkshire, Midlothian, Perthshire and
Renfrewshire, 4 Oct. 1831, to pleading for the continued separate
enfranchisement of Selkirk and Peebles. He now also challenged
Althorp to state the likely electoral effects of permitting the
eldest sons of Scottish peers to sit for Scottish counties and,
receiving a fudged reply, protested that ‘reform’ had not been
thought through.
Douglas chaired the West India planters and
merchants’ standing committee in St. James’s Street, 19 June 1831,
and represented them in discussions at the treasury and board of
trade on molasses (to which select committee he was appointed, 30
June), the sugar duties and the beleaguered sugar refinery bill. He
presented the Dublin West India Association’s petition against
renewing the Refinery Act, 30 Aug., and when the renewal bill was
delayed, 5 Sept., he moved unsuccessfully for a committee on the
commercial, financial and political state of the West Indies.
Opposing the bill’s committal, 12 Sept., he protested that ministers
had kept him uninformed and criticized Althorp’s policy of
permitting foreign sugars to enter the country for refining and
re-export, so keeping prices at continental levels, below the
British West Indians’ production costs. He failed to have ‘the
statements, calculations and explanations, submitted to the board of
trade, relating to the commercial, financial, and political state of
the British West India colonies, and printed by the House of Commons
on 7 Feb. 1831’ referred to a committee of the whole House. As a
minority teller, he harried ministers when the refinery bill was
held over, 13, 14 Sept., and the report presented, 28 Sept., pressed
again for inquiry 30 Sept., and on 6 Oct. was named to the committee
conceded on West Indian commerce, to which he immediately submitted
evidence in writing.70 His opposition to the ‘vexatious’ sugar
refinery bill persisted, but his objections, requests for deferral
and attempts to kill it failed, 6, 7, 13 Oct., and exposed divisions
within the West India lobby, 13 Oct. In November he wrote to the
president of the board of trade Lord Auckland and Brougham setting
out his own views on the sugar trade. He recommended ‘opening the
trade on a system of duties and drawbacks’ determined by the country
of production, and suggested
that the duty on British
plantation sugar should be 15s. per hundredweight; East India sugar,
the actual growth of any of our residences in India 18s., and
foreign 20s. I would further suggest that they should all be
admitted for consumption in this country at these distinctive rates
of duty, on condition that all such importations shall be made in
British ships; and that the slave trade shall be effectually
abolished in the foreign countries to which this privilege shall be
extended.
Partly on account of his West Indian commitments,
he prevaricated over going to Scotland to rally support for the
anti-reformers following the English bill’s defeat in the Lords. He
divided against the revised bill at its second reading, 17 Dec.
1831, and committal, 20 Jan., and against enfranchising Tower
Hamlets, 28 Feb., and the third reading, 22 Mar. 1832. He again
poured scorn on Gateshead’s case for separate enfranchisement, 5
Mar. According to Lord Ellenborough, Douglas frequented the Carlton
Club during the crisis of May when the king’s invitation to
Wellington to form a ministry failed.73 Riled by the popular reform
petitions that the episode prompted, he criticized the Edinburgh one
presented by the lord advocate, Jeffrey, 23 May, and accused
ministers of refusing to treat the question of Scottish reform with
‘fair deliberation’ from the outset. Justifying his remarks, he
added:
At my own election, because I professed my honest
opinions and refused to vote for ‘the bill, the whole bill and
nothing but the bill’, there were persons in conjunction with
government who took care to suppress anything like deliberation; and
this has been the case at all other public meetings, whether the
object was to petition Parliament to elect a representative. We have
now reached the stage where the power of the king and ... Lords is
entirely superseded. Under these circumstances I have made up my
mind as to the Scotch reform bill. I consider it quite unnecessary
to offer any suggestions respecting it, because it is well known the
government will admit of no alterations. We now have a ministry, not
only invested with their known customary official power, but also
with the power of the king and both Houses of Parliament. It is,
therefore, better to leave to them all the responsibility and
inconvenience that must attend on a measure carried in so
unconstitutional a manner.
He divided against the Irish
reform bill at its second reading, 25 May, and called for a uniform
freeholder franchise, 2 July. He wanted to see a combined Greenock
and Port Glasgow constituency under the Scottish reform bill, 15
June, and was a minority teller that day against the dismemberment
of Perthshire. He divided against government on the Russian-Dutch
loan, 26 Jan., 12 July, and expressed surprise at the failure of
Alexander Baring’s bill denying debtors parliamentary privilege, 13
July 1832.
Douglas was included on the revived West India
committee, 15 Dec. 1831, and, testifying before them, 2, 3 Feb.
1832, he spoke candidly of his eight to ten years’ experience as an
absentee planter and produced accounts from his estates for scrutiny
that confirmed his tenet that the absence of protective tariffs and
the age-structure of post-abolition British plantations adversely
affected their competitiveness. He suggested introducing a drawback
on West Indian sugars and permitting rum to be refined and rectified
in bond.74 Their deliberations had little effect on his
parliamentary conduct, but the delays to the report infuriated him.
With Chandos, he pressed for tariff concessions on dark and clay
sugars, information on the ministerial relief measures and a full
debate, 29 Feb., 7, 9, 14, 15, 23 Mar. He protested at delays to the
West India committee’s report and to the crown colonies relief bill,
and criticized the government’s reluctance to discuss West Indian
issues in a full House and their prevarication and ‘ambiguity’ on
policy, 28 Mar., 13 Apr. He remained convinced that Fowell Buxton’s
policies would ‘destroy the colonies at a stroke’ and conceded that
he had been ‘caught out’ by the late change in the wording of his
motion for a select committee to consider the West Indian reports
and the immediate appointment of a select committee on slavery, and
also by the colonial under-secretary Lord Howick’s willingness to
grant it, 24 May. He now criticized Fowell Buxton’s choice of
statistics, and he was dismayed to find that his appeal to Canning’s
1823 resolutions as a common rallying call went unheeded. On the
crown colonies relief bill, which he opposed, 13 June, 3 Aug., he
played second fiddle to the Jamaican agent Burge, with whom he was a
minority teller, 3 Aug. He succeeded in harrying Althorp on
commercial issues, the differences between crown and legislative
colonies and the remit of previous orders-in-council, 20, 27 July, 3
Aug.; but when, assisted by Holmes, he tried to have the issues he
had then raised and papers he had ordered on colonial labour, 2
July, and crown colonies, 27 July, referred to the new West India
committee, he failed by 51-20, 3 Aug. 1832.
As expected,
Douglas stood down at the dissolution in 1832, and although mooted
as a likely Conservative candidate for St. Andrews Burghs in 1835
and the Dumfries district in 1839, he did not stand for Parliament
again. He remained active at the Carlton and in West Indian circles,
welcomed Peel’s decision to repeal the corn laws and corresponded
with Brougham, whose legal advice he had first sought in 1833, when
his late father-in-law’s (and thereby his family’s) rights to the
Irvines’ Scottish and West Indian property became the subject of
costly and protracted litigation in the court of session and Upper
House, which ultimately ruled in their favour, 2 Aug. 1850. He
attributed to Brougham personally William IV’s decision to grant him
and his siblings the precedence of younger sons and daughters of a
marquess. Douglas, for whom no will has been found, died in December
1859 at his London home in Chesham Place, survived by his wife (d.
1864) and four of their seven children. His eldest surviving son
William (1824-68), the secretary of legation at Vienna, succeeded
his mother to the Irvine estates, took that name in 1867 and was in
turn succeeded by his brother Walter Douglas Irvine (1825-1901), who
disentailed the estates in 1872.
Notes:
1. According to the Legacies of British Slave-Ownership at the
University College London, Douglas was awarded a payment as a slave
trader in the aftermath of the Slavery Abolition Act 1833 with the
Slave Compensation Act 1837. The British Government took out a £15
million loan (worth £1.43 billion in 2020) with interest from Nathan
Mayer Rothschild and Moses Montefiore which was subsequently paid
off by the British taxpayers (ending in 2015). Douglas was
associated with three different claims he owned 576 slaves in Tobago
and received a £10,907 payment at the time (worth £1.04 million in
2020)
2. Walter Irvine planter of Tobago came back
to Britain in 1796 and bought an estate in Surrey. Died there in
January 1824. He left a large estate in Scotland, possessed by Lady
Douglas, his daughter, by virtue of her marriage settlement.
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