Robert Lowe

Source: Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia.
Victoria
Prime MinisterWilliam Ewart Gladstone
Preceded byHenry Bruce
Succeeded byR. A. Cross
Personal details
Born4 December 1811 (2024-03-27UTC15:00:57)
Bingham, Nottinghamshire
Died27 July 1892(1892-07-27) (aged 80)
Political partyLiberal
SpouseGeorgiana Orred (d. 1884)

Caroline Anne Sneyd (d. 1914)[1]

Alma materUniversity College, Oxford

Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke,

UK company law. Gladstone appointed Lowe as Chancellor expecting him to hold down public spending. Public spending rose, and Gladstone pronounced Lowe "wretchedly deficient"; most historians agree. Lowe repeatedly underestimated the revenue, enabling him to resist demands for tax cuts and to reduce the national debt instead. He insisted that the tax system be fair to all classes. By his own main criterion of fairness — that the balance between direct and indirect taxation remain unchanged — he succeeded. Even in his time, however, this concept of fiscal incidence was obsolescent.[3]

Early life

Lowe was born in

Bingham, Nottinghamshire, England, the second son of the Reverend Robert Lowe (rector of St Mary and All Saints, Bingham). His mother was Ellen,[2] the daughter of the Rev. Reginald Pyndar.[4] Lowe had albinism, and his sight was so weak that initially it was thought he was unfit to be sent to school.[4]

In 1822, he went to a school at Southwell, then Latin House, Risley, and in 1825 to Winchester as a commoner. In Lowe's fragment of autobiography he shows an unpleasing picture of the under-feeding and other conditions of the school life of the time. The languages of Latin and Greek were the main subjects of study and Lowe records that both were easy for him.[4]

Lowe then attended

Literae Humaniores and a second class in mathematics, besides taking a leading part in the Union
debates.

In 1835, he won a fellowship at Magdalen, but vacated it on marrying, on 26 March 1836, Georgiana Orred (d. 1884).[2] Lowe was for a few years a successful tutor at Oxford, but in 1838 was disappointed at not being elected to the professorship of Greek at the University of Glasgow.

Australia

In 1841 Lowe moved to London to read for the Bar, but his eyesight showed signs of serious weakness, and, acting on medical advice, he sailed to Sydney in the colony of New South Wales, where he set to work in the law courts. On 7 November 1843 he was nominated by Sir George Gipps, the Governor of New South Wales, to a seat in the New South Wales Legislative Council replacing Robert Jones who had to resign from the Council due to insolvency.[5][6]

Owing to a difference of opinion with Gipps, Lowe resigned from the council on 9 September 1844,[6][7] but was elected in April 1845 for Counties of St Vincent and Auckland.[6] Lowe held that seat until 20 June 1848 and was elected for City of Sydney in July 1848, a seat he held until November 1849.[6]

Lowe soon made his mark in the political world by his clever speeches, particularly on finance and education; and besides obtaining a large legal practice, he was involved with the founding and was one of the principal writers for the Atlas newspaper.[4]

In 1844, Lowe defended a Royal Navy captain, John Knatchbull, on a charge of murdering a widowed shopkeeper named Ellen Jamieson;[8] he was one of the earliest to raise in a British court the plea of moral insanity (unsuccessfully). Knatchbull was hanged on 13 February 1844. Lowe and his wife adopted Mrs. Jamieson's two orphaned children, Bobby and Polly Jamieson.[2]

On 27 January 1850, the Lowes and the two Jamieson children sailed to England.[4]

British politics

Early years

Lowe's previous university reputation and connections combined with his colonial experience stood him in good stead;

Vice-President of the Board of Trade. During his time there, he saw the Joint Stock Companies Act 1856 passed – the first nationwide codification of company law in the world.[citation needed] He has been referred to as "the father of modern company law".[9] This status was again referred to in the presentation by Lord Sainsbury of the second reading leading up to the new United Kingdom Companies Act 2006
:

"One hundred and fifty years ago, my predecessor Robert Lowe, later First Viscount Sherbrooke, brought forward the Bill that created the joint stock limited liability company. It was the first nationwide codification of company law in the world, and he has recently been described as "the father of modern company law". Our company law continues to have an excellent record. Since 1997 new incorporations have risen by over 60 per cent and the number of foreign firms incorporating in the UK has more than quadrupled. No doubt this is because, according to the World Bank's assessment, it is quicker and cheaper for companies to set up in the UK than in any other EU member state."[10]

In 1859, Lowe went to the Education Office as

payment by results, and bringing in the revised code (1862), which embodied this principle and made an examination in "the three R's" the test for grants of public money. He felt then, and still more after the Reform Act of 1867, that "we must educate our masters," and he rather scandalized his old university friends by the stress he laid on physical science as opposed to classical studies. Considerable opposition was aroused by the new regime at the Education Office, and, in 1864, Lowe was driven to resign by an adverse vote in Parliament with reference to the way in which inspectors' reports were "edited." This was the result of the strong feelings that had been aroused against Lingen's administration of the Education Office.[citation needed
]

Reform

Robert Lowe, Vanity Fair, 1869

Lord Palmerston had been a towering opponent to widening democratic participation and his death in October 1865 opened the way to the RussellGladstone reform ministry, which introduced the Reform Bill of 1866. Lowe carried on his former Prime Minister's views, as part of the Canning and Peel Liberal school. Moreover, he had been heavily shocked by his experiences of the comparatively developed union movement in his time in Australia in a less rigid class system. He had already made known his objections to the advance of "democracy", notably in his speech in 1865 on Sir Edward Baines's Borough Franchise Bill. He was not invited to join the new ministry. Lowe retired into what Bright called the "Cave of Adullam", and with other Liberals and Whig peers (known collectively as the 'Adullamites' ) opposed the bill in a series of brilliant speeches, which raised his reputation as an orator to its highest point and helped to cause government's downfall.

However, Benjamin Disraeli who led the subsequent Conservative government proposed his own Reform Bill, which by splitting the parties succeeded to become the Reform Act 1867. As he said in the third reading of the Bill, Lowe thought any step towards democracy was bad because it engendered "a right existing in the individual as opposed to general expediency… numbers as against wealth and intellect".[11] So the bill contained "the terms of endless agitation".[12]

Proponents of the Bill argued a lower property qualification would give the vote to respectable members of the working class. But Lowe thought:

the elite of the working classes you are so fond of, are members of trades unions... founded on principles of the most grinding tyranny not so much against masters as against each other... It was only necessary that you should give them the franchise, to make those trades unions the most dangerous political agencies that could be conceived; because they were in the hands, not of individual members, but of designing men, able to launch them in solid mass against the institutions of the country.[13]

Being a man of

company law, Robert Lowe saw unions as a threat to the order, which as he drafted, allowed only for social participation through investment of capital, not investment of labour. As it was the case that participation in Parliament was also only possible through possession of property
, Lowe was fearful that a change in one part of the world he understood would lead to another, ending in unforeseeable chaos.

This principle of equality which you have taken to worship, is a very jealous power; she cannot be worshipped by halves, and like the Turk in this respect, she brooks no rival near the throne. When you get a democratic basis for your institutions, you must remember that you cannot look at that alone, but you must look at it in reference to all your other institutions. When you have once taught the people to entertain the notion of the individual rights of every citizen to share in the Government, and the doctrine of popular supremacy, you impose on yourselves the task of re-modelling the whole of your institutions, in reference to the principles that you have set up...[14]

Lowe concluded his speech with considerable flair.

You must take education up the very first question, and you must press it on without delay for the peace of the country. Sir, I was looking to-day at the head of the lion which was sculptured in

Englishman who is not a slave to the trammels of party, or who is not dazzled by the glare of a temporary and ignoble success![15]

Gladstone Ministry

A terracotta statuette dated 1873 by caricaturist Carlo Pellegrini of Lowe standing on a box of matches inscribed 'Ex luce lucellum'
Lowe's grave in Brookwood Cemetery

In spite of the fact that his appeals did not prevent the passing of the

House of Commons
on 11 April 1870: "The Chancellor of the Exchequer is a man whose duties make him more or less of a taxing machine. He is entrusted with a certain amount of misery which it is his duty to distribute as fairly as he can."

Lowe was a rather cut-and-dried economist, who prided himself that during his four years of office he took twelve millions off taxation; but later opinion has hardly accepted his removal of the shilling registration duty on corn (1869) as good statesmanship, and his failures are remembered rather than his successes. His proposed tax of a halfpenny a box on Lucifer matches in 1871 (for which he suggested the epigram ex luce lucellum, "out of light a little profit") roused a storm of opposition, and had to be dropped. In 1873 he was transferred to the Home Office, but in 1874 the government resigned.

Later years

Lowe spoke against the

Liberal Unionist
party in 1886.

During the 1870s the following epitaph was suggested for him by one of the wits of his day:

Here lies poor old Robert Lowe;
Where he's gone to I don't know;
If to the realms of peace and love,
Farewell to happiness above;
If, haply, to some lower level,
We can't congratulate the devil.

Lowe was delighted with this, and promptly translated it into Latin, as follows:

Continentur hac in fossa
Humilis Roberti ossa;
Si ad coelum evolabit,
Pax in coelo non restabit;
Sin in inferis jacebit,
Diabolum ejus poenitebit.

On his death he was buried in Brookwood Cemetery.

Australian federal electoral division

The

Australian electoral division located in Sydney, was named after him.[18]

Arms

Coat of arms of Robert Lowe
Crest
In front a wolf’s head erased Proper gorged with a collar gemel Or two mullets also Or pierced Gules.
Escutcheon
Gules three mullets fesswise Argent pierced of the field between two wolves passant of the second.
Supporters
On the dexter side a wolf Proper and on the sinister side a bay horse each gorged with a chain and therefrom suspended a portcullis Or.
Motto
Ne Quid Nimis [19]

See also

 This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh (1911). "Sherbrooke, Robert Lowe, Viscount". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). pp. 843–844.

Notes

  1. required.)
  2. ^ . Retrieved 10 September 2014.
  3. .
  4. ^ a b c d e Serle, Percival. "Lowe, Robert, Viscount Sherbrooke (1811–1892)". Dictionary of Australian Biography. Project Gutenberg Australia. Archived from the original on 26 July 2015. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
  5. ^ "Wednesday, November 8, 1843: Legislative Council". The Australian. 9 November 1843. p. 3. Retrieved 25 February 2018 – via Trove.
  6. ^ a b c d "Robert Lowe (1811 - 1892)". Former members of the Parliament of New South Wales. Retrieved 9 April 2019.
  7. New South Wales Government Gazette
    . No. 83. 10 September 1844. p. 1117. Retrieved 23 April 2019 – via Trove.
  8. ^ R v Knatchbull [1844] NSWSupC 9, (1844) NSW Select Cases (Dowling) 313 (1 February 1844), Supreme Court (Full Court) (NSW).
  9. ^ John Micklethwait and Michael Wooldridge (2003) The Company
  10. ^ Lords Hansard text for 11 January 2006 Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
  11. ^ Hansard 15 July 1867 p. 1540
  12. ^ Hansard 15 July 1867, p. 1542
  13. ^ Hansard 15 July 1867 p. 1546
  14. ^ Hansard 15 July 1867 col 1543 Archived 30 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine
  15. ^ Hansard 15 July 1867 pp. 1549–1550
  16. ^ "No. 24847". The London Gazette. 25 May 1880. p. 3173.
  17. ^ "No. 25486". The London Gazette. 3 July 1885. p. 3060.
  18. ^ "2007 federal election: Profile of the Electoral Division of Lowe". Australian Electoral Commission. 9 February 2011. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
  19. ^ Burke's Peerage. 1891.

Bibliography

Own works

  • Poems of a Life (1884)

Sources

External links

New South Wales Legislative Council
Preceded by Appointed member
7 November 1843 – 9 September 1844
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member for Counties of St Vincent and Auckland
April 1845 – June 1848
Succeeded by
Preceded by Member for City of Sydney
July 1848 – November 1849
With: William Wentworth
Succeeded by
Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
John Best
Member of Parliament for Kidderminster
18521859
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Sir William Williams, Bt
Member of Parliament for Calne
18591868
Succeeded by
New constituency Member of Parliament for London University
18681880
Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by
Joint Secretary to the Board of Control

1852–1855
Succeeded by
Preceded by Paymaster General
1855–1858
Succeeded by
Vice-President of the Board of Trade

1855–1858
Preceded by
Vice-President of the Committee of
the Council on Education

1859–1864
Succeeded by
Preceded by Chancellor of the Exchequer
1868–1873
Succeeded by
Preceded by
Home Secretary

1873–1874
Succeeded by
Peerage of the United Kingdom
New creation Viscount Sherbrooke
1880–1892
Extinct