Robert Lowe
This article needs additional citations for verification. (December 2022) |
Victoria | |
---|---|
Prime Minister | William Ewart Gladstone |
Preceded by | Henry Bruce |
Succeeded by | R. A. Cross |
Personal details | |
Born | 4 December 1811 Bingham, Nottinghamshire |
Died | 27 July 1892 | (aged 80)
Political party | Liberal |
Spouse | Georgiana Orred (d. 1884) Caroline Anne Sneyd (d. 1914)[1] |
Alma mater | University College, Oxford |
Robert Lowe, 1st Viscount Sherbrooke,
Early life
Lowe was born in
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
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;
"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
Reform
Lord Palmerston had been a towering opponent to widening democratic participation and his death in October 1865 opened the way to the Russell–Gladstone 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
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
In spite of the fact that his appeals did not prevent the passing of the
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
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
Arms
|
See also
public domain: Chisholm, Hugh (1911). "Sherbrooke, Robert Lowe, Viscount". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 24 (11th ed.). pp. 843–844.
This article incorporates text from a publication now in the- Liberal Party (UK)
- Reform Act 1867
- UK company law
Notes
- doi:10.1093/ref:odnb/17088. (Subscription or UK public library membershiprequired.)
- ^ ISSN 1833-7538. Retrieved 10 September 2014.
- .
- ^ 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.
- ^ "Wednesday, November 8, 1843: Legislative Council". The Australian. 9 November 1843. p. 3. Retrieved 25 February 2018 – via Trove.
- ^ a b c d "Robert Lowe (1811 - 1892)". Former members of the Parliament of New South Wales. Retrieved 9 April 2019.
- New South Wales Government Gazette. No. 83. 10 September 1844. p. 1117. Retrieved 23 April 2019 – via Trove.
- ^ R v Knatchbull [1844] NSWSupC 9, (1844) NSW Select Cases (Dowling) 313 (1 February 1844), Supreme Court (Full Court) (NSW).
- ^ John Micklethwait and Michael Wooldridge (2003) The Company
- ^ Lords Hansard text for 11 January 2006 Archived 3 March 2016 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Hansard 15 July 1867 p. 1540
- ^ Hansard 15 July 1867, p. 1542
- ^ Hansard 15 July 1867 p. 1546
- ^ Hansard 15 July 1867 col 1543 Archived 30 June 2009 at the Wayback Machine
- ^ Hansard 15 July 1867 pp. 1549–1550
- ^ "No. 24847". The London Gazette. 25 May 1880. p. 3173.
- ^ "No. 25486". The London Gazette. 3 July 1885. p. 3060.
- ^ "2007 federal election: Profile of the Electoral Division of Lowe". Australian Electoral Commission. 9 February 2011. Retrieved 15 October 2020.
- ^ Burke's Peerage. 1891.
Bibliography
Own works
- Poems of a Life (1884)
Sources
- Briggs, Asa. “Robert Lowe and the Fear of Democracy," in Briggs, Victorian People (1955) pp. 232–263. online
- Knight, R. (1966). Illiberal Liberal – Robert Lowe in New South Wales, 1842–1850. Melbourne University Press.
- Maloney, John (2006). "Gladstone's Gladstone? The Chancellorship of Robert Lowe, 1868–73". Historical Research. 79 (205): 404–428. .
- Wikidata Q107340676.
- Martin, A.Patchett (1893). Life and Letters of the Rt Hon Robert Lowe, Viscount Sherbrooke. Vol. 2 Vols. London.
{{cite book}}
: CS1 maint: location missing publisher (link) - Marcham, A.J. (1973). "Educating our masters: political parties and elementary education 1867 to 1870". British Journal of Educational Studies. 21 (2): 180–191. .