Following on from our post about James Abercromby‘s highly-charged partisan election as Speaker in 1835, Philip Salmon explores the 1839 and 1841 elections of his successor Charles Shaw Lefevre. These shed new light on the so-called ‘Bedchamber crisis’ involving Queen Victoria, and hint at tell-tale splits within the Conservative party long before the famous repeal of the Corn Laws in 1846.
Considered by the Liberal prime minister Earl Russell to be ‘the greatest Speaker who ever sat in that chair’, a view endorsed by Palmerston and the Tory premiers Peel and Disraeli, Lefevre helped to transform the way the 19th century House of Commons functioned. On his watch as a ‘reforming’ Speaker from 1839-57, many of the recognisably modern procedures that continue to govern the UK’s parliamentary system began to emerge. Widely credited with being the first ‘politically independent Speaker’ and ‘the first of the modern Speakers ─ non-partisan in mind, dignified in manner’, he also helped Thomas Erskine May produce the first edition of his famous Treatise on procedure, the so-called ‘bible’ of parliamentary practice that continues to be updated and in use today.
Lefevre’s first election to the Speakership, however, was anything but ‘non-partisan’, occurring in the midst of a major constitutional crisis involving the young monarch. On 6 May 1839 Melbourne’s Whig government resigned after almost losing a vote on a bill relating to the government of Jamaica. As the diarist Charles Greville explained, ‘they resigned because they no longer had that parliamentary support for their measures which they deemed necessary’. The ensuing ‘Bedchamber crisis’ in which Sir Robert Peel refused to form a Conservative government without the appointment of new ladies in Queen Victoria’s household, as a mark of royal confidence, has been well documented. Its connection with that month’s Speakership election, however, remains relatively unexplored.
On the same day that the Whig government resigned, Speaker Abercromby announced his intention to retire. The candidate already lined up by the Whigs to replace him was Thomas Spring Rice, their former chancellor of the exchequer. He had only narrowly missed being a candidate in 1835 and, as Melbourne noted, ‘still desires the position’. The Whigs, he felt, would ‘be obliged to give him all the assistance in our power’.
The way Peel’s refusal to form a government without new courtiers forced the Whigs to come to the queen’s ‘rescue’ and resume office is well known, not least owing to the way in which it has been depicted in popular TV dramas such as Victoria and the film The Young Victoria. This was the last time that a monarch effectively kept a ministry in power, occurring just four years after the queen’s uncle William IV did exactly the opposite and turfed a government out.
Significantly, during Peel’s discussions with the queen the election of a new Speaker came to be viewed as a key ‘test’ of any ensuing ‘government’s ability to control the House’. Peel named Henry Goulburn, another former chancellor of the exchequer, as his Tory candidate. The Speakership election now became a crucial trial of party strength, with important bearings on the constitutional legitimacy of the hastily reinstated Whig ministry and the actions of the monarch.
The 1839 Speaker election
After consulting with leading radicals and the Father of the House George Byng, Whig ministers realised that in these altered circumstances Spring Rice could not be their candidate. Influential figures like Daniel O’Connell and Joseph Hume simply refused to back him. Instead, the advice they received ‘from all quarters’ was that Lefevre, known for his radical views and behind-the-scenes work on reforming private bill procedure, was ‘the only man we could place in the chair’. Lefevre later recalled how some of his friends said ‘we mean to have you as our Speaker’, and ‘this friendly joke was soon found to express the general sentiment of the country gentlemen and the ministerial party’. Under pressure Spring Rice reluctantly stepped aside, later being rewarded with a peerage. Backed by a rare combination of Irish MPs, Radicals and Whigs, Lefevre was duly put forward as the Whig candidate. The whip E. J. Stanley, meanwhile, hastily wrote to every ‘Liberal’ MP for support.
On 27 May 1839 Lefevre was proposed as Speaker by the radically inclined MP Henry Handley, who decried the way the election had become ‘a matter of party’ and ‘an appendage to ministerial patronage’. Seconded as an ‘advocate for reform’ by Stephen Lushington, the noted anti-slavery campaigner, Lefevre made a self-deprecatory speech downplaying his ‘humble share’ in reforming private business. In a remarkably full House, with just 19 recorded abstentions, Lefevre narrowly won the ensuing vote, 317-299. In the first official record of a Speakership vote, Lefevre and Goulburn courteously supported each other, continuing a tradition that lasted until 1992.
The 1841 Speaker election:
Lefevre’s re-election as Speaker in 1841 could not have been more different, occurring after a general election victory for the Conservatives that finally brought Peel to power with a large majority. It was widely expected that Lefevre would now be replaced as Speaker. Elements of the Tory party were certainly determined to oppose him, with ‘violent talk’ being reported at the Carlton Club against him and the Tory press accusing him of party bias in his management of election committees. The Times, in particular, recommended ‘purifying the Speakership from the taint of Whiggery which at present infects it’, warning of the ‘mischief’ that would otherwise ‘result to the Conservative cause’ at their ‘very moment of success’. In a highly provocative letter to The Times attributed to Disraeli, one ‘Pittacus’ reminded readers of the ‘bigoted’ Whig rejection of the Tory Manners Sutton as Speaker in 1835. If Peel allows ‘the minority’ to retain ‘their Speaker’, it warned, he will have ‘deserted his post and his friends’ and been ‘false to the principles of the British constitution’.
The ensuing furore within Tory ranks over Lefevre’s re-election clearly anticipated subsequent rifts within the Conservative party. As Peel himself later pointed out, ‘many of those who were the most eager Protectionists were decidedly adverse to the re-election of Mr. Lefevre’, while the ‘most moderate’ were ‘in his favour’. Warning the Duke of Wellington about Tory ‘disunion at the very start of the session’, 1 Aug. 1841, Peel reported that ‘many of the most eager of our party are decidedly in favour of opposing Shaw Lefevre’, which ‘I am against’. Outlining his objections, Peel dismissed the idea of retaliating for the Whigs’ treatment of Manners Sutton in 1835, noting how ‘we said it was unjust and impolitic’. He also argued that ‘a Speaker who has shown himself well qualified for his office’ and ‘acted fairly and impartially … will have greater authority and power to preserve order than a Speaker elected after a party contest’.
On 1 Aug. 1841 Peel privately advised Lefevre that he would support his re-election, citing his ‘impression that it is not for the public’s advantage that the election for the chair’ should become ‘a party contest’. ‘I cannot give you an assurance that the course I intend to pursue will be universally acquiesced in by the party’, he warned, but ‘I am confident a decided majority will take the course which I propose’. After ‘strenuous efforts’ on Peel’s part to ‘secure unanimity’, Lefevre was eventually re-elected unopposed, 19 Aug. 1841.
In his Commons speech that day supporting the re-election of Lefevre, Peel explained that he did not believe ‘the person elected to the Chair, who had conscientiously and ably performed his duties, should be displaced because his political opinions were not … those of the majority of the House’. ‘The Whig papers which were chuckling at the prospect of an early schism’ were ‘much disappointed’, Greville recorded, adding, ‘it would have been a very bad beginning for Peel if he had been overruled by the violence of the Ultra Tories’.
One clearly astonished commentator observed how ‘the Tories consent to be ruled by a Whig, and one who is perhaps something more than a mere Whig – a sincere Liberal in the fullest sense of the word’. ‘The Speaker of the majority in one Parliament is continued as speaker in the next, though he belongs to the minority’, they protested. Significantly, as one historian of the Speakership has noted, since that time ‘no Speaker has ever been rejected following a change of government’.
PS
This article is based on a recent History of Parliament biography for the 1832-68 House of Commons project. For access please contact us here.
Further Reading:
P. Laundy, The office of Speaker in the Parliaments of the Commonwealth (1984)
F. Willson, A Strong Supporting Cast: The Shaw Lefevres 1789-1936 (1993)