Edward John Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton PC, FRS (18 March 17914 May 1863), was a British politician from the extended Littleton/Lyttelton family, of first the Canningite Tories and later the Whigs. He had a long political career, active in each of the Houses of Parliament in turn over a period of forty years. He was closely involved in a number of major reforms, particularly Catholic emancipation, the Truck Act 1831, the Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1832 and the Municipal Corporations Act 1835. Throughout his career he was actively concerned with the Irish question and he was Chief Secretary for Ireland between 1833 and 1834.
Hatherton was also a major Staffordshire landowner, farmer and businessman. As heir to two family fortunes, he had large holdings in agricultural and residential property, coal mines, quarries and brick works, mainly concentrated around Penkridge, Cannock and Walsall.
Background and education
Littleton was born Edward Walhouse, and was educated at Rugby and at Brasenose College, Oxford. In 1812, he took the name of Littleton to inherit the large landed estates of his great-uncle Sir Edward Littleton, 4th and last of the Littleton Baronets, of Teddesley Hall, near Penkridge, Staffordshire. In 1835, he also inherited large mineral and manufacturing interests in Walsall and Cannock from his uncle, Edward Walhouse.
Career Political career, 1812–1833 Littleton also took over his great-uncle's parliamentary seat. From 1812 to 1832, he was Member of Parliament for Staffordshire and then was the MP for the southern division of that county until 1835. He spent most of that time as a Canningite Tory, but moved over to the Whigs after George Canning's death in 1827.
In the House of Commons, Littleton was especially prominent as an advocate of Roman Catholic emancipation. In 1825, as a preliminary to a Catholic Relief Bill promoted by Daniel O'Connell, he introduced an Elective Franchise in Ireland Bill.Hansard 22 April 1825 The objective of this was, paradoxically, to raise the property qualification for Irish voters. However, its underlying aim was to end abuse of a distinctively Irish form of freehold, which had to be renewed by payment to the original landlord, and so allowed large landowners to create large numbers of compliant voters. Both the Relief and the Franchise Bills failed. After crossing the floor of the House to join the Whigs in 1827, Littleton voted for the Catholic emancipation Bill that finally became law in 1829.
From this point, the style and content of his contributions changed completely. For almost twenty years he had been content generally to make short contributions, usually delivering himself of his considered opinions or changed notions (for he sometimes altered his initial stance during debate) in the chamber of the house in a few unmemorable phrases. From 1830 he became closely involved in committee work on important reforms. As his opinions became more radical, he adopted an increasingly trenchant and discursive style, speaking frequently in long, argued statements, laden with factual detail. On one day in September 1831, for example, he made eight speeches of varying length in the House.Hansard 12 September 1831 One of the important factors in this change of style and focus seems to have been his increasingly close contact with middle and working class opinion in the growing Staffordshire towns – Stoke on Trent, Wolverhampton and Walsall. He frequently presented petitions and deployed arguments and reports drawn directly from these disfranchised towns and people. As he became more combative and forensic in his contributions, he was increasingly regarded as a Radical rather than merely a Whig.
After the 1830 General Election ended Tory domination, and brought in a minority Whig government under Earl Grey, Littleton took up the campaign against the truck system. This was the practice by which employees were forced to accept payment or advances in kind, often becoming effectively enslaved to the company store. First he presented numerous petitions against the system from workers in Staffordshire and Gloucestershire.Hansard 16 March 1830 He asked and obtained leave to introduce a bill against the truck system at the end of the year.Hansard 14 December 1830 The 1831 general election completely changed the electoral landscape, ushering in a reforming Whig ministry under Grey, and allowing Littleton to proceed with his bill with a fair certainty of success. Moving the vote on the bill in September 1831, he pointed out that "it was notorious that the universal feeling of the working classes was in favour of some attempt to put down this odious system." He summarised its main purpose simply as that "the workmen must be paid in money." Consolidating and extending numerous earlier acts on the subject, the Truck Act 1831 (actually the Money Payment of Wages Act) was a landmark piece of social legislation, which was invoked as still relevant in Parliament as recently as 2003.Hansard 23 January 2003
The campaign for the Truck Act had revealed an important weakness in Littleton's character that was to have major consequences for his career. To get the reform through, he had made the concession that Ireland be excluded from it for the time being. At one point he had let slip the unguarded comment that he did not care about Ireland. This was overheard by one of the members for Waterford – presumably Lord George Beresford, who was hated by the Radicals and Irish Repealers, and who proceeded to broadcast the remark. Littleton took up the challenge in Parliament and, accepting that the report of his comment was accurate, pointed out that it was reported entirely out of context.Hansard 9 November 1830 In fact, it was well known that he had been a strong proponent of Emancipation. However, the damage was done.
As the Truck Act passed into Law, Littleton was drafted into detailed work on the Great Reform Bill, intended to create an entirely new system of parliamentary representation. The reform had two main thrusts: a simplification of the Franchise qualification and a complete redrawing of the Constituency boundaries to abolish the rotten boroughs and pocket boroughs. Littleton was appointed as an unpaid Commissioner on the latter task. Here his command of detail and forensic skills found a perfect outlet, as the reform involved careful research, the establishment of principles and their application to hundreds of varying local situations. He was determined that the reform should be based on the latest data about population sizes, not on the traditional status of settlements. He was formidably well informed and often sarcastic in debate, often tangling with John Wilson Croker, a bitterly anti-Reform Irish Tory who sat for the rotten borough of Aldeburgh. In his first major contribution in Committee, he said in reply to an ill-informed remark by Croker that: "his right hon. friend had displayed his want of acquaintance with the county of Stafford when he spoke of the village of Bilston. The village of Bilston, as his right hon. friend was facetiously pleased to style it, contained a population of not less than 14,000 or 15,000 souls.".Hansard 28 February 1832 He made similar contributions to uphold the importance of Wolverhampton, Walsall and Stoke, continually insisting on the principle that constituencies should represent communities and populations, not political or economic interests. He consistently appealed simultaneously to principles and facts, showing a ferocious interest in every region of the country, for example: "as one of the Commissioners upon whom was devolved the duty of fixing the limits of the new borough of Huddersfield, he felt himself called upon to state that, in performing that duty, he did not conceive himself bound to consider the extent of property which any individual might possess within the borough, or his political opinions." Ultimately, the Reform Bill as originally conceived proved unwieldy, and the boundary reform, with its mass of detail and numerous schedules was divided off into a second bill. Hence the "Reform Act 1832" is really two separate acts: a Representation of the People Act 1832 and the Parliamentary Boundaries Act 1832, which owed much of its effectiveness to Littleton's work.
It is some measure of the regard in which he was held by parliamentary Radicals that in the Speaker election of January 1833, against his own wish, he was nominated by the Scottish MP Joseph Hume to become Speaker of the first reformed House of Commons. He was seconded by Daniel O'Connell himself. Littleton spoke against his own nomination, expressing his confidence in the existing Speaker, Charles Manners-Sutton, a Tory member, and praising his "unexampled patience and urbanity". Littleton had voted for Manners-Sutton consistently since 1817. He correctly diagnosed his own nomination as a political protest and he did not consider the Speakership a party matter. O'Connell countered with a long speech denouncing Toryism, demanding a triumphal vindication of the Reform Act and refusing to withdraw the nomination. He regarded the nomination of Manners-Sutton "as another instance of that paltry truckling on the part of the present Administration towards their ancient enemies, which had already afforded such frequent subjects of complaint." Lord Althorp, a fellow Radical, supported Littleton's non-partisan view but William Cobbett gave a bitterly partisan speech, claiming that the election of Manners-Sutton would be "an open declaration of war against the people of England." Much of the venom derived from an accompanying proposal to pay the Speaker a large pension. However, Manners-Sutton himself rose to reject the idea of a pension. A division was held on the proposal install Littleton in the chair and it was defeated by 241 votes to 31: Littleton did not vote for himself.Hansard 29 January 1833 Littleton's nomination, though rejected by himself, had initiated an important constitutional debate, which established permanently in the reformed parliament the non-partisan character of the Speaker.
Military career 1814–1833 He was commissioned as Major of the part-time Staffordshire Yeomanry on 11 July 1814 and was promoted to Lieutenant-Colonel on 27 September 1819. He was appointed Lt-Col Commandant on 17 December 1829, but resigned the command in August 1833 after he became Chief Secretary for Ireland.Capt P.C.G. Webster, The Records of the Queen's Own Royal Regiment of Staffordshire Yeomanry, Lichfield: Lomax, 1870, pp. 58, 72, 76, 93; Appendix.
Chief Secretary for Ireland, 1833–1834 In May 1833 Littleton became chief secretary to the Lord Lieutenant of Ireland in the ministry of Earl Grey, with Richard Wellesley, 1st Marquess Wellesley, Littleton's father-in-law, as Lord Lieutenant. The appointments met with the approval of Daniel O'Connell.Charles Chenevix Trench (1984): The Great Dan: a Biography of Daniel O'Connell, the 'Liberator of Ireland": Jonathan Cape, London : p. 227. However, Littleton was part of a shaky coalition of Whigs and Radicals. The Whigs were much more concerned with defending property rights and the position of the established church than the Radicals, who were prepared to sacrifice both if they perceived injustice. He was often forced to take positions which might normally have gone against his political instincts, and he also allowed his loose tongue to get him into further trouble.