Sir William Molesworth was the youngest man memorialised in the streets of Adelaide, and in a touch of serendipity the Street Naming Committee made a decision to include him on his 27th birthday. Moreover, Molesworth is a man to whom there are several dedications throughout the British Commonwealth. All were accorded when he was of a youthful age and before the eventual zenith of his parliamentary career in the late 1840s.
Like many of the landed families in Cornwall, Devon and Wales, the Molesworth dynasty extended back to the time of the religious crusades and beyond. Family tradition suggests that Sir Walter de Molesworth accompanied Edward I on a pilgrimage to Jerusalem in 1270. One of his descendants, a John Molesworth, was appointed by Queen Elizabeth I as the Auditor for Cornwall during her reign. By this time the family was established at Pencarrow and have been there ever since.
Hender Molesworth, a later descendant, became President of Jamaica in 1684 during the time of William III. In 1688 he was created a Baronet in the Grand Whig tradition. Throughout the eighteenth century a succession of Molesworths represented several Cornish constituencies in the parliament, so it was not at all surprising that a young William, later Sir William Molesworth, should eventually join their ranks. No one, however, could have predicted that he was to become one of the most outspoken anti-Whig members of the radical liberal left – the Philosophical Radicals in the Reform Parliament of the 1830s.
Like William’s grandmother, a woman of French Huguenot lineage, William’s mother also infused new blood into the family. She was the daughter of the celebrated beauty Betsy Hume, a member of the distinguished Scottish family of the historian David Hume. William’s mother lived a full and long life, but his father died prematurely in 1823, at the age of 32. William, being the eldest son, succeeded to the baronetcy. He was 13 years old, ‘the eighth baronet of his line, the head of an ancient family, the owner of great estates, in possession of mental vigour far beyond his years and an extremely delicate physical constitution’.
On the death of his father, Molesworth became a rich young man with an income of some £10,000 to £12,000 annually. On his majority he assumed responsibility for Pencarrow and the other principal family estates of Offland, Kempthorne (possibly in Ireland) and Tetcott, in Devon. His links with Cornwall would later see him become both Deputy Lieutenant and High Sheriff in the county. He was also the patron of four ‘livings’. Given the early demise of all but one of the members of this family, one could be forgiven for thinking there was some kind of curse at work. There were five children and four of them died prematurely, except Mary (who became Mrs Ford), who lived until she was 95 years old and is buried in the grounds at Pencarrow.
William Molesworth was born in Upper Brook Street, London, on 23 May 1810. As a child he contracted a bacterial condition of the skin known as scrofula, which weakened him constitutionally. This prevented him from joining in the rough and tumble of the schoolyard. As a result, he retreated into many and varied intellectual pursuits and revealed an early genius for pure mathematics. He became colloquially known as the ‘philosopher’ as a boy. His parents had thought he would go to Eton, but after his father died, and because of William’s frail constitution, his mother was warned by a leading physician not to send him there, for fear he might be abused.
With her advanced knowledge of the superiority of the Scottish educational system, his mother decided William should follow one of their Cornish neighbours, Charles Buller, to Edinburgh High School. The family immediately moved to Scotland. By coincidence, Edward Gibbon Wakefield also went to Edinburgh High School twelve years earlier and the two were to eventually meet when a number of young Cambridge confreres, including Buller, William Hutt, John Stirling and others, joined with Wakefield and the National Colonization Society in mid-1830. Buller was two years ahead of William in Edinburgh and they became good friends and fellow politicians in the House of Commons. The young baronet excelled in Edinburgh, where he was permitted to join some of the university classes as part of his high school studies. He took Italian, French and German and sat at the feet of some powerful literary figures and gifted teachers.
William then went to St John’s College, Cambridge to take a degree. Shortly after arriving there, and in letters home to his mother, he deplored the lack of manners among the commoners in his college and immediately sought to be transferred to Trinity College where, as a member of the peerage, he could have private quarters and a manservant. He also asked his mother for more money to indulge his passion for fox hunting. At Cambridge he was a contemporary of William Makepeace Thackeray, Charles Darwin, Alfred Tennyson and Charles Buller.
Unfortunately, William did not apply himself to his studies to anywhere near the same degree he had in Edinburgh and became caught up in the spirited high jinks which became the downfall of so many young Oxford and Cambridge aristocrats. Only months after starting, and without completing his studies, he was sent down in April 1828 for having become embroiled in a threatened duel. Duels were considered honourable events under aristocratic protocol up until this period, but by the 1820s the practice was losing favour among legal, religious and educational authorities. It is said William’s mother did not try to stop the duel, as a matter of principle and family honour. However, she decided William should go to Germany to continue his studies, remove him from embarrassment and enhance his education.
After a brief spell back in England, William Molesworth returned to the continent in 1830. In this short time he added Arabic and Asian languages to his lexicon before returning home to celebrate his 21st birthday. Earlier in Germany he had also become proficient in the language and happily took to the metaphysics and philosophy of Kant and others.
On his return to London it is likely that Molesworth renewed his acquaintance with some of his fellow students from Cambridge, and it is presumed that at this point he met Wakefield, possibly for the first time. Wakefield was not long out of Newgate Prison and with the help of Robert Gouger, his surrogate organiser and editor while in prison, initiated the National Colonization Society. The young Molesworth and his contemporaries from Cambridge were strongly attracted to Wakefield’s idea of systematic colonisation, believing it would ameliorate the widespread destitution then prevalent in Britain. By the end of 1833 and on the eve of the passage of the South Australia Act in 1834, Molesworth had become totally involved with Gouger, Wakefield and John Stuart Mill in the colonial experiment. Moreover, because of his ideological and financial support for the project he became a crucial player in the South Australian story.
The fact that Sir William Molesworth succeeded to the baronetcy at an early age guaranteed him a run at the parliament as soon as he reached his majority. His 21st birthday coincided with the turmoil and unrest which precipitated the Reform Bill of 1832. At the first opportunity and on an entirely new electoral map he ran successfully for the seat of Eastern Cornwall and took his place in Grey’s Government of 1833. However, unlike so many other aristocrats of his background, he despised both the Whigs and the Tories and didn’t mind saying so. Molesworth had matured as a person from within a cocoon of privilege, but without the usual restraints of an expectant father and a pervading peer group. His educational pathway was idiosyncratic, exotic and singular, without the shackles of conformity that might normally be expected in such a family.
In his first speech at the polls he made it clear that he was different, calling for national education, the ballot, triennial parliaments, free trade and the commutation of the tithe. In his mind the widened franchise of the 1832 Reform Bill was only a beginning. As a disciple of Jeremy Bentham and James Mill he would have preferred to go straight to a universal franchise. In fact, he disliked aristocratic privilege so much that once in the parliament he called in vain for the abolition of the House of Lords. On matters of religion he had independently come to the same position as Grote. They both repudiated Christianity, found the trappings of ecclesiastical government offensive and continually sought ‘complete religious liberty and equality and removal of the disabilities of the Jews’.
Of all those who have provided written comment on the character and parliamentary performance of Sir William Molesworth, none knew him better than Harriet Grote. She was the hard-driving force behind the Philosophical Radicals; he one of their most determined ideologues. From the moment a very young Sir William rushed up to her, full of admiration and fawning enthusiasm following George Grote’s maiden speech, she gathered him under her wing like a clucking hen. Thenceforth, and until some years later when he finally married, Sir William stuck to the Grotes, especially Harriet, like a limpet. Moreover, the affection seemed to be entirely mutual. She took great delight in parading the young baronet around London as a kind of entree ticket to all the fashionable soirees, musical recitals and operatic performances. She was eighteen years his senior and took what some described as an unhealthy interest in him.
Sir William Molesworth sat in the House of Commons representing East Cornwall between 1832 and 1837. It was his first period in office and it coincided with the rise and fall of the Philosophical Radical party to which he belonged. Both he and John Temple Leader were resident near Putney as children and would gather radical supporters at the Clarendon Hotel each week in a concerted effort to build up their influence. Being from wealthy families they would take it in turns to host the luncheons. In this period Molesworth and his fellow members of the South Australian Association managed to bring forward a Bill to establish a colony in South Australia under the Wakefield principle. This is why he is named in the streets of Adelaide.
Whenever Sir William rose to speak in the House he was always well prepared. In his first term he would commit his speeches to memory and deliver them verbatim. It was believed at this point that he would eventually mature into a good, contemporaneous speaker. However, being so young, he reflected a nervousness and degree of excitability which sometimes comes with theatrical recitation. Nevertheless, his speeches were always deeply reflective and carefully crafted with exquisite phraseology. His style was clear. Some thought he did not have a great future as an orator because his voice was feeble and scarcely audible in the cut and thrust of the ‘bear pit’. His delivery was also said to lack intonation. The other feature of his behaviour, which some found unnerving, was the degree of affectation in his demeanour. He was the epitome of a Georgian Dandy. When rising to speak he would deliberately walk at least three steps out onto the floor in front of the benches and then turn to address the speaker. Then, with a flourish of foppery, he would fold his arms and hold the position for fifteen minutes or so as he spoke in a voice which had a streak of harshness about it.
Delivery is one thing. Deeds and actions are another. Molesworth left little doubt about his innermost feelings and beliefs and over the next few years expressed them in several ways. His commitment was to causes which embraced radicalism, utilitarianism, agnosticism and the elevation of the human condition. In only his second speech in the House he seconded John Arthur Roebuck’s motion on education, which called for an education for all children in Britain and dwelt on raising the status of the teaching profession. In 1833 he joined Francis Place’s Radical Club. Towards the end of 1833 he joined the Provisional Committee of the South Australian Association, and in 1835 he was elected a Fellow of The Royal Society.
He was also a committee member and a proponent of the Reform Club of Pall Mall. In 1837 Molesworth joined the New Zealand Association and financially backed the resultant New Zealand Company. His younger brother, Francis, went to New Zealand to settle, and Wakefield exhorted Molesworth to go as well, promising him that in the new colony he would have more power and influence than he could ever imagine in Britain. Molesworth was tempted and gave it some serious consideration before declining on the pretext that he had more to achieve in the British Parliament; and so it proved.
Molesworth’s romantic inclinations as a young man provided Harriet Grote with much entertainment and excitement over several years. Whenever his heart was stolen he would run back to her, seeking approval and advice on how to proceed. From the recorded exchange of letters on the subject she in return was obviously and vicariously participating in his dalliances. There was no doubt that as a rich, young baronet he was extremely eligible. However, two issues militated against an early match. He was a non-believer, although he sometimes claimed his position was more agnostic than atheistic. To the father of any prospective bride, this meant that he was an ‘infidel’. Furthermore, he was also a radical! Neither of these characteristics went down too well, so when he and Miss Julia Carew fell in love, William was refused her hand by her guardian, Lord Lyttelton. Sir William was deeply offended by the refusal and ran back to Mrs Grote ‘in a perfect fever, his eyes flashing fire and fury, his voice full of emotion’.
Mrs Grote, as the driving force behind the Philosophical Radicals almost from the outset, and her close relationship with the young Molesworth coincided almost identically with their rise and fall in the parliament. When it came time for Molesworth to put himself forward in the 1836 election he declined. His radical views had hardened on some issues and he was by then closely aligned with John Stuart Mill and the London and Westminster Review. Given that Molesworth owned the paper and Mill was the editor, their views were on show for all to see. Hence the backlash from influential Whigs in East Cornwall who accused him of selling out on some issues, especially when he called for the abolition of the Corn Laws. There were petitions in the local press in Cornwall for Molesworth to stand again, but as the franchise was still largely held by landholders, he gracefully withdrew, knowing the odds to be against him.
Both he and his mother then went to Germany and travelled the continent for some respite. His correspondence with Mrs Grote at this time is revealing in two ways. It hints at the loss of support for the radical party and shows the depth of intimacy between them. In a letter to her from Prague in September 1836 and knowing that she was not happy at his withdrawal from the cause, he writes: ‘[I]n truth, I will do exactly as you like, for you are the only person who is invariably kind to me whenever I commit follies or errors, and whose reproofs even sound to me more pleasing than the praises of others.’
Harriet Grote had her way and on returning to London William began to look around for a safer seat. He settled on Leeds, which he subsequently won easily and held between 1837 and 1841.
As the member for Leeds he was accorded the great honour of being one of the youngest parliamentarians ever to head up a Select Committee. He was only 27 years old, but his association with Wakefield and the Benthamite utilitarians made him uniquely qualified to accept such an undertaking.
The Select Committee was charged with inquiring into ‘The system of transportation, its efficacy as a punishment, its influence on the moral state of society in the penal colonies, and how far it is susceptible of improvement’. It was a powerful group of influential MPs, and between April 1837 and August 1838 Sir William manoeuvred them through no less than 38 meetings before bringing down his report. The Select Committee recommended the abolition of convict transportation, but it did not cease in Australia generally until 1853. In Western Australia it lingered until 1867. Molesworth’s political reputation grew markedly from this exercise, but with the added pressures it did temporarily affect his health during this time. Nevertheless, his work as Chairman of the Committee received high praise.
Charles Dickens was known to both Wakefield and Molesworth, and after Molesworth married in 1844, Dickens was often his guest at both Eaton Place in London and at Pencarrow, in Cornwall. Some of his fiction, especially Great expectations, relied heavily on the expertise and insight he gleaned from both Wakefield and Molesworth during this period.
Towards the end of his time as the member for Leeds, Sir William Molesworth, in a development which was remarkably similar to George Grote’s parliamentary pathway, began to put time into his magnum opus, which eventually induced him to leave parliament in 1841. He had taken it upon himself to translate and edit the complete works of Thomas Hobbes, the distinguished seventeenth-century political philosopher, mathematician and author of Leviathan. It was a huge task, encompassing eleven volumes. He worked on it tirelessly for three or four years at Pencarrow. By the middle of the decade it was finished. He dedicated the works to George Grote, who had much inspired him in his earlier years.
However, there was an abrupt change in the relationship between Molesworth and the Grotes when, in 1844, and after an unusually short lead time, William married Mrs Temple West, a gracious widow with exceedingly gentle, caressing manners who had a penchant for entertaining. She was clearly a woman with some influence and great artistic accomplishment. A woman more clearly different from Mrs Grote could hardly be imagined. Unfortunately, it became known to Sir William that Mrs Grote had, with a tinge of jealousy, maligned Sir William’s new wife in the company of some of their mutual friends. William was totally affronted and wrote a letter to Mrs Grote, declaring their friendship terminated thenceforth. The Grotes and the Molesworths were estranged from then on, although it must be said that after Sir William died prematurely in 1855, Mrs Grote’s 1866 publication The Philosophical Radicals of 1832: Comprising the life of Sir William Molesworth was obviously her way of atoning for the hurt she had inflicted.
The final chapter and probably the greatest period in the life of Sir William Molesworth really began when he again felt the pull of the parliament. Unlike Grote, who was completely at home with his scholarly works, Molesworth relished the theory but not as much as the practical expression of it. Noting a shift towards the possibility of repealing the Corn Laws, he offered himself against both a liberal and conservative candidate in the seat of Southwark at the 1845 election.
Molesworth was elected. The moment he entered the chamber the conservative press, sensing his power, began to attack at every opportunity. It rankled with them that he was of the aristocracy but in favour of the oppressed and underprivileged. Such a view was tantamount to heresy in their eyes, but Molesworth had always taken the view that Britain’s colonies should not be burdened with corrupt and petty bureaucrats. Furthermore, they should be granted some type of representative government on their own soil.
It was this conciliatory and mediating position which gave Molesworth such credibility in subsequent parliaments. The Tory view was that such liberties would undermine British sovereignty. Whereas the more radical view as previously postulated by Bentham was that after a suitable growth in population numbers British colonial territories should be allowed to drift away to a completely republican position. Molesworth, John Stuart Mill, Buller and Wakefield were in agreement on this issue. Their thinking contained the seeds of what we now know as the British Commonwealth of Nations.
By the 1850s Sir William’s influence in the parliament had grown to the point where he had bipartisan support. Lord Aberdeen included him as the only radical in his 1853 cabinet and he became Commissioner of Works. Calling on his experience with his own garden at Pencarrow, he had the Victoria Park design drawn up, threw Kew Gardens open to the public on a Sunday and planted ornamental gardens in all of London’s parks. He was by this time popular with all parliamentary colleagues.
Unfortunately, just as Sir William Molseworth was reaching his peak as a statesman and soon after he claimed his greatest prize as Colonial Secretary in July 1855, he died rather unexpectedly at his residence in Eaton Place, London, on 22 October. Like so many others in his family this was well before his time. He was buried at Kensal Green Cemetery. Molesworth’s vision was not simply the vision of an Imperial Britain lording it over her various conquests, but a vision for a Commonwealth of Nations as we have come to understand it today, with separate democracies linked to Britain constitutionally through a benign monarchy.
Comments