Charles
Pelham Villiers (3
January 1802 – 16 January 1898) was a British lawyer and politician from the
aristocratic Villiers family. He sat in
the House of
Commons from 1835 to 1898, making him the longest-serving
Member of Parliament (MP). He also holds the distinction of the oldest
candidate to win a parliamentary seat, at 93. He was a radical and reformer who
often collaborated with John Bright and had a
noteworthy effect in the leadership of the Anti-Corn Law League, until its repeal in 1846. Lord
Palmerston appointed him to the cabinet as president of the Poor-Law Board in
1859. His Public Works (Manufacturing Districts) Act of 1863 opened
job-creating schemes in public health projects. He progressed numerous other
reforms, most notably the Metropolitan Poor Law Act of 1867. Florence Nightingale helped him formulate the reform, in
particular, ensure professionalisation of nursing as part of the poor law
regime, the workhouses of which erected public infirmaries under an Act of the
same year. His political importance was overshadowed by his brother, the Earl
of Clarendon, and undercut by the hostility of Gladstone. Villiers was the son
of the Hon. George Villiers and
the Hon. Theresa, daughter of John Parker, 1st Baron
Boringdon. He was the grandson of Thomas
Villiers, 1st Earl of Clarendon and brother of George
Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon. He was educated at East India Company College and St John's College,
Cambridge,[2] becoming a barrister at Lincoln's Inn in 1827. He was raised to the rank of an
Earl's son in 1839 and thus entitled to be styled the Honourable Charles Pelham
Villiers. Villiers held Benthamite political views and enjoyed a long career in
public service and Parliament. In 1832, he was a Poor Law Commissioner, and from 1833 to 1852 was an
examiner of witnesses in the Court of Chancery.Villiers was elected as a Liberal Member of
Parliament for Wolverhampton in
1835. In each year from 1837 to 1845, he launched parliamentary debates in
attempts to repeal the Corn Laws. In 1838, he spoke to over 5,000
"working-class men" in Manchester and told them that the presence of
so large an audience gave him the proof that "the working class man was
with him." Villiers was unsuccessful in his attempts, but in 1840 sat on
the Committee on Import Duties that provided much of the evidence that
pressured Robert Peel into his
sliding scale concession in 1842. The bluebook produced by the Committee on
Import Duties was published in pamphlet form and distributed across the country
by the Anti-Corn Law League, it was reprinted in America and quoted by all
leading newspapers of the day, the Spectator published it in abridged form. In
February 1842, Villiers was called by Monckton Milnes MP,
the "solitary Robinson Crusoe standing on the barren rock of Corn Law
repeal." In 1842, the majority in favour of retaining the Corn Laws had
been 303, at the vote on Villiers motion in June 1845 it was down to 132. After
the repeal in 1846, the press said of Villiers that he was "the most
persevering and undaunted supporter of those principles within the
house." David Ricardo,
Chairman of the Free Traders in London, wished to raise money to give to
Villiers in recognition of his work, Villiers declined this. Villiers was a
corresponding member of the British and Foreign Anti-Slavery Society, and he attended
the World Anti-Slavery
Convention in London in 1840.
In 1847 Villiers was returned for Lancashire
South but elected to sit for his former constituency; his
election in Lancashire South was unsolicited but an honour conferred by the
people there to express their gratitude for his good work with the repeal of
the Corn Laws. Villiers was sworn of the Privy Council in 1853[4] and served under Lord
Aberdeen and Lord
Palmerston as Judge
Advocate General from 1852 to 1858. In 1853 the Times observed
that "it was Mr. Charles Villiers who practically originated the Free
Trade movement." He served under Palmerston and Lord Russell as President of the Poor Law Board (with a seat in the
cabinet) from 1859 to 1866. In 1876 he wrote to the Manchester-based Women's Suffrage Journal in
which he stated, in the words of the Journal, that "he had
voted for the measure [suffrage] on more than one occasion, and should do so
again. As far as he was acquainted with the objections usually alleged, he was
bound to say they only appear to be those which have always been offered
whenever any fresh extension of liberty to the subject has been proposed, and
which he had himself heard urged against personal freedom in the colonies,
religious liberty in this country, the enfranchisement of the working classes,
and against the abolition of every monopoly, political and commercial, wherever
it has been assailed." Villiers
was offered a peerage in June 1885, but declined. His Wolverhampton
constituency was divided under the Redistribution of Seats
Act 1885 and he was then elected for Wolverhampton South, switching to the Liberal Unionist party in 1886. He was the Father of the House of Commons from
1890 until his death in 1898. However, the last time he attended Parliament was
in 1895. During his time in Parliament he worked towards free trade and opposed the Corn Laws and home rule for Ireland. He is noted as being the voice in parliament of the
free trade movement before the election of Richard Cobden and John Bright.