Hugh Childers | |
|---|---|
 | |
| Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster | |
| In office 9 August 1872 – 30 September 1873 | |
| Prime Minister | William Gladstone |
| Preceded by | The Earl of Dufferin |
| Succeeded by | John Bright |
| Secretary of State for War | |
| In office 28 April 1880 – 16 December 1882 | |
| Prime Minister | William Gladstone |
| Preceded by | Frederick Stanley |
| Succeeded by | Marquess of Hartington |
| Chancellor of the Exchequer | |
| In office 16 December 1882 – 9 June 1885 | |
| Prime Minister | William Gladstone |
| Preceded by | William Gladstone |
| Succeeded by | Sir Michael Hicks Beach, Bt |
| Home Secretary | |
| In office 6 February 1886 – 25 July 1886 | |
| Prime Minister | William Gladstone |
| Preceded by | R. A. Cross |
| Succeeded by | Henry Matthews |
| Personal details | |
| Born | 25 June 1827 (1827-06-25) London, UK |
| Died | 29 January 1896 (1896-01-30) (aged 68) London, UK |
| Political party | Liberal |
| Spouse | Emily Walker (d. 1875) |
| Children | 8, includingMilly |
| Relatives | Erskine Childers (cousin) |
| Education | |
Hugh Culling Eardley Childers (25 June 1827 – 29 January 1896) was a BritishLiberalstatesman of the nineteenth century. He is perhaps best known for his reform efforts at theAdmiralty and theWar Office. Later in his career, as Chancellor of the Exchequer, his attempt to correct a budget shortfall led to the fall of the Liberal government led byWilliam Gladstone.
Childers was born inLondon, the son of Reverend Eardley Childers and his wife Maria Charlotte (née Smith),[1]sister ofSir Culling Eardley, 3rd Baronet and granddaughter ofSampson Eardley, 1st Baron Eardley. He was educated atCheam School under Pestalozzi and then bothWadham College, Oxford andTrinity College, Cambridge, graduatingB.A. from the latter in 1850.[2] Influential on his intellectual development were Adam Smith's theories of free trade, and capital returns.
Childers then decided to seek a career in Australia and on 26 October 1850 arrived inMelbourne,Victoria along with his wife Emily Walker.[1]
Childers joined the government of Victoria and served as Inspector ofDenominational schools (meaning Protestant and Catholic schools) and immigration agent. In 1852 he became a director of theMelbourne, Mount Alexander and Murray River Railway Company. Childers became auditor-general on 26 October 1852 and was nominated to theVictorian Legislative Council.[1][3] In 1852 he placed a bill before the colonial legislature proposing the establishment of a university for Victoria, the second in Australia following the foundation of theUniversity of Sydney in 1850. With the receipt of theRoyal Assent in 1853, theUniversity of Melbourne was founded, with Childers as its first vice-chancellor.[1] Childers was Collector of Customs from 5 December 1853 to 28 November 1855 andCommissioner of Trade and Customs 28 November 1855 to 25 February 1857.[4] Childers was elected to the inauguralVictorian Legislative Assembly forPortland in November 1856, a seat he held until resigning in February 1857.[4]
Childers retained the vice-chancellorship until his return to Britain in March 1857 and received anM.A. fromCambridge in the same year.
In 1860 he entered theHouse of Commons as aLiberal member forPontefract, and within a few years joined the government ofLord Palmerston, becoming aCivil Lord of the Admiralty in 1864 and thenFinancial Secretary to the Treasury in 1865.
With the election of Gladstone's government in December 1868, he rose to greater prominence, serving asFirst Lord of the Admiralty. Childers "had a reputation for being hardworking, but inept, autocratic and notoriously overbearing in his dealing with colleagues."[5] He "initiated a determined programme of cost and manpower reductions, fully backed by the Prime Minister, Gladstone described him [Childers] as 'a man likely to scan with a rigid eye the civil expenses of the Naval Service'. He got the naval estimates just below the psychologically important figure of £10,000,000. Childers strengthened his own position as First Lord by reducing the role of the Board of Admiralty to a purely formal one, making meetings rare and short and confining the Sea Lords rigidly to the administrative functions... Initially Childers had the support of the influential Controller of the Navy, Vice-Admiral Sir[Robert] Spencer Robinson."[6] "His re-organisation of the Admiralty was unpopular and poorly done."[5]
Childers was responsible for the construction ofHMSCaptain in defiance of the advice of his professional advisers, the Controller (Robinson) and the Chief ConstructorEdward James Reed.Captain was commissioned in April 1870, and sank on the night of 6/7 September 1870. She was, as predicted by Robinson and Reed, insufficiently stable. "Shortly before the battleship sank, Childers had moved his son, Midshipman Leonard Childers from Reed's designedHMSMonarch onto the new ship-of-the-line; Leonard did not survive."[5] Childers "faced strong criticism following the Court Martial on the loss ofHMS Captain, and attempted to clear his name with a 359-page memorandum, a move described as "dubious public ethics". Vice Admiral Sir Robert Spencer Robinson wrote 'His endeavors were directed to throw the blame which might be supposed to attach to himself on those who had throughout expressed their disapproval of such methods of construction'." Childers unfairly blamed Robinson for the loss of theCaptain, and as a result of this Robinson was replaced as Third Lord and Controller of the navy in February 1871.[7] "Following the loss of his son and the recriminations that followed, Childers resigned through ill health as First Lord in March 1871."[5]
Following his resignation he spent some months on the Continent,[5] and recovered sufficiently to take office in 1872 asChancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster. The consequentministerial by-election on 15 August 1872 was the first Parliamentary election to be held after theBallot Act 1872 required the use of asecret ballot.[8]
When the Liberals regained power in 1880, Childers was appointedSecretary for War, a position he accepted reluctantly. He therefore had to bear responsibility for cuts in arms expenditure, a policy that provoked controversy when Britain began fighting; first the Boers inSouth Africa in 1880 and then theinvasion of Egypt in 1882. Childers was also very unpopular withHorse Guards for the reinforcement and expansion of theCardwell Reforms. On 1 May 1881 he passedGeneral Order 41, which outlined a series of improvements known as theChilders Reforms.
Childers becameChancellor of the Exchequer in 1882, a post he had coveted. As such, he attempted to implement a conversion ofConsols in 1884. Although the scheme proved a failure, it paved the way for thesubsequent conversion in 1888. He attempted to resolve a budget shortfall in June 1885 by increasing alcohol duty andincome tax. His budget was rejected byParliament, and the government – already unpopular due toevents in Egypt – was forced out of office. Childers's colleague theEarl of Rosebery commented resignedly: "So far as I know the budget is as good a question to go out upon as any other, and Tuesday as good a day."
At the subsequent election in December 1885 Childers lost his Pontefract seat, but returned as an independentHome Ruler forEdinburgh South (one of the few Liberals who adopted this policy before Gladstone's conversion in 1886). Childers then served asHome Secretary in the short-lived ministry of 1886. He was critical of the financial clauses of theFirst Home Rule Bill, and their withdrawal was largely due to his threat of resignation. Nevertheless, the bill still failed to pass, and its rejection brought down the Liberal government.
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He retired from parliament in 1892, and his last piece of work was the drafting of a report for the 1894 "Financial Relations Commission" onIrish financial matters, of which he was chairman (generally known as theChilders Commission). This found that, compared to the rest of the United Kingdom, Ireland had been overtaxed on aper capita basis by some £2 or £3 million annually in previous decades. The matter was finally debated in March 1897.[9] In the following decadesIrish nationalists frequently quoted the report as proof that some form of fiscal freedom was needed to end imperial over-taxation, which was prolonging Irish poverty. Their opponents noted that the extra tax received had come from an unduly high consumption of tea, stout, whiskey and tobacco, and not fromincome tax. His younger cousinErskine Childers wrote a book on the matter in 1911.[10]
Childers' 1894 report was still considered influential in 1925 in considering the mutual financial positions between the newIrish Free State and the United Kingdom.[11] In 1926 anIrish Senate debate included claims by some Senators that, withcompound interest, Ireland was owed as much as £1.2 billion by Britain.[12] This, however, ignored the changed economic conditions since 1894, and at the eve of secessionSouthern Ireland was being heavily subsidised by the British taxpayer. This economic reality forced the initialIrish Free State government to cut the old age pension from five to four shillings. In 1932 on the start of theAnglo-Irish Trade War, theIrish government made a claim for £400 million in respect of past overtaxation, amongst others, but this was not mentioned when the dispute was settled in 1938.[13]
Childers married Emily Walker in 1850. They had six sons and two daughters. One of their daughters,Emily "Milly" Childers, was a portrait and landscape painter. His first wife died in 1875 and Childers married Katherine Anne Gilbert in 1879. A cousin,Erskine Childers, was the author of the spy novelThe Riddle of the Sands, an important figure in theIrish War of Independence andIrish Civil War (during which he was executed), and father of the fourthPresident of Ireland,Erskine Hamilton Childers.[citation needed]
Towards the end of his ministerial career "HCE" Childers was known for his girth, and so acquired the nickname "Here Comes Everybody", which was later used as a motif inFinnegans Wake byJames Joyce.
Childers died in January 1896, aged 68. He is buried on the south side of the central enclosed roundel inBrompton Cemetery, London.
| Government offices | ||
|---|---|---|
| Preceded by | Auditor-General ofVictoria 1852 – 1853 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Collector of Customs,Victoria 1853 – 1855 | Merged into Commissioner of Trade and Customs |
| Victorian Legislative Council | ||
| Preceded by | Nominated member 1852 – 1856 | Original Council abolished |
| Victorian Legislative Assembly | ||
| New district | Member forPortland 1856 – 1857 With:Daniel Hughes | Succeeded by |
| Parliament of the United Kingdom | ||
| Preceded by | Member forPontefract 1860 –1885 With:Richard Monckton Milnes 1860–1863 Samuel Waterhouse, 1863–1880 Sidney Woolf 1880–1885 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Member forEdinburgh South 1886 –1892 | Succeeded by |
| Political offices | ||
| Preceded by | Civil Lord of the Admiralty 1864 – 1866 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Financial Secretary to the Treasury 1865 – 1866 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | First Lord of the Admiralty 1868 – 1871 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chancellor of the Duchy of Lancaster 1872 – 1873 | Succeeded by |
| Paymaster General 1872 – 1873 | Succeeded by | |
| Preceded by | Secretary of State for War 1880 – 1882 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Chancellor of the Exchequer 1882 – 1885 | Succeeded by |
| Preceded by | Home Secretary 1886 | Succeeded by |
| Academic offices | ||
| New title | Vice-chancellor of theUniversity of Melbourne 1853 – 1858 | Succeeded by |
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