Sir Stafford Northcote: A Political Study to 1874
His early brilliance at Eton and Oxford, his Evangelicalism that moderated to Low-Church Anglicanism, and his decade in the civil service---an institution he is well remembered for helping to reform---shaped his outlook and his conciliatory approach to the party rifts of the 1850s and '60s. Close examination of his correspondence with Gladstone and Disraeli reveals how much each of them relied upon his acumen in financial, administrative, parliamentary, and electoral affairs. Along with hitherto unknown involvement in a newspaper for the middle classes and a surprisingly close relationship with the Queen, Northcote also had a key role in repealing the old Navigation Acts in 1849; in organizing the Great Exhibition of 1851, the first world's fair; in promoting schools for destitute children; in the rescue of European hostages in Abyssinia (and the care of that fallen emperor's orphaned son); in the transformation of the Hudson's Bay Company from territorial to retail power; and perhaps most important, in the settling of Anglo-American differences growing out of the U.S. Civil War. His moderate temperament and his sense of Parliament as a bulwark of the constitution helped foster inter-party cooperation, changing the way government was conceived of until late in the 19th century.
University of Illinois - Urbana-Champaign
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University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign