FOX, CHARLES JAMES

FOX, CHARLES JAMES (1749–1806), English politician.

Charles James Fox led the main political opposition connection in Britain from 1784 until his death in September 1806. Born on 24 January 1749, he was educated at Eton and Oxford, and was elected to Parliament on 10 May 1768 for the borough of Midhurst. He briefly held minor offices at the Admiralty Board and at the Treasury Board between 1770 and 1774 under Lord North's (Frederick North, prime minister, 1770–1782) administration. From this point on, Fox became an unyielding critic of the influence of the crown and a fierce opponent of North and his policy toward the American colonists, arguing for the recognition of American independence. He also adopted other more liberal causes than he had previously supported, such as moderate parliamentary reform and the repeal of the Test and Corporation Acts (which discriminated against non-Anglicans).

After the fall of North in March 1782, Fox became foreign secretary under Charles Watson-Wentworth, the Marquis of Rockingham, but he resigned in June 1782 after Rockingham's death because he was unable to agree with the home secretary, William Petty, Earl of Shelburne, over the American peace terms. He then, to the surprise of many, allied himself and the Rockingham Whigs with North, with whom he defeated Shelburne in the House of Commons, and then forced the king to yield the government, in February 1783. The Fox-North coalition lasted in power only until December 1783, when George III (r. 1760–1820) dismissed them—having secured the defeat of their East India Bill in the House of Lords—and replaced them with the administration of William Pitt the Younger, who was able to keep Fox out of office until February 1806. Fox believed that this maneuvering by the king was an unconstitutional intervention and a monumental injustice, and it determined his politics for the rest of his life.

Foiled in his hopes of political advancement by the king's recovery from serious illness in 1788 and 1789, Fox's attitude to the French Revolution was shaped partly by his response to events in France but also by his resolve to establish and maintain a permanent party of opposition in Parliament. He had long been an ardent francophile, and he associated the early events of the revolution in France with those of the Glorious Revolution in England in 1688 and with the American Revolution. While some of the old Rockingham connection, under William Henry Cavendish Bentinck, the Duke of Portland, gradually changed sides between 1791 and 1794 to support Pitt over the issue of the war against France, Fox and a rump of some sixty-six members of Parliament continued to view George III and Pitt as greater enemies to British liberties than armed French revolutionaries. To Fox, the British war against France was not provoked by any serious threat to national security. Rather, it was another evidence of corruption in high places within Britain. The later violence of the Terror dismayed him deeply, although in public the Foxites excused it on the grounds of the long reign of absolutist oppression, which had created a pent-up flood of frustration and fury to be unleashed by the revolution.

Fox divided Parliament over the war even when he had no chance of defeating Pitt in a vote, partly to record opposition to government policy and partly to maintain as ense of party with in his own ranks. From October 1797 until 1801, however, he seceded from Parliament in an attempt to impress on the country how little notice was taken of argument and reason in the House of Commons. Historians disagree over how far Fox and his followers in Parliament supported radicals outside Parliament in the 1790s. It is clear that they dabbled in popular politics, associated with provincial radicals, supported them at their trials for treason and made some inflammatory speeches outside Parliament. However, most scholars also emphasize their more conservative tendencies. Certainly Fox himself never explicitly supported universal manhood suffrage, even if he toasted popular sovereignty in 1798, when government repression was at its height and he was anxious to rouse a show of public hostility to the government.

After Pitt's death in January 1806, George III reluctantly accepted Fox as foreign secretary in the administration of William Grenville, better known as the "Ministry of All the Talents" (1806–1807). Fox tried to negotiate peace with France during his brief tenure of office, but he was already in poor health by the time he entered government, and he died on 13 September 1806. A brilliant parliamentary speaker and a man of considerable personal charm, he nevertheless failed to achieve much in tangible political terms other than the basis of a legitimate party of opposition.

See alsoFrench Revolution; Great Britain; Tories; Whigs.

bibliography

Graham, Jenny. The Nation, the Law, and the King: Reform Politics in England, 1789–1799. Lanham, Md., and Oxford, U.K., 2000. Argues that Fox and his followers were much more sympathetic to and supportive of the radicals outside Parliament than most historians allow.

Mitchell, Leslie. Charles James Fox. Oxford, U.K., 1992.

O'Gorman, Frank. The Whig Party and the French Revolution. London, 1967.

Emma Vincent Macleod