# Dictionary of National Biography, 1912 supplement/Lawson, Wilfrid

​LAWSON, Sir WILFRID, second baronet (1829–1906), politician and temperance advocate, born on 4 Sept. 1829 at his father's house, Brayton, near Carlisle, was eldest son in a family of four sons and four daughters of Sir Wilfrid Lawson (1795-1867), by his wife Caroline, daughter of Sir James Graham, first baronet, of Netherby, and sister to Sir James Robert George Graham [q. v.], the Peelite statesman. |The family surname was originally Wybergh. The politician's father was younger son of Thomas Wybergh of Clifton Hall, Westmoreland, whose family was settled there since the fourteenth century. Thomas Wybergh's wife Elizabeth was daughter of John Hartley of Whitehaven, and sister of Anne, wife of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, tenth and last baronet, of Isel Hall, Cockermouth, who died without issue on 14 June 1806; this Sir Wilfrid's property passed by his will to the eldest son of his wife's sister, another Thomas Wybergh, who assumed the surname of Lawson, and dying unmarried on 2 May 1812 was succeeded in his estates by his next brother, Wilfrid Wybergh, who also took the name of Lawson and was made a baronet on 30 Sept. 1831.
Young Lawson was brought up at home. His father, an advanced liberal, was devoted to the causes of temperance, peace, and free trade. He held dissenting opinions, and he chose as tutor for his boys a young man, J. Oswald Jackson, who had just left the dissenting college at Homerton, and was in after years a congregationalist minister. The instruction was desultory, and Lawson declared in after life that he 'had never had any education,' and that Adam Smith's 'Wealth of Nations' was the book which taught him all he knew. He was, however, early initiated into the sports of hunting, shooting, and fishing, and was a capital shot and a hard rider. In 1854 he bought the hounds which had belonged to John Peel [q. v.] of the hunting song, amalgamated them with a small pack which he already possessed, and became master of the Cumberland foxhounds. He took a keen interest in agriculture, woodcraft, and all rural pursuits. He was early made J.P., and was active in the social and public life of the county.
His father, whose political convictions he shared, wished him to enter parliament at the earliest opportunity. On 21 March 1857 Lawson contested in the liberal interest West Cumberland, which had always been represented by two tory members. During the contest Lawson first gave proof of his faculty for public speaking, in which humour and sarcasm played a chief part. But he was at the bottom of the poll, with 1554 votes against 1825 recorded for the second tory. The new parliament was dissolved in 1859, and on 31 May Lawson, standing for Carlisle with his uncle. Sir James Graham, was returned to the House of Commons, in which he sat with few intervals till his death, forty-seven years later. His maiden speech was made with unusual self-possession in 1860, and Lawson early made a reputation as, in his own words, 'a fanatic, a faddist, and an extreme man.' Joining the radical section of his party, which was out of sympathy with the liberal prime minister, Lord Palmerston, ​he doggedly voted for the old principles of 'peace, retrenchment, and reform,' for abstention from interference in foreign affairs, and for the promotion of religious equality.
To the furtherance of temperance reform, which the majority of liberals scouted as a crotchet, Lawson was already committed, although he was not yet a professed abstainer, and with this cause he chiefly identified himself in the House of Commons and the country. In the session of 1863 he supported a motion in favour of Sunday closing, and the home secretary, Sir George Grey, who opposed it, said that Lawson's argument was equally good for total prohibition. 'That' (Tote Lawson) 'was just where I wanted my argument to tend.' Thus encouraged, he produced on 8 June 1864 his 'permissive bill,' which provided that drink-shops should be suppressed in any locality where a two-thirds majority of the inhabitants voted against their continuance. The bill was rejected by 294 to 37.
On the dissolution of parliament in July 1865 Lawson stood again for Carlisle, and was defeated by fifteen votes. His radicalism had offended moderate liberals; and the 'permissive bill' had aroused the fury of the liquor-trade. Excluded from parliament, Lawson bestirred himself on the platform, speaking in favour of extension of the suffrage, abolition of church rates, Irish disestablishment, and, above all, liquor-law reform. He became closely associated with the United Kingdom Alliance (founded in 1853 for the total suppression of the liquor traffic), and he was elected president in 1879. He sought every opportunity of pleading for legislation on the lines of his 'permissive bill' of 1864, but the policy acquired the new name of 'local option,' or 'local control,' and later it was known as 'local veto.' Lawson's lifelong principle was: 'No forcing of liquor-shops into unwilling areas.'
In 1867 Lawson's father died, and he succeeded to the baronetcy and estates. After the dissolution of 1868 Lawson, who was an enthusiastic champion of Gladstone's policy of Irish disestablishment, and indeed upheld disestablishment everywhere, was returned for Carlisle at the top of the hill. In the new parliament he was active in support of the government measures, but also identified himself with many unpopular causes. He advocated women's rights; in 1870 he moved a resolution condemning the opium-traffic, which was heavily defeated. At the end of the session of 1870 he voted, with five supporters, against some addition to the army which had been judged expedient in view of the Franoo-German war. In 1872 he moved a resolution to the effect that we should, as soon as possible, extricate ourselves from all treaties with foreign powers, by which we bound ourselves to fight for them and their dominions. He was opposed by Gladstone, and beaten by 126 to 21. To the end of his life he maintained that his proposal was sound and struck at the root-danger of our foreign policy.
On his permissive bill he still concentrated his main energies. He reintroduced it on 12 May 1869, 17 May 1871, 8 May 1872, 7 May 1873, and 17 June 1874. The adverse majorities fluctuated from 257 in 1864 to 72 in 1871, but Lawson's enthusiasm never slackened. Daring the recess of 1871-2 he was busy through the country speaking in favour of his measure. Accompanied by (Sir) George Trevelyan, he met in some large towns a furiously hostile reception. From the republican agitation of Sir Charles Dilke [q. v. Suppl. II] and others Lawson held aloof, but on 19 March 1872 he voted in the minority of two for Dilke's motion of inquiry into Queen Victoria's expenditure, which Auberon Herbert seconded.
In the next parliament (1874-80), for which Lawson was again returned for Carlisle, but in the second place, he continued his fight for temperance, introducing his proposals in each of four sessions, and incurring heavy defeats, but abstaining in debate from controversial questions on which he had no special knowledge. In 1875 the bill was rejected by a majority of 285. He advocated in 1875-6 Sunday closing in Ireland, a measure which was carried in 1879. In 1877 he supported with some misgivings Mr. Joseph Chamberlain's 'Gothenburg system' for municipal control of liquor traffic, which eliminates the element of private profit. In 1879 he changed his permissive bill for a local option resolution, which was rejected by a majority of 88.
Despite Lawson's love of sport and horses, his development of puritan energy led him to oppose in 1874 the traditional 'adjournment for the Derby.' For many years he annually waged war on the proposal to make the day a holiday, and in 1892 he carried his point, with the result that the motion for adjournment was not renewed. On this and all other topics he seasoned ​his speech with welcome humour and apt quotation.
To the parliament of 1880-5 Lawson was again returned for Carlisle in the second place. He argued for religious freedom when Charles Bradlaugh, an avowed atheist, was excluded from the house [q. v. Suppl. I]. He voted against Forster's Irish coercion bill in 1881, and with the Irish nationalists. He persistently resisted the liberal government's policy in Egypt in 1882-3. To his proposed reform of the liquor traffic a majority of the new house was favourable, and in June 1880 he for the first time carried by twenty-six votes his resolution in favour of local option. In the following year he carried it by forty- two, and in 1883, when Gladstone voted with him, by eighty-seven.
At the general election of November 1885, which followed the extension of the suffrage to the agricultural labourers, Lawson was defeated in the Cockermouth division of Cumberland by ten votes. Five hundred Irish constituents voted against him. There was a paradox in his defeat by the labourers and the Irish, in both of whose interests he had consistently worked hard during the last parliament. He watched from the Riviera the subsequent struggle in parliament over Gladstone's home rule bill, with which he was in complete sympathy. In June 1886 he stood as home rule candidate for the Cockermouth division, and won by 1004 votes. In the new parliament he zealously supported the Irish cause, and resisted Mr. Balfour's policy of coercion in all its phases. In 1888 he successfully opposed the clauses in the local government bill which would have provided compensation for publicans whose licences were not renewed.
Lawson was re-elected for the Cockermouth division in 1892 and 1895, but took a less conspicuous part in the parliament, although he was steadfast to all the causes which he had earlier espoused. A reduction in his majority at Cockermouth in 1896 he attributed to the unpopularity of the local veto bill, on which Sir William Harcourt (though not the prime minister. Lord Rosebery) had appealed to the country. To the South African war, which broke out in October 1899, he was absolutely opposed, and as a pro-Boer he was defeated at Cockermouth by 209 votes. He found comfort in polling upwards of 4000 votes. During the autumn and winter of 1901 he engaged anew, after a holiday on the Riviera, in political agitation outside parliament. In April 1903 he was returned at a bye-election for the Camborne division of Cornwall, on the understanding that, at the expiration of the parliament, he should be at liberty to contest his old constituency. He now rarely missed a day's attendance at the house, or failed to take part in a division. The fiscal controversy which opened in 1903 gave him the opportunity of avowing his passionate attachment to the cause of free trade. At the general election of January 1906 he was again returned for the Cockermouth division. After the election the liberal prime minister. Sir Henry Campbell-Bannerman, offered him a privy councillorship; and it is characteristic of Lawson that no one heard of the offer till it had been declined. Lawson was elated by the liberal triumph of 1906, but his health showed signs of failure. He had long given up hunting, and latterly did not ride; but he went on shooting to the end. On 29 June 1906 he voted in the house for the last time in a division on clause iv. of Mr. Birrell's education bill. He died at his London house, 18 Ovington Square, S.W., on 1 July 1906, and was buried in the churchyard of Aspatria, in which parish Brayton is situated. On 12 November 1860 Lawson married Mary, daughter of Joseph Pocklington-Senhouse of Netherhall, Cumberland, by whom he had four sons and four daughters. There is an oil painting (by C. L. Burns) at Brayton. A statue of Lawson by Mr. David M'Gill is on the Victoria Embankment, and a drinking-fountain, with a medallion portrait by Roselieb, at Aspatria. A cartoon portrait appeared in 'Vanity Fair 'in 1880.
Lawson, despite his strong and unchanging convictions, was absolutely just to friend and foe alike, and his justice was tempered by a tenderness which had its root in a singularly humane disposition. He always claimed for others the same freedom of opinion and expression which he claimed for himself. His power of speech was well adapted to great popular audiences. His humour was spontaneous and unforced; his jokes, like those of Sydney Smith, were rich and various, and always served the purposes of his serious argument. He had a vein of sarcasm which, though never personal, was extremely keen, wrote light verse with quickness and ease, and often combined in it humour and sarcasm with great pungency. His main political aim was as simple and sincere as his character. He saw in the ​liquor traffic the great moral and material curse of England; and he devoted all his energies to the attempt to destroy it. From first to last, he was the most disinterested of politicians.
Selections from Lawson's speeches were published under the titles: 'Gay Wisdom,' first series (reprinted from the Liverpool 'Argus'), 1877; 'Wit and Wisdom.' 1886; and 'Wisdom, grave and gay,' chiefly on temperance and prohibition, selected and edited by R. A. Jameson (1889). His verses on political themes were collected with illustrations by Sir F. Carruthers Gould in 'Cartoons in Rhyme and Line' in 1905, 4to. He also issued in 1903 verses entitled 'The Conquest of Camborne, 9 April 1903.'
[Sir W. Lawson's manuscript diary; Sir Wilfrid Lawson, a Memoir, edited by G. W. E. Russell, 1909; private information; Lucy's Diary of Parliamonts. 1874-1905.]
G. W. E. R.