page_title: F. J. Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich
section_title: Cabinet minister
hierarchical_section_title: F. J. Robinson, 1st Viscount Goderich / Life and career / Cabinet minister
caption_attribution_description: English: Four British prime ministers of the early 19th century, cropped and composited from Wikipedia images File:Lord Liverpool.jpg, File:George Canning by Richard Evans.jpg, File:Grey2.jpg, and File:Robert Peel.jpg
context_page_description: Frederick John Robinson, 1st Earl of Ripon, PC, styled The Honourable F. J. Robinson until 1827 and known between 1827 and 1833 as Viscount Goderich, the name by which he is best known to history, was Prime Minister of the United Kingdom between August 1827 and January 1828.
  A member of the rural landowning aristocracy, Robinson entered politics through family connections. In the House of Commons he rose through junior ministerial ranks, achieving cabinet office in 1818 as President of the Board of Trade. In 1823 he was appointed Chancellor of the Exchequer, a post he held for four years. In 1827 he was raised to the peerage, and in the House of Lords was Leader of the House and Secretary of State for War and the Colonies.
  When the Prime Minister, George Canning, died in 1827 Goderich succeeded him, but was unable to hold together Canning's fragile coalition of moderate Tories and Whigs. He resigned after 144 days in office, the shortest in history for any British prime minister who did not die in office.
  After leaving the premiership Goderich served in the cabinets of two of his successors, Earl Grey and Sir Robert Peel.
context_section_description: In 1818 Robinson entered the cabinet as President of the Board of Trade and Treasurer of the Navy, under the premiership of Lord Liverpool. In 1823 he succeeded Nicholas Vansittart as Chancellor of the Exchequer. The historian Richard Helmstadter writes:
  Robinson was a first-rate administrator, a superb head of a department. He had a good mind, a great capacity for work, and an appetite for precision. He was a great fusser, but he fussed in a gentle way, and no one disliked him for it. His very lack of strong partisan convictions enabled him to serve, almost as a neutral civil servant, a long succession of political leaders.
  Robinson served as Chancellor for four years, and was regarded as a success in the post. The public finances were in good order, with a revenue surplus for the first three years of his chancellorship. He cut taxes and made grants to house the Royal Library in the British Museum and to buy the Angerstein collection for the National Gallery. Jupp writes, "These achievements, together with his support for Catholic relief and the abolition of slavery, led to his being regarded as one of the most liberal members of the government and to two more nicknames – 'Prosperity Robinson' and 'Goody'." Robinson's last year at the Treasury was overshadowed by a run on the banks, caused by the collapse of the City of London bankers Pole Thornton and Co. Robinson was not blamed for the collapse, but his measures to mitigate the crisis were widely seen as half-hearted.
  Under strain from the financial crisis, Robinson asked Liverpool for a change of post. In January 1827 he was given a peerage as Viscount Goderich, but Liverpool had no time to reshuffle his cabinet, being taken ill in February 1827 and resigning the premiership. He was succeeded by Canning, whose appointment caused a major realignment in the political factions of the day. The Tories split into four groups, distinguished by their view of Catholic Emancipation. Canning and his followers were liberal on the matter; Robinson belonged to a moderate group that was willing to support Canning; the faction led by the Duke of Wellington and Robert Peel opposed emancipation; and an ultra-Tory group resisted any kind of liberalising measure. To the anger of the King, George IV, who regarded it as a betrayal, Wellington and Peel refused to serve under Canning. With half the Tories ranged against him, Canning was obliged to seek support from the Whigs. Goderich, appointed by Canning as Leader of the House of Lords as well as Secretary of State for War and the Colonies, found the upper house no less stressful than the Commons. He was the target for the anger of the anti-Canning Tories in the Lords, suffering many personal verbal assaults; when he attempted to get a new Corn Law enacted it was defeated by an alliance of peers led by Wellington.
caption: PMs in whose cabinets Robinson served: clockwise from top l., Lord Liverpool, George Canning, Earl Grey, and Robert Peel
exif: {"Image Orientation": "Horizontal (normal)", "Image XResolution": "72", "Image YResolution": "72", "Image ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Image Software": "Adobe Photoshop Elements 7.0 Windows", "Image DateTime": "2012:03:13 15:20:11", "Image ExifOffset": "172", "Thumbnail Compression": "JPEG (old-style)", "Thumbnail XResolution": "72", "Thumbnail YResolution": "72", "Thumbnail ResolutionUnit": "Pixels/Inch", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormat": "310", "Thumbnail JPEGInterchangeFormatLength": "7561", "EXIF ColorSpace": "sRGB", "EXIF ExifImageWidth": "200", "EXIF ExifImageLength": "200"}