page_title: Joseph Hume
section_title: Political campaigns
hierarchical_section_title: Joseph Hume / Political campaigns
caption_attribution_description: English: A Humebugging attempt to Dissect a Naval Estimate (caricature)Hand-coloured.
context_page_description: Joseph Hume FRS was a Scottish doctor and Radical MP.
context_section_description: From the date of his re-entering Parliament, Hume became the self-appointed guardian of the public purse, by challenging and bringing to a direct vote every single item of public expenditure. In 1820, he secured the appointment of a committee to report on the expense of collecting tax revenue. He was very active and became known as someone who gave Chancellors of the Exchequer no peace. He exercised a check on extravagance, and helped to abolish the sinking fund. It was he who caused the word "retrenchment" to be added to the Radical programme "peace and reform." He carried on a successful warfare against the old anti-trade union combination laws that hampered workmen and favoured masters. He brought about the repeal of the laws prohibiting the export of machinery, and of the act preventing workmen from going abroad. He constantly protested against flogging in the army, the impressment of sailors and imprisonment for debt.
  In 1837 he initiated a plan for a memorial to the Scottish Political Martyrs. The monument is in the form of a 90-foot (27 m) obelisk of grey-black sandstone blocks, and is inscribed with the names of the five men:
  Thomas Muir
  Joseph Gerrald
  Thomas Fyshe Palmer
  William Skirving and
  Maurice Margarot
  On 21 August 1844, 3000 gathered to see Hume lay the monument's foundation stone at the Old Calton Cemetery, Edinburgh.
  In February 1852, a second monument to the Scottish Political Martyrs, again initiated by Hume, was unveiled at Nunhead Cemetery, London.
caption: A Humebugging attempt to Dissect a Naval Estimate, 1822
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