page_title: Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet, of Brayton
section_title: 1874 Carlisle election
hierarchical_section_title: Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet, of Brayton / Political career / 1874 Carlisle election
caption_attribution_description: Statesmen No.111: Caricature of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet MP (1829-1906). Caption reads: "Permissive Prohibition"
context_page_description: Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 2nd Baronet was an English temperance campaigner and radical, anti-imperialist Liberal Party politician who sat in the House of Commons variously between 1859 and 1906. He was recognised as the leading humourist in the House of Commons.
  Lawson was Member for Carlisle, 1859–65, 1868–85; Cockermouth, 1886–1900; Camborne, 1903–1906; and Cockermouth 1906. He was the son of Sir Wilfrid Lawson, 1st Baronet, of Brayton, who changed his name from Wybergh, and Caroline Graham, daughter of Sir James Graham. He was privately educated at home. He was a founder member of both the National Liberal Club and the Reform League, a prominent member of the Peace Society, and the Society for the Suppression of the Opium Trade. He was a director of the Maryport and Carlisle Railway and a Justice of the Peace for Cumberland. He was always an enthusiast in the cause of temperance and in 1879 he became president of the United Kingdom Alliance. He was, like his younger brother William, a forward thinking co-operator and agriculturalist.
context_section_description: As the 1874 general election approached, Lawson had good cause to feel satisfied with the progressive reforms introduced by the outgoing Gladstone government. They had gone some way to pacify Ireland by disestablishing the Irish church and introducing an Irish Land Bill. They had introduced an Education Bill, which Lawson welcomed with a few reservations. They had introduced the Local Government Board Act 1871, which put the supervision of the Poor Law under the Local Government Board. They had repealed the Ecclesiastical Titles Act and abolished the Religious tests in the universities. They had introduced much needed army reforms, instituted the abolition of the sale of commissions in the army and made peacetime flogging illegal. In foreign affairs they had settled the Alabama Claims by international arbitration to the benefit of the United States; and kept Britain out of the Franco-Prussian War. They had introduced the Secret Ballot notwithstanding the serious opposition from the Tory party. Although parliament had passed the 1872 licensing act, Lawson had failed miserably to enact his Permissive Prohibitory Bill. In 1870, he had without success, introduced a resolution condemning the Opium traffic, which he compared to the problems associated with alcohol: "We go on to this day merrily poisoning the Chinese with opium as we do our own people with alcohol." Lawson also voted in a minority division of two in support of Sir Charles Dilke when heavily censured by parliament after seeking returns relating to the expenditure on the British Royal family. On 2 August 1870, at the time of the Franco-Prussian War, Lawson had opposed Gladstone, who sought parliament's permission to increase the army estimates by £2,000,000 and 20,000 men. Lawson saw the vote as a danger to Britain and represented the first step in a direction away from a policy of non-intervention, war when not a necessity, was he emphasised, a crime and no war was justified unless strictly defensive. Although he threatened to walk through the lobbies unattended he received support from six radicals. 
  During the election, Lawson expressed his opposition to the ongoing Ashanti war which he saw as a continuation of the drive to open out Africa "We are opening out Africa to progress, civilisation and religion. I don't believe in the souls of a few being saved by destroying the bodies of many more out there. I don't believe in civilising and Christianising by the sword." Unlike many of his Liberal colleagues, Lawson was re-elected and would spend the vast majority of his time in the forthcoming parliament opposing Beaconsfieldism and what he saw as unnecessary conflict.
caption: Caricature by Adriano Cecioni published in Vanity Fair in 1872.
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