Joseph Hume - Political Campaigns

Political Campaigns

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.

He was conspicuous in the agitation raised by the so-called Orange plot to set aside William IV of the United Kingdom in favour of Ernest Augustus I of Hanover (1835 and 1836). His action as trustee for the notorious Greek loan in 1824 was at least not delicate, and was the ground of charges of downright dishonesty.

In 1837 he initiated a plan for a memorial to the Scottish Political Martyrs. The monument is in the form of a 90-foot 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.

On February 1852, a second monument to the Scottish Political Martyrs, again initiated by Hume, was unveiled at Nunhead Cemetery, London.