Charles James Fox
Charles James Fox was a Whig politician and a member of the Parliament in Great Britain.
Contents
History
Charles was a younger son of Henry Fox.
Fox entered Parliament in 1768 for Midhurst, a pocket borough. He had two brief appointments to the board of Admiralty in the 1770s, both of which he resigned from in protest against the North government.
He served in the brief government of Watson-Wentworth, who died within a few months. Fox refused to continue under Petty, so he formed a coalition with North and forced a government onto George III. While the coalition would disintegrate within a year, neither could the minority Pitt government effectively govern, until new elections in 1784 handed him a solid majority.
Fox was a vocal supporter of the French Revolution and the Jacobins. As the Napooleonic Wars carried on, these positions became politically poisonous, and Fox was increasingly sidelined from politics.
In early 1806, Fox was appointed to Grenville's Ministry of All the Talents. His failure to negotiate peace with Bonaparte shattered his public image.
Fox died in office in September 1806.
Policies
Fox was a notable critic of North, George III, and the American Revolutionary War. He argued that the true aims of the war were to establish an absolute monarchy.
He was caught in an embarrassing position during the Regency Crisis. While he was well known to oppose the powers of George III, he was also an ally of George, prince of Wales. In 1788, George III was incapacitated by severe mental illness, and had to be restrained. Fox tried to argue in Parliament that the prince of Wales had a natural right to declare a permanent regency.
Fox was a leading critic of Pitt's wartime security acts. These included the Habeas Corpus Suspension Act, the Seditious Meetings Act, and the Treasonable Practices Act. Even from the opposition, he pressed for legislation to restore civil liberties. He found a notable success in the Libel Act, restoring the role of juries in libel trials. In contrast, his Roman Catholic Relief Act did not pass.
He publicly supported the French Revolution, specifically of the Jacobins. He initially expressed opposition to Bonaparte for his seizure of power, but eventually rationalized it as necessary.
In the last months of his life, Fox introduced legislation to ban the slave trade.
He believed that Napoleonic France fundamentally wanted peace, but was forced to wage aggressive war to secure itself geopolitically against the inherently hostile monarchies surrounding it.