Sir Henry Cavendish (1732–1804), Parliamentarian in Two Countries

• Autores: P.D.G Thomas
• Localización: Parliamentary history, ISSN-e 1750-0206, Vol. 36, Nº. 2 (June), 2017, págs. 185-197
• Idioma: inglés
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• Resumen

  • Sir Henry Cavendish, who sat in the Irish parliament from 1766 to 1768 and from 1776 to 1800, and in the Westminster parliament from 1768 to 1774, was a parliamentarian par excellence. His chief claim to fame is as a parliamentary diarist, in both houses of commons, noting down in shorthand some five million words. But this article is on Cavendish as a politician. He was a prolific speaker in both parliaments. But finding himself only a second-rate debater, he cultivated two fields of expertise: finance, and, above all, parliamentary procedure. Here his knowledge soon became unequalled, and virtually unchallenged by the last two decades of the Irish parliament, where he became notorious as a master of obstruction. His political career was erratic, often in opposition, increasingly in government, a permanent officeholder by the end.