James Blair ( 1788 – 9 September 1841
) was a
Scots-Irish owner of plantations in the
West Indies
The West Indies is a subregion of North America, surrounded by the North Atlantic Ocean and the Caribbean Sea that includes 13 independent island countries and 18 dependencies and other territories in three major archipelagos: the Greater A ...
. He entered Parliament as a
Tory
A Tory () is a person who holds a political philosophy known as Toryism, based on a British version of traditionalism and conservatism, which upholds the supremacy of social order as it has evolved in the English culture throughout history. Th ...
in 1818 to protect the interests of slave-owners.
Blair sat in the
House of Commons
The House of Commons is the name for the elected lower house of the bicameral parliaments of the United Kingdom and Canada. In both of these countries, the Commons holds much more legislative power than the nominally upper house of parliament. ...
from 1818 to 1830, and later from 1837 to 1841.
When slave-owners were compensated for the
abolition of slavery in British colonies in 1833, Blair received the biggest single compensation payment.
Early life
Blair was the son of John Blair of
County Armagh
County Armagh (, named after its county town, Armagh) is one of the six counties of Northern Ireland and one of the traditional thirty-two counties of Ireland. Adjoined to the southern shore of Lough Neagh, the county covers an area of and ha ...
in Ireland. However, his family came from
Wigtownshire
Wigtownshire or the County of Wigtown (, ) is one of the historic counties of Scotland, covering an area in the south-west of the country. Until 1975, Wigtownshire was an administrative county used for local government. Since 1975 the area has f ...
in Scotland, and their business interests were there.
Career as a planter and slave holder
In 1815, his father's brother
Lambert Blair left his South American estates jointly to James Blair and his cousin John MacEamon
(or MacCamon).
These included sugar and cotton plantations in
Berbice
Berbice is a region along the Berbice River in Guyana, which was between 1627 and 1792 a colony of the Dutch West India Company and between 1792 to 1815 a colony of the Dutch state. After having been ceded to the United Kingdom of Great Britain ...
,
Demerara
Demerara ( nl, Demerary, ) is a historical region in the Guianas, on the north coast of South America, now part of the country of Guyana. It was a colony of the Dutch West India Company between 1745 and 1792 and a colony of the Dutch state fro ...
and
Surinam.
In 1833, Parliament passed the
Slavery Abolition Act
The Slavery Abolition Act 1833 (3 & 4 Will. IV c. 73) was an Act of Parliament, Act of the Parliament of the United Kingdom which provided for the gradual abolition of slavery in most parts of the British Empire. It was passed by Charles Grey, 2n ...
, which abolished slavery throughout the
British Empire
The British Empire was composed of the dominions, colonies, protectorates, mandates, and other territories ruled or administered by the United Kingdom and its predecessor states. It began with the overseas possessions and trading posts esta ...
. The Act reconciled two central principles of 19th-century
classical liberalism
Classical liberalism is a political tradition
Political culture describes how culture impacts politics. Every political system is embedded in a particular political culture.
Definition
Gabriel Almond defines it as "the particular patt ...
–
human liberty and
private property
Private property is a legal designation for the ownership of property by non-governmental legal entities. Private property is distinguishable from public property and personal property, which is owned by a state entity, and from collective or ...
– by paying compensation to slave-owners for the loss of their property.
The sum allocated in the Act was £20 million, which amounted to 40% of the United Kingdom's annual budget.
Owners submitted separate claims for their slave-holdings on separate plantations, and the largest single claim came from Blair.
(Others such as
John Gladstone made multiple claims which reached a higher total.
) For the 1,598 slaves he owned on the Blairmont plantation he had inherited in British Guyana, Blair was awarded £83,530 8shilling and 11pennies
Career in Parliament
At the
1818 general election, Blair bought a seat in Parliament, in the
rotten borough
A rotten or pocket borough, also known as a nomination borough or proprietorial borough, was a parliamentary borough or constituency in England, Great Britain, or the United Kingdom before the Reform Act 1832, which had a very small electorat ...
of
Saltash
Saltash (Cornish: Essa) is a town and civil parish in south Cornwall, England, United Kingdom. It had a population of 16,184 in 2011 census. Saltash faces the city of Plymouth over the River Tamar and is popularly known as "the Gateway to Corn ...
in Devon.
That seat was bought for one Parliament only from
Michael George Prendergast
Michael George Prendergast (died 1834) was an Irish politician. He was a Member of Parliament from 19 April 1809 to 2 May 1831, representing at various times the constituencies of Westbury, Gatton, Galway Borough and Saltash
Saltash (Co ...
, who had purchased a life interest from the borough's owner
James Buller.
At the
1820 general election, Blair was returned for another rotten borough, this time
Aldeburgh
Aldeburgh ( ) is a coastal town in the English county, county of Suffolk, England. Located to the north of the River Alde. Its estimated population was 2,276 in 2019. It was home to the composer Benjamin Britten and remains the centre of the int ...
in Suffolk.
It was owned by the Lancashire ironmaster
Samuel Walker, who had bought it in 1818 for £39,000
(equivalent to £ in ).
Blair had entered Parliament to defend the slave plantations, and while he voted on conventional Tory lines, he did not speak in the Commons until March 1824, in the debates which followed the
Demerara rebellion of 1823. He opposed measures to improve the living and working conditions of slaves.
He told the house that the slaves were "as mildly and as humanely managed in Demerara, as in the Islands, or as is compatible with a state of slavery and pressure" and that "there can be no doubt that the revolt in Demerara is to be attributed to the debates which took place in this House last year, and to the notice preceding them".
His only other contribution to Parliamentary debates was in 1825,
when he supported retaining the preferential tariff on sugar imported from the West Indies.
He had been an active member of the
London Society of West India Planters and Merchants The London Society of West India Planters and Merchants was an organization established to represent the views of the British West Indian plantocracy, i.e. the ruling class who owned and ran the slave-based plantations in what is now the Caribbean. ...
, attending 33 meetings between 1824 -1829.
[Ryden D. (2015) The Society of West India Planters and Merchants in the Age of Emancipation, c.1816-35]
Economic History Society Annual Conference, University of Wolverhampton
accessed 5 January 2016
Walker's interest in Aldeburgh had been sold in 1822, and at the
1826 election Blair was returned for
Minehead
Minehead is a coastal town and civil parish in Somerset, England. It lies on the south bank of the Bristol Channel, north-west of the county town of Taunton, from the boundary with the county of Devon and in proximity of the Exmoor National P ...
in the Fownes Luttrell interest. He continued to take a Tory line, voting against repeal of the
Test Acts
The Test Acts were a series of English penal laws that served as a religious test for public office and imposed various civil disabilities on Roman Catholics and nonconformists. The underlying principle was that only people taking communion in ...
, against Jewish emancipation, and against Catholic emancipation.
He stood down at the
1830 general election, with hopes of a seat in
Wigtownshire
Wigtownshire or the County of Wigtown (, ) is one of the historic counties of Scotland, covering an area in the south-west of the country. Until 1975, Wigtownshire was an administrative county used for local government. Since 1975 the area has f ...
.
However, he did not return to the Commons for seven years.
Blair did not contest the Wigtownshire seat until
1835
Events
January–March
* January 7 – anchors off the Chonos Archipelago on her second voyage, with Charles Darwin on board as naturalist.
* January 8 – The United States public debt contracts to zero, for the only time in history.
...
, when he was defeated by the incumbent
Sir Andrew Agnew, Bt.
Agnew retired at the
1837 election, when Blair won the seat by 362 votes to 314 of the Whig
Alexander Murray.
At the
general election in August, Blair lost his seat to the Whig
John Hamilton Dalrymple.
Personal life
In 1815, he married Elizabeth Catherine Stopford, youngest daughter of Lieutenant-General Hon
Edward Stopford. In 1825, he bought the
Penninghame
Penninghame in Wigtownshire, Dumfries and Galloway, Scotland, is a civil parish area, 8 miles (N. W.) from Wigtown. The area is approx 16 miles in length, and from 5 to 6 miles' width, bounded on the north and east by the River Cree, and on the ...
estate in Wigtownshire from a merchant whose business had failed. The estate included the lands of Penninghame,
Castle Stewart and Fintalloch.
Death
Blair died less than a month after his defeat in the 1841 election at about age fifty-three.
His will ran to 46 pages and made many bequests,
to a total value of £300,000
(equivalent to £ in ).
The bulk of his wealth, including the Penninghame estate, was bequeathed to his brother-in-law
William Henry Stopford, a Colonel in the
Royal Artillery
The Royal Regiment of Artillery, commonly referred to as the Royal Artillery (RA) and colloquially known as "The Gunners", is one of two regiments that make up the artillery arm of the British Army. The Royal Regiment of Artillery comprises t ...
.
In 1842, Colonel Stopford changed his name to Stopford-Blair, and incorporated the Blair
coat of arms
A coat of arms is a heraldry, heraldic communication design, visual design on an escutcheon (heraldry), escutcheon (i.e., shield), surcoat, or tabard (the latter two being outer garments). The coat of arms on an escutcheon forms the central ele ...
in his own.
References
External links
*
*
{{DEFAULTSORT:Blair, James
1780s births
Year of birth uncertain
1841 deaths
People from County Armagh
People from Dumfries and Galloway
Tory MPs (pre-1834)
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for English constituencies
Members of the Parliament of the United Kingdom for Scottish constituencies
UK MPs 1818–1820
UK MPs 1820–1826
UK MPs 1826–1830
UK MPs 1837–1841
Scottish Tory MPs (pre-1912)
Scottish businesspeople
19th-century Irish businesspeople
Sugar plantation owners
British slave owners
Scottish slave owners
Ulster Scots people
Recipients of payments from the Slavery Abolition Act 1833