Charles James Fox

Charles James Fox (born Jan. 24, 1749, London, England—died Sept. 13, 1806, Chiswick, Middlesex [now in Hounslow, London]) was Britain’s first foreign secretary (1782, 1783, 1806), a famous champion of liberty, whose career, on the face of it, was nevertheless one of almost unrelieved failure. He conducted against King George III a long and brilliant vendetta; for this reason he was almost always in political opposition and, in fact, held high office for less than a year altogether. He achieved only two important reforms, steering through Parliament a resolution pledging it to abolish the slave trade speedily and, in the 1792 Libel Act, restoring to juries their right to decide not merely whether an allegedly libellous article had, in fact, been published but also what constituted libel in any given case and whether or not a defendant was guilty of it.

Early life

Fox was the third son of Henry Fox, afterward 1st Baron Holland, by his wife, Lady Caroline Lennox, daughter of the 2nd duke of Richmond. Through his mother he was descended from Charles II of England and Henry IV of France. He was educated at Eton and at Hertford College, Oxford, where he acquired an extensive knowledge of the classics, to which he remained devoted for the rest of his life. His father brought him up without the least regard for morality and encouraged him, while still a schoolboy, to acquire extravagant and dissolute habits. He lost vast sums at gambling, and in 1774 his father, just before his death, paid the young man’s gambling debts to the amount of £140,000. Almost 20 years later political friends not only freed him from debt but settled on him a comfortable income. He then showed his gratitude by abandoning forever both racing and gambling.

Entry into politics

Fox was procured a seat in Parliament by his father in 1768. Two years later he was appointed a junior lord of the Admiralty but gave up his office in February 1772 in order that he might be free to oppose a bill (eventually the Royal Marriage Act) designed to prevent marriages of members of the royal family unless authorized by the king or ratified by the Privy Council. He reentered the government the following December as a junior lord of the Treasury, but the King, who already disliked him for his recent opposition, accused him of insubordination and dismissed him in February 1774.

Already a friend of Edmund Burke, he naturally gravitated into the Whig group and before long was their accepted leader in the Commons. He went into opposition just when the controversy with the American colonies was becoming acute. Believing that the colonial policy of the prime minister Lord North was unjust and oppressive, he opposed it with unrestrained violence, but he later admitted that the American war was popular in England. The series of disasters sustained by the British troops in America, culminating in the capitulation of the army led by Lord Cornwallis at Yorktown (October 1781), eventually brought down North’s government (March 1782). The King had to call in a Whig ministry, of which Lord Rockingham became prime minister, and Lord Shelburne (later marquess of Lansdowne) colonial secretary; Fox became the first foreign secretary in English history.

Fox believed, erroneously, that the negotiations for peace with the Americans came within the province of the foreign secretary, and he wished to recognize the independence of the former colonies immediately and unconditionally. Shelburne wanted to withhold this recognition until the peace treaties with the European countries with which Britain had also been at war were ready for signature; and he maintained that, since the independence of America had not yet been formally recognized, he, as colonial secretary, had the right to conduct the negotiations. Fox, therefore, notified his intention to resign (June 30), but before he could implement it Rockingham died (July 1).

When the King offered the premiership to Shelburne, Fox and his friends maintained that it was for them, not for the King, to choose Rockingham’s successor. This was unconstitutional; the King had the undoubted right to choose the minister. Fox and some of his friends at once resigned, but others remained to support Shelburne. The historian Sir George Otto Trevelyan described Fox’s refusal to serve under Shelburne as the fatal and irreparable mistake of his life. Though his suspicions of Shelburne were far from groundless, they were exaggerated; moreover, Shelburne was in some respects the most enlightened statesman of his time.