Political career
Baring sat in Parliament in the lower chamber of the House of Commons for Taunton 1806–1826,later for Callington 1826–1831,and then subsequently for Thetford 1831–1832 and following for North Essex 1832–1835. In 1835,he was elevated as a Lord Temporal to the upper parliamentary chamber of the House of Lords,sitting in London for 13 years until his 1848 death.
He regarded politics from the point of view of the businessman. He opposed the orders-in-council for "the restrictions on trade with the United States" in 1812,before the tragic renewed hostilities ensued between the two English-speaking nations of the War of 1812. Fifteen years later,in 1826,he also opposed the act for the suppression of small banknotes,as well as other reforms. He accepted the important post in the realm of Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government proposed of pivotal June 1815 Battle of Waterloo's victor,famed British Army general and now first Duke of Wellington's projected ministry of 1832 as prime minister;but afterwards,alarmed at the type of men then serving in Parliament declared:"he would face a thousand devils rather than such a House of Commons." After the financial Panic of 1847 and subsequent economic recession,Baring headed an external bi-metallist monetary movement hoping to prevent the undue restriction of the British currency and coinage of the pound sterling. [6]
Baring was Master of the Mint in prime minister Sir Robert Peel's government and,on Peel's retirement in 1835,was raised to the peerage as Baron Ashburton,of Ashburton,in the County of Devon, [7] a title previously held by his uncle-in-law,John Dunning,1st Baron Ashburton (1731–1783).
In 1842,he was again sent to America,on a significant diplomatic mission,and the same year concluded the Webster–Ashburton Treaty,negotiated in the American federal national capital city of Washington,D.C.,with United States Secretary of State Daniel Webster. A compromise was settled concerning the north-east boundary of the state of Maine with bordering provinces to the north of Nova Scotia,New Brunswick,and Quebec in neighboring Canada of British North America,plus other matters at issue remaining between the two governments of the extradition of certain criminals,which was arranged,and each state agreed to maintain a naval squadron of at least eighty guns onboard warships on the coast of West Africa for the suppression of the trans-Atlantic slave trade,and the two governments then agreed to unite in a joint naval military effort to persuade other European powers to close all slave markets within their colonial territories.
Despite his earlier attitude,Lord Ashburton disapproved of prime minister Sir Robert Peel's free trade policies and opposed the Bank Charter Act 1844.
Ashburton was a trustee of the British Museum and of the National Gallery,a privy councillor and DCL. He published,besides several speeches,An Enquiry into the Causes and Consequences of ... Orders in Council (1808),and The Financial and Commercial Crisis Considered (1847).
Baring was the recipient of compensation when slavery was abolished in the British Empire in 1833. [9] He received £10,090 sterling in compensation for the emancipation of nearly 500 owned black slaves across four estates in the colonial territory of British Guiana (modern Guyana) on the northeast coast of South America and the island colony of Saint Kitts in the West Indies islands chain in the Caribbean Sea and Gulf of Mexico in the Americas / Western Hemisphere,due to holding interests in those plantations. [9]
