necessary in 1793, he supported Wilberforce in a motion (26 Jan. 1795) intended to facilitate negotiations for peace. He afterwards strongly approved of the peace of Amiens. He voted in favour of Grey's motion for parliamentary reform in 1797, and, like Wilberforce, separated from his extreme protestant friends by supporting Roman catholic emancipation. Thornton was not an effective speaker, but became well known in parliament as a high authority upon all matters of finance. In this capacity he gave an independent support to Pitt's measures. He approved the income tax first imposed in 1798, but thought that it operated unfairly in taxing permanent and precarious incomes alike. It is said that when he found a change impracticable, he silently raised his own payment to what it would have been upon his own scheme. He was a member of the committee on the Irish exchange and currency appointed in March 1804, and of the finance committees, the first of which was appointed in February 1807. He was also a member of the famous bullion committee, in which he took a part second only to Horner. Two of his speeches upon their report in 1811 were separately published. In his views upon this question he was opposed to the views of his own family and city connections. Thornton's reputation as a financier was confirmed by his ‘Enquiry into the Nature and Effects of the Paper Credit of Great Britain,’ 1802, a book of which J. S. Mill said, in his ‘Political Economy’ (bk. iii. chap. xi. § 4), that it is still the clearest exposition known to him in English of the subject with which it deals. It was reviewed by Horner in the first number of the ‘Edinburgh Review.’ It was partly intended to vindicate the policy of the Bank of England, of which Thornton was a director and governor (see MacCullough, Literature of Political Economy, p. 169). It was also reprinted in America, and in MacCulloch's ‘Collection of Tracts on Paper Currency,’ 1857.
Thornton was at the same time one of the most influential members of ‘the Clapham sect.’ Wilberforce had entered public life about the same time; and Wilberforce's uncle had married Thornton's aunt. They were on most intimate terms from the first. For four years before his death John Thornton had given a room in his house to Wilberforce. In 1792 Henry Thornton bought a house at Battersea Rise upon Clapham Common, and Wilberforce shared in the establishment until his marriage in 1797. The library in this house was designed by William Pitt. It became the meeting-place of the informal councils which gathered round Wilberforce. Thornton supported Wilberforce's anti-slave-trade agitation in parliament, and took a leading part in the foundation of the colony at Sierra Leone intended to provide a centre of civilisation for the African races. He carried through parliament an act (31 George III, c. 55) for the formation of a Sierra Leone Company. He was chairman of the company during its whole existence. He procured the capital, drew up the constitution, selected the governor, superintended the despatch of settlers, and in 1807 arranged for the transfer of the colony to the English government. The first views of the promoters had been, as Thornton wrote in 1808, ‘very crude.’ There was much difficulty in obtaining proper colonists or competent administrators. The expectations of pecuniary success were disappointed, and nearly the whole capital of 240,000l. was spent. Thornton himself lost 2,000l. or 3,000l., but held that he was ‘on the whole a gainer.’ He had been associated with many excellent people, had encouraged an interest in the African race, and had, as he hoped, laid a foundation for more successful enterprises. Among the good results to Thornton was a friendship with Zachary Macaulay [q. v.], who was one of the first governors of the colony, and in later years a zealous member of the Clapham sect. Thornton took an active part in many other cognate enterprises. He was first treasurer of the Society for Missions to Africa and the East, started in 1799, which soon afterwards became the Church Missionary Society. He was also the first treasurer of the British and Foreign Bible Society, which had been frequently discussed at Battersea Rise, and was finally established in 1804.
Thornton's firm had a small business when he became a partner, but prospered under his management, till in later years his share of the yearly profits amounted to from 8,000l. to 12,000l. Until his marriage in 1796 he gave away six-sevenths of his income, which in one year amounted to over 9,000l. After his marriage he reduced his charitable expenditure to one-third of his income. He gave 600l. a year to Hannah More for her schools, and supported schools in the Borough and elsewhere. He deliberately refrained from leaving more than modest fortunes to his children, and told them that his example of personal frugality and large liberality, inherited from his own father, was better than a large fortune. He was careful in educating his children, and endeavoured to interest them at the earliest
