Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Richard, Henry
RICHARD, HENRY (1812–1888), politician, born on 3 April 1812, was second son of the Rev. Ebenezer Richard (1781–1837), by his wife Mary, the only daughter of William Williams of Tregaron. The father, a Calvinistic methodist minister, was well known as an eloquent preacher and an organiser of his denomination in South Wales. His two sons, Edward, a London doctor, and Henry, jointly wrote his biography in Welsh (‘Bywyd y Parch. Eb. Richard, gan ei Feibion,’ London, 1839, 8vo, with a portrait).
Henry was educated at Llangeitho grammar school, and in 1826 was apprenticed for three years to a draper at Carmarthen; but in September 1830, with a view to the ministry, he entered Highbury College, where he remained four years. He was ordained, 11 Nov. 1835, pastor of Marlborough (congregational) chapel, Old Kent Road, and devoted himself to church work until 19 June 1850, when he relinquished the ministry.
The chief work of Richard's life, whence he was often called ‘the Apostle of Peace,’ was the advocacy of arbitration as a method for settling international disputes. He first publicly enunciated his principles on 5 Feb. 1845 at the Hall of Commerce, Threadneedle Street, in a lecture on ‘Defensive War’ (London, 1846, 8vo; 2nd edit. 1890, 8vo). Early in 1848 he was appointed to succeed John Jefferson as secretary to the Peace Society. In this capacity he attended at Brussels (September 1848) the first of a series of international peace congresses, and, on his return, conducted a vigorous propaganda in England. The next three years proved a period of great progress for the movement. In June 1849 Cobden brought forward the first motion submitted to the House of Commons in favour of arbitration. In August 1849, through Richard's exertions, another congress was opened at Paris under the presidency of Victor Hugo. Richard and Elihu Burritt, the American champion for peace, also organised an influential congress at Frankfort-on-the-Main in August 1850 (see [Richard's] Proceedings of the Third General Peace Congress, held in Frankfort, on 22, 23, and 24 Aug. 1850, London, 1851, 8vo). An equally successful gathering followed in London during the Great Exhibition in July 1851. This was succeeded by lesser congresses at Manchester (January 1853) and Edinburgh (October 1853). But the breaking out of the Crimean war, which was denounced by Richard in ‘A History of the Origin of the War with Russia’ (London, 1855), stayed the progress of the movement.
At the end of the war Richard, accompanied by Joseph Sturge and Charles Hindley (then M.P. for Ashton), went to Paris in March 1856 to present to the plenipotentiaries there assembled a memorial urging the insertion of an arbitration clause in the treaty of Paris. The result was that for the first time in European history a declaration in favour of arbitration was inserted in a treaty. As secretary of the Peace Society, Richard had charge of the ‘Herald of Peace,’ its monthly organ. Towards the end of 1855 the ‘Morning Star’ and ‘Evening Star’ were started as daily papers to advocate a pacific policy in addition to general liberal principles, and for several years Richard shared in the editorial management.
Second only to his efforts on behalf of arbitration were the services he rendered to Wales, between which country and England he may be said (adopting his own expression) to have acted as an ‘interpreter.’ In 1843, when the Rebecca riots broke out in South Wales, Richard explained their real significance in a letter to the ‘Daily News,’ and in a paper read before the Congregational Union. In 1844 he visited Wales as a deputation from the Congregational Union, and was instrumental in bringing the nonconformists of England and Wales into closer relation. At his suggestion, an educational conference was convened at Llandovery, where a ‘South Wales Committee on Education’ was formed, and this led to the establishment of a normal school for teachers there and indirectly to the opening of many day schools throughout South Wales. In 1866 Richard contributed to the ‘Morning Star’ a series of ‘Letters on the Social and Political Condition of the Principality of Wales,’ which attracted wide attention, were reproduced in separate form, and were translated into Welsh. A second edition, containing two additional articles dealing with the position of the established church in Wales, was issued in 1884 (London, 8vo).
In 1862 the bicentenary of protestant nonconformity was deemed by the Liberation Society a suitable occasion for spreading its views in Wales by means of a deputation from the society, consisting of Richard, Edward Miall, and Mr. J. Carvell Williams. At a conference at Swansea on 23 and 24 Sept. an agitation was also begun for securing a more democratic representation of Wales in parliament, and in the autumn of 1866 Richard, with his two colleagues, renewed efforts in this direction by means of conferences and local committees. In 1865 Richard had come out as a parliamentary candidate for his native county of Cardigan, but had withdrawn, as there was another candidate in the field (Y Traethodydd for October 1865). In the general election of 1868 he was, however, elected, by a majority of over four thousand, senior member for the Merthyr boroughs, which had been granted an additional seat by the Reform Act of 1867. This seat he retained till his death, his majorities, whenever there was a contest, being overwhelming, and his expenses being always paid by his constituents. Among services to his own constituents, he organised, with Lord Aberdare, a fund which reached about 5,000l. to relieve the South Wales miners during a ‘lock out’ in 1878, and in 1881 he presided at a National Eisteddfod held at Merthyr.
From the first he was regarded as ‘the member for Wales.’ His maiden speech, delivered on 22 March 1869, in support of the second reading of the Irish Church Bill, made a good impression. Later he helped to expose the action of Welsh landowners in evicting tenants who had declined to vote with them at the previous election (Parl. Paper, No. 352 of 1869). This exposure aided materially in the passing of the Ballot Act, 1871, which Richard supported. When W. E. Forster's Education Bill was before the house in 1870, Richard, who had reluctantly accepted the principle of state aid in education, opposed ‘the conscience clause compromise,’ and proposed that ‘the religious instruction should be supplied by voluntary effort and not out of the public funds.’ His final protest against the third reading of the bill (11 July) was bitter and sarcastic, and he subsequently made repeated attempts to get rid of the clauses which were considered obnoxious to nonconformists. A strenuous opponent of the connection of church and state, he seconded on 9 May 1871 Edward Miall's motion for the disestablishment of the British churches, and in subsequent years endeavoured (without success) to introduce a similar motion himself. He took part in many bitter discussions of the burials question, and, being dissatisfied with the Burials Act of 1880, unsuccessfully introduced in 1883 and 1884 an amending cemeteries bill. In 1885, with Mr. J. Carvell Williams, he wrote for the ‘Imperial Parliament Series’ a small work on ‘Disestablishment’ (London, 8vo).
Richard achieved his greatest parliamentary triumph on 8 July 1873, when he carried in the House of Commons a motion in favour of international arbitration similar to that which Cobden had moved twenty-five years previously. In the autumn he undertook a continental tour or ‘mission,’ with the object of promoting the peace movement by personal communication with foreign statesmen. He was civilly received, and in three succeeding years he paid shorter visits to the continent, chiefly for the purpose of attending congresses on international law. In 1878 he went to Berlin, in an endeavour to obtain a fuller recognition of arbitration in the Berlin treaty, which, however, simply reaffirmed the declaration he had succeeded in getting inserted in the treaty of Paris in 1856. Before his return home he presided at some of the sittings of a second peace congress held in Paris in connection with the exhibition of that year. On 16 June 1880 he introduced in the House of Commons a motion in favour of a gradual and mutual disarmament, which was accepted in a modified form by the government. In July 1885 he retired from the secretaryship of the Peace Society, and a testimonial of four thousand guineas was presented to him.
His interest in education increased in his later years. In 1880–1 he served on the departmental committee appointed to inquire into the condition of intermediate and higher education in Wales, the report of which (C—3047) led to the passing of the Intermediate Education (Wales) Act of 1889, and the establishment in 1893 of a Welsh University. In January 1886 he became a member of the royal commission on education. On his initiative it recommended a scheme—since adopted by the education department—for utilising the Welsh language in elementary schools.
As a congregationalist, Richard was associated with Samuel Morley and others in forming, in 1860, a society for supporting English congregational churches in South Wales (Rees, Nonconformity in Wales, p. 459). From January 1875 till his death he was chairman of the deputies of the three (dissenting) denominations, and in 1877 he filled the chair of the Congregational Union, when he delivered addresses on ‘The Relations of the Temporal and Spiritual Power in the different Nations’ (London, 1877, 8vo) and on ‘The Application of Christianity to Politics’ (London, 1877, 8vo).
He died on 20 Aug. 1888 while on a visit to Treborth, near Bangor, and was buried on the 24th at Abney Park cemetery, where a monument provided by public subscription was erected over his grave in November 1889. A bronze statue provided by subscriptions among the Welsh people was unveiled in his native town of Tregaron in August 1893.
Richard, who died without issue, had married (20 Aug. 1866) Matilda Augusta, third daughter of John Farley of Kennington, who survived him. Richard was a fluent speaker, more eloquent, perhaps, in Welsh than in English, but forcible in both. ‘He was the first real exponent in the House of Commons of the puritan and progressive life of Wales, and he expounded the principles which nonconformity has breathed into the very heart and life of the Welsh people’ (Letter of Mr. Thomas Ellis, M.P., in Cymru Fydd for October 1888). His friendship with Cobden is attested by the fact that the latter's widow requested Richard to write a biography of her husband. He ‘sifted and arranged much of the correspondence,’ but the work was finally entrusted to Mr. John Morley, who, in his preface to ‘The Life of Richard Cobden’ (London, 1881), acknowledges the value of Richard's preparatory work. Perhaps his best literary work is his ‘Letters on Wales,’ which is written in a clear, forcible style. In addition to the works already mentioned, as well as his speeches, many of which were published separately, and ephemeral pamphlets, he was author of:
- ‘The Effects of the Civil War in England on the National Liberties, Morality, and Religion,’ London, 1862, 8vo.
- ‘The Destruction of Kagosima and our intercourse with Japan,’ London, 1863, 12mo; 2nd ed. same year, 8vo.
- ‘Memoirs of Joseph Sturge,’ London, 1864, 8vo.
- ‘On Standing Armies and their Influence on Nations,’ London, 1868, 8vo.
- ‘The Recent Progress of International Arbitration,’ London, 1884, 8vo.
[Henry Richard, M.P., a biography by Charles S. Miall (with a portrait), London, 1889, 8vo; an autobiographical article in Cymru Fydd for February 1888, and a memoir (which had been revised by Richard himself shortly before his death) in Cymru Fydd for September and October 1888 (with portrait); introduction to the 2nd edit. of Letters and Essays on Wales (1884); Memoirs of Henry Richard by Lewis Appleton (with a portrait) (London, 1889, 8vo); Rev. D. Burford Hooke in Sunday at Home for February 1889; W. R. Williams's Parl. History of Wales, p. 111; personal knowledge.]
Dictionary of National Biography, Errata (1904), p.233
N.B.— f.e. stands for from end and l.l. for last line
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