Joseph Hume (January 22, 1777 - February 20, 1855) was a British doctor and politician, born in Montrose, Scotland.

Contents

1 Medical career 2 Political career 3 Political campaigns 4 Legacy

Medical career

He studied medicine at the University of Edinburgh and moved to India in 1797. There, he worked as a surgeon to an Army regiment, and was able to take up work as interpreter and commissary-general due to his knowledge of Indian languages.

His knowledge of chemistry helped him provide the administration with gunpowder in 1802, on the eve of Lord Lake's Maratha war. In 1808 he resigned and returned home with a fortune of about £40,000.

Between 1808 and 1811 he travelled around England and Europe and in 1812 published a blank verse translation of The Inferno.

Political career

In 1812, he purchased a seat in Parliament for Weymouth and voted as a Tory. When the parliament was dissolved the patron refused to return his money, and Hume brought an action to recover part of it. Six years later, Hume again entered the House, and made acquaintance with James Mill and the philosophical reformers of the school of Jeremy Bentham. He joined with Francis Place, of Westminster, and other philanthropists, to help improve the condition of the working classes, labouring especially to establish schools for them on the Lancastrian system, and forming savings banks.

In 1818, soon after his marriage with Miss Burnley, the daughter of an East India Company director, he was returned to Parliament as member for the Border burghs. He was afterwards successively elected for Middlesex (1830), Kilkenny (1837) and for the Montrose burghs (1842), in the service of which constituency he died.

Political campaigns

From the date of his re-entering Parliament, Hume became the self-elected guardian of the public purse, by challenging and bringing to a direct vote every single item of public expenditure. In 1820, he secured the appointment of a committee to report on the expense of collecting tax revenue. He was very active and became known as someone who gave Chancellors of the Exchequer no peace. He exercised a check on extravagance, and helped to abolish the sinking fund.

He brought about the repeal of the laws prohibiting the export of machinery, and of the act preventing workmen from going abroad. He constantly protested against flogging in the army, the impressment of sailors and imprisonment for debt.

He was conspicuous in the agitation raised by the so-called Orange plot to set aside King William IV in favor of the Duke of Cumberland (1835 and 1836). His action as trustee for the notorious Greek loan in 1824 was at least not delicate, and was the ground of charges of downright dishonesty.

Legacy

A memorial of Hume was published by his son Joseph Burnley Hume (London, 1855). Another son, Allan Octavian Hume, also went into the Indian Civil Service and was involved in much political activism during his career especially on behalf of India.