Joseph Hume

Joseph Hume ( * January 22, 1777 in Montrose, Scotland, † February 20, 1855 in Burnley Hall at East Somerton, Norfolk, England ) was a British physician and politician.

Life and work

Hume, who came from a humble background ( he was the younger son of a sea captain ), studied medicine at Edinburgh University and went in 1797 to India, where he initially worked as a regimental doctor. As a result, he made a considerable fortune, and returned there in 1808 returned to Britain.

In 1812 he bought a seat in the lower house ( Weymouth ) and the Tories joined them, had to give up his membership again, as the owner of the seat refused to send it again but after a dissolution of Parliament. Hume filed a lawsuit and received a part of his money back.

During a six-year interim, in which he did not belong to the parliament, he made ​​the acquaintance of the economist James Mill and studied the teachings and philosophical reformers to Jeremy Bentham. Hume joined the efforts of Francis Place and other philanthropists to improve the lot of the working class, in particular through the establishment of Lancasterschulen and establishment of savings banks.

In 1815 he married Catherine Elizabeth Burnley, the daughter of a director of the British East India Company. The marriage produced six children, including Allan Octavian Hume, who was active politically as well.

In 1818 he was again sent to the House of burghs for the Scottish Border. Later he was elected successively as MP for Middlesex ( 1830), Kilkenny (1837 ) and Montrose (1842 ), the latter he remained until his death.

From his reentry Hume became the self -appointed guardians of public funds, which provided all the points of the state budget in question and individually brought to a vote before the parliament. In 1820 he reached the setting up of a committee that took the cost of tax collection under the microscope, and in which he was very active. He made his name as a "watchdog " of the respective Chancellor of the Exchequer (Finance Minister) had no rest, and any waste denounced relentless.

He also fought successfully inherited guild laws, ease of disadvantaged artisans and masters preferred, and reached the abolition of laws that banned the export of machinery and workers prevented them from going abroad.

Hume protested constantly against corporal punishment with the Nine-Tailed Cat in the British military, the shanghai of seafarers and the debtors' prison.

Hume died on February 20, 1855 at home in Burnley Hall at East Somerton, Norfolk, England. He was buried in Kensal Green Cemetery in London.

Honors

Hume was recorded in 1818 as a member ( "Fellow" ) to the Royal Society.

Swell

• Entry in the Encyclopædia Britannica of 1911 (English)
• Biography at the Liberal Democrat History Group (English)
• Biography and family tree (English)
• Entry in the archive of the Royal Society (English)

Documents

Literature / Web Links

• Karl Marx: Critical Hume obituary in the New Or -Zeitung No. 98 of February 28, 1855

• Member of the House of Commons (United Kingdom)
• Member of the Royal Society
• Briton
• Person ( Montrose, Angus )
• Politicians (Scotland )
• Scotsman
• Politicians (19th Century )
• Born in 1777
• Died in 1855
• Man