Politics
Hesketh was appointed High Sheriff of Lancashire in 1830. In 1831 he was invited to stand as a Tory Party candidate for the constituency of Preston. He had similar views to Tory statesman Robert Peel and readily agreed to stand. Hesketh-Fleetwood opposed monopolies, slavery and capital punishment and was in favour of reforming the Corn Laws. At the 1832 general election, he was elected—along with his friend, Henry Stanley—Member of Parliament for Preston, in the first parliament following the Reform Act. He made his maiden speech to parliament in 1834.
Queen Victoria came to the throne in 1837, and in June the following year Hesketh-Fleetwood was knighted in the Coronation honours list and created Baronet Fleetwood. He was remained MP for Preston until the 1847 general election, although towards the end of his parliamentary career he was recorded as a Liberal MP. In 1840 he translated Victor Hugo's pamphlet, The Last Day of a Condemned Man, with a foreword entitled "Observations on capital punishment" that made clear Hesketh-Fleetwood's abolitionist stance on the issue.
Read more about this topic: Peter Hesketh-Fleetwood
Famous quotes containing the word politics:
“The average educated man in America has about as much knowledge of what a political idea is as he has of the principles of counterpoint. Each is a thing used in politics or music which those fellows who practise politics or music manipulate somehow. Show him one and he will deny that it is politics at all. It must be corrupt or he will not recognize it. He has only seen dried figs. He has only thought dried thoughts. A live thought or a real idea is against the rules of his mind.”
—John Jay Chapman (1862–1933)
“While you’re playing cards with a regular guy or having a bite to eat with him, he seems a peaceable, good-humoured and not entirely dense person. But just begin a conversation with him about something inedible, politics or science, for instance, and he ends up in a deadend or starts in on such an obtuse and base philosophy that you can only wave your hand and leave.”
—Anton Pavlovich Chekhov (1860–1904)
“From the beginning, the placement of [Clarence] Thomas on the high court was seen as a political end justifying almost any means. The full story of his confirmation raises questions not only about who lied and why, but, more important, about what happens when politics becomes total war and the truth—and those who tell it—are merely unfortunate sacrifices on the way to winning.”
—Jane Mayer, U.S. journalist, and Jill Abramson b. 1954, U.S. journalist. Strange Justice, p. 8, Houghton Mifflin (1994)