John Arthur Roebuck (28 December 1802 – 30 November 1879) was a British Whig and Liberal MP for Bath from 1832 to 1837 and from 1841 to 1847, and for Sheffield from 1849 to 1868 and from 1874 to 1879.
Biography[]
John Arthur Roebuck was born in Madras, British India in 1802, and he was raised in Canada and England, where he became intimate with the leading radical and utilitarian reformers. He was called to thet bar in 1831, and he served as the Legislative Assembly of Lower Canada's agent in England and was appointed Queen's Counsel in 1843. He served as an Independent Whig MP for Bath from 1832 to 1837, and he was known to be a bitter man who was hostile to the government of the day, attacking everyone who differed from him; he attacked the Whigs as "an exclusive an aristocratic fashion", "demagogues" when out of office, and "exclusive oligarchs" when in power. He opposed the use of coercion in Ireland, advocated the abolition of sinecures, proposed withdrawing the veto from the House of Lords, supported secular education, and championed a vigorous foreign policy, defending the Crimean War. In 1862, he became unpopular for alleging that working men were spendthrifts and wife-beaters, and he firmly championed the slave-holders of the Southern American Confederacy during the American Civil War, advocating for a British-French intervention in the war on the side of the CSA. At the same time, he defended Austrian rule in Italy. His uncompromising attitudes cost him re-election in 1868, but the was returned to Parliament in 1874. He was made a privy councillor by the Tory government in 1878, and he died in Westminster a year later.