Edward John Littleton, 1st Baron Hatherton PC, FRS (18 March 1791 – 4 May 1863), was a British politician from the extended Littleton/Lyttelton family, of first the Canningite Tories and later the Whigs.

As heir to two family fortunes, he had large holdings in agricultural and residential property, coal mines, quarries and brick works, mainly concentrated around Penkridge, Cannock and Walsall.

For almost twenty years he had been content generally to make short contributions, usually delivering himself of his considered opinions or changed notions (for he sometimes altered his initial stance during debate) in the chamber of the house in a few unmemorable phrases.

As his opinions became more radical, he adopted an increasingly trenchant and discursive style, speaking frequently in long, argued statements, laden with factual detail.

[3] One of the important factors in this change of style and focus seems to have been his increasingly close contact with middle and working class opinion in the growing Staffordshire towns – Stoke on Trent, Wolverhampton and Walsall.

After the 1830 General Election ended Tory domination, and brought in a minority Whig government under Earl Grey, Littleton took up the campaign against the truck system.

[5] The 1831 general election completely changed the electoral landscape, ushering in a reforming Whig ministry under Grey, and allowing Littleton to proceed with his bill with a fair certainty of success.

Moving the vote on the bill in September 1831, he pointed out that "it was notorious that the universal feeling of the working classes was in favour of some attempt to put down this odious system."

As the Truck Act passed into Law, Littleton was drafted into detailed work on the Great Reform Bill, intended to create an entirely new system of parliamentary representation.

Here his command of detail and forensic skills found a perfect outlet, as the reform involved careful research, the establishment of principles and their application to hundreds of varying local situations.

He was formidably well informed and often sarcastic in debate, often tangling with John Wilson Croker, a bitterly anti-Reform Irish Tory who sat for the rotten borough of Aldeburgh.

[8] He made similar contributions to uphold the importance of Wolverhampton, Walsall and Stoke, continually insisting on the principle that constituencies should represent communities and populations, not political or economic interests.

Littleton spoke against his own nomination, expressing his confidence in the existing Speaker, Charles Manners-Sutton, a Tory member, and praising his "unexampled patience and urbanity".

O'Connell countered with a long speech denouncing Toryism, demanding a triumphal vindication of the Reform Act and refusing to withdraw the nomination.

He regarded the nomination of Manners-Sutton "as another instance of that paltry truckling on the part of the present Administration towards their ancient enemies, which had already afforded such frequent subjects of complaint."

Lord Althorp, a fellow Radical, supported Littleton's non-partisan view but William Cobbett gave a bitterly partisan speech, claiming that the election of Manners-Sutton would be "an open declaration of war against the people of England."

[9] Littleton's nomination, though rejected by himself, had initiated an important constitutional debate, which established permanently in the reformed parliament the non-partisan character of the Speaker.

He need scarcely use such strong language, for the proposition was so extremely absurd — so opposed to the feelings and interests of both Englishmen and Irishmen, that any strenuous exertion would be totally unnecessary, in order to ensure it a signal defeat.

[1] In February 1835, Littleton won re-election to the House of Commons as member for Staffordshire Southern – part of a Whig victory that returned Melbourne to power.

Since he was now constitutionally barred from serving as a member of the House of Commons, his seat had to be contested again in a by-election in May, won by a fellow Whig, Sir Francis Goodricke.

To show the facilities which they afforded for corruption, the noble Lord read various statements of the vast number of persons who had been admitted as freemen just previous to general elections.

If their Lordships refused to sanction this proposition, he was afraid they would expose themselves to strong observations out of doors, where it was the universal opinion that they had found the class of individuals which the Bill tended to get rid of extremely convenient, and easily to be managed on certain occasions.When a similar measure was proposed for Ireland in 1838, Hatherton defended it trenchantly in the Lords, taking particular exception to attempts to tamper with the franchise.

In fact, after this disappointment, and especially in the early 1840s, a period of Tory dominance that brought Robert Peel to power, Hatherton's contributions slackened for a time in number and in focus.

A Commission, headed by Lord Anthony Ashley-Cooper, 7th Earl of Shaftesbury, had investigated conditions in the mines and its proposals for reform included prohibitions on female and child labour underground.

Hatherton found himself in the unusual and uncomfortable position of defending the status quo alongside Charles Vane, 3rd Marquess of Londonderry, a Tory grandee hated in the mining areas of Northumberland and Durham.

[29] Parliament was reconvened on 19 January and the government's revised strategy sketchily outlined to in Speech from the Throne[30] that gave Ireland prominence but wandered across such topics as the marriage of the Spanish Infanta, and problems in Poland and Argentina.

[31] He immediately stated that the condition of Ireland was topic of "all-absorbing importance" and went on to give a long speech in which all other matters were relegated to a formal mention at the end.

Hatherton stated that his purpose was to "implore their Lordships, in considering this question, to make the case of Ireland their own" and demanded the government treat it exactly as if it had happened in England.

Hatherton served as Lord Lieutenant of Staffordshire between 1854 and 1863—an honorific local post with considerable ceremonial duties that perhaps filled his time as he himself became less able to travel.

A listing of his economic interests in 1862, the year before his death, includes: Although most of Hatherton's income from agriculture came in the form of rents and tithes, he was also a considerable farmer on his own account.