Alexander was brought up in his father's business, and became a partner at
Hope and Company. He was later sent to the
United States for various land deals, and formed wide connections with wealthy, socially prominent American families. In 1807, Alexander became a partner in the family financial firm, along with his brothers
Sir Thomas Baring, 2nd Baronet (1772–1848), and
Henry Baring (1777–1848), and the name was then changed to
Baring Brothers & Company. When
Henry Hope died in 1811, the London offices of
Hope & Company then merged with the bank of Baring Brothers & Company,
Political career Baring sat in
Parliament in the lower chamber of the
House of Commons for
Taunton 1806–1826, later for
Callington 1826–1831, and then subsequently for
Thetford 1831–1832 and following for
North Essex 1832–1835. In 1835, he was elevated as a Lord Temporal to the upper parliamentary chamber of the
House of Lords, sitting in London for 13 years until his 1848 death. He regarded politics from the point of view of the businessman. He opposed the
orders-in-council for "the restrictions on trade with the United States" in 1812, before the tragic renewed hostilities ensued between the two English-speaking nations of the
War of 1812. Fifteen years later, in 1826, he also opposed the act for the suppression of small banknotes, as well as other reforms. He accepted the important post in the realm of
Chancellor of the Exchequer in the government proposed of pivotal June 1815
Battle of Waterloo's victor, famed
British Army general and now first
Duke of Wellington's projected ministry of 1832 as
prime minister; but afterwards, alarmed at the type of men then serving in
Parliament declared: "he would face a thousand devils rather than such a
House of Commons." After the financial
Panic of 1847 and subsequent economic recession, Baring headed an external
bi-metallist monetary movement hoping to prevent the undue restriction of the British currency and coinage of the
pound sterling. Baring was
Master of the Mint in prime minister Sir
Robert Peel's government and, on Peel's retirement in 1835, was raised to the peerage as
Baron Ashburton, of Ashburton, in the County of
Devon, a title previously held by his uncle-in-law,
John Dunning, 1st Baron Ashburton (1731–1783). In 1842, he was again sent to America, on a significant diplomatic mission, and the same year concluded the
Webster–Ashburton Treaty, negotiated in the American federal national
capital city of
Washington, D.C., with
United States Secretary of State Daniel Webster. A compromise was settled concerning the north-east boundary of the
state of
Maine with bordering provinces to the north of
Nova Scotia,
New Brunswick, and
Quebec in neighboring
Canada of
British North America, plus other matters at issue remaining between the two governments of the extradition of certain criminals, which was arranged, and each state agreed to maintain a naval squadron of at least eighty guns onboard warships on the coast of
West Africa for the suppression of the
trans-Atlantic slave trade, and the two governments then agreed to unite in a joint naval military effort to persuade other
European powers to close all slave markets within their colonial territories. Despite his earlier attitude, Lord Ashburton disapproved of
prime minister Sir
Robert Peel's free trade policies and opposed the
Bank Charter Act 1844. Ashburton was a trustee of the
British Museum and of the
National Gallery, a privy councillor and
DCL. He published, besides several speeches,
An Enquiry into the Causes and Consequences of ... Orders in Council (1808), and
The Financial and Commercial Crisis Considered (1847). Baring was the recipient of compensation when slavery was abolished in the
British Empire in 1833. He received £10,090 sterling in compensation for the emancipation of nearly 500 owned black slaves across four estates in the colonial territory of
British Guiana (modern
Guyana) on the northeast coast of
South America and the island colony of
Saint Kitts in the
West Indies islands chain in the
Caribbean Sea and
Gulf of Mexico in the
Americas /
Western Hemisphere, due to holding interests in those plantations. ==Personal life==