from active business. Their views were far apart, and on Pitt's death Baring was quick to stress their lack of concurrence "on any great political question for above 20 years, our political opinions and principles being different". In particular he disagreed with Pitt's policy for the seemingly endless continuation of a wasteful war; they also suffered differences over government policy towards the East India Company. Baring's personal influence in government waned but his expert advice, always fairly delivered, continued to be provided on such matters as trade with Turkey, the importance of Gibraltar, and the funding of the national debt. As part of Pitt's cleansing of abuse from public office, in 1784 he appointed Baring a commissioner charged with investigating fees, gratuities, and prerequisites for holding certain offices. The link with Lansdowne led Baring to the Commons in 1784 when, at a cost of £3,000, he was elected MP for Grampound, Devon. He was ousted six years later, after which he stood unsuccessfully for Ilchester. Later he sat for Lansdowne's safe boroughs of Chipping Wycombe, Buckinghamshire (1794–6 and 1802–6), and Calne, Wiltshire (1796–1802), which had formerly been represented by other Lansdowne favourites, Dunning and Barré. Notwithstanding his admission that "my voice is so very unequal to the House of Commons", his speeches were reckoned to be "neat, flowing and perspicuous, aiming more by solidity of argument to arrest and convince his hearers, than by beautiful figures and impassioned eloquence to mislead the minds of men". Both in private and from the benches, Baring advocated greater freedom of trade. "Every regulation", he said, "is a restriction, and as such contrary to that freedom which I have held to be the first principle of the well being of commerce", for good measure adding that a restriction, or regulation, may doubtless answer the particular purpose for which it is imposed, but as commerce is not a simple thing, but a thing of a thousand relations, what may be of profit in the particular, may be ruinous in general. Government business in the 1780s There can be little doubt that Baring's firm benefited directly as well as indirectly from his political connections, in particular from Barré's almost limitless patronage as paymaster-general during the American War of Independence. In 1782 he advised Lansdowne that in 1781 and 1782 contractors' profits from supplying the army abroad represented over 13% of the total value of transactions. Baring