| Matthew Forster | |
| Office: | Member of Parliament for Berwick-upon-Tweed |
| Term Start: | 1 July 1841 |
| Term End: | 25 April 1853 |
| Alongside: | John Stapleton (1852–1853) John Campbell Renton (1847–1852) Richard Hodgson (1841–1847) |
| Predecessor: | William Holmes Richard Hodgson |
| Successor: | Dudley Marjoribanks John Forster |
| Birth Date: | 1786 |
| Nationality: | British |
| Party: | Whig |
Matthew Forster (1786 – 2 September 1869) was a British Whig politician and merchant.
Forster was elected Whig MP for Berwick-upon-Tweed at the 1841 general election and held the seat until 1853 when he was unseated due to bribery and treating during the 1852 general election.[1] At the ensuing by-election, his son John Forster was elected as a Whig candidate.[2] Forster attempted to regain the seat at the 1857 general election but ranked bottom of the poll.[3]
Forster, "a wealthy and highly respected ship-owner and merchant" had mining interests, as a senior partner in Forster, Smith and Company, in both south County Durham and The Gambia.[4] [5]
In 1840 Richard Robert Madden (the Special Commissioner of Inquiry into the British Settlements on the West Coast of Africa) reported that Forster was one of the London-based merchants who were actively (and illegally) helping the slave traders.[6] However, Forster managed to escape criminal prosecution. In 1841 there was a change of government, and the new government chose not to send the matter to the Queen's Bench, but to a House of Commons committee that Forster himself was part of. Unsurprisingly, this committee rejected most of Madden's findings.[7]