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OBITUARIES, FOREIGN. (ARGYLL.) 



evinced thus early his proud independence of 

 character by taking a ground opposed to the 

 opinions of his family. The very title of the first 

 pamphlet revealed as the author Lord Lome, the 

 heir of the Campbells. His moral independence 

 led him to become a communicant for a season 

 of the Episcopalian Church, because he disap- 

 proved of disruption, and would not follow his 

 friends into the Free Kirk that they founded. A 

 Presbyterian he was, however, by nature as much 

 as by birth and environment, and he returned to the 

 Kirk of Scotland and drew a fulmination of the 

 Bishop of Glasgow upon his head by his arraign- 

 ment of the Scotch Episcopalians of the Stuart 

 period in a book called Presbytery Examined. He 

 succeeded to the titles and estates of the main 

 branch of the Campbells on the death of his father, 

 in 1848. On taking his seat in the House of 

 Lords he gave an independent support to Lord 

 .lohn Russell, and gradually renewed the connec- 

 tion of his family with the Whigs. His first 

 speech was in support of the bill removing Jewish 

 disabilities. He spoke frequently on Scotch sub- 

 jects, and on ecclesiastical questions he engaged 

 in spirited arguments with Bishop Wilberforce. 

 When Peelites and Whigs formed a coalition 

 ministry in 1852 the Duke of Argyll, connected 

 as he was with both parties, was admitted at once 

 into the Cabinet as Lord Privy Seal. When the 

 Aberdeen ministry was disrupted on the question 

 of war witli Russia, and resigned on Feb. 8, 1855, 

 the Duke of Argyll gave his support to Lord Palm- 

 erst on, and adhered to him after the desertion 

 of the Peelites, led by Mr. Gladstone, sharing the 

 latter's sympathies for the Christians of Turkey, 

 but convinced that Russia threatened Great 

 Britain's power and prestige in the East. In the 

 Palmerston Cabinet he exchanged his office for 

 that of Postmaster-General at the end of 1855. 

 In those stirring times of war and international 

 politics he had no opportunity to show his ad- 

 ministrative ability. Lord Palmerston gave way 

 to Lord Derby on Feb. 22, 1858, and came in 

 again on June 17, 1859. In his second Cabinet 

 the Duke of Argyll resumed the office of Lord 

 Privy Seal, which he held until the fall of Lord 

 John Russell's Cabinet on the reform question in 

 istiii. He was the most fearless and aggressive 

 debater in the upper house, not hesitating to 

 measure swords with Lord Derby. He delighted 

 in public controversy at all times, and had a vast 

 fund of knowledge on the most various subjects, 

 from which he forged arguments wherewith to 

 meet the champions in every field ; Bishop Wilber- 

 force, Lord Derby, Mr. Gladstone, Mr. Disraeli, 

 Prof. Huxley, Herbert Spencer all these and 

 many others he challenged on their own ground, 

 his armory that of a keen and polished contro- 

 versialist, his spirit that of a Highland chieftain. 

 His earnest and independent convictions he would 

 never suppress for reasons of expediency or allow 

 to be clogged with social or party trammels. He 

 had been long before the civil war broke out in 

 the United States on terms of friendship with 

 Kmerson, Charles Sumner, Harriet Beeeher Stowe, 

 and other opponents of slavery, and when the 

 South seceded he stood almost alone among the 

 British aristocracy and quite alone in the Cabinet 

 in his outspoken and consistent sympathy and 

 support of the Unionist cause. He was the only 

 other member of the Cabinet who approved the 

 Foreign Secretary's demand that the Alabama 

 should be held if she re-entered a British port. 

 His logical mind ae(|iiieseed in the justice of the 

 Geneva award, against which all England mur- 

 mured. His opinions on the American question 

 made him popular with the advanced Liberals; 



not so his views regarding Indian policy, which 

 he expounded in 18(55 in a book on India under 

 Dalhousie and Canning, defending Lord Dal- 

 housie's annexations, to which as a member of 

 the Cabinet he had assented. His imperialistic 

 convictions won for him the post of Secretary of 

 State for India in the Cabinet constituted by Mr. 

 Gladstone on Dec. 9, 1868, which lasted till Feb. 

 21, 1874. When in opposition again he took side.-. 

 with the Conservatives and against Mr. Glad- 

 stone on the Scotch patronage bill, but in 1870 

 he vigorously attacked Mr. Disraeli's Eastern pol- 

 icy, and took up the cry of Bulgarian atrocities 

 as soon as it was raised by Mr. Gladstone. From 

 the beginning of the Afghan complications in 1S7S 

 he assailed the Government not only in Parlia- 

 ment, but in the press, and his polemics contrib- 

 uted to the defeat of the Conservatives after the 

 dissolution of Parliament. He became Lord 

 Privy Seal in Mr. Gladstone's second Cabinet, 

 constituted on April 28, 1880. His resolute atti 

 tude on the Irish land question had considerable 

 effect on the subsequent history of English par- 

 ties. He accepted the compensation for disturb- 

 ance bill as a temporary charitable measure, but 

 objected to vesting in a special tribunal the power 

 to fix rents, and when the land bill was adopted 

 by the Cabinet in the spring of 1881 he resigned, 

 and became the most severe and ingenious critic 

 of the Irish policy of the leader with whom he had 

 been connected by the closest political ties for 

 thirty years. In 1884 he gave a qualified support 

 to the Gladstone Government on the question of 

 Parliamentary reform, and he approved the nego- 

 tiations with Russia. When Irish home rule \va- 

 espoused by Mr. Gladstone in 1886 the Duke of 

 Argyll was one of the most active and formi- 

 dable antagonists of the Liberal policy, although 

 he kept his seat as an independent on the cm- 

 benches in the House of Lords. When the Union- 

 ists defeated home rule in the general election he 

 supported the general policy of Lord Salisbury's 

 Government, and gave a hearty approval to Mr. 

 Balfour's Irish administration. * In 1887 he moved 

 a vote of confidence in the Irish policy of the 

 Government, and as none of the Liberal peer* 

 cared to answer the irresponsible utterances of 

 their former associate it was passed without a 

 dissenting voice. The cleft between him and Mr. 

 Gladstone widened after the latter's return to 

 office in 1892. He denounced the home rule bill 

 of 1893 as unsparingly as he had that of issi; 

 His hostility toward the Irish agrarians grew in- 

 tensely bitter when Mr. Davitt and his Scotch di- 

 ciples attempted to apply the principles of Iri>l 

 land legislation in Scotland for the benefit of the 

 crofters on the islands and in the Highlands a IK'. 

 thus affect his own great estates. In the begin 

 ning of 1895 when he was assailing Lord Ro-c- 

 bery's plan of mending or ending the House of 

 Lords on a public platform he was seized with 

 symptoms of heart failure, which warned him to 

 desist from the strenuous excitement of political 

 controversy. His last prominent act in publi 

 life was to move the rejection of the dccea-cl 

 wife's sister bill in ISOli'. The Duke of Argyll 

 fiat as an English peer with the unfamiliar title of 

 Baron Sundridge until he was created a peer of 

 the United Kingdom in 1892. His long and con 

 spieuous political career was only half of hi-* 

 claim to distinction. His broad and many-side I 

 mind and his trenchant and vigorous style earm I 

 for him a hearing in theological controversies, i i 

 metaphysical speculations, in physical science, i i 

 economical theories, in historical research, an 1 

 in literary criticism. Besides innumerable anl 

 incessant contributions to the reviews and to the 



