Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/115

 a great collection of pictures from his uncle, Thomas Baring (1799–1873), M.P. for Huntingdon, was to reorganise his private life both in London and at Stratton. While his own party remained in opposition, he was again able to attend to the duties and occupation of a country gentleman. Much as he deprecated party conflict on Indian questions, the development of the Afghan imbroglio under his successor, Lord Lytton, forced him by degrees to take a prominent part in the controversy; and even if it be admitted that the Lawrence policy of complete non-interference had practically broken down before Lord Northbrook left India, the disastrous results of the counter-policy as actually pursued completely vindicated Northbrook's foresight and courage in the line he took on this question.

On the accession to office of Gladstone in 1880, Lord Northbrook was appointed first lord of the admiralty. At the same time he became the principal adviser of the cabinet on Indian questions, and later on, when Sir Evelyn Baring, his cousin, was consul-general at Cairo, on Egyptian policy also. He was one of the four ministers—Lord Granville, Lord Kimberley, and Sir Charles Dilke were the other three—who were directly responsible for the despatch of General Gordon [q. v.] to the Soudan, a step which he afterwards admitted to have been a 'terrible mistake.' In Sept. 1884 he went to Cairo as a special commissioner to advise the government on the ' present situation in Egypt,' and especially on the 'present exigencies of Egyptian finance,' and in the reports brought home by him in the following November he definitely ranged himself on the side of single British control, with all which that conclusion implied. His colleagues, however, did not accept his plan of reorganisation, and though he remained a member of the government for the short remainder of its term, his relations with Gladstone became from that time markedly less cordial. He had returned from Egypt to find himself the object of serious attack on account of the agitation started in the 'Pall Mall Gazette by Mr. Stead's articles on 'The Truth about the Navy,' which resulted in the decision of the government, in Lord Northbrook's absence, to introduce a programme of expenditure on ship-building. As a matter of fact the board, headed by Lord Northbrook and advised by Sir Cooper Key [q. v.], had, as Admiral Colomb, the biographer of the latter, wrote, taken more decided steps in reorganising the navy 'than perhaps any board which preceded it,' and technical opinion has long since vindicated Lord Northbrook from any suspicion of neglect or supineness. The fall of Gladstone's administration in June 1885 marked the close of Lord Northbrook's official career, although he refused high office in the cabinet on two subsequent occasions. In February 1886 Gladstone offered him the choice of the lord-lieutenancy of Ireland or the lord-presidentship of the council, but his Egyptian experience had decided him never again to serve under Gladstone, and though he retained an open mind on the Irish question longer than many of his old colleagues, he was already moving towards the liberal unionist position of strong hostility to the home rule solution, which he adopted on the production of Gladstone's bill in 1886. In December 1886, upon Lord Randolph Churchill's resignation, he declined a suggestion that he should join Lord Salisbury's cabinet with George Joachim (afterwards Viscount) Goschen [q. v. Suppl. II], preferring with the rest of his old colleagues to support the government from without. When the time arrived, in 1895, for a unionist coalition, it was too late for him to re-enter the political arena and take office with the leader with whom throughout his political career he was much in sympathy, the Duke of Devonshire [q. v. Suppl. II]. He retained, moreover, strong liberal sympathies, which he showed at the close of his life by withdrawing his support from the unionist party in 1903 at the commencement of the agitation in favour of tariff reform.

After the break-up of the liberal party in 1886, Lord Northbrook, living much at Stratton, found himself increasingly involved in the business of local administration. As a member of the committee of quarter sessions he took a leading part in the arrangements for the transfer of authority to the new Hampshire county council under the Local Government Act of 1888; he became chairman of the finance committee of the county council, and in 1894, on Lord Basing's death, he yielded, though with reluctance, to the unanimous wish of his colleagues that he should accept the chairmanship of the council which he held until his death. In 1889 he had been elected to the ancient office of high steward of Winchester, and in the following year he succeeded Lord Carnarvon as lord-lieutenant of Hampshire. In these various capacities, his courteous dignity, his force of character, his known impartiality, his complete