Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/87

  Mr. Chamberlain, was also in the House of Commons, so that Ashley's parliamentary duties were light, but he presided over the railway rates committee (1881-2). In 1882 he was transferred to the colonial office ; the secretary of state was Lord Derby, and Ashley represented his department in the House of Commons. To him fell the important task of explaining the conditions of service in which the Australian contingents were to proceed to the Soudan in 1885. From 1880 to 1885 he was one of the ecclesiastical commissioners.

At the general election of 1885 Ashley was beaten in the Isle of Wight by Sir Richard Webster (Lord Alverstone). When Gladstone announced his adoption of the principle of home rule, Ashley joined the liberal unionists. At the general election of 1886 he stood as a liberal unionist for North Dorset, and was beaten. Thence-forward he sustained a series of defeats at Glasgow, Bridge ton division, in 1887, at the Ayr boroughs in 1888, and at Ports- mouth in 1892 and 1895. Of statesmanlike temper, he was brought up in an older political school, and was untrained in modern electioneering methods; on the mass of voters his intellectual ability and attainments made small impression. Although his active interest in county politics never declined, he made no further attempt to renew his parliamentary career. On the death in 1888 of his uncle, William Cowper-Temple, Lord Mount-Temple [q. v. Suppl. I], Ashley succeeded to the properties bequeathed to Mount-Temple by Lord Palmerston, his stepfather Broadlands, Romsey and Classiebawn, co. Sligo. He was sworn of the privy council in 1891. He was D.L. Hampshire and J.P. Hampshire, Dorset, and Sligo, an alderman of the Hampshire county council, official verderer of the New Forest, and five times mayor of Romsey (1898-1902). He was also chairman of the Railway Passengers' Assurance Company. He died at Broadlands on 15 Nov. 1907, and was buried at Romsey.

Ashley married twice: (1) in 1866, Sybella, daughter of Sir Walter and Lady Mary Farquhar (d. 1886), by whom he left one son (Wilfrid, M.P. for the Blackpool division of Lancashire since 1906) and one daughter; (2) in 1891, Alice, daughter of William Willoughby Cole, third earl of Enmskillen, by whom he left one son. A portrait painted by Miss Emmett in 1899 is at Broadlands. A cartoon by 'Spy' appeared in 'Vanity Fair' in 1883.

  ASHMEAD-BARTLETT, ELLIS (1849-1902), politician. [See -]. 

 ASTON, WILLIAM GEORGE (1841–1911), Japanese scholar, born near Londonderry on 9 April 1841, was son of George Robert Aston, minister of the Unitarian Church of Ireland and school-master. Receiving early education from his father, he matriculated at Queen's College, Belfast, 1859, and after a distinguished career as a student, graduated in the Queen's University of Ireland, B.A. in 1862 and M.A. in 1863, on both occasions being gold medallist in classics and taking honours also in modern languages and literature. In 1890 he was made by the Queen's University hon. D.Lit.

In 1864 Aston was appointed student interpreter in the British Consular Service in Japan, and in the autumn joined the staff of the British legation at Yedo (Tokio), where (Sir) Ernest Satow was already filling a like position.

Aston's official career extended over twenty-five highly interesting years in the history of Japan and Korea. Sir Harry Parkes [q. v.] became envoy at Yedo in 1865, and it was largely on the advice of Aston and Satow, based on the result of their historical researches, that Parkes supported the revolutionary movement in Japan in 1868, and unlike the diplomatic representatives of other western powers hastened to acknowledge the new government of the emperor. From 1875 to 1880 Aston was assistant Japanese secretary of the British Legation at Tokio, and from 1880 to 1883 consul at Hiogo. He prepared the way for the first British treaty with Korea, which was signed on 26 Nov. 1883, and from 1884 to 1886 was British consul-general in Korea. He was the first European consular officer to reside in Soul, and he was present through the early troubles that marked Korea's first entry into the world, including the sanguinary 6meute at the capital in 1884. From 1886 to 1889 Aston was Japanese secretary of the British legation at Tokio.

From his first arrival in Japan Aston rapidly turned to advantage his linguistic aptitudes, which proved of value in his official work and eventually gave him a high reputation as a Japanese scholar. When he reached Japan, scarcely half a dozen Europeans had succeeded in acquiring a practical