Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/679

 accept the office of lieutenant-governor of Ontario. In 1898 his health began to fail, but in spite of a partial paralysis he continued his official duties. He died at Government House, Toronto, on 19 April 1903, and was accorded a public funeral in Mount Pleasant cemetery.

Mowat's consistent success as a party leader was due to his tact, political sagacity, and integrity. The province recognised that to him its affairs were safely entrusted. The conservative opposition was powerless in the presence of the popularity and prestige which Mowat gained by his successful championship of provincial rights. In Dominion politics Mowat advocated the policy of unrestricted reciprocity with the United States, while he was an ardent supporter of the British connection. He denounced as 'veiled annexation' Goldwin Smith's proposal that Canada and the United States should maintain a uniform tariff against the world, and free trade between themselves. He was a member of the senate of the university of Toronto (1852–72), president of the Canadian Institute (1864–6), president of the Evangelical Alliance (1867–87), vice-president of the Upper Canada Bible Society (1859–1903), and hon. president of the Canadian Bar Association (1897). He held honorary degrees from Queen's university, Trinity university, and the university of Toronto.

On 19 May 1846 Mowat married Jane, daughter of John and Helen Ewart of Toronto. There were two sons and three daughters from this marriage. The eldest son, Frederick Mowat, is sheriff of the city of Toronto.

There are portraits in the Ontario Legislative Buildings by Robert Harris, C.B.; in Government House, Toronto, by Dixon Patterson; in the National Club, Toronto, and in the board room of the Imperial Life Assurance Company by E. Wyly Grier; and in Sheriff Mowat's house by J. Colin Forbes.

 MUIR, SIR WILLIAM (1819–1905), Indian administrator and principal of Edinburgh University, born in Glasgow on 27 April 1819, was youngest of four sons of William Muir, merchant in Glasgow, by his wife Helen Macfie, of an Ayrshire family. [q.v.], the Sanskrit scholar, was his eldest brother. The eldest sister, Margaret, married the painter, Sir [q.v.]. Left a widow two years after William's birth, his mother took her four daughters to Kilmarnock, where William attended the grammer school. On the removal of the family to Manor Place, Edinburgh, he entered the university there, and subsequently the university of Glasgow. Before he had the opportunity of graduating, his grand-uncle, Sir [q. v.], chamberlain of the city of London, previously lord mayor, gave Mrs. Muir four writerships for the East India Company's civil service, and all her four sons went successively to Haileybury College and to the North-West Provinces of India. The second and third sons. James and Mungo, died there after short service.

On 16 Dec. 1837 William Muir landed in Bombay. There he at once entered on the work of settling the periodical assessments of land revenue, and with that work his service of thirty-nine years was mainly identified. He was stationed successively in the districts of Cawnpore, Bundelkhand, and Fatehpur. Following in the footsteps of [q.v] and of  [q. v.], the creators of the land revenue system, he passed into the board of revenue, and then became secretary to Thomason's government of the North-West Provinces at Agra in 1847.

The sepoy Mutiny broke out at Meerut on 10 May 1857 and spread rapidly. Muir, at Agra, where the situation was soon critical, advised vigorous action from the first. Akbar's great fort of Agra became the refuge of the Christians, and [q. v.], the lieutenant-governor, just before his death there on 9 Sept. 1837, nominated Muir and two others to keep the wheels of government in motion. Moir vividly told the story of his experience for his children in his 'Agra in the Mutiny' (1896). Soon there was neither government nor revenue; but as head of the intelligence department Muir held the dangerous position of centre of communication between the viceroy, Lord Canning, and the civil and military authorities right across India to Delhi, Lahore, and Peshawar, to Gwalior, Indore, and Bombay. The invaluable correspondence which he controlled, after being partially utilised by Kaye in his history, was published in Edinburgh in two volumes in 1908, edited by W. Coldstream.

On the virtual suppression (save in Oudh) of the rebellion at the end of 1857 Lord Canning personally undertook the lieutenant-governorship of the North-West Provinces, and removed the headquarters from Agra to Allahabad. At the end of