Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/385

 a highland chief among his vassals, all looking up to him with affection and veneration. The wild mountain scenery gave a charm to the kind hospitality and hearty good humour which pervaded the whole family. A more interesting and affectionate one I have never seen, and am not likely again to see' (Cardiff Times, October 1872). Some years later the father became very rich. It was in 1837 that he became full owner of the Duffryn estate on the death of a cousin, Frances Anne, eldest daughter of Thomas Pryce of Duffryn, and first wife of the Hon. William Booth Grey, son of George Harry Grey, fifth Earl of Stamford. Thereupon the father assumed the additional surname of Pryce, but his sons did not follow his example in this regard. At the same period the Aberdare valley, of which the Duffryn estate formed part, which had long been a wild region of small value to its possessors, became, through the discovery of great beds of coal, a centre of industry and a mine of wealth. A great part of this valuable property passed to Lord Aberdare.

At six years old Bruce was taken by his parents to St. Omer, and remained there till he was twelve, when he returned to Wales and attended the Swansea grammar school. There he imbibed a liking for Latin verse, which remained with him to the end. Instead of proceeding to Oxford or Cambridge, Bruce left school for the chambers of his uncle, James Lewis (afterwards lord-justice) Knight Bruce. He was called to the bar from Lincoln's Inn in 1837, when only two-and-twenty, and began practice. At the same date his father came into his fortune, and six years later, in 1843, Bruce retired from the bar. For reasons of health he spent the next two years in Italy and Sicily, greatly to his physical and mental advantage in after years. In 1845, on returning to England, he married Annabella, daughter of Richard Beadon and sister of Sir [q. v.] In 1847 he was appointed stipendiary magistrate for Merthyr Tydvil and Aberdare, a position which he held until he entered the House of Commons. That event took place in 1852, when he was returned in the liberal interest for Merthyr Tydvil. He showed from the first that he meant to take his parliamentary duties seriously. In the same year his first wife died, and he married secondly, in 1854, Nora Creina Blanche, younger daughter of Sir [q. v.], the historian of the peninsular war. In 1855 he became one of the Dowlais trustees, a position of great local importance, which enabled him to do much service to the iron industry of South Wales and to increase his influence in his native district [see, Suppl.]

After ten years of independent membership of the House of Commons, Bruce was appointed under-secretary of state for the home department in November 1862, in Lord Palmerston's ministrv, and remained in that office till April 1864. Sir [q. v.] was his chief, and he fully appreciated the advantage of beginning official life under one so sagacious and experienced. In April 1864 he became vice-president of the committee of council on education in the same administration, and was sworn a member of the privy council. In the same year he was appointed a charity commissioner for England and Wales, and held that office until the fall, in the summer of 1866, of Lord Russell's government, which had succeeded Palmerston's on that statesman's death in October 1865. At the end of 1865 and for some months of the next year he was also second church estates commissioner. In these various capacities he gained much credit, and was marked out for higher office. He published in 1866 an address to the Social Science Association upon national education, and a speech on the education of the poor bill in 1867. Meanwhile in 1862 he sat on a royal commission which inquired into the condition of mines, and in 1865 on another which was occupied with the Paris Exhibition.

At the general election of November 1868 Bruce was defeated in his old constituency of Merthyr Tydvil, but he quickly found a seat in Renfrewshire on 25 Jan. 1869, on the death of the sitting member. He had already accepted Gladstone's invitation to join his cabinet as home secretary. Gladstone congratulated himself upon having found 'a heaven-born home secretary.' Bruce discharged his duties with the utmost conscientiousness, and although his acts were subjected to rigorous criticism, they passed well through the ordeal. His tenure of the home office was mainly identified with a reform of the licensing laws, in which he sought a via media between temperance fanatics and the irreconcilable champions of the brewing interest. In 1871 he introduced a measure which tended to reduce the number of public-houses and subjected them to stricter supervision than before. The brewers and publicans raised an outcry which led to the withdrawal of the bill, but in the next session of 1872 Bruce brought it forward in a somewhat modified form, and it passed into law. The licensing power was committed to the care of