Page:Dictionary of National Biography. Sup. Vol I (1901).djvu/70

 Spielmann's 'History of Punch' (1895). He married Emily, eldest daughter of William Hunt, J.P., of Bath, and his only daughter Minna married in 1896 Mr. Hugh Clifford, C.M.G., governor of Labuan and British North Borneo.  ABERCROMBY, ROBERT WILLIAM DUFF (1835–1895), colonial governor. [See .]

ABERDARE,. [See, 1815–1895.]

ACHESON, ARCHIBALD, second  in the Irish peerage, and first Baron Worlingham in the peerage of the United Kingdom (1776–1849), governor-in-chief of Canada, born on 1 Aug. 1776 (Hibernian Mag. vi. 645), was the eldest son and heir of Arthur, the first earl, by Millicent, daughter of Lieutenant-general Edward Pole of Radborne in Derbyshire. Entering Christ Church, Oxford, on 19 Jan. 1796, he matriculated in the university on the 22nd of that month, and graduated M.A. honoris causa on 26 Oct. 1797. During the Irish troubles of the succeeding year he served as lieutenant-colonel in the Armagh militia. In 1807 he became colonel.

His political life began with his election to the Irish parliament, on 9 Jan. 1798, as member for Armagh. He voted in the Irish House of Commons against union with Great Britain on 20 Jan. 1800, while his father cordially supported the measure in the Irish House of Lords. The offer of an earldom, made in that connection to his father, was renewed in 1803, but was not accepted till three years later when the whigs came into power.

As Acheson represented a county he became, by the terms of the Union Act, a member of the House of Commons in the first parliament of the United Kingdom (1801). At the general elections of 1802 and 1806 he was returned for Armagh, and continued to sit in the commons till 14 Jan. 1807, when he succeeded his father as second earl of Gosford. He was chosen a representative peer for Ireland in 1811. While he seldom intervened in debate, he gave a general support to the whig party and policy, especially on Irish questions. In 1832 he was gazetted lord-lieutenant and custos rotulorum of Armagh, offices which he held for life. Nominated captain of the yeomen of the guard on 3 Sept. 1834, he was on the same day called to the privy council. Next year — in June — he became prominent as an exponent of the whig policy of 'conciliation' in Ireland. Having reported, in his capacity of lord-lieutenant, in a 'conciliatory' temper, on certain Armagh riots, a resolution censuring both his investigation and report was defeated in the commons after a brisk debate. Thereupon Joseph Hume [q. v.] proposed a motion eulogising Gosford, which receired warm support from O'Connell and his followers, and from the radicals generally; it was accepted by the government and carried amid much enthusiasm.

On 1 July 1835 Gosford was nominated by the prime minister. Lord Melbourne, governor of Lower Canada, and governor-in-chief of British North America, Newfoundland excepted. On the same day he became royal commissioner with Sir George Grey [q.v. Suppl.] and Sir George Gipps [q. v.] to examine locally into the condition of Lower Canada and the grievances of the colonists. Four days afterwards he was created a peer of the United Kingdom, adopting the title of Baron Worlingham from an estate that came to him through his wife. Arriving in Quebec on 23 Aug. 1835, Gosford assumed the reins of government on 17 Sept., immediately after the departure of Lord Aylmer. He left the colony on 26 Feb. 1838. His term of office, lasting two and a half years and covering the period of the Canadian rebellion, is a dark passage in Canadian history, and still occasions much debate.

His appointment was not received with general favour. As constitutional questions of deep moment were being mooted, the nomination of an unknown and untried man seemed to many hazardous in the extreme. The whig remedy for colonial evils, which Charles Grant, lord Glenelg [q.v.], the colonial minister under Lord Melbourne, embodied in the original draft of Gosford's instructions, was not based on an examination of colonial facts, but proceeded on the assumptions that there was a very close analogy between Irish and colonial conditions, and that the whig policy known in Irish affairs as 'conciliation' needed only a trial to prove an absolute success beyond the sea.

The Melbourne cabinet consequently instructed Gosford to adopt as matter of principle the three chief demands of Louis Joseph Papineau [q. v.] and the political agitators in Lower Canada. The first demand that the assembly should have sole control of the waste or crown lands, and the third demand that the legislative council should be elective, were to be accepted absolutely; the