Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 17.djvu/261

  Letters; Stenhouse's notes to Johnson's Scots Musical Museum; Somerville's Own Life and Times; Jesse's Reign of George III.]  ELLIOT, GILBERT, first  (1751–1814), governor-general of India, eldest son of Sir Gilbert Elliot, third baronet, of Minto, in Roxburghshire (1722-1777) [q. v.], by Agnes, daughter of Hugh Dalrymple Murray Kynynmound, was born on 23 April 1751, and was educated first under a private tutor, and afterwards (1764-1766)at the Pension Militaire, Fontainebleau, where he was a schoolfellow of Mirabeau, David Hume, then at Paris, acting as his guardian. The winters of 1766 and 1767 he spent in Edinburgh, attending the lectures on civil law, moral and natural philosophy, humanity, history, and rhetoric. In 1768 he entered Christ Church, Oxford, as a gentleman commoner. Here he seems to have chiefly occupied himself with sport and society. Part of 1770 he spent in Paris, where he attracted the notice of Madame du Deffaud and other celebrities, and the vacation of 1773 on the Rhine. In 1769 he had entered Lincoln's Inn, and on 4 May 1774 he was called to the bar. He went the northern circuit, and soon obtained a certain amount of practice. In 1776 he was returned to parliament for Morpeth. Though a whig, he was in favour of the prosecution of the American war, and therefore gave a general support to the government. By 1782, however, he had become convinced that the revolt could no longer be suppressed, and went over to the opposition. About this time he made the acquaintance, which afterwards ripened into friendship, of Burke. Towards the end of the year he was compelled by symptoms of pulmonary disease to leave England for Nice, where he wintered, returning to England completely reinstated in health in the following summer. On his return to London he renewed his acquaintance with Mirabeau, then staying in England, whom he entertained at Bath and Minto. Having on the dissolution of parliament (25 March 1784) lost his seat, he occupied his leisure in preparing, in concert with Burke, the case against Warren Hastings and Sir Elijah Impey. In September 1786 he was returned to parliament for Berwick. On 8 Feb. 1787 he gave notice of motion on the subject of Impey's conduct while chief justice of Fort William. The motion, however, did not come on until 12 Dec. Elliot then in an eloquent speech opened the case against Sir Elijah Impey [q.v.], charging him with perversion of justice in various instances, and particularly in the case of Maharaja Nuncomar, whom he had sentenced to death for forgery. His motion that his complaint against Sir Elijah Impey be received and laid on the table was carried. The proceedings were protracted until 7 May 1788, when Elliot made a second elaborate speech on the question, being supported by Burke. The debate was adjourned and re opened by Elliot the next day. At the close of an animated discussion the motion was lost by 55 to 73. The case against Impey has recently been subjected to careful examination by Sir James Fitzjames Stephen, in two remarkably able volumes, entitled 'The Story of Nuncomar and the Impeachment of Sir Elijah Impey,' in which it is conclusively proved that there was not a tittle of evidence to support the charges 'insinuated rather than alleged' by Elliot. His attack on Impey raised the reputation of Elliot with his party so high that he was put forward on two occasions as a candidate for the speakership, first on 5 Jan. 1789 against Grenville, and secondly on 9 June following against Addington. On both occasions he was beaten. At the general election of 1790 he was returned for Helston, Coniwall. On 10 May 1791 he moved the repeal of the Test Act, so far as it applied to Scotland, but the motion was lost. On the outbreak of the French revolution Elliot declared energetically against the policy of Fox, and exerted himself to detach Lord Portland from the influence of that statesman. On 5 July 1793 he received the degree of D.C.L. from the university of Oxford. In the following September he was appointed civil commissioner at Toulon, where he arrived about the middle of November, and at once opened his commission. By the 20th of the following month, however, Toulon had ceased to be in the possession of the English. Elliot then proceeded to Florence, where he made arrangements for the relief of the refugees from Toulon, and endeavoured to animate the Italian states to a more vigorous resistance to the French. It was now decided, with the consent of the inhabitants, to assume the protectorate of Corsica. Elliot on 19 June 1794 assumed provisionally vice-regal powers, though he did not receive his commission from the British government until 1 Oct. He governed constitutionally, opening the parliament of the island on 25 Nov. 1795. By making Pozzo di Borgo president of the council of state, he alienated General Paoli, who conspired for the expulsion of the British from the island, but was himself expelled by Elliot. Elliot's policy was to make Corsica the centre of British influence in the Mediterranean, and his commission invested him with a general control over the movements of the fleet. It was by his direction that Nelson in July 1796 seized the harbour