Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 22.djvu/387

Rh invasion of the Kaffirs into Cape Colony had led to a war, which terminated in 1835. The governor, Sir Benjamin D'Urban [q. v.], had thereupon issued a proclamation extending the boundaries of the colony to the river Kei. Glenelg refused to sanction this action, and on 26 Dec. 1835 sent a despatch to this effect to Sir Benjamin D'Urban, who immediately resigned. Glenelg was vigorously defended in a pamphlet published in 1837 by 'Justus,' and entitled 'Wrongs of the Caffre Nation.'

Glenelg's Canadian administration exposed him to severe and on the whole deserved condemnation. Signs of disturbance were apparent in Canada on his assuming office. Without adopting a very definite line of policy, he at first aimed vaguely at reorganising the Canadian government in conformity with Canadian sentiment. He gained at once the dislike of the king, who, while resisting all concessions, called Glenelg 'vacillating and procrastinating' (, Life of Lord John Russell, i. 268). When the king saw Sir Charles Grey [q. v.] on his appointment (June 1835) as a commissioner to investigate Canadian grievances, he openly denounced Glenelg, and Melbourne in the name of the cabinet protested against his violent language (Melbourne Papers, p. 334). In June 1836, when the crisis in Canada was growing more acute, William IV forbade for a time the issue of Glenelg's despatch sanctioning the alienation of crown lands and the introduction of the elective principle in Lower Canada (ib. p. 349). The outbreak of the rebellion in 1837 increased Glenelg's unpopularity with all parties. The lieutenant-governor of Upper Canada, Sir Francis Bond Head [q. v.], readily quelled the disturbance, but Glenelg was still unable to determine to what policy to adhere, and Head resigned on 15 Jan. 1838 (see Lord Glenelg's Despatches to Sir F. B. Head, London, 1839). The next day Lord Durham was appointed governor-general of Canada with extraordinary powers. On 7 March Sir William Molesworth, the radical leader, who sympathised with Canadian claims to self-government, moved in the House of Commons that Glenelg did 'not enjoy the confidence of the house or of the country,' and attacked his policy not only in Canada, but in New South Wales and Van Diemen's Land, to both of which he had refused autonomous institutions. Molesworth's motion was withdrawn in favour of an amendment proposed by Lord Sandon from the conservative benches attributing the Canadian crisis to 'the ambiguous, dilatory, and irresolute course' of the ministry. The amendment was lost, but the debate greatly injured Glenelg. On 28 May Durham arrived at Quebec, and on 28 June he issued his famous ordinance sentencing the rebels who had surrendered to perpetual banishment to the Bermudas. Glenelg at first approved the proclamation, but Lord Brougham carried in the House of Lords a motion strongly condemning it (5 Aug.) Lord Melbourne thereupon announced its partial withdrawal, and Glenelg admitted that it was in part illegal. Lord Durham resigned when this news reached him (22 Oct.), and joined the ranks of Glenelg's enemies. Glenelg's colleagues, Lord John Russell and Lord Howick, insisted in October that his incompetency at the colonial office made his dismissal necessary (Melbourne Papers, 380;, Russell, i. 308). The premier, Melbourne, hesitated to act. He wished to make other provision for Glenelg, and suggested a pension of 2,000l. a year or the auditorship of the exchequer, then held by Sir John Newport. Russell and his friends in the cabinet threatened to resign if Glenelg was not removed. But it was not until 8 Feb. 1839 that Glenelg yielded and retired. When announcing his resignation in the House of Lords 'he said very little,' writes Greville, 'but that little conveyed a sense of ill-usage and a mortified spirit.' He subsequently received the non-political post of commissioner of the land tax, and accepted a retiring pension of 2,000l. per annum. He appeared occasionally in the House of Lords, for the last time in 1856, when he took part in the debate on life peerages. The remainder of his life he devoted to books, society, and travel. Feeble health forced him to live abroad, and his last days were spent in the companionship of Brougham at Cannes, where he died on 23 April 1866. He was unmarried, and his title became extinct at his death. There is a portrait of him in Inverness Castle.

[Information from the Hon. and Rev. Latimer Neville; obituary notices in Inverness Courier, 3 May 1866, Morning Post and Times, 28 April 1866; Nouvelle Biographie Universelle; Annual Review; Thornton's Hist. of India; Trevelyan's Life and Letters of Macaulay; Melbourne Papers, ed. Lloyd C. Sanders (1889); Spencer Walpole's Life of Lord John Russell, vol. i.; Greville Memoirs, 1st ser.] 

GRANT, COLQUHOUN (d. 1792), Jacobite, was son of the farmer of Burnside, on the estate of Castle Grant, Inverness-shire. He joined the army of the Chevalier in the highlands in 1745, and rendered important service in procuring recruits. According to one account he was one of those detached by the prince to force an entrance into Edinburgh, and pursued some of the guard to the very walls of the castle, where they had just time to close the outer gate, into whiqh he stuck his dirk, leaving it as a mark of triumph