Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 24.djvu/246

 Masson, 1865, 3rd edit. 1877; 'The Philosophy of the Conditioned,' by H. L. Mansel, 1866; 'Inquisitio Philosophica,' by M. P. W. Bolton, 1866; 'Examination of Mr. J. S. Mill's Philosophy,' by Dr. M'Cosh, 1866; 'The Battle of the Two Philosophies,' by 'An Inquirer,' 1866. See also John Grote's 'Exploratio Philosophica,' 1865. Mr. Herbert Spencer contributed 'Mill v. Hamilton' to the 'Fortnightly Review' of 15 July 1865; Mansel replied to Mill in the 'Contemporary Review' for September 1867; and Dr. M'Cosh in the 'British and Foreign Evangelical Review' for April 1868; Professor Fraser reviewed Mill in the 'North British Review' for September 1865; and George Grote in the 'Westminster Review' for January 1866. Professor Veitch has expounded Hamilton's philosophy in his biography in the volume upon 'Hamilton' in Blackwood's 'Philosophical Classics' (1882), and in 'Sir William Hamilton, the Man and his Philosophy' (two lectures at Edinburgh, 1883). See also M'Cosh's ' Scottish Philosophy from Hutcheson to Hamilton,' 1875, pp. 415-54; Ueberweg's 'History of Philosophy,' 1874, ii. 414-19, and the ordinary text-books.

Hamilton's 'Lectures,' edited by Mansel and Veitch, appeared, vols. i. and ii. (on 'Metaphysics') in 1859; vols. iii. and iv. (on 'Logic') in 1861. His 'Metaphysics,' 'collected, arranged, and abridged by F. Bowen,' were published at Cambridge, Mass., in 1870.  HAMILTON, WILLIAM GERARD (1729–1796), 'Single-speech Hamilton,' was born on 28 Jan. 1729, and baptised on the 25th of the following month in Lincoln's Inn Chapel. He was only son of William Hamilton, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and his wife Helen, daughter of David Hay of Woodcockdale, Linlithgowshire; his grandfather was William Hamilton (d. 1724) [q. v.] He was educated at Winchester College and Oriel College, Oxford, where he matriculated, at the age of sixteen, on 4 March 1745, but did not take any degree. He was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 4 May 1744, but soon gave up all thoughts of following the legal profession.

His father, 'who had been the first Scot who ever pleaded at the English bar, and, as it was said of him, should have been the last' (, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ii. 44), died on 15 Jan. 1754, leaving him a sufficient fortune to enable him to follow his own inclinations and enter political life. At the general election in April of that year Hamilton was returned to parliament as one of the members for Petersfield, Hampshire, and on 13 Nov. 1755 made his celebrated maiden speech during the great debate on the address, which lasted from two in the afternoon to a quarter to five the next morning. There is no report of this speech extant; but Walpole, in giving an account of the debate in a letter to Conway, records: 'Then there was a young Mr. Hamilton, who spoke for the first time, and was at once perfection. His speech was set, and full of antithesis; but those antitheses were full of argument. Indeed, his speech was the most argumentative of the whole day; and he broke through the regularity of his own composition, answered other people, and fell into his own track again with the greatest ease. His figure is advantageous, his voice strong and clear, his manner spirited, and the whole with an ease of an established speaker. You will ask, what could be beyond this? Nothing but what was beyond what ever was, and that was Pitt!' (Letters, ed. Cunningham, ii. 484). It was from this speech that he acquired the misleading nickname of 'Single-speech.' There can be no doubt that Hamilton made a second speech in the house, as Walpole, in a letter to Conway dated 4 March 1756, says : 'The young Hamilton has spoken and shone again' (ib. p. 510). Through the instrumentality of Fox, Hamilton was on 24 April 1756 appointed one of the commissioners for trade and plantations, George, earl of Halifax, being then at the head of the commission. Upon the appointment of Halifax as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, in March 1761, Hamilton resigned this office, and became chief secretary to the new lord-lieutenant, whom he accompanied to Dublin in October. At the general election in the spring of this year he was returned to the English parliament for the borough of Pontefract, and to the Irish parliament for the borough of Killebegs. During the session of the Irish parliament which began in October 1761, and lasted to the end of April of the following year, Hamilton made five speeches. They are said 'to have fully answered the expectations of his auditors, on whom so great was the impression of his eloquence that at the distance of near fifty years it is not quite effaced from the minds of such of them as are yet living' (Parliamentary Logick, Preface, p. xxii). Copies of the rough drafts of two of these speeches have been preserved (ib. pp. 139-60, 165-94). In April 1763 Hamilton was appointed chancellor of the ex- 