Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 35.djvu/362

Rh duke of Richmond [q. v.], and General Benedict Arnold. On the following day he challenged the duke to a duel, but the affair was afterwards amicably settled. A bloodless meeting, however, took place between Lauderdale and Arnold on 1 July, when Fox attended as Lauderdale's second (ib. xxix. 1517–20; Annual Register, 1792, pt. ii. p. 30*).

In August 1792 Lauderdale went with Dr. John Moore to France, where he formed an acquaintance with Brissot. During their stay in Paris the attack was made on the Tuileries. They remained in France until December (, Journal during a Residence in France, London, 1793, 8vo). Upon his return Lauderdale took every opportunity of protesting against the war with France, and is said on one occasion to have appeared in the House of Lords ‘in the rough costume of Jacobinism’ (Annual Register, 1839, App. to Chron. p. 364). In April 1794 he denounced the manner in which the trials of Muir and Palmer had been conducted (Parl. Hist. xxxi. 263–7), and in the following month opposed the passing of the Habeas Corpus Suspension Bill (ib. pp. 589–591, 603–5). On 5 June 1795 his motion in favour of making peace with France was only supported by eight votes (ib. xxxii. 46–52, 54). In November following he gave a strenuous opposition to the Treasonable Practices Bill, which he described as ‘one of the severest and most dangerous to the rights and liberties of the people that had ever been introduced’ (ib. xxxii. 245–6 et seq.). On 13 May 1796 he called the attention of the house to the state of the public finances, but did not attempt to take a division upon his resolutions (ib. pp. 1138–55). In consequence of his uncompromising hostility to the ministerial policy, Lauderdale was not re-elected a Scottish representative peer either in 1796 or in 1802. While out of the house he became a citizen of London by the purchase of his freedom from the Needlemakers' Company, and vainly attempted to get elected as sheriff. He appears also at the time to have ‘formed a plan to get into the House of Commons by a surrender of his peerage, which he thought was allowable by the Scottish law’ (Public Characters, ii. 575). In 1804 he published his ‘Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, and into the Means and Causes of its Increase,’ Edinburgh, 8vo (second edition, greatly enlarged, Edinburgh, 1819, 8vo; translated into French, Paris, 1808, 8vo; and into Italian in the ‘Biblioteca dell' Economista,’ 1st ser. v. 1–139). It attracted considerable attention at the time and was reviewed by Brougham in the ‘Edinburgh Review’ for July 1804 (iv. 343–77). Lauderdale unwisely replied to Brougham's strictures in ‘Observations … on the Review of his Inquiry into the Nature and Origin of Public Wealth, published in the viiith Number of the “Edinburgh Review,”’ Edinburgh, 1804, 8vo, which provoked a sharp rejoinder from Brougham in his ‘Thoughts suggested by Lord Lauderdale's Observations upon the “Edinburgh Review,”’ London, 1805, 8vo.

Upon the accession of the whigs to power Lauderdale was created a peer of Great Britain and Ireland on 22 Feb. 1806 by the title of Baron Lauderdale of Thirlestane in the county of Berwick. He was offered by Fox the post of governor-general of India, but subsequently withdrew his claims in consequence of the strong opposition of the court of directors to his appointment. Lauderdale thereupon accepted the office of lord high keeper of the great seal of Scotland, and was sworn a member of the privy council on 21 July 1806. On 2 Aug. following he went to Paris as joint-commissioner with Francis Seymour, earl of Yarmouth, for concluding a peace with France. The negotiations proved abortive, and he returned to England in October (, Hist. of England, 1800–15, 1878, pp. 206–7; London Gazettes, 1806, pp. 1377–8). He resigned office upon Lord Grenville's downfall in March 1807, and was for many years an active member of the opposition in the House of Lords, and the recognised chief of the whig party in Scotland. In the proceedings against Queen Caroline, however, Greville records that ‘there is no one more violent than Lord Lauderdale, and neither the Attorney-General nor the Solicitor-General can act with greater zeal than he does in support of the Bill’ (Memoirs, 1st ser. 1874, i. 38). He was rewarded with the order of the Thistle on 17 July 1821. From this time Lauderdale's political views underwent much modification, and he became a tory. In February 1825 Lord Colchester remarks that though Lauderdale was not in the tory cabinet (of Lord Liverpool) he had ‘as much weight in the issue of its deliberations as if he were’ (Correspondence, iii. 363). Lauderdale spoke for the last time in the House of Lords on 12 July 1830, when he protested against the second reading of the Court of Session Bill (Parl. Debates, 2nd ser. xxv. 1154–8). During the remainder of his life he lived in the country and amused himself with agricultural pursuits. He voted by proxy against the second reading of the second and third Reform Bills (ib. 3rd ser. viii. 342, xii. 459). He died at Thirlestane Castle, Berwickshire, on 13 Sept.