Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 45.djvu/135

  1778 p. 94, 1779 p. 375, 1781 p. 593, 1789 pt. ii. p. 768, 1805 pt. i. pp. 491–2; Haydn's Book of Dignities, 1890; Official Return of Lists of Members of Parliament, pt. ii. pp. 109, 123, 665; Notes and Queries, 8th ser. vi. 467, 489, vii. 35, 55. Lord Edmond Fitzmaurice's report on the Shelburne papers belonging to the Marquis of Lansdowne will be found in Hist. MSS. Comm. 3rd Rep. pp. 125–47, 5th Rep. pp. 215–260, 6th Rep. pp. 235–43.]  PETTY-FITZMAURICE, HENRY, third (1780–1863), statesman, was the only son of the second marriage of William Petty, second earl of Shelburne and first marquis of Lansdowne [q. v.] His mother was Lady Louisa Fitzpatrick, daughter of John, earl of Upper Ossory. He was born on 2 July 1780 at Lansdowne House, and was educated at Westminster School, under the special care of a private tutor, the Rev. Mr. Debarry, and from his earliest years was trained with a view to public life. From Westminster School he was sent, together with Lord Ashburton, under the tutelage of Mr. Debarry, to Edinburgh. Shelburne is said to have chosen Edinburgh rather than Oxford for his son's academic training owing to the advice of his friend, Jeremy Bentham (, Life of Shelburne, iii. 565). At Edinburgh he attended the lectures of Professor Dugald Stewart, with Henry John Temple, afterwards third Viscount Palmerston [q. v.], Brougham, Cockburn, Jeffrey, Horner, and Sydney Smith, and the political ideas of Petty and his fellow students were formed, to some extent, in Stewart's class-room. While at Westminster School Petty had been a frequent attendant at the debates in the House of Commons, and at Edinburgh he became a prominent member of the Speculative Society, to which he was admitted on 17 Jan. 1797, and of which he was elected an honorary member on 1 May 1798. From Edinburgh he proceeded to Trinity College, Cambridge, where he graduated M.A. 1801. In 1811 he was created LL.D. On leaving the university in 1802 he set out, on the conclusion of the peace of Amiens, on the grand tour, in the company of M. Etienne Dumont, an intimate friend of Mirabeau, and the translator into French of Bentham's works. Returning to England on the renewal of the war, he almost immediately entered the House of Commons as member for Calne, at the age of twenty-two. He appears to have first directed his attention to financial questions, and delivered his maiden speech in 1804 on the Bank Restriction Act. The leaders of both parties soon marked the political promise displayed by the young member. Fox wrote of him, ‘The little he has done is excellent; good sense and good language to perfection’ (FOX, Correspondence, iii. 246); and Pitt showed his appreciation by making him an offer of subordinate office in 1804 (, Life of Pitt, iv. 190). This Petty declined, being determined to attach himself to Fox. In April 1805 he made a very able speech (, Correspondence, i. 300) in answer to Pitt's attempt to defend Lord Melville as treasurer of the navy, and left no doubt as to the party to which he was to belong through life. On the meeting of parliament in January 1806 he was selected to move an amendment to the address; but Pitt was lying on his deathbed, and at the last moment the opposition refrained from the attack (Gent. Mag. 1806, i. 161). On the formation, after the death of Pitt, of the administration of ‘All the Talents’ under Lord Grenville, Petty found himself chancellor of the exchequer at the age of twenty-five. He took office as member for the university of Cambridge, having secured the seat (vacated by the death of Pitt) after a contest with Lord Althorp and Lord Palmerston. It was of this election and of Petty's and Palmerston's rival candidatures that Byron wrote in the ‘Hours of Idleness:’ One on his power and place depends, The other on the Lord knows what, Each to some eloquence pretends, Though neither will convince by that. The young chancellor of the exchequer, finding that the exigencies of the war made fresh taxation absolutely necessary, boldly introduced on 28 March 1806, and carried after considerable opposition, a new property tax, raising the tax from six and a half per cent. to ten per cent., and at the same time cutting down and regulating more strictly the exemptions (, Hist. of Taxation, ii. 113). The best service that he rendered during his brief term of office was in bringing forward the New Auditors Bill on 21 May 1806, when he forcibly directed public attention to the condition of the finance of the country, showing that there were arrears of public money not accounted for amounting to the sum of 455,000,000l. On 29 Jan. 1807 he produced a novel and ingenious but unsound scheme for providing for the next fourteen years' war expenditure. The money was to be raised by annual loans, to be charged on the war taxes, then estimated to produce 28,000,000l. a year, and provision was made for interest on the loans, and for a sinking fund for their redemption, by the appropriation of the extra war taxes. Portions of the pledged war taxes, when successively libe-