Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 46.djvu/88

 of their successes against Eton and Winchester were due to his instruction. He was also a good actor at Cambridge in private theatricals. With Tom Taylor, William Bolland, G. Cavendish Bentinck, and others, he originated, in 1842, the Old Stagers at Canterbury in connection with the Canterbury cricket week, and for many years he took part in their entertainments.

On the death of his brother, John George Brabazon, fifth earl of Bessborough, on 28 Jan. 1880, he succeeded as sixth earl, but sat in the House of Lords as Baron Ponsonby and Baron Duncannon. In politics he was a liberal. When Mr. Gladstone's ministry in 1880 appointed a commission to inquire into the land system in Ireland, Bessborough was nominated a member. His colleagues were Baron Dowse, The O'Conor Don, Mr. Kavanagh, and [q. v.] The commission, which became known by Lord Bessborough's name, reported in 1881, advising the repeal of the Land Act of 1870, and the enactment of a simple uniform act on the basis of fixity of tenure, fair rents, and free sale. The policy of buying out the landlords was deprecated, but additional state aid for tenants anxious to purchase their holdings was recommended. The Bessborough commission marks an important stage in the history of Irish land legislation, and led to Mr. Gladstone's land bill of 1881. Lord Bessborough was himself a model landlord. He was unremitting in his attention to the interest of his tenants in co. Kilkenny, and through the troubled times of the land league there was never the least interruption of friendly relations between him and them. Although for a long time a follower of Mr. Gladstone, he did not vote in the divisions on the home rule bill in the House of Lords in 1893. He died at 45 Green Street, Grosvenor Square, London, on 12 March 1895, and was buried at Bessborough. He was unmarried and was succeeded by his brother Walter William Brabazon Ponsonby, who was rector of Canford Magna, Dorset, from 1846 to 1869.



PONSONBY, GEORGE (1755–1817), lord chancellor of Ireland, third son of (1713–1789) [q. v.], was born on 5 March 1755. , first baron Ponsonby [q. v.], was his brother. After an education received partly at home and partly at Trinity College, Cambridge, he was called to the Irish bar in 1780. Though fonder, it is said, of fox-hunting than of the drudgery of the law courts, he was in 1782, by the influence of his father and the patronage of the Duke of Portland, admitted to the inner bar, and at the same time given the lucrative post, worth 1,200l. a year, of first counsel to the commissioners of revenue, of which he was subsequently, in 1789, deprived by the Marquis of Buckingham. He entered parliament in 1776 as member for the borough of Wicklow, in the place of Sir William Fownes, deceased. In 1783 he was returned for Inistioge borough, co. Kilkenny, which he represented till 1797, and was one of the representatives of Galway city when the parliament of Ireland ceased its independent existence. He held office as chancellor of the exchequer in the brief administration of the Duke of Portland in 1782, and in February supported the motion for the postponement of Grattan's address regarding the independence of the Irish parliament. The traditions of his family, though liberal, naturally inclined him to support government; but his interest in politics at this time was not intense, and his attendance in the house far from frequent. He spoke at some length on 29 Nov. 1783 in opposition to Flood's Reform Bill; in March 1786 he opposed a bill to limit pensions as an unmerited censure on the Duke of Rutland's administration, and in the following year he resisted a motion by Grattan to inquire into the subject of tithes. He took, however, a very determined line on the regency question in 1789, arguing strongly in favour of the address to the Prince of Wales. He was in consequence deprived of his office of counsel to the revenue board, and from that time forward acted avowedly with the opposition. In the following session he inveighed strongly against the profuse expenditure of government with a declining exchequer, and the enormous increase in the pension list during the Marquis of Buckingham's administration. ‘His excellency,’ he said sarcastically, reviewing the list of persons promoted to office, ‘must have been a profound politician to discover so much merit where no one else suspected it to reside.’

Meanwhile his reputation as a lawyer had been steadily growing. His practice was a large and a lucrative one; and so great, it is said, was Fitzgibbon's regard for his professional abilities that Fitzgibbon, on his elevation at this time to the woolsack, forgot his political animosity towards him, and transferred to him his brief bag. In 1790, as counsel with Curran, he supported the claims of the common council of Dublin against the court of aldermen in their contest over the elec-