Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 51.djvu/457

Shaw College, Oxford (, Reg. ii. 261), and was admitted to the Inner Temple on 20 June 1828, being called to the bar on 22 Nov. 1833. He first came into public prominence in connection with his efforts towards the establishment of the Royal Agricultural Society (, Thirty Years' Peace, iv. 448, ed. 1878). He took a leading part in the preliminary work of forming this society, and at the inaugural meeting held on 9 May 1838 [see under, third ] he was chosen the first secretary, a position which he resigned in the following year, when he was elected (7 Aug. 1839) a member of the council. He was at this time editor of the ‘Mark Lane Express’ and of the ‘Farmer's Magazine,’ and his pen was busy for many years in advocating agricultural reforms and improvements. In 1838 he started with his lifelong friend, Cuthbert William Johnson [q. v.], the ‘Farmers' Almanack and Calendar,’ which continued to be issued annually in their joint names, nothwithstanding Shaw's death in 1853, until 1872. In 1844 Shaw and Johnson brought out an English edition of Von Thaer's ‘Principles of Agriculture.’

Shaw was a great supporter of farmers' clubs, and a frequent speaker and reader of papers at them. The establishment of the (London) Farmers' Club in 1840 was greatly owing to his efforts, and he was honorary secretary from 1840 to 1843. He read before this body six papers on tenant right and two on agricultural statistics. He took up enthusiastically the then novel but soon burning question of tenant right. In 1849 Shaw, with Henry Corbet (who subsequently succeeded him as editor of the ‘Mark Lane Express’), published a digest of the evidence on tenant right given in the previous year before the famous committee of the House of Commons presided over by Philip Pusey [q. v.] This digest was very popular, and is still useful for reference; a second edition appeared in 1854. On 1 April 1850 Shaw was presented with a service of silver plate by the tenant farmers for his advocacy of their cause, when he was described by the chairman who made the presentation as ‘the Cobden of Agriculture’ (Farmer's Mag. 1850, xxi. 407). He was one of the chief founders of the Farmers' Insurance Company (established in 1840, and amalgamated in 1888 with the Alliance Insurance Company), of which he was managing director. He was managing director also of a less successful venture, the Farmers' and Graziers' Mutual Cattle Insurance Association, established 1844, which fell into difficulties in 1849.

Other financial ventures of his proved unsuccessful, and during the time of the railway mania he became pecuniarily embarrassed. In November 1852 he fled to Australia, where, some time in 1853, he died very miserably in the gold diggings far up the country, with only a few pence in his pocket. He was married, but lived apart from his wife. Shaw was of commanding presence and had fine features. There is a small portrait of him by Richard Ansdell (1842) in the rooms of the Royal Agricultural Society at 13 Hanover Square. This was reproduced in the engraving of the society subsequently published in 1843.

[Mark Lane Express and Farmer's Magazine, passim; Minute-Books of the Royal Agricultural Society; Journal of Farmers' Club, February 1877 and December 1892; private information.]

 SHAW, WILLIAM (1823–1895), Irish politician, was born in Moy, co. Tyrone, on 4 May 1823. His father, Samuel Shaw, was a congregational minister. He received his education privately, and spent some time at Trinity College, Dublin, but never proceeded to a degree. Being intended for the congregational ministry, he studied at a theological seminary at Highbury, and in 1846 was inducted into the independent church in George's Street, Cork. Shaw remained for four years in this position; but in 1850 definitely abandoned the clerical profession for a mercantile career on his marriage to Charlotte Clear, daughter of a wealthy corn merchant in Cork.

Shaw made his first attempt to enter political life in 1859. At the general election of that year he stood as a liberal for the old borough of Bandon, but was defeated by a small majority. He suffered a second defeat in the same constituency in 1865, but in 1868 he was successful by three votes, and sat through the whole of the 1868–74 parliament, strenuously supporting the church and land legislation of Mr. Gladstone. When Isaac Butt [q. v.] formulated his home-rule proposals in 1871, Shaw, who in his youth had had some connection with the young Ireland movement, accepted the new policy, and his position in the movement was so conspicuous that he was called on to preside at a home-rule convention held at the Rotunda in November 1873. At the general election of 1874 Shaw was returned for the county of Cork without opposition as an avowed home-ruler. In 1877 he was selected as the spokesman of his party on a motion for a select committee of the House of Commons to inquire into the demand for an Irish parliament. Until the death of Butt