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 Vansittart. He was educated at Mr. Gilpin's school at Cheam, and at Christ Church, Oxford, where he matriculated on 29 March 1784, and graduated B.A. 1787 and M.A. 1791. On 16 June 1814 he received the honorary degree of D.C.L. Becoming a student of Lincoln's Inn on 21 April 1788, he was called to the bar 26 May 1791, and went the northern circuit for about a year, but never devoted himself to his profession. He was elected a bencher of Lincoln's Inn on 12 Nov. 1812. In London he at first associated with a somewhat gay set in fashionable society, but soon turned seriously to politics and proved himself a useful pamphleteer in support of Pitt's government. In 1793 he published ‘Reflections on the Propriety of an Immediate Peace,’ in which he maintained the necessity for the war, and the folly of trusting to an uncertain peace. In 1794 and 1795 he defended Pitt's finance in ‘A Reply to the Letter addressed to Mr. Pitt by Jasper Wilson,’ and in ‘Letters to Mr. Pitt on the Conduct of the Bank Directors;’ and in 1796 he published ‘An Inquiry into the State of the Finances of Great Britain, in Answer to Mr. Morgan's Facts respecting the State of the War and the Actual Debt.’ Having thus shown himself likely to be useful to the government in the House of Commons, he was returned as M.P. for Hastings on 25 May 1796, and continued to sit in the house for the next twenty-six years, being returned for Old Sarum on 12 July 1802, Helston on 3 Nov. 1806, East Grinstead on 8 June 1812, and for Harwich on 6 Oct. 1812, in possession of which seat he remained until he was made a peer. From almost the commencement to the end of his parliamentary career he attached himself to Addington. He had joined as cornet in 1797 the City of London and Westminster Light Horse Volunteers, a fashionable regiment in which he was promoted lieutenant in 1798 and captain in 1799.

In February 1801, under the Addington administration, Vansittart was selected to conduct the special mission to Copenhagen; his instructions from Lord Hawkesbury [see ] were to make clear the position of England, and to detach the court of Denmark from the northern alliance. His mission was unsuccessful, Denmark resenting too keenly the lengths to which the claim to search neutral vessels for contraband of war had been carried, and on 16 March Vansittart applied for his passports (cf. Addit. MS. 31233). In March, after his return, he was appointed joint secretary of the treasury, and held this office with credit till the resignation of the ministry on 26 April 1804. He was fortunate in possessing a good friend in the Duke of Cumberland, who warmly recommended him in July to both the king and Pitt as secretary for Ireland. Pitt objected to him at first as being likely to alarm the catholics, and as not being a sufficiently good debater in the house (Addit. MS. 31229, f. 130); but at the beginning of January 1805 he received the appointment, and was admitted member of the privy council on 14 Jan. His short term of Irish office was undistinguished, and he failed to find himself in complete accord with the lord lieutenant, Lord Hardwicke [see, third ] (ib. 31230, ff. 109, 119). Addington (now Lord Sidmouth) left the administration in July 1805, and Vansittart followed his example in September. On Grenville's administration following the death of Pitt, Vansittart again took the secretaryship to the treasury, coming in as one of Sidmouth's friends, and during this period of his office was the first to summon Nathan Meyer Rothschild [q. v.] to the assistance of the treasury. In March 1807 he resigned, with his chief, Sidmouth, just before the break-up of the administration. In the session of 1809, during the debate on the resumption of cash payments, he proposed and carried without opposition thirty-eight resolutions relating to the total war expenditure, sinking fund, and the imports and exports of the United Kingdom, and declaring that the national resources were sufficient to provide for the defence, independence, and honour of the country (Hansard, xiv. 1147). He had now so established his reputation as a financier that in October 1809 Perceval, hoping to secure Sidmouth's followers without their leader, offered the chancellorship of the exchequer to Vansittart. He, however, refused to desert his chief (Life of Lord Sidmouth, iii. 8;, Life of Perceval, ii. 47), and was the first of five to whom the office was on this occasion ineffectually offered. Despite his refusal, he remained on very friendly terms with Perceval.

On the report of the bullion committee in May 1811 Vansittart took the leading part in defeating Francis Horner's resolutions in favour of the resumption of cash payments, and proposed in their place, on 13 May, fourteen resolutions drawn up by the request of Perceval, to the effect that an immediate resumption was inexpedient, and that the restriction in cash payments had no connection with the unfavourable state of the exchanges. The third resolution, which affirmed that the promissory notes of the bank of England were held in public estimation to