Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 60.djvu/335

 in the army. He committed suicide at Cambridge on 22 April 1873. He was unmarried, and was succeeded by his brother Reginald Windsor Sackville, seventh earl.



WEST, EDWARD (1782–1828), economist, the son of Balchen West of St. Marylebone, Middlesex, was born there in 1782. Matriculating from University College, Oxford, on 9 May 1800, he graduated B.A. in 1804, proceeded M.A. in 1807, and was elected fellow of his college. Called to the bar at the Inner Temple in 1814, he was appointed recorder of Bombay, and promoted to the office of chief justice on 8 Dec. 1823. He was knighted on 5 July 1822, and died at Bombay in August 1828. ‘Bombay in the Days of George IV: Memoirs of Sir Edward West,’ was edited by Dr. Dawtrey Drewitt in 1908.

In 1815 West published ‘An Essay on the Application of Capital to Land,’ with observations showing the impolicy of any great restriction of the importation of corn, and that the bounty of 1688 did not lower the price of it (London, 8vo), in which he clearly stated the law of diminishing returns and anticipated Ricardo's theory of rent. The law of diminishing returns was suggested to him by the evidence given before the corn committees of 1813–14, and it is probable that ‘the form in which’ that doctrine ‘was subsequently taught and the phraseology in which it was expressed’ are largely due to him. When Ricardo published his ‘Principles’ in 1817 he stated that Malthus and West had ‘presented to the world nearly at the same moment the true doctrine of rent’ (Principles of Political Economy, Preface). West also published ‘The Price of Corn and Wages of Labour, with Observations upon Dr. Smith's, Mr. Ricardo's, and Mr. Malthus's Doctrines upon those Subjects, and an Attempt at an Exposition of the Causes of the Fluctuations of the Price of Corn during the last thirty years,’ London, 1826, 8vo.



WEST, FRANCIS (1586–1633?), colonist, born on 28 Oct. 1586, was the fourth but second surviving son of Thomas West, second or eleventh baron De La Warr, and his wife Anne, daughter of Sir [q. v.], third or twelfth baron De La Warr [q. v.], was his elder brother. Francis preceded his elder brother to Virginia, accompanying [q. v.] on his voyage thither about July 1609. He was elected a member of the council in August 1609 (Cal. State Papers, Amer. and West Indies, 1574–1660, p. 8), and was soon involved in a quarrel with Captain (1580–1631) [q. v.], who is said to have conspired with Powhattan to kill West. Smith was, however, apprehended and sent to England to answer for his misdemeanours. Early in 1610 West paid a visit to England, but he returned to Virginia in the same year, and in 1612 succeeded [q. v.] as commander at Jamestown. He was probably also a member of the council, and was one of those who in 1619 petitioned that a nobleman should be appointed governor ‘such as had been the late Lord De La Warr’ (Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. ii. 33).

On 22 March 1621–2 the Indians killed two men on his plantation at Westover; he had another plantation at Sherley, so named from his connection with the Shirley family; both are on the James River. In November 1622 West was appointed admiral of New England by the New England council, and his instructions were drawn up by Sir [q. v.] Henceforth he divided his time between Virginia and New England, and it is improbable that he was the Captain West who in July 1623 convoyed a Spanish ship from Leith to the Downs and was attacked by the Dutch (ib. 4th Rep. p. 282). On 22 March 1627–8 he received a commission as governor of Virginia (Cal. State Papers, Dom. Addenda, 1625–49, p. 272), an office which he held until 5 March 1628–9, when John Pott was chosen his successor. In that year West visited England, and opposed Lord Baltimore's project of founding a colony within the limits of Virginia. He had returned to Virginia before December 1631, and attended council there until 1633, the date of the last undoubted reference to him. There is a tradition in the family that he was drowned.

In any case there is little ground for the identification, suggested by Mr. Alexander Brown, of the colonist with the Colonel Francis West (d. 1652) who was captain of the blue regiment of trained bands raised by the ward of Bread Street, All Hallows, commanded them on the expedition to Gloucester and Newbury in 1644, received a commission as colonel from Essex, and on 5 Aug. was recommended for promotion to some post worthy of his merit. He was afterwards employed by the committee for compounding, and on 2 May 1645 was made lieutenant of the Tower of London. He died early in August 1652, and on the 5th the officers of the blue regiment were granted leave to at-