Page:EB1911 - Volume 01.djvu/77

 His person was said to be deformed, and his “want of mine or deportment” was alleged as a disqualification for the office of lord chancellor. He married Anne, daughter and sole heiress of George Lockhart of Torbrecks, by whom he had six children, his only surviving son, William, succeeding him as 2nd earl of Aberdeen.

See Letters to George, earl of Aberdeen (with memoir: Spalding Club, 1851); ''Hist. Account of the Senators of the College of Justice, by G. Brunton and D. Haig (1832), p. 408; G. Crawfurd’s Lives of the Officers of State (1726), p. 226; Memoirs of Affairs in Scotland, by Sir G. Mackenzie (1821), p. 148; Sir J. Lauder’s (Lord Fountainhall) Journals (Scottish Hist. Society, vol. xxxvi., 1900); J. Mackay’s Memoirs (1733), p. 215; A. Lang’s Hist. of Scotland'', iii. 369, 376.

ABERDEEN, GEORGE HAMILTON GORDON, (1784–1860), English statesman, was the eldest son of George Gordon, Lord Haddo, by his wife Charlotte, daughter of William Baird of Newbyth, Haddingtonshire, and grandson of George, 3rd earl of Aberdeen. Born in Edinburgh on the 28th of January 1784, he lost his father in 1791 and his mother in 1795; and as his grandfather regarded him with indifference, he went to reside with Henry Dundas, afterwards Viscount Melville. At the age of fourteen he was permitted by Scotch law to name his own curators, or guardians, and selecting William Pitt and Dundas for this office he spent much of his time at their houses, thus meeting many of the leading politicians of the day. He was educated at Harrow, and St John’s College, Cambridge, where he graduated as a nobleman in 1804. Before this time, however, he had become earl of Aberdeen on his grandfather’s death in 1801, and had travelled over a large part of the continent of Europe, meeting on his journeys Napoleon Bonaparte and other persons of distinction. He also spent some time in Greece, and on his return to England founded the Athenian Society, membership of which was confined to those who had travelled in that country. Moreover, he wrote an article in the Edinburgh Review of July 1805 criticizing Sir William Gill’s Topography of Troy, and these circumstances led Lord Byron to refer to him in English Bards and Scotch Reviewers as “the travell’d thane, Athenian Aberdeen.” Having attained his majority in 1805, he married on the 28th of July Catherine Elizabeth Hamilton, daughter of John James, 1st marquess of Abercorn. In December 1806 he was elected a representative peer for Scotland, and took his seat as a Tory in the House of Lords, but for some years he took only a slight part in public business. However, by his birth, his abilities and his connexions alike he was marked out for a high position, and after the death of his wife in February 1812 he was appointed ambassador extraordinary and minister plenipotentiary at Vienna, where he signed the treaty of Töplitz between Great Britain and Austria in October 1813; and accompanying the emperor Francis I. through the subsequent campaign against France, he was present at the battle of Leipzig. He was one of the British representatives at the congress of Châtillon in February 1814, and in the same capacity was present during the negotiations which led to the treaty of Paris in the following May. Returning home he was created a peer of the United Kingdom as Viscount Gordon of Aberdeen (1814), and made a member of the privy council. On the 15th of July 1815 he married Harriet, daughter of the Hon. John Douglas, and widow of James, Viscount Hamilton, and thus became doubly connected with the family of the marquess of Abercorn. During the ensuing thirteen years Aberdeen took a less prominent part in public affairs, although he succeeded in passing the Entail (Scotland) Act of 1825. He kept in touch, however, with foreign politics, and having refused to join the ministry of George Canning in 1827, became a member of the cabinet of the duke of Wellington as chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster in January 1828. In the following June he was transferred to the office of secretary of state for foreign affairs, and having acquitted himself with credit with regard to the war between Russia and Turkey, and to affairs in Greece, Portugal and France, he resigned with Wellington in November 1830, and shared his leader’s attitude towards the Reform Bill of 1832. As a Scotsman, Aberdeen was interested in the ecclesiastical controversy which culminated in the disruption of 1843. In 1840 he introduced a bill to settle the vexed question of patronage; but disliked by a majority in the general assembly of the Scotch church, and unsupported by the government, it failed to become law, and some opprobrium was cast upon its author. In 1843 he brought forward a similar measure “to remove doubts respecting the admission of ministers to benefices.” This Admission to Benefices Act, as it was called, passed into law, but did not reconcile the opposing parties.

During the short administration of Sir Robert Peel in 1834 and 1835, Aberdeen had filled the office of secretary for the colonies, and in September 1841 he took office again under Peel, on this occasion as foreign secretary; the five years during which he held this position were the most fruitful and successful of his public life. He owed his success to the confidence placed in him by Queen Victoria, to his wide knowledge of European politics, to his intimate friendship with Guizot, and not least to his own conciliatory disposition. Largely owing to his efforts, causes of quarrel between Great Britain and France in Tahiti, over the marriage of Isabella II. of Spain, and in other directions, were removed. More important still were his services in settling the question of the boundary between the United States and British North America at a time when a single injudicious word would probably have provoked a war. In 1845 he supported Peel when in a divided cabinet he proposed to suspend the duty on foreign corn, and left office with that minister in July 1846. After Peel’s death in 1850 he became the recognized leader of the Peelites, although since his resignation his share in public business had been confined to a few speeches on foreign affairs. His dislike of the Ecclesiastical Titles Assumption Bill, the rejection of which he failed to secure in 1851, prevented him from joining the government of Lord John Russell, or from forming an administration himself in this year. In December 1852, however, he became first lord of the treasury and head of a coalition ministry of Whigs and Peelites. Although united on free trade and in general on questions of domestic reform, a cabinet which contained Lord Palmerston and Lord John Russell, in addition to Aberdeen, was certain to differ on questions of foreign policy. The strong and masterful character of these and other colleagues made the task of the prime minister one of unusual difficulty, a fact which was recognized by contemporaries. Charles Greville in his Memoirs says, “In the present cabinet are five or six first-rate men of equal, or nearly equal, pretensions, none of them likely to acknowledge the superiority or defer to the opinions of any other, and every one of these five or six considering himself abler and more important than their premier”; and Sir James Graham wrote, “It is a powerful team, but it will require good driving.” The first year of office passed off successfully, and it was owing to the steady support of the prime minister that Gladstone’s great budget of 1853 was accepted by the cabinet. This was followed by the outbreak of the dispute between France and Turkey over the guardianship of the holy places at Jerusalem, which, after the original cause of quarrel had been forgotten, developed into the Crimean war. The tortuous negotiations which preceded the struggle need not be discussed here, but in defence of Aberdeen it may be said that he hoped and strove for peace to the last. Rightly or wrongly, however, he held that Russell was indispensable to the cabinet, and that a resignation would precipitate war. His outlook, usually so clear, was blurred by these considerations, and he lacked the strength to force the suggestions which he made in the autumn of 1853 upon his imperious colleagues. Palmerston, supported by Russell and well served by Lord Stratford de Redcliffe, British ambassador at Constantinople, favoured a more aggressive policy, and Aberdeen, unable to control Palmerston, and unwilling to let Russell go, cannot be exonerated from blame. When the war began he wished to prosecute it vigorously; but the stories of misery and mismanagement from the seat of war deprived the ministry of public favour. Russell resigned; and on the 29th of January 1855 a motion by J. A. Roebuck, for the appointment of a select committee to enquire into the conduct of the war, was carried in the House of Commons by a