Edmond George Fitzmaurice

“ Like all the followers of Lord Shelburne, he sided with the colonists in their struggle with the mother country, and his political as well as his religious sympathies brought him into intimate relations with Price, Priestley, Paine, and Horne Tooke during the American war and the French revolution. In June 1782 he was sent to Paris to give private assurances to Franklin that the death of Lord Rockingham and the accession to power of Lord Shelburne had caused no change of policy in regard to the intention of recognising the independence of the United Colonies. ”

“ He apparently became acquainted with Lord Shelburne through Benjamin Horne, the elder brother of John Horne Tooke [q. v.] , and soon gained the confidence of that statesman, by whom he was occasionally employed in confidential political business and as private secretary. He also studied law at the Temple and medicine in Edinburgh; it is said because William Manning, whose daughter Sarah he married on 30 June 1781, had at first refused his consent to the marriage on the ground that he had no profession (Vaughan's wife was aunt of Cardinal Manning) . ”

“ A ‘Treatise on International Trade,’ which was translated into French in 1789, and a series of letters to the ‘Morning Chronicle’ condemning the attack of the northern powers on Poland and France in 1792 and 1793, are his principal performances. ”