by George Peel and Archibald Geikie

“ The time when our people in the western highlands of Scotland came over from Ireland still lives in the memory of the people. I have often stood on the shore of my own country looking to the opposite coast of Ireland, divided by a strait so narrow that on a clear day we see the houses, the divisions of the fields, and the colours of the crops ”

“ Lord Beaconsfield, who had entered the Lords in the autumn of 1876, called it 'a criticism not malevolent but certainly envenomed.' It reviewed the past four years: the nation, though no longer shopkeepers but warriors, thanks to the government's rule, must take stock, for 'even warriors at the end of a campaigrn look to the roll-call of the living and the dead;' true the opposition was weak, but 'we have not been repulsed indeed by what is called a fire of precision; we have been beaten rather by a sort of Zulu rush. ”

“ The Crimean war began, and in February 1854, the month when France and England sent their ultimatum to St. Petersburg, the duke came forward as a supporter of the government, asserting that 'the real question is whether you are to allow a weaker nation to be trodden under foot by a stronger,' i.e. Russia (Hansard, 14 Feb. 1854) . In January 1855 the Roebuck motion for inquiry into the war was carried in the House of Commons, and Lord Aberdeen at once resigned; but the 'Radical Duke,' as he was sometimes called, retained his office under the new whig prime minister, Lord Palmerston. ”

“ It is a peculiar kind of star-fish, which, when brought up from the bottom of the water, immediately throws off all its arms; its very centre breaks up, and nothing remains of one of the most beautiful forms in nature but a thousand wriggling fragments. ”

“ The duke had approved of the annexation, because he understood that the Boers assented to the measure. 'There is no public man in this country, belonging to any party, who would have cared to annex the Transvaal if he had believed that it was against the assent of the population.' The battle of Laing's Nek, he stated, occurred when Gladstone's government had already 'entered into indirect communications with a view to peace' (Hansard, 10 May 1881) . Later in the year he moved for papers on the subject of landlord and tenant in Ireland. ”

“ Time is your great accuser; the course of events is summing up the case against you.' Whether correct in its conclusions or not, it was a speech of which Bright might have been proud, the reference to the society of friends always excepted.
In 1880 the conservative government fell. The duke had taken a strenuous line against it on the Afghan crisis, and to few men, Gladstone excepted, could the result of the elections be more correctly attributed. In 1879 he had published his important political work 'The Eastern Question,' a survey of eastern policy since the Crimean war. ”

“ The duke was roused as before, speaking finely at Edinburgh in March 1893; in June at Leeds he described Gladstone as 'no longer a leader, but only a bait.' With the defeat of the home rule bill in September the parliamentary discussion closed; but at Glasgow on 1 Nov. of that year the duke entered upon a review of Gladstone's whole career. It was bitter, and an estrangement followed, though the quarrel was eventually made up, and disappeared when in 1895 they both were roused to defend the case of the Armenians. ”

“ Russia put pressure of another sort, and in April 1877 began war on Turkey. This was progress of an unacceptable order ; the English government began to think of war with Russia; the fleet was ordered to pass the Dardanelles in January 1878, and England refused to recognise Russia's imposition of terms by her San Stefano treaty with Turkey in March. Accordingly there was the Berlin conference, whence the English plenipotentiaries returned, bringing 'peace with honour.' In May 1879 the duke made perhaps his best speech. ”

“ They are not private property, they are not even corporate property; they are not, as Sir James Graham argued in 1835, trust property, but revenue at the disposal of the state' (ib. 24 June 1867) . In 1868 Gladstone succeeded the Derby-Disraeli government, and formed his first administration; the duke became secretary of state for India, remaining in that office until the fall of Gladstone's government in 1874. ”

“ In 1888 he moved in the House of Lords, and carried unopposed, a vote of confidence in the Irish policy of the conservative government, and in 1891 he supported the land purchase bill on the ground that it contained the principle of 'restoration of ownership.' All these years since 1886 he had been labouring outside parliament with the greatest energy against home rule. Perhaps his best performance in these years was his Manchester speech of 10 Nov. 1891. With 1892 came the fourth Gladstone government, and presently another home rule bill. ”

“ A prominent public man, immersed in politics and full of the cares of a great estate, who finds his recreation in scientific inquiry, must be counted among the beneficent influences of his time.
The duke began his writings on scientific subjects in 1850, and continued them almost to the end of his life. ”

“ In vain did the younger generation appeal to the proofs, everywhere obtainable, of the reality and rapidity of the decay of the surface of the land, and show that even at the present rate of denudation all trace of any primeval topography must ages ago have disappeared. ”

“ Facts and Memories of Forty Years,' London, 1896, 8vo. 'The Philosophy of Belief; or, Law in Christian Theology,' London, 1896, 8vo. The duke also published many speeches, lectures, addresses, letters, and articles in magazines and reviews on religious and political topics. ”