George Cornewall Lewis

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Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 2nd Baronet
)

Thomas H. Sotheron-Estcourt
Succeeded bySir George Grey, Bt
Secretary of State for War
In office
23 July 1861 – 13 April 1863
MonarchVictoria
Prime MinisterThe Viscount Palmerston
Preceded bySidney Herbert
Succeeded byThe Earl de Grey and Ripon
Personal details
Born21 April 1806 (1806-04-21)
London
Died13 April 1863(1863-04-13) (aged 56)
NationalityBritish
Political partyLiberal
Spouse
Lady Maria Theresa Villiers

(m. 1844)
Alma materChrist Church, Oxford

Sir George Cornewall Lewis, 2nd Baronet,

man of letters. He is best known for preserving neutrality in 1862 when the British cabinet debated intervention in the American Civil War
.

Early life

He was born in London, the son of

Sir George Cornewall, 2nd Baronet and his wife Catherine Cornewall, daughter of Velters Cornewall.[1]

Lewis was educated at

Julius Charles Hare in starting The Philological Museum, a journal published from 1831 to 1833. Its successor was The Classical Museum, which he also supported.[3][4]

Commissioner

Lord Althorp included him in the commission to inquire into the state of church property and church affairs in Ireland.[3] In the short-lived London Review of 1835–6 edited by John Stuart Mill, a doctrinaire article on the Church of Ireland by Mill himself, influenced by the line of his father James Mill, was followed in the next number by one from Lewis described by Thomas as "highly factual, tolerant, open-minded and practical."[5]

In 1836, at the request of Charles Grant, 1st Baron Glenelg, Lewis accompanied John and Sarah Austin to Malta. They spent nearly two years reporting on the condition of the island and framing a new code of laws. One main object of both commissioners was to associate the Maltese in the responsible government of the island. On his return to Britain, Lewis succeeded his father as one of the principal poor-law commissioners.[3]

Government positions

The enquiry into the

Sir Edmund Head, and the cosy relationship they had with Sir James Graham. In 1847 the Poor Law Commission was effectively closed down, under a cloud.[1]

Lewis was then returned as Member of Parliament for

Under-Secretary of State for Home Affairs. There he introduced bills for the abolition of turnpike trusts and the management of highways by a mixed county board, and to define and regulate the parochial assessment.[3]

In 1850 Lewis succeeded William Hayter as Financial Secretary to the Treasury.[3] From 1853 to 1854 he sat on Royal Commission on the City of London.[6]

Editor

On the dissolution of parliament which followed the resignation of Lord John Russell's ministry in 1852, Lewis sought re-election in the 1852 United Kingdom general election. He was defeated for Herefordshire and then for Peterborough. He accepted the editorship of the Edinburgh Review, and remained in the post until 1855. During this period he served on the Oxford commission, and on the commission to inquire into the government of London.[3]

Return to government

In 1855 Lewis succeeded his father in the baronetcy, and was elected member for the

Radnor Boroughs, and Lord Palmerston made him Chancellor of the Exchequer. He became responsible for the financing of the Crimean War.[3]

After the change of ministry in 1859 Lewis became

Home Secretary under Lord Palmerston, and in 1861, against his wish, he succeeded Sidney Herbert at the War Office. In that role he successfully argued against Russell's call for British mediation in the American Civil War in the autumn of 1862. In Cabinet, William Gladstone, Russell and Palmerston favoured the Confederacy. They worried about race war in the United States, and wanted to restore the supply of cotton for the Lancashire textile industry. Lewis opposed, warning of the risks to British interests. His views finally prevailed and the British remained a neutral throughout the Civil War.[7]

Death

Lewis fell ill and shortly died, on 13 April 1863, at Harpton Court. He was buried in

Oxford Dictionary of National Biography, does not accept that, though saying he would have had a role to play.[1]

Works

A major early work by Lewis was Remarks on the Use and Abuse of some Political Terms (London, 1832), written under the influence of John Austin. In Local Disturbances in Ireland, and the Irish Church Question (London, 1836), he condemned the existing connection between church and state, proposed a state provision for the Catholic clergy, and maintained the necessity of an efficient workhouse organization. It contains a detailed analysis of rural violence in Ireland.[1][3] The Essay on the Government of Dependencies (1841) was a systematic statement and discussion of the relations in which colonies may stand towards the mother country. About 1850, his Essay on the Influence of Authority in Matters of Opinion was published.[3]

Before leaving college Lewis published observations on

François Juste Marie Raynouard's theories on Provençal. He also compiled a glossary of provincial words used in Herefordshire and the adjoining counties.[3]

In the 1850s Lewis produced the Treatise on the Methods of Observation and Reasoning in Politics, and the Enquiry into the Credibility of the Early Roman History, in which he attacked the theory of epic lays and other theories on which Barthold Georg Niebuhr's reconstruction of that history was based. In 1859 Lewis published the Essay on Foreign Jurisdiction and the Extradition of Criminals, topical after the Orsini affair and the trial of Simon François Bernard. He advocated the extension of extradition treaties, and condemned the idea of Weltrechtsordnung which Robert von Mohl of Heidelberg had proposed.[3]

Lewis's final works were the Survey of the Astronomy of the Ancients, in which he applied sceptical analysis to the Egyptology of Christian Charles Josias von Bunsen; and the Dialogue on the Best Form of Government, in which, under the name of "Crito", the author points out that there is no one abstract government which is the best possible for all times and places.[3]

He translated

Philipp August Böckh's Public Economy of Athens and Muller's History of Greek Literature, and he assisted Henry Tufnell in the translation of Müller's Dorians. While his friend Abraham Hayward ran the Law Magazine, he wrote in it frequently on subjects including secondary punishments and the penitentiary system.[3]

In 1846 Lewis edited a text of the Fables of Babrius. This venture into scholarship soured when he advised the British Museum on a purchase of manuscript copies by Konstantinos Minas (also known as Constantin Minadi, or Minoïde Mynas). When Lewis published in 1859 further fables, there was an outcry across Europe that he had validated what were forgeries. This (?) is no longer the accepted view.[1]

Associations

Lewis's large circle of friends included Edmund Walker Head, George and Harriet Grote, the Austins, Lord Stanhope, John Stuart Mill, Henry Hart Milman, and the Duff Gordons.[2] In public life he was described by Lord Aberdeen as notable "for candour, moderation, love of truth". According to Geoffrey Madan, although invited by Queen Victoria each year to stay at Balmoral, he never accepted.[9]

Legacy

Monument near New Radnor

A marble bust of Lewis, by Henry Weekes, stands in Westminster Abbey.[10] A large monument was built in his memory in the small village of New Radnor, Powys and still stands today, as does a statue in front of the Shirehall, Hereford.[2]

Family

Kent House, Knightsbridge

In 1844 Lewis married the biographer Lady

Maria Theresa Villiers. She was a daughter of George Villiers and Theresa Parker and younger sister of George Villiers, 4th Earl of Clarendon; the widow of novelist Thomas Henry Lister, and mother of three children by him. Much of their married life was spent in Kent House, Knightsbridge. They had no children of their own.[11]

References

  1. ^ required.)
  2. ^ a b c Lee, Sidney, ed. (1893). "Lewis, George Cornewall" . Dictionary of National Biography. Vol. 33. London: Smith, Elder & Co.
  3. ^ a b c d e f g h i j k l m  One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from a publication now in the public domainChisholm, Hugh, ed. (1911). "Lewis, Sir George Cornewall". Encyclopædia Britannica. Vol. 16 (11th ed.). Cambridge University Press. p. 522.
  4. required.)
  5. .
  6. ^ "List of commissions and officials: 1850–1859 (nos. 53–94)". Office-Holders in Modern Britain: Volume 9. 1984. Retrieved 10 March 2008.
  7. ^ Howard Jones, Blue & Gray Diplomacy: A History of Union and Confederate Foreign Relations (2010).
  8. ^ Richard Shannon, "The virtues of unheroic government: the counterfactual case for Sir George Cornewall Lewis", The Transactions of the Radnorshire Society Vol 81: 2011
  9. ^ J. A. Gere and John Sparrow (ed.), Geoffrey Madan's Notebooks, Oxford University Press, 1981
  10. ^ Stanley, A.P., Historical Memorials of Westminster Abbey (London; John Murray; 1882), p. 249.
  11. required.)

External links

Parliament of the United Kingdom
Preceded by Member of Parliament for Herefordshire
1847–1852
With: Francis Wegg-Prosser 1847–1852
Joseph Bailey until 1850
Thomas William Booker-Blakemore from 1850
Succeeded by
Thomas Booker
Preceded by
Sir Thomas Lewis, Bt
Member of Parliament for Radnor
1855–1863
Succeeded by
Political offices
Preceded by
Joint Secretary to the Board of Control

1847–1848
Succeeded by
James Wilson
Preceded by
Sir Denis Le Marchant, Bt
Under-Secretary of State for the Home Department

1848–1850
Succeeded by
Preceded by Financial Secretary to the Treasury
1850–1852
Succeeded by
Preceded by Chancellor of the Exchequer
1855–1858
Succeeded by
Preceded by Home Secretary
1859–1861
Succeeded by
Preceded by Secretary of State for War
1861–1863
Succeeded by
Baronetage of the United Kingdom
Preceded by
Thomas Lewis
Baronet
(of Harpton Court)
1855–1863
Succeeded by