George Francis Hamilton

THE RIGHT HONOURABLE Lord George Francis Hamilton, G.C.S.I., P.C. (17 December, 1845 – 22 September, 1927) was a British Conservative and Unionist Party politician of the late nineteenth and early twentieth centuries.

Early Life & Career

Hamilton was born on 17 December 1845 in Brighton, the third son of thirteen children of James Hamilton, the first duke of Abercorn (1811–1885), Irish landowner, and his wife, Lady Louisa Jane (1812–1905), second daughter of John Russell, sixth duke of Bedford [see under Russell, John, first Earl Russell]. This branch of the Hamiltons was an Ulster Conservative family with Scottish antecedents, by this time mainly based in England. An election opponent in 1874 called Lord George ‘an Irish gentleman’ and he often described himself similarly, but he founded his political career on London, and for most of his life lived in Portman Square. He was educated at Harrow School, and remained a devoted Harrovian, serving as chairman of governors in 1913–24. He joined the rifle brigade in 1864 and served for four years abroad, partly with Garnet Wolseley in Canada.

Tory Politics

In 1868 Hamilton exchanged from the rifle brigade into the Coldstreams, and was settling into a career of more fashionable soldiering when an invitation to contest Middlesex changed his direction. The unexpected invitation was accepted only when repeated by Disraeli with the words ‘all right, little David, go in and kill Goliath’. Hamilton could fight a full contest only because caustic remarks about his family by the Liberal MP, Henry Labouchere, persuaded Abercorn to pay the bills; three Middlesex contests had by 1880 cost over £30,000. If Middlesex was, in Hamilton's words, ‘notoriously radical’, a seat Conservatives rarely even contested, it was also a county in which railways had transformed the electorate, so that ‘I was merely the mouthpiece of that transformation, but I got the whole credit of the victory’. His defeat of Labouchere was the harbinger of Conservative success in the burgeoning metropolitan suburbs. When re-elected by over five thousand votes in 1874, Hamilton proclaimed that ‘the great majority of the electors of Middlesex were and are Conservative’. He easily held the seat in adverse circumstances in 1880, and the eight constituencies into which Middlesex was then divided all elected Conservatives in 1885. Hamilton was returned for Ealing and held it until retirement in 1905.

Thirty-seven years representing the suburbs made Hamilton one of the parliamentary Conservatives best informed about middle-class voters, and a spokesman for advanced electoral methods. In 1872 he chaired the Conservative National Union conference when it met in London, urging better two-way communications between constituency organizations and parliamentary leaders. He was chairman of the Middlesex Ratepayers' Association in 1884, and subsequently of the London Municipal Society. As a freemason, he was Middlesex provincial grand master, 1892–1924, and Middlesex brought him close to W. H. Smith, whose Westminster victory in 1868 paralleled Hamilton's own and for whom he made his first political speech; they became friends and political allies.

In 1871 Hamilton married Maud (d. 14 April 1938), younger daughter of the third earl of Harewood; since she was also one of thirteen children, this did not improve Hamilton's finances, but it was a marriage which lasted until his death and produced three sons; the dukes of Abercorn continued to support his career. He established himself in the Commons as a critic of Gladstone, whom he regarded as dishonest and unscrupulous. He had some successes—for example, with a motion on the Alabama treaty in 1873—but was still considered too young to be taken seriously; in 1868 Disraeli had thought he looked eighteen rather than twenty-two, while the hecklers' cry in Middlesex had been ‘Milk for the baby!’.

Geordie Hamilton was soon a Disraeli favourite, and Hamilton remembered Disraeli as ‘more like an elder relative than a political chief’. He impressed others too, and when the Conservatives regained office in 1874, Derby wanted him at the Foreign Office, a post he evaded by pleading inadequate French. Disraeli made him under-secretary for India, informing him that this required knowledge neither of Hindustani nor of Persian. He spoke for the government on India in the Commons since the secretary of state, Salisbury, was in the Lords. Of his first ministerial statement, Disraeli told the queen that Hamilton had

greatly distinguished himself … Both sides of the House were delighted with him; with his thorough knowledge of the subject; his fine voice; his calmness, dignity and grace. He spoke for exactly an hour. Mr. Disraeli has rarely witnessed so great a success—and what is better, a promise of greater. (The Times)

He contemplated promoting Hamilton to Irish chief secretary in 1875, and made him chairman for the government's annual dinner; Disraeli enjoyed both ‘the perpetual flow of wit, and playful humour and grace’ in his speech, and the cheek with which he presented the premier with the wooden spoon as the government's worst performer. Derby more sceptically noted that Hamilton ‘succeeds in every speech he makes, but seems to want ambition’ (Shannon). Hamilton had no great difficulties in Indian debates, which rarely attracted a full house, but met criticism for investing money in Indian railways, rather than tackling food shortages directly, a stance vindicated, however, in select committee.

The 1878 reshuffle provided Hamilton with a sideways move to vice-president of the council, in effect minister of education, though he had difficulties with the lord president, Richmond, when he said so. Beaconsfield gave support when education spending came under Treasury fire, but Hamilton still found it difficult to retain his budget. Without that restraint he could have carried the final measure that made elementary education compulsory, but had to leave this to his Liberal successor. He found education ‘terribly meticulous and dull’ and was frustrated in a subordinate post under an undistinguished superior. This period was the origin of his low opinion of local government, reinforced when chairman of the London school board in 1894–5, which he was to bring to the poor-law inquiry in 1905.

In opposition, youth, aristocratic connections, and progressive ideas made him a likely supporter of the Fourth Party, but he was deterred by loyalty to Northcote, and by suspicion of Lord Randolph Churchill, whom he regarded as unprincipled; Hamilton's connection with middle-class voters made him unsympathetic to Churchill's tory democracy, which he thought ‘too fast’. His personal credo was limited in its application to current domestic politics; he tritely defined Conservatism for an 1880 audience as aiming ‘to establish such a state of things in this country, that the great majority of people shall be happy and shall be contented’, and revealingly added that ‘so long as the Conservatives are in office, the good we do must be measured not merely by the legislation we achieve but by what we stop’, a limited horizon that would not have inspired tory democrats. Hamilton was in any case a supporter of his former chief, Salisbury, and established a connection with Salisbury's nephew Balfour, obtaining his support in 1883 for a Commons motion calling for Irish land purchase. Hamilton's proposal, anathema to the family's Ulster interests, was accepted by the house though both front benches had initially resisted; he argued that the 1881 Land Act had transformed the land situation and that unionists must produce policies within its scope; his autobiography records with wry amusement the ‘Ashbourne’ Land Act of 1885 which carried this idea into party orthodoxy. Hamilton remained opposed to home rule as such, which would bring ‘ruin in every sense of the word to those who, like myself, are Anglo-Irish’; one of his doubts about Churchill was his unreliability over Ireland.

Naval Reform

Although getting on well with Churchill in office from 1885 and initially supporting his retrenchment campaign, Hamilton did not join him in resignation, for, as he told Salisbury, ‘the duty of every member of your Cabinet was to try to keep the party together’. Hamilton's attention was anyway dominated by external affairs, as it would be for the rest of his life. In 1885 Salisbury offered the War Office, which Hamilton jibbed at, for an ex-regular subaltern would be far too junior to overrule the formidable duke of Cambridge on army reform. W. H. Smith took on the army, and Hamilton got ‘the blue ribbon of office’, the Admiralty. He proved a determined naval reformer, immediately replacing all the service members of the Board of Admiralty with more radical men. Over seven years, interrupted only by five months of Liberal government, Hamilton strove to modernize the navy. Initially, shipbuilding was slowed, so that ships could be finished and armed more quickly, while better audit ensured that for the first time in years projects were completed within budget. A naval intelligence department was created, the number of torpedoes was quadrupled, and new quick-firing guns introduced. The fleet was reorganized into squadrons, and annual exercises begun. The Naval Defence Act of 1889 regulated future expansion, and linked building to a defined strategic objective—the duty to contain threats from any two enemies; this was Admiralty policy for the next two generations. Equally significant, Hamilton's electioneering experience demonstrated the need to maintain public support for higher naval expenditure, achieved, for example, through a popular demonstration of naval power in the Solent during the 1887 jubilee. The Times concluded that ‘in seven years the fleet was entirely reconstituted and the foundations were laid for an essential expansion’, and the Morning Post that ‘it was due to him that the two-power standard was adopted’. In opposition after 1892, Hamilton defended his achievement. Since he had enshrined naval expansion in legislation and generated public support, he had made it difficult for Gladstone to economize; in 1893–4 this dilemma, exacerbated by Hamilton's own Commons motions and his speeches around the country, prompted Gladstone's final retirement.

India

From 1895 Hamilton was secretary of state for India, a post he held for a record eight years. He was a diligent defender of the independence of Indian government, even against the cabinet, but was able, when Lord Elgin was viceroy, discreetly to steer Indian policy from London. From 1899, when Curzon succeeded Elgin, relations deteriorated, and Hamilton could not prevent the feud between viceroy and Kitchener as army commander. He was an architect in 1897 of the garrisoning of Chitral which led to an expensive campaign in Waziristan, but while there was criticism of this, a party majority in the Commons gave steady support. He facilitated the contingents of the Indian army which helped to stave off British defeat in the early months of the South African War, and was privately critical of the poor preparation of Britain's own forces. He remained an admirer of Indian arms, and his final public duty in 1917 was to chair the Mesopotamia commission, charged with investigating the defeats of the Indian army. He undertook this task in the hope of restoring the reputation of an admired institution; the report provoked the resignation of his successor as secretary of state but had only limited impact in a Britain more interested in battles to come.

Hamilton believed that long involvement with India dulled his appetite for domestic politics; platform appearances became fewer and knowledge of the issues more remote; in 1890 Salisbury contemplated offering him the exchequer, but by 1903 Balfour wrote that ‘his opinion on financial subjects carries weight neither in the Cabinet, the House, nor the country’. On foreign policy he remained fully involved, joining ministers demanding closer relations with Germany in 1898, and in 1900 pressing Salisbury to give up the Foreign Office to encourage that policy. It was largely determination to defend Indian economic interests and his awareness of international implications that brought about his resignation from Balfour's government in 1903 in opposition to tariff reform; he explained his reasons in a speech to his constituents (The Times, 23 Oct 1903). On the back benches he again became a public campaigner, but would have no truck with free-traders who wanted an alliance with Liberals, ‘even for temporary purposes … I have fought too long and consistently against Radical doctrine to be able now to alter my attitude’. Retirement from the Commons in 1905 owed something to his being no longer in step with his constituents on the central issue of the day.

Other Activities

Hamilton was still only sixty, and continued to lead an active life, first as a generous-minded chairman of the royal commission on the poor law, 1905–9, though even the majority report signed by Hamilton and other moderate members proved too advanced for implementation. Within the commission, Beatrice Webb thought Hamilton ‘an attractive grand seigneur’ with ‘exceptional personal charm and social tact’ (Rempel). He made few public appearances after 1905, but was captain of Deal Castle until 1923. He remained throughout his life an outdoor man; he still played cricket in his fifties, having earlier been MCC president, and cycled until at least 1911; he continued to be a keen walker almost until his death. He published in 1916 and 1922 two discreet volumes of autobiography. He died at 17 Montagu Street, London, on 22 September 1927.

The Times obituarist (23 Sept 1927) highlighted the ‘great work he did at the Admiralty’ and his ‘long and able tenure of the Indian Office’, but felt that ‘he held fast to a tradition too austere to be popular; his own political imagination was not inflamed, and he had neither the will nor the power to inflame the imagination of others’. John Morley had found that at the India Office he was remembered as an outstanding minister. These are among many indications that he was a gifted administrator with a strong sense of duty and of loyalty to party, but limited political gifts. Hamilton was always good company, if no great orator—a man unexpectedly and misleadingly catapulted into popular electoral politics.

Wealth at death; £53,568 15s. 5d.: Probate; 17 November, 1927.

Bibliography

Political Office
Preceded by The Marquess of Ripon	First Lord of the Admiralty 1886 – 1892	Succeeded by The Earl Spencer