DERBY, EDWARD GEOFFREY SMITH STANLEY, 14th earl of Derby (1 j 99-1869), the "Rupert of debate," born at Knowsley in Lancashire on March 29, 1799, grandson of the I2th earl and eldest son of Lord Stanley, subsequently (1834) 13th earl of Derby (1775-1851). He was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford, and in 1819 he obtained the chancellor's prize for Latin verse, the subject being "Syracuse." As a boy he prac tised elocution under the instruction of Lady Derby, his grand father's second wife, the actress, Elizabeth Farren. In 182o he was returned for Stockbridge in Hampshire, one of the nomination boroughs whose electoral rights were swept away by the Reform Bill of 1832, Stanley being a warm advocate of their destruction.
His maiden speech was delivered early in the session of 1824 in the debate on a private bill for lighting Manchester with gas. On May 6, 1824 he delivered a vehement and eloquent speech against Joseph Hume's motion for a reduction of the Irish Church establishment, maintaining in its most conservative form the doctrine that church property is as sacred as private property. From this time he was acknowledged to be one of the most powerful speakers in the House. In the autumn of 1824 Stanley went on an extended tour through Canada and the United States with Henry Labouchere, afterwards Lord Taunton, and Evelyn Denison, afterwards Lord Ossington. In 1825 he married the second daughter of Edward Bootle-Wilbraham, created Baron Skelmersdale in 1828, by whom he had a family of two sons and one daughter who survived.
At the general election of 1826 Stanley was returned for borough of Preston, where the Derby influence was paramount. The change of seats left him free to speak against the system of rotten boroughs with great force during the Reform Bill debates, without laying himself open to the charge of personal inconsis tency as the representative of a place where, according to Gay, cobblers used to "feast three years upon one vote." In 1827 Derby and other Whigs made a coalition with Canning on the defection of the more unyielding Tories, and he became under secretary for the colonies. The coalition was broken up by Canping's death in August. During the administration of the duke, of Wellington (1828-183o), Stanley and those with whom he acted were in opposition. His robust and assertive Liberalism about this period seemed curious afterwards to a younger genera tion who knew him only as the very embodiment of Conservatism.
On the advent of Lord Grey to power in Nov. 183o, Stanley was appointed to the chief secretaryship of Ireland. On accepting office he had to vacate his seat for Preston and seek re-election; and he had the mortification of being defeated by the Radical, "Orator" Hunt. The contest was a peculiarly keen one, and turned upon the question of the ballot, which Stanley refused to support. He re-entered the House as one of the members for Windsor, Sir Hussey Vivian having resigned in his favour. In 1832 he again changed his seat, being returned for North Lan cashire.
Stanley was one of the most ardent supporters of the Reform Bill. Reference may be made especially to his eloquent speech on March 4, 1831 on the adjourned debate on the second reading of the bill. Apart from his connection with the general policy of the government, Stanley had a difficult task in his own office. Ireland was in a very unsettled state. The concession of Catholic emancipation had excited the people to make all sorts of demands, reasonable and unreasonable. "Scorpion Stanley," as O'Connell called him, discharged with determination the ungrateful task of carrying a coercion bill through the House. It was generally felt that O'Connell, powerful though he was, had fairly met his match in Stanley, who, with invective scarcely inferior to his own, evaded no challenge, ignored no argument, and left no taunt unanswered. The title "Rupert of debate" is peculiarly applicable to him in connection with the fearless if also often reckless method of attack he showed in his parliamentary war with O'Connell. It was first applied to him, however, 13 years later by Sir Edward Bulwer Lytton in The New Tinton:— One after one the lords of time advance; Here Stanley meets—here Stanley scorns the glance The brilliant chief, irregularly great, Frank, haughty, rash,—the Rupert of debate.
The best answer, however, to the attacks of the great agitator was the beneficial legislation which Derby secured for Ireland. He introduced and carried the first national education act for Ireland, one result of which was the remarkable and to many almost incredible phenomenon of a board composed of Catholics, Episcopalians and Presbyterians harmoniously administering an efficient education scheme. In 1833, just before the introduction of the Irish Church Temporalities Bill, Stanley had been ap pointed secretary for the colonies, with a seat in the cabinet. In this capacity he introduced the bill for freeing the slaves in the West Indies, on May 14, 1833, in one of his most eloquent speeches.
The Irish Church question determined more than one turning point in his political career. In 1834 the proposal of the govern ment to appropriate the surplus revenues of the church to edu cational purposes led to his secession from the cabinet, and, as it proved, his complete and final separation from the Liberals. Sir James Graham, the earl of Ripon and the duke of Richmond, also left the cabinet on the same issue. O'Connell, speaking in the House, described the secession in a couplet from Canning's Loves of the Triangles:— Still down thy steep, romantic Ashbourne, glides The Derby dilly carrying six insides.
Stanley spoke against the bill and against its authors with a bitterness that he himself is understood to have afterwards admitted to have been unseemly towards those who had so recently been his colleagues. The course followed by the government was "marked with all that timidity, that want of dexterity, which led to the failure of the unpractised shoplifter." His late colleagues were compared to "thimble-riggers at a country fair," and their plan was "petty larceny, for it had not the redeeming qualities of bold and open robbery." In the end of 1834, Lord Stanley, as he was now styled by courtesy, his father having succeeded to the earldom in October, was invited by Peel to join the short-lived Conservative ministry which he formed after the resignation of Melbourne. Though he declined the offer for reasons stated in a letter published in the Peel memoirs, he acted from that date with the Conservative party, and on its next accession to power, in 1841, he accepted the office of colonial secretary, which he had held under Lord Grey. His position and his temperament alike, however, made him a thoroughly independent supporter of any party to which he attached himself. When, therefore, consideration of health arising from the late hours in the Commons led him in 1844 to seek elevation to the Upper House in the right of his father's barony, Peel was rid of a too candid friend in the Commons and was assured of strong debating power in the Lords. But when Peel accepted the policy of free trade in 1846, the breach between him and Stanley was, as might have been anticipated, instant and irreparable. Stanley at once became the recognized leader of the Protectionist party, having Lord George Bentinck and Disraeli for his lieutenants in the Commons. They did all that could be done when the logic of events was against them, though Protection was never to become more than their watchword.
Lord Derby, who had succeeded to the earldom on the death of his father in June 185 i, was called upon to form his first admin istratiop in Feb. 1852. He was in a minority, but the circum stances were such that no other than a minority government was possible, and he resolved to dissolve parliament and appeal to the country at the earliest opportunity. The election did not materially alter the position of parties. Parliament met in Novem ber, and in December the ministry had resigned in consequence of their defeat on Disraeli's budget. For the next six years, during Lord Aberdeen's "ministry of all the talents" and Lord Palmerston's premiership, Lord Derby led the opposition, whose policy gradually became more generally Conservative and less distinctively Protectionist as the hopelessness of reversing the measures adopted in 1846 made itself apparent. In 1855 he was asked to form an administration after the resignation of Lord Aberdeen, but failing to obtain sufficient support he declined the task. After the defeat of Lord Palmerston on the Conspiracy Bill in Feb. 1858, he formed his second ministry. Though he still could not count upon a working majority, defeat was avoided for a whole session, owing chiefly to the dexterous management of the Commons by Disraeli. During the session of 1858 the government carried two important measures, one a bill to remove Jewish disabilities, and the other a bill to transfer the government of India from the East India Company to the crown. Next year the question of parliamentary reform had to be faced, and the government introduced a bill at the opening of the session, which was rejected by the House, and, on a dissolution, rejected also by the country. After a vote of no confidence (June io) in the new parliament Derby at once resigned.
He now devoted much of the leisure the position afforded him to congenial classical studies. It was his reputation for scholar ship as well as his social position that had led in 1852 to his appointment to the chancellorship of the university of Oxford, in succession to the duke of Wellington. His Translations of Poems Ancient and Modern (1862) was privately printed. Its reception by those to whom it was circulated encouraged him to proceed with his magnum opus, the translation of the whole of the Iliad, which appeared in 1864.
During the seven years that elapsed between Lord Derby's second and third administrations the terrible industrial crisis in Lancashire caused by the stoppage of the cotton supply in conse quence of the American Civil War, absorbed much of his time and thought. Derby worked unceasingly for its relief. His personal subscription, munificent though it was, represented the least part of his service. His noble speech at the meeting in Manchester in Dec. 1862, where the movement was initiated, and his advice at the subsequent meetings of the committee, were of the very highest value in stimulating and directing public sympathy. His relations with Lancashire had always been cordial; after the cotton famine period the cordiality passed into a warmer and deeper feeling among the factory operatives.
On the rejection of Russell's Reform Bill in 1866, Derby formed his third cabinet. It was destined to be short-lived, but lasted long enough to settle on a permanent basis the question that had proved fatal to its predecessor. The passing of the Reform Bill was the main business of the session 1867. The chief debates were, of course, in the Commons, and Derby's fail ing powers prevented him from taking any large share in those which took place in the Lords. His description of the measure as a "leap in the dark" was eagerly caught up, because it exactly represented the common opinion at the time,--the most expe rienced statesmen, while they admitted the granting of household suffrage to be a political necessity, being utterly unable to foresee its effect on the constitution and government of the country.
Declining health compelled Derby to resign office in Feb. 1868. He yielded the entire leadership of the party as well as the premiership to Disraeli. His subsequent appearances in public were few and unimportant. His last speech in the House of Lords, denunciation of Gladstone's Irish Church Bill, was marked by much of his early fire and vehemence. A few months later, on Oct. 23, 1869, he died at Knowsley.
Lord Aberdeen was reported by The Times to have said that no one of the giants he had listened to in his youth, Pitt, Fox, Burke or Sheridan, "as a speaker, is to be compared with our own Lord Derby, when Lord Derby is at his best." (G. Saintsbury, Lord Derby, 1906.)