JAMES BRUCE, 8th earl of Elgin (1811-1863), British statesman, second son of the 7th earl by his second marriage, was born in 1811, and succeeded to the peerage as 8th earl of Elgin and 12th of Kincardine in 1841. He began his official career in 1842 at the age of 3o, as governor of Jamaica, where he improved the con dition of the negroes and conciliated the planters by working through them. In 1846 Lord Grey appointed him governor general of Canada. Son-in-law of the popular earl of Durham, he was well received by the colonists, and he set himself delib erately to carry out the Durham policy. His assent to the local measure for indemnifying those who had suffered in the troubles of 1837 led the mob of Montreal to pelt his carriage for the rewarding of rebels for rebellion, as Mr. Gladstone described it. But long before his eight years' term of service expired he was the most popular man in Canada. His relations with the United States, his hearty support of the self-government and defence of the colony, and his settlement of the free-trade and fishery ques tions, led to his being raised in 1849 to the British peerage as Baron Elgin.
Soon after his return to England in 1854, Lord Palmerston offered him a seat in the cabinet, which he declined. But when, in 1856 the seizure of the "Arrow" by Commissioner Yeh plunged England into war with China, he went as special envoy with the expedition. On reaching Point de Galle he was met by a force summoned from Bombay to Calcutta by the news of the sepoy mutiny at Meerut on May 11. Urgent letters from Lord Canning reached him at Singapore, the next port, on June 3. H.M.S. "Shannon" was at once sent to Calcutta with the troops destined for China, and Elgin himself followed it, when gloomier letters from India reached him. The position in China was not seriously affected by the want of the troops. Elgin sent in his ultimatum to Commissioner Yeh at Canton on the same day, Dec. 12, that he learned of the relief of Lucknow, and soon afterwards he sent Yeh a prisoner to Calcutta. By July 1858, after months of Chinese deception, he was able to leave the Gulf of Pechili with the emperor's assent to the Treaty of Tientsin. He then visited Japan, and obtained less considerable concessions from its gov ernment in the Treaty of Yeddo. That visit proved the beginning of British influence in Japan. Unfortunately, the Chinese diffi culty was not yet at an end. After tedious disputes with the tariff commissioners as to the opium duty, and a visit to the upper waters of the Yang-tzse, Elgin had reached England in May 1859. But when his brother and the allied forces attempted to proceed to Peking with the ratified treaty, they were fired on from the Taku forts at the mouth of the Peiho. Lord Russell again sent out Elgin as ambassador extraordinary to demand an apology for the attack, the execution of the treaty, and an in demnity for the military and naval expenditure. Sir Robert Napier (afterwards Lord Napier of Magdala) and Sir Hope Grant, with the French, routed the Tatar troops and sacked the Summer Palace, and by Oct. 24, 186o, a convention was made which was "entirely satisfactory to Her Majesty's Government." Elgin had not been a month at home when Lord Palmerston selected him to be viceroy and governor-general of India. As the first viceroy directly appointed by the Crown, and as subject to the secretary of State for India, Elgin at once gave up all Lord Canning had fought for, in the co-ordinate independence, or rather the stimulating responsibility, of the governor-general, which had prevailed from the days of Clive and Warren Hastings. On the other hand, he loyally carried out the wise and equitable policy of his predecessor towards the Indian feudatories. He did his best to check the aggression of the Dutch in Sumatra, which was contrary to treaty, and he supported Dost Mohammed in Kabul until he entered the then neutral and disputed area of Herat.
Elgin then assembled a camp of exercise at Lahore, and marched a force to the Peshawar border to punish those branches of the Yusufzai tribe who had violated the engagements of 1858. In the midst of this "little war" he died at the hill station of Dharmsala on Nov. 20, 1863.