LEWIS, SIR GEORGE CORNEWALL, BART. (1806 1863), English statesman and man of letters, was born in London on April 21, 18o6. Young Lewis was educated at Eton and at Christ Church, Oxford. He then entered the Middle Temple, and was called to the bar in 1831. In 1835 he published an Essay on the Origin and Formation of the Romance Languages (re-edited in 1862), the first effective criticism in England of Raynouard's theory of a uniform romance tongue, represented by the poetry of the troubadours.
In 1836 he accompanied John Austin to Malta, to examine the condition of the island and frame a code of laws. On his return to England Lewis succeeded his father as one of the princi pal poor-law commissioners. In 1844 Lewis married Lady Maria Theresa Lister, sister of Lord Clarendon, and settled in London at Kent House, Knightsbridge. In 1847 Lewis resigned his office. He was then returned for the county of Hereford, and Lord John Russell appointed him secretary to the Board of Control, but a few months afterwards he became under-secretary to the Home Office. He introduced two important bills, one for the abolition of turn pike trusts and the management of highways by a mixed county board, the other for the purpose of defining and regulating the law of parochial assessment. In 185o he succeeded Hayter as financial secretary to the treasury.
on the Oxford commission, and on the commission to inquire into the government of London. But its chief fruits were 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 vigorously attacked the theory of epic lays and other theories on which Niebuhr's reconstruction of that history had proceeded. In 1855 Lewis succeeded his father in the baronetcy.
He was at once elected member for the Radnor boroughs, and Lord Palmerston made him chancellor of the exchequer. He had a war loan to contract and heavy additional taxation to impose, but his industry, method and clear vision carried him safely through. After the change of ministry in 1859 Sir George became home secretary under Lord Palmerston, and in 1861, much against his wish, he succeeded Sidney Herbert (Lord Herbert of Lea) at the War Office. The closing years of his life were marked by increasing intellectual vigour. His later works include : Essay on Foreign Jurisdiction and the Extradition of Criminals (1859), and Dialogue on the Best Form of Government (1863). He died in April 1863.
A reprint from the Edinburgh Review of his long series of papers on the Administration of Great Britain appeared in 1864, and his Letters to various Friends (1870) were edited by his brother Gilbert, who succeeded him in the baronetcy.