MILNE-EDWARDS, HENRY (I800-1885), French zoologist, the son of an Englishman, was born in Bruges, Oct. 23, 1800, but spent most of his life in France. He graduated in medicine at Paris in 1823, but devoted himself to the study of the lower forms of animal life. In 1841 he was appointed professor of entomology at the museum d'histoire naturelle, and 21 years later he succeeded Geoffrey Saint-Hilaire in the chair of zoology. He died in Paris on July 29, 1885.
Besides his papers in the Annales des sciences naturelles, with the editorship of which he was associated from 1834, he published: Histoire naturelle de crustaces (3 vols., 1837-41) ; Histaire naturelle des coral liaires (1858-6o) ; and the excellent Lecons sur la physiologie et l'anatomie comparee de l'homme et des animaux (14 vols., 1857-81). MILNER, ALFRED MILNER, VISCOUNT British statesman and colonial administrator, was born at Bonn on March 23, 1854, the only son of Charles Milner, M.D., whose wife was a daughter of Major-General Ready, sometime governor of the Isle of Man. Alfred Milner was educated first at Tubingen, where his father was Reader in English of the university, then at King's College, London, and under Jowett as a scholar of Balliol College, Oxford, from 1872 to 1876. He graduated in 1877, with a first class in classics, having won the Hertford, Craven, Eldon and Derby scholarships, and was elected to a fellowship of New College. At Oxford he formed a close friendship with Arnold Toynbee, and was associated with his schemes of social work; and subsequently he wrote a tribute to his friend, Arnold Toyn bee: a Reminiscence (1895). In 1881 he was called to the bar at the Inner Temple and joined the staff of the Pall Mall Gazette under John Morley, becoming assistant editor under W. T. Stead. In 1885 he was Liberal candidate for the Harrow division of Middlesex at the general election, but was defeated. He acted as private secretary to Mr. (afterwards Lord) Goschen, and in 1887, when Goschen became chancellor of the exchequer, was appointed his principal private secretary. It was by Goschen's influence that in 1889 he was made under-secretary of finance in Egypt. He remained in Egypt four years, his period of office coinciding with the first great reforms, after the danger of bank ruptcy had been avoided. Milner returned to England in 1892, and was appointed chairman of the Board of Inland Revenue, being made C.B. in 1894 and K.C.B. in 1895. Shortly after his return to England he published his England in Egypt, which at once became the authoritative account of the work done since the British occupation.
Sir Alfred Milner remained at the Board of Inland Revenue until 1897. In April of that year Lord Rosmead resigned his posts of high commissioner for South Africa and governor of Cape Colony. The situation resulting from the Jameson raid (see TRANSVAAL and SOUTH AFRICA) was one of the greatest delicacy and difficuhy, and Mr. Chamberlain, now colonial secretary, selected Milner as Lord Rosmead's successor. The appointment was avowedly made in order that an acceptable British statesman, in whom public confidence was reposed, might go to South Africa to consider all the circumstances, and to formulate a policy which should combine the upholding of British interests with the attempt to deal justly with the Transvaal and Orange Free State govern ments.
Sir Alfred Milner reached the Cape in May 1897, and after the difficulties with President Kruger over the Aliens' Law had been patched up he was free by August to make himself personally acquainted with the country. Between August 1897 and May 1898 he travelled through Cape Colony, the Bechuanaland Pro tectorate, Rhodesia and Basutoland, and also during this period learned both Dutch and the South African "Taal." He came to the conclusion that there could be no hope of peace and progress in South Africa while there remained the "permanent subjection of British to Dutch in one of the Republics." He also realized— as was shown by the triumphant re-election of Mr. Kruger to the presidency of the Transvaal in Feb. 1898—that the Pretoria government would never on its own initiative redress the griev ances of the "Uitlanders." That Milner had good grounds for his view of the situation is shown in a letter written (March I I) by Mr. J. X. Merriman to President Steyn of the Free State : "The greatest danger," wrote Mr. Merriman, "lies in the attitude of President Kruger and his vain hope of building up a State on a foundation of a narrow unenlightened minority." Though this was recognized by the more far-seeing of the Bond leaders, they were ready to support Kruger, whether or not he granted reforms, and they sought to make Milner's position impossible. At the general election in Cape Colony the Bond obtained a majority, and in accordance with constitutional practice were invoked to form a ministry. In November he visited England, and the next February (1899) returned, assured of support, to find the situation more critical. On May 4 Milner penned a memorable despatch to the Colonial Office, in which he insisted that the remedy for the unrest in the Transvaal was to strike at the root of the evil—the political impotence of the injured. "It may seem a paradox," he wrote, "but it is true that the only way for protecting our subjects is to help them to cease to be our subjects." The policy of leaving things alone only led from bad to worse, and "the case for inter vention is overwhelming." Milner felt that only the enfranchise ment of the Uitlanders in the Transvaal would give stability to the South African situation. He realized keenly that the spectacle of thousands of British subjects in the Transvaal in the condition of "helots" (as he expressed it) was undermining the prestige of Great Britain throughout South Africa. This despatch was kept private for a time by the home government but its tenor was known to the leading politicians at the Cape, and at the instance of J. H. Hofmeyr a conference was held (May 31–June 5) at Bloemfontein between the high commissioner and the president of the Transvaal. Milner then made the enactment by the Trans vaal of a franchise law which would at once give the Johannes burgers a share in the government of the country his main, and practically his only, demand. The conference ended without any agreement being reached, and war broke out in Oct. 1899.