READING, RUFUS DANIEL ISAACS, 1ST MARQUESS OF (186o-1935), British statesman, was born on Oct. 1o, 186o, in London, the second son of Joseph Isaacs, merchant. He was edu cated at University college school, London, and abroad. At the age of 14 he ran away to sea, and served two years before the mast in a sailing ship. A subsequent venture on the Stock Ex change was a failure. He then read for the bar, and was called in 1887 ; the same year he married Miss Alice Cohen. His legal career was one of unbroken and immediate success. Perhaps the most sensational of his cases was the prosecution of Whitaker Wright for fraud, which was followed by the defendant's suicide.
He entered parliament as a Liberal Imperialist, winning a seat for his party at Reading in a by-election in 1904, which he re tained till he went to the House of Lords. In political oratory, although an effective speaker in the country, he failed, as so many great lawyers have failed, to impress the House of Commons, being far more inclined to address his opponents as a jury with a view to their conversion than to stimulate enthusiasm for the policy of his own party. But his party had the highest opinion of him and he became attorney-general in 191o, and in 1912 was given a seat in the cabinet; which no attorney-general had held before. Then followed the great Marconi shares scandal, in which he and Lloyd George were alleged to be involved. The substance of the charge was that he had bought American Marconi shares, some of which he sold to Lloyd George, while the British Marconi com pany was contracting with the Government. It was investigated by a committee of the House and his reputation was certainly vindicated. On Oct. 20, 1913 he was made lord chief justice, I and in Jan., 1914, was created Baron Reading of Erleigh. In this office he distinguished himself by humanity in the conduct of criminal cases and by the establishment of the principle that the court of criminal appeal should act as a real court of revision, upsetting verdicts or reducing sentences even of the individual high court judges. He presided over the trial of Casement in Ireland during the World War.
After the outbreak of the war in Aug. 1914, he assisted in the drafting and the administration of those measures which saved England from financial ruin. The most sensational of these was the granting of the British guarantee to the great accepting houses, to bills amounting to many hundred millions of pounds. In 1915 he was president of the Anglo-French Loan Commission to the United States, where he succeeded in floating a great war loan. On June 26, 1916, he was created Viscount Reading of Erleigh.
In 1917 he was appointed high commissioner and special envoy to the United States, and in December of that year was created an earl. In 1918 he was appointed high commissioner and special ambassador at Washington.
Lord Reading's term as viceroy of India began at the end of the war. He was faced immediately by four acute problems. First the diarchy system of the Montagu-Chelmsford Govern ment of India Act, devised as a step in advance towards complete self-government, was definitely rejected by the leaders of the united Hindu and Mohammedan educated population, who in the movement known as Swaraj had resolved to make it unworkable.
The second was the influence of Mahatma Gandhi, one of the most remarkable men of all time, who had inflamed millions of Indians to a boycott of the West by the East and a kind of gigantic movement of passive resistance, in which both English products and English Government were to be alike rejected.. The third was that the national temper of India had been aroused by prohibitions and indignities put upon Indians in other parts of the empire. The fourth, the ghastly story of the Punjab rebellion and the slaughter at Amritsar in 1919, with the support of Gen. Dyer's action there by the governing classes in England, had excited a feeling of such fierce resentment throughout the length and breadth of the peninsula as might well have caused a general uprising. In dealing with the revolt against the diarchy, he found himself compelled to imprison the two Mohammedan leaders, the brothers Ali. And although he was able before the end to establish some kind of self-government in most of the local provinces and even something like friendly co-operation in the Central Legislative council the constitution broke down in the Central Provinces and had to be suspended in Bengal, with a return to complete autocratic government. In the case of the boycott of the West the viceroy, after several attempts at re conciliation with Gandhi, authorized his prosecution for inciting to mass civil disobedience which resulted in a sentence of six years' imprisonment, although the mahatma was released on the grounds of ill health after two years.
In the matter of the treatment of Indian immigrants in other parts of the empire, Lord Reading showed himself a determined supporter of the rights of India. In the case of Amritsar and the memories of the rebellion he could only exhibit his sympathy with the Indian population and work for the healing influences of time. In the struggle for financial stability he was compelled to exercise the power of certification by the viceroy against the Assembly of the much-hated salt tax. But he saw, and acquiesced in, India, like many other of the dominions, converting itself from a free trade into a protectionist country, a change produced partly by a passionate nationalism which rejected the excise cotton duties, and partly by the need for compensating revenues by a big import duty on iron and steel. That he could exercise sternness when re quired was shown by his action towards the maharajah of Indore, who was compelled to abdicate as an alternative to trial by his peers for the murder of an Indian merchant. Upon his return to England in April 1926 he was created a marquess. He was secre tary of state for foreign affairs, Aug.-Nov. 1931. (See INDIA.)