WINDHAM, Right Hon. WILLIAM, English statesman, b. 1750, in Golden square, London, was son of ,col. Windham of Felbrigg hall, Norfolk, in which county the family had been settled since the 12th century. He was educated at Eton, and was afterward sent to Glasgow university, where he studied mathematics with success. In 1761 he entered at University college, Oxford. After the usual course of travel, he began to acquire notoriety as an opponent of the administration of lord North. Histora torical exercises were interrupted by a design of visiting the north pole, and he accom panied the expedition in which Nelson,then a youth, took part. He found the sea-sick ness intolerable, was put on shore in Norway, and returned home in a Greenland whaler. In 1781 he was returned to parliament for Norwich, and took his seat among the whigs. In 1783, on the formation of the Portland ministry, remarkable for the coalition of lord North and Mr. Fox, lie became principal secretary to lord Northington, then lord-lieu tenant of Ireland. Before leaving England, he called upon his friend Dr. Johnson, and lamented that his situation would compel him to sanction practices he could not approve. " Don't be afraid, sir," replied the doctor, " you will soon make a very pretty rascal." Ill-health, or, perhaps, conscientious scruples, soon caused him to resign his secretary ship. In 1784 lie seconded Burke's motion for a representation to the throne on the state of the nation. There is an admirable and characteristic sketch of Windham in Macaulay's description of the trial of Warren Hastings: " There, with eyes momentarily fixed on Burke, appeared the first gentleman of the age, his form developed by every manly exercise, his face beaming with intelligence and spirit—the ingenious, the chival rous, the high-souled Windham." Abandoning his old friends the whigs, he followed Mr. Burke, and ranged himself on the side of Mr. Pitt in opposing the speculative doc trines of the French revolution, and, supporting the war with France. In 1794 lie became secretary-at-war under Mr. Pitt, with a seat in the cabinet. He now attacked his former friends with the utmost ascerbity. He went out with Pitt in 1801, and sided with the Grenvilles in stigmatizing the peace of Amiens, concluded by the Addington administration in 1801. This lost him his seat for Norwich, but he was elected for St. Mawes, and, on the return of the Grenville party to power, lie became colonial secretary. In 1806 he brought forward his plan of limited service in the army, proposing that the infantry should be enlisted for seven years only, with liberty to renew their services for another seven years, receiving an increase of pay; cavalry and artillery to be enlisted for ten years, the second period six, and the third five years. He also proposed to increase the pay and
pensions of officers and men, and generally to better the condition of the soldier., The plan was streuously opposed, but passed into a law. He went out of office in 1807, when the Portland administration was formed (having previously declined the offer of a peerage), and strongly denounced the expedition against Copenhagen, and afterward the disastrous Walcheren expedition. In 1808 a clause was introduced by lord Castle reagh (who had succeeded Windham in office) into the mutiny act, permitting men to enlist for life, contrary to Windharn's scheme of limited service, which was, however, readopted in 1847. In May he underwent a surgical operation for extracting a tumor from his hip, from the effects of which he died June 3, 1810.
Windham was an excellent speaker, and one of the most effective and skillful debat ers of his time, as will appear from his speeches collected by Mr. Amyot I., his secretary, and published, with a life prefixed, in 3 vols. 8vo. Fox said he hal never met a medi tating man with so muclr activity, or a reading man with so much practical knowle,dge. Pitt declared that his speeches were the finest productions possible of a wfirm imagina tion and fancy. Canning described his eloquence as, if not the most commanding, at least the most insinuating that was ever heard in the house of commons. Dr. Johnson, who was much attached to him, declared that, in the regions of literature, Windham. was inter stellas tuna minores. He possessed brilliant conversational powers. Yet, not withstanding his great talents and rare gifts, he appears in the page of history as the mere shadow of a man. In his lifetime he gained the disparaging nickname of " the weathercock." He was fond of paradox, and once defended bull-baiting in the house of commons with great vivacity and ingenuity. Although a man of refinement and sensi tiveness, he had a passion for pugilism, and was a regular attendant upon prize-fights. The publication of his Diary from 1784 to 1810, by Mrs. Henry Baring (1866) discloses the secret of his weakness. Morbidly self-conscious, lie was always watching himself, pulling himself to pieces, and recording the doubts that haunted him as to his mental capacity. Acknowledged by his contemporaries to be one of the manliest of men, he succeeded in infusing into his mind doubts with respect to his own courage. He got rid of this delusion by going under fire in the trenches at the siege of Valenciennes; but no sooner was he convinced that lie was not a coward than he began to be afraid he was discreditably insensible to the scenes which were passing around him! With faculties, lie was in fact an intellectual hypochondriac incapable of achieving anything great.