LONDONDERRY, ROBERT STEWART, second marquis of, b. at Mount Stewart, Down co., Ireland, June 18, 1769, eldest soia of Robert, first marquis, who represented the county of Down many years in the Irish parliament. Educated at the grammar-school, Armagh, and at St. John's college, Cambridge, he entered the Irish parliament in 1789, altli.aurli then under age. In 1796 he became viscount Castlereagh; and in 1798 he was 1111.1e Chief secretary for Ireland. It was the year of the insurrection and the French inva,ion, and some allowance must be made for the terrible severities employed hy the Irish government. Yet the cruel part he acted or tolerated in Ireland, in the suppression of the rebellion, and effecting the union, always weighed upou his reputation. In 1802 he was appointed president of the board of control, in the Addington administration. In 1805 he was promoted to the seals of the war and colonial department, but resigned, with the whole of the cabinet, on Pitt's death in 1806. In the following year, lie resumed -the office of war minister, when he organized the disastrous Walcheren expedition. Mr. -Canning, then foreign secretary, attacked lord Castlereagh on this account with much acrimony and personality. The result was that both resigned, anti a hostile meeting took place between them (Sept. 21, 1809), in which Canning- was wounded. In 1812, after the assassination of 3Ir. Perceval, lord Castlereagh became foreign secretary, a post which he held during the period illustrated by tly• military achievements of the -duke of Wellington. By this time the general direction of Briash policy was unalter ably fixed by circumstances, and lord Castlereagh has at least the merit of having pur sued this fixed course with a steadiness, and even obstinacy, which nothing could abate.
He was the soul of the coalition against Bonaparte. and it was only by his untiring -exertions, and through his personal influence, that it was kept totrether. He represented England at the congress of Vienna in 1814, at the treaty- of earls in 1815, and at-the .congress of Aix-la-Chapelle in 1818. While his foreign policy was favorable to the principles and policy of the " holy alliance " abroad, he constantly recommended arbi trary and despotic measures at home. As the leader of the Liverpool government in the lower house, he carried the suspension of the habeas corpus aet in 1817, and the "six acts" or " the gagging bills," as they were called, of 1819—measures which will for ever stamp his name with infamy. The retirement of Canning from the ministry rather than be a party to the prosecution of queen Caroline (1820), threw the whole weight of business on lord Castlereagh. By the death of his father in 1821 he became marquis of Londonderry; but his mind became deranged, and he died by his own hand at his seat at Foot's Cray, Kent, Aug. 12, 1822. The populace witnessed the funeral procession in silence; but when the coffin entered the, walls of Westminster, a loud and exulting shout rent the air, which penetrated into the abbey-, and broke upon the still ness of the funeral ceremony. This statesman, looked upon by one party as a paragon of perfection, has been characterized by the other party as " the most intolerable mis chief that ever was east by an angry providence 013 a helpless people."