*HERBERT, RIGHT 110N. SIDNEY, M.P. for South Wilts, second son of the eleventh Earl of Pembroke, by a daughter of the late Count 1Voronzow of Russia, was born in 1810. He received his education at Harrow and at Oriel College, Oxford, where he graduated iu classical honours in 1831. He first entered publics life in December 1832 as member for the southern division of Wilts, for which he has continued to sit without interruption down to the present time (October 1856). His parliamentary career exhibits an apt illustration of the gradual tendcney of thinking minds to liberalise their political opinions, and to abandon narrow prejudices for wider and more enlightened principles. In 1834 he made his first speech in the House of Commons, when he seconded a resolution for the exclusion of Dissenters from the University of Oxford. In 1838 be opposed the motion of Mr. Grote in favour of the ballot, aud strenuously opposed all the measures of the Melbourne ministry down to its fall iu the year 1841, including the motions on the affairs of Spain and on the opium trade and war with China. In the autumn of 1841 the late Sir Robert Peel came into power, and shortly afterwards began to entertain and to avow a conviction that the existing corn-laws were wrong in principle. Mr. Herbert followed Sir Robert Peel in this modification of his views, though be had opposed the measure of the Whig government to substitute for the sliding scale an eight-shilling fixed duty on the importation of foreign corn, as well as Lord John Russell's proposal for a reduction of the duties on foreign sugar. On the accession of Sir Robert Peel, Mr. Herbert became secretary to the Admiralty, which post he held till 1845, when he accepted the office of secretary at-war with a seat in the cabinet. In 1846 he supported the commercial and financial reforms, introduced by Sir Robert Peel, in order to pave the way for the repeal of the corn-laws and the introduction of the free-trade principle in our commercial legislation. In March 1845,
when Dlr. Cobden moved for a select committee on the corn-laws, Mr. Herbert was selected to expound the views of his political leader, which he unfolded more completely, iu January 1816, on the motion of Sir Robert Peel for a committee of the whole house on the Customs and Corn Importation Acts. Having remained in opposition during the premierships of Lord John Russell and Lord Derby, on the accession of Lord Aberdeen to power in December 1852, Mr. Herbert, who had been sworn a privy councillor, resumed the post of secretary-at-war, which he resigned in the early part of 1855, upon a re-construction of the cabinet, consequent on the retirement of the Duke of Newcastle, and held the secretaryship of the colonies for a few weeks under the administration of Lord Palmerston. This poet however he relinquished, retiring from the government, in conjunction with one or two other members of the Peelite party, on account of the censure on the Aberdeen cabinet, which be considered to be implied in the appoint ment of the committee of inquiry into the state of the army before SebastopoL Since that time he has kept aloof from the political world, devoting much of his time, talents, and attention to the organisation of schemes of social benevolence and general utility. Mr. Herbert has erected at Wilton, near Salisbury, a beautiful church in the Romanesque or Lombardic style, which is perhaps the finest specimen of Italian ecclesiastical architecture in this country. In 1646 he married a daughter of General A'Court, and niece of Lord Heytesbury.