BARING, ALEXANDER, first BARON ASHBURTON (1774•1848). An English financier and states man. He was born in London, October 27, 1774, the second son of Sir Francis Baring. For many years he was commercially engaged in the United States and Canada in the service of the great London mercantile house founded by his father. While in this country he married, August 23, 1798, Anne Louisa, eldest Bingham, of Philadelphia, United States Sena tor; and to his alliance and to his American mercantile acquaintance he was much indebted in later life. On the death of his father in 1810, he became the head of the firm of Baring Brothers & Co., and in 1812 was elected mem ber of Parliament for Taunton. In the first ad ministration of Sir Robert Peel (1834-35), he was president of the Board of Trade andmaster of the Al int. and was created Baron Ashburton by pat ent in April, 1835. In 1812 Lord Ashburton's knowledge of busiuess and thorough acquaintance with American institutions, customs, and modes of thought caused him to be appointed special ambassador to the United States to settle the Northwestern Boundary Question and other dis putes, which then threatened to involve the two countries in war. In August of the same year he
concluded the famous Treaty of Washington, commonly called the Ashburton Treaty, by which the frontier line between the State of Maine and Canada was definitely agreed to. By this treaty seven-twelfths of the disputed ground and the British settlement of Madawaska were given to the United States, and only five-twelfths of the ground to Britain; but it secured a better military frontier to Britain, and included heights commanding the Saint Lawrencewhich the award of the King of Holland, who had been chosen arbiter, had assigned to the Americans. By the eighth and a inth articles provision was made for putting an end to the African slave-trade, and the tenth article provided for the mutual extradition of suspected criminals. As an Eng lish statesman. Lord Ashburton opposed free trade, but strongly supported the penny-postage system when first proposed by Rowland Hill in 1837. His death took place \lay 13, 1848.