from his old party ties; he opposed the acquisition of Cyprus and the first Afghan war (1879), and eventually, in a letter to Lord Sefton, 12 March 1880, he announced his severance from the conservative party, avowedly in consequence of its foreign policy.
Derby was soon accepted as a leader of the liberal party. From December 1882 to 1885 he was colonial secretary in Mr. Gladstone's second administration, and in 1884 he was made a knight of the Garter. His policy as colonial secretary was sensible, but not impressive. ‘We don't want any more black men,’ was one of his favourite expressions, and he therefore resisted further annexation of tropical colonies. He favoured withdrawal from the Soudan; he declined to seize New Guinea, and he supported the policy of contraction in South Africa by concluding the convention with the Boers of 1884. Though he accepted Australian aid for the Soudan, he discouraged any plan of Australian federation. He left the colonial office in the summer of 1885, when Mr. Gladstone and his colleagues resigned.
In 1886 the home-rule question led to a further change in Derby's political allegiance. From the first he disapproved of Mr. Gladstone's policy of giving home rule to Ireland, and he joined the new party of liberal unionists on its formation early in 1886. Until the Marquis of Hartington succeeded to his father's peerage in 1891 he led the liberal unionist peers in the House of Lords. Thenceforward he retired practically from active public life, and occupied himself with social questions. His last public speech was on the occasion of the unveiling of the statue of John Bright at Manchester in October 1891. In 1892 he presided over the labour commission. In the previous year, when he was severely attacked by influenza, his usually robust health had broken down, and he died at Knowsley of an affection of the heart on 21 April 1893. He was buried at Knowsley church on 27 April.
Derby held many dignified offices outside politics. He was chancellor of the university of London from 1891 till his death, was lord rector of the university of Glasgow from 1868 to 1871, and of Edinburgh from 1875 to 1880, and was a trustee of the British Museum. He was for eighteen years—from 1875 to 1893—an active president of the Royal Literary Fund, and was one of the founders of University College, Liverpool.
In his habits Derby was simple and unassuming, in manner somewhat awkward and shy. In character he was singularly cool, fair, and critical, but he was too diffident of his own powers, and perhaps too undecided, to become a great man of action. He was unambitious and disinterested, as indeed he conclusively showed when, by leaving Lord Beaconsfield in 1878, he sacrificed the almost certain reversion of the leadership of the conservative party. His memory and his reading were alike great. He was unrhetorical in mind or speech. Though his enunciation was imperfect, he spoke impressively, and had a great gift ‘of making speeches with which every one must agree, and which at the same time were never commonplace.’ He was an industrious and excellent man of business, and managed his great estates very successfully. For years he showed himself in Lancashire a model chairman of quarter sessions, an active and a hopeful agriculturist, and a benevolent promoter of institutions for the benefit of the working classes. On such matters his opinions were almost those of an old-fashioned radical, for he strongly believed in self-help, and was continuously active in attacking fads and urging the views of J. S. Mill, whom he greatly admired. He lived much in his own county, spoke, like his father, with a Lancashire accent, and was on the whole popular among Lancashire men.
He married, on 5 July 1870, Mary Catherine, second daughter of George, fifth earl De La Warr, and widow of James, second marquis of Salisbury (she died on 6 Dec. 1900), but had no issue, and was succeeded in the title by his brother Frederick, baron Stanley of Preston (1841–1908). There are at Knowsley portraits by W. Derby as a boy, by George Richmond in 1864, and by Sir Francis Grant. A good photograph prefixed to the edition of his speeches was taken in 1894.
[Mr. W. E. H. Lecky's Prefatory Memoir to Speeches of Lord Derby, ed. Sanderson and Roscoe, 1894; Times, 22 April 1893; Macmillan's Mag. xl. 180; Westminster Review, lxxvii. 498; Martin's Life of Lord Sherbrooke, ii. 61, 281; Malmesbury's Memoirs; Life of Sir S. Northcote; Memoirs of Count Beust; Pollard's Stanleys of Knowsley; Scharf's Cat. of Pictures at Knowsley. See, too, Lord Derby's Address to the Co-operative Congress at Leeds, 1881; Speech on the Irish Question, 29 June 1886; Speech on Indian Finance, 13 Feb. 1859.]
STANLEY, EDWARD JOHN, second Baron Stanley of Alderley (1802–1869), was the son of Sir John Thomas Stanley, seventh baronet, and nephew of Edward Stanley [q. v.], bishop of Norwich. Sir John, born in 1766, was a considerable magnate in Cheshire, where he was for more than twenty years chairman of quarter sessions. He was elected F.R.S. on 29 April 1790, and in the
