parliament on matters of education. This led to an important despatch by Viscount Halifax, president of the board of control, to the marquess of Dalhousie, the governor-general, authorizing an educational advance in primary and secondary schools, the provision of technical and scientific teaching, and the establishment of schools for girls.
In 1854 Duff visited the United States, where what is now New York University gave him the degree of LL.D.; he was already D.D. of Aberdeen. In 1856 he returned to India, where the mutiny soon broke out; his descriptive letters were collected in a volume entitled The Indian Mutiny, its Causes and Results (1858). Duff gave much thought and time to the university of Calcutta, which owes its examination system and the prominence given to physical sciences to his influence. In 1863 Sir Charles Trevelyan offered him the post of vice-chancellor of the University, but his health compelled him to leave India. As a memorial of his work the Duff Hall was erected in the centre of the educational buildings of Calcutta; and a fund of £11,000 was raised for his disposal, the capital of which was afterwards to be used for invalided missionaries of his own church. In 1864 Duff visited South Africa, and on his return became convener of the foreign missions committee of the Free Church. He raised £10,000 to endow a missionary chair at New College, Edinburgh, and himself became first professor. Among other missionary labours of his later years, he helped the Free Church mission on Lake Nyassa, travelled to Syria to inspect a mission at Lebanon, and assisted Lady Aberdeen and Lord Polwarth to establish the Gordon Memorial Mission in Natal. In 1873 the Free Church was threatened with a schism owing to negotiations for union with the United Presbyterian Church. Duff was called to the chair, and guided the church happily through this crisis. He also took part in forming the alliance of Reformed Churches holding the Presbyterian system. He died on the 12th of February 1878. By his will he devoted his personal property to found a lectureship on foreign missions on the model of the Bampton Lectures.
See his Life, by George Smith (2 vols.). (D. Mn.)
DUFFERIN AND AVA, FREDERICK TEMPLE HAMILTON-TEMPLE-BLACKWOOD, 1st Marquess of (1826–1902), British diplomatist, son of Price Blackwood, 4th Baron Dufferin, was born at Florence, Italy, on the 21st of June 1826. The Irish Blackwoods were of old Scottish stock,[1] tracing their descent back to the 14th century. John Blackwood of Bangor (1591–1663), the ancestor of the Irish line, made a fortune and acquired landed property in county Down, and his great-grandson Robert was created a baronet in 1763. Sir Robert’s son, Sir John, married the heiress of the Hamiltons, earls of Clanbrassil and viscounts of Clandeboye (“clan of yellow Hugh”), and thus brought into the family a large property in the borough of Killyleagh and barony of Dufferin, county Down. Sir John Blackwood (d. 1799) declined a peerage, and so did his heir James at the time of the Union, but the Irish title of Baroness Dufferin was conferred (1800) on Sir John’s widow, and James (d. 1836) succeeded as second baron in 1808. His brother Hans (d. 1839) became third baron, and by his marriage with Miss Temple (a descendant of the Temples of Stowe) was the father of Price Blackwood, 4th baron. Among other distinguished members of the family was Admiral Sir Henry Blackwood, Bart. (1770–1832)—a brother of James and Hans—one of Nelson’s captains, who commanded the “Euryalus” at Trafalgar. Price Blackwood, too, was in the Navy; his marriage in 1825 with Helen Selina Sheridan, a daughter of Thomas Sheridan, and granddaughter of Richard Brinsley Sheridan, the dramatist and politician, was against his parents’ wishes, but his young wife’s talents and beauty soon won them over.
Frederick went to Eton (1839–1843) and Christ Church, Oxford (1845–1847), where he took a pass school and was President of the Union. His father died in 1841, and the influence of his mother—one of three unusually accomplished sisters, the other two being the duchess of Somerset and Mrs Norton (q.v.)—was very marked on his mental development; she lived till 1867 and is commemorated by the “Helen’s Tower” erected by her son in her honour at Clandeboye (the Irish seat of the Blackwoods) in 1861, and adorned with epigraphical verses written by Tennyson, Browning and others. On leaving Oxford Lord Dufferin busied himself for some little while with the management of his Irish estates. In 1846–1848 he was active in relieving the distress in Ireland due to the famine, and he was always generous and liberal in his relations with his tenants. In 1855 he already advocated compensation for disturbance and for improvements; but while supporting reasonable reform, he demanded justice for the landowners. In later years (1868–1881) he wrote much, in opposition to J. S. Mill, on behalf of Irish landlordism, and, when Gladstone adopted Home Rule, Lord Dufferin, who had been attached throughout his career to the Liberal party, regarded the new policy as fatal both to Ireland and to the United Kingdom, though, being then an ambassador, he took no public part in opposing it.
Starting with every personal and social advantage, Lord Dufferin quickly became a favourite both at Court and in London society; and in 1849 he was made a lord-in-waiting. In political life he followed Lord John Russell, and in 1850 was further attached to the party by being created a peer of the United Kingdom as Baron Clandeboye. In 1855 Lord John Russell took him as attaché on his special mission to the Vienna Conference. Meanwhile Lord Dufferin was enlarging his experience by foreign travel, and in 1856 he went on a yachting-tour to Iceland, which he described with much humour and graphic power in his successful book, Letters from High Latitudes; this volume made his reputation as a writer, though his only other purely literary publication was his memorial edition (1894) of his mother’s Poems and Verses. In 1860 Lord John Russell sent him as British representative on a joint commission of the powers appointed to inquire into the affairs of the Lebanon (Syria), where the massacres of Christian Maronites by the Mussulman Druses had resulted in the landing of a French force and the possibility of a French occupation. Lord Dufferin was associated with French, Russian, Prussian and Turkish colleagues, and his difficult diplomatic position was made none the less delicate by his conscientious endeavour to be just to all parties. Even if he had not satisfied himself that the Mahommedans were by no means wholly to blame, the question of punishment was in any case complicated by the problem of future administration. His own proposal to put the whole Syrian province under a responsible governor, appointed by the sultan for a term of years, with unfettered jurisdiction, was rejected; but at last it was agreed to place a Christian governor, subordinate to the Porte, over the Lebanon district, and to set up local administrative councils. In May 1861 the French forces departed, and Lord Dufferin was thanked for his services by the government.
In 1862 he married Hariot, daughter of Captain A. Rowan Hamilton, of Killyleagh Castle, Down. He held successively the posts of under-secretary for India (1864–1866) and under-secretary for war (1866) in Lord Palmerston’s and Earl Russell’s ministries; and he was chancellor of the duchy of Lancaster, outside the cabinet, under Mr Gladstone (1868–1872). In 1871 he was created earl of Dufferin.
In 1872 he was appointed governor-general of Canada. There his tact and personal charm and genial hospitality were invaluable. He had already become known as a powerful and graceful orator, and a man of culture and political distinction; and his abilities were brilliantly displayed in dealing with the problems of the newly united provinces of the Canadian Dominion. At a time when a weak or unattractive governor-general might easily have damaged the imperial connexion, he admittedly strengthened and consolidated it. Lord Dufferin left Canada in 1878, and in 1879, rather to the annoyance of his old party leader, he accepted from the conservative prime minister, Lord Beaconsfield, the appointment of ambassador to Russia. At St Petersburg he did useful diplomatic work for a couple of years, and then, in
- ↑ One branch of the Blackwood family emigrated to France; the head of this line being Adam Blackwood (d. 1613), jurist, poet and divine, and senator of the presidial court of Poitiers.
