capital of Ghazni. The Mahommedan puppet of the English, Shah Shuja, had been asked, when ruler of Afghanistan, to restore them to India; and what he had failed to do the Christian ruler of opposing Mahommedans and Hindus resolved to effect in the most solemn and public manner. In vain had Major (afterwards Sir Henry) Rawlinson proved that they were only reproductions of the original gates, to which the Ghazni moulvies clung merely as a source of offerings from the faithful who visited the old conqueror’s tomb. In vain did the Hindu sepoys show the most chilling indifference to the belauded restoration. Ellenborough could not resist the temptation to copy Napoleon’s magniloquent proclamation under the pyramids. The fraudulent folding doors were conveyed on a triumphal car to the fort of Agra, where they were found to be made not of sandalwood but of deal. That Somnath proclamation (immortalized in a speech by Macaulay) was the first step towards its author’s recall.
Hardly had Ellenborough issued his medal with the legend “Pax Asiae Restituta” when he was at war with the amirs of Sind. The tributary amirs had on the whole been faithful, for Major (afterwards Sir James) Outram controlled them. But he had reported the opposition of a few, and Ellenborough ordered an inquiry. His instructions were admirable, in equity as well as energy, and if Outram had been left to carry them out all would have been well. But the duty was entrusted to Sir Charles Napier, with full political as well as military powers. And to add to the evil, Mir Ali Morad intrigued with both sides so effectually that he betrayed the amirs on the one hand, while he deluded Sir Charles Napier to their destruction on the other. Ellenborough was led on till events were beyond his control, and his own just and merciful instructions were forgotten. Sir Charles Napier made more than one confession like this: “We have no right to seize Sind, yet we shall do so, and a very advantageous, useful and humane piece of rascality it will be.” The battles of Meeanee and Hyderabad followed; and the Indus became a British river from Karachi to Multan.
Sind had hardly been disposed of when troubles arose on both sides of the governor-general, who was then at Agra. On the north the disordered kingdom of the Sikhs was threatening the frontier. In Gwalior to the south, the feudatory Mahratta state, there were a large mutinous army, a Ranee only twelve years of age, an adopted chief of eight, and factions in the council of ministers. These conditions brought Gwalior to the verge of civil war. Ellenborough reviewed the danger in the minute of the 1st of November 1845, and told Sir Hugh Gough to advance. Further treachery and military licence rendered the battles of Maharajpur and Punniar, fought on the same day, inevitable though they were, a surprise to the combatants. The treaty that followed was as merciful as it was wise. The pacification of Gwalior also had its effect beyond the Sutlej, where anarchy was restrained for yet another year, and the work of civilization was left to Ellenborough’s two successors. But by this time the patience of the directors was exhausted. They had no control over Ellenborough’s policy; his despatches to them were haughty and disrespectful; and in June 1844 they exercised their power of recalling him.
On his return to England Ellenborough was created an earl and received the thanks of parliament; but his administration speedily became the theme of hostile debates, though it was successfully vindicated by Peel and Wellington. When Peel’s cabinet was reconstituted in 1846 Ellenborough became first lord of the admiralty. In 1858 he took office under Lord Derby as president of the board of control, for the fourth time. It was then his congenial task to draft the new scheme for the government of India which the mutiny had rendered necessary. But his old fault of impetuosity again proved his stumbling-block. He wrote a caustic despatch censuring Lord Canning for the Oudh proclamation, and allowed it to be published in The Times without consulting his colleagues, who disavowed his action in this respect. General disapprobation was excited; votes of censure were announced in both Houses; and, to save the cabinet, Ellenborough resigned.
But for this act of rashness he might have enjoyed the task of carrying into effect the home constitution for the government of India which he sketched in his evidence before the select committee of the House of Commons on Indian territories on the 8th of June 1852. Paying off his old score against the East India Company, he then advocated the abolition of the court of directors as a governing body, the opening of the civil service to the army, the transference of the government to the crown, and the appointment of a council to advise the minister who should take the place of the president of the board of control. These suggestions of 1852 were carried out by his successor Lord Stanley, afterwards earl of Derby, in 1858, so closely even in details, that Lord Ellenborough must be pronounced the author, for good or evil, of the present home constitution of the government of India. Though acknowledged to be one of the foremost orators in the House of Lords, and taking a frequent part in debate, Ellenborough never held office again. He died at his seat, Southam House, near Cheltenham, on the 22nd of December 1871, when the barony reverted to his nephew Charles Edmund Law (1820–1890), the earldom becoming extinct.
See History of the Indian Administration (Bentley, 1874), edited by Lord Colchester; Minutes of Evidence taken before the Select Committee on Indian Territories (June 1852); volume i. of the Calcutta Review; the Friend of India, during the years 1842–1845; and John Hope, The House of Scindea: A Sketch (Longmans, 1863). The numerous books by and against Sir Charles Napier, on the conquest of Sind, should be consulted.
ELLERY, WILLIAM (1727–1820), American politician, a
signer of the Declaration of Independence, was born in Newport,
Rhode Island, on the 22nd of December 1727. He graduated
from Harvard in 1747, engaged in trade, studied law, and was
admitted to the bar in 1770. He was a member of the Rhode
Island committee of safety in 1775–1776, and was a delegate in
Congress in 1776–1781 and again in 1783–1785. Just after
his first election to Congress, he was placed on the important
marine committee, and he was made a member of the board of
admiralty when it was established in 1779. In April 1786 he
was elected commissioner of the continental loan office for the
state of Rhode Island and from 1790 until his death at Newport,
on the 15th of February 1820, he was collector of the customs
for the district of Newport.
See Edward T. Channing, “Life of William Ellery,” in vol. 6 of Jared Sparks’s American Biography (Boston and London, 1836).
ELLESMERE, FRANCIS EGERTON, 1st Earl of (1800–1857),
born in London on the 1st of January 1800, was the second son
of the 1st duke of Sutherland. He was known by his patronymic
as Lord Francis Leveson Gower until 1833, when he assumed
the surname of Egerton alone, having succeeded on the death
of his father to the estates which the latter inherited from the
duke of Bridgewater. Educated at Eton and at Christ Church,
Oxford, he entered parliament soon after attaining his majority
as member for the pocket borough of Bletchingly in Surrey.
He afterwards sat for Sutherlandshire and for South Lancashire,
which he represented when he was elevated to the peerage as
earl of Ellesmere and Viscount Brackley in 1846. In politics
he was a moderate Conservative of independent views, as was
shown by his supporting the proposal for establishing the
university of London, by his making and carrying a motion for
the endowment of the Roman Catholic clergy in Ireland, and by
his advocating free trade long before Sir Robert Peel yielded
on the question. Appointed a lord of the treasury in 1827, he held
the post of chief secretary for Ireland from 1828 till July 1830,
when he became secretary-at-war for a short time. His claims
to remembrance are founded chiefly on his services to literature
and the fine arts. Before he was twenty he printed for private
circulation a volume of poems, which he followed up after a short
interval by the publication of a translation of Goethe’s Faust,
one of the earliest that appeared in England, with some translations
of German lyrics and a few original poems. In 1839 he
visited the Mediterranean and the Holy Land. His impressions
of travel were recorded in his very agreeably written Mediterranean
Sketches (1843), and in the notes to a poem entitled
The Pilgrimage. He published several other works in prose and
verse, all displaying a fine literary taste. His literary reputation
