Henry Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne

Henry Charles Keith Petty-Fitzmaurice, 5th Marquess of Lansdowne KG GCSI GCMG GCIE PC (14 January 18453 June 1927), was a British statesman who served successively as Governor General of Canada, Viceroy of India, Secretary of State for War and Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs.

In 1917, during the First World War, he wrote the "Lansdowne letter", advocating in vain a compromise peace. A millionaire, he had the distinction of having held senior positions in Liberal and Conservative Party governments. His maternal grandfather, Count Charles de Flahaut, was an important French general to Napoleon Bonaparte, and a member of his family. He fought along his side during many battles and later occupied the functions of Ambassador and Senator of the Empire. Through his mother Emily, Lansdowne was half-nephew of Emperor Napoleon III, a step-grandson of Queen Hortense Bonaparte, and a great-grandson of Prince Talleyrand, the Emperor's foreign minister. His maternal great-grandfather, George Elphinstone, 1st Viscount Keith, was also the Admiral who prevented Napoleon's escape from France after the Battle of Waterloo, and who received and supervised his final exile to St. Helena in 1815.

Lord Lansdowne was a member of the Fitzmaurice/Petty-Fitzmaurice family, a cadet branch of the House of FitzGerald of Ireland. He held the courtesy title Viscount Clanmaurice from birth to 1863 and then the courtesy title Earl of Kerry until he succeeded as Marquess of Lansdowne in 1866. Upon his mother's death in 1895, he succeeded her as the 9th Lord Nairne in the Peerage of Scotland. He was estimated to be the sixteenth richest peer in the United Kingdom, and the fourth largest landowner. At one of his inherited properties, Derreen House (Lauragh, County Kerry, in the present-day Republic of Ireland), Lord Lansdowne started to develop a great garden from 1871 onwards. For most of the rest of his life, he spent three months of the year at Derreen.

Lord Lansdowne entered the House of Lords as a member of the Liberal Party in 1866. He served in William Ewart Gladstone's government as a Lord of the Treasury from 1869 to 1872 and as Under-Secretary of State for War from 1872 to 1874. He was appointed Under-Secretary of State for India in 1880 and, having gained experience in overseas administration, was appointed Governor General of Canada in 1883, replacing John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, the son-in-law of Queen Victoria. His great-grandfather, Lord Shelburne, had previously founded Boodle's Club, which had as members Adam Smith, the Duke of Wellington, Sir Winston Churchill, and Ian Fleming, among others, and is now the second oldest club in the world.

In 1897, he also became a founding trustee of the National Gallery of British Art, with the Earl of Carlisle of Castle Howard, Lord Brownlow of Belton House, Alfred de Rothschild of Halton House, Sir Charles Tennant of Glen House, John Postle Heseltine of Walhampton House, and Sir John Murray Scott.

Governor General of Canada, 1883–1888

Lord Lansdowne was Governor General during turbulent times in Canada. His Protestant Irish connections made him unpopular with the Catholic Irish element. He was appointed GCMG in January 1884.

Prime Minister Sir John A. Macdonald's government was in its second term and facing allegations of scandal over the building of the railway (the Pacific Scandal), and the economy was once again sliding into recession. The North-West Rebellion of 1885 and the controversy caused by its leader, Louis Riel, posed a serious threat to the equilibrium of Canadian politics. His experiences in Western Canada gave Lansdowne a great love of the Canadian outdoors and the physical beauty of Canada. He was an avid fisherman and was intensely interested in winter sports. His love of the wilderness and the Canadian countryside led him to purchase a second residence (first Cascapedia House, built in 1880, later renamed Lorne Cottage, and then New Dereen Camp, built in 1884) on the Cascapédia River in the Gaspé Peninsula, Quebec. The same area was previously used by the past Viceroy of Canada, John Campbell, 9th Duke of Argyll, and his wife, Princess Louise, the daughter of Queen Victoria. and GCIE The office, which he held from 1888 to 1894,

The present day town of Lansdowne in Uttarakand state was established in 1887 and named after him.

Secretary of State for War, 1895–1900

Upon his return, as a Liberal Unionist, he aligned with the Conservative Party. Prime Minister Lord Salisbury appointed Lansdowne to the post of Secretary of State for War in June 1895. The unpreparedness of the British Army during the Second Boer War brought calls for Lansdowne's impeachment in 1899. His biographer, P. B. Waite, considers that he was unjustly criticised for British military failures, but ever the good minister, he took full responsibility and said nothing.

Secretary of State for Foreign Affairs, 1900–1905

After the Unionist victory in the general election of October 1900, Salisbury reorganised his cabinet, gave up the post of Foreign Secretary and appointed Lansdowne to replace him.

According to G. W. Monger's summary of the Cabinet debates in 1900 to 1902:<blockquote>Chamberlain advocated ending Britain's isolation by concluding an alliance with Germany; Salisbury resisted change. With the new crisis in China caused by the Boxer rising and Landsdowne's appointment to the Foreign Office in 1900, those who advocated a change won the upper hand. Landsdowne in turn attempted to reach an agreement with Germany and a settlement with Russia but failed. In the end Britain concluded an alliance with Japan. The decision of 1901 was momentous; British policy had been guided by events, but Lansdowne had no real understanding of these events. The change of policy had been forced on him and was a confession of Britain's weakness.</blockquote>

Big Revolver

On 15 June 1903, he made a speech in the House of Lords defending fiscal retaliation against countries with high tariffs and governments subsidising products for sale in Britain (known as 'bounty-fed products', also called dumping). Retaliation was to be done by threatening to impose tariffs in response against that country's goods. His Liberal Unionists had split from the Liberals, who promoted Free Trade, and the speech was a landmark in the group's slide towards protectionism. Landsdowne argued that threatening retaliatory tariffs was similar to getting respect in a room of armed men by showing a big revolver (his exact words were "a rather larger revolver than everybody else's"). The "Big Revolver" became a catchphrase of the day and was often used in speeches and cartoons.

Unionist leader in Lords

thumb|upright|The Marquess of Lansdowne by [[Philip Alexius de László, 1920]]

In 1903, Lord Lansdowne became the leader of Unionists (Conservative and Liberal Unionist peers) in the House of Lords. In 1915, Lansdowne joined the wartime coalition cabinet of H. H. Asquith as a Minister without Portfolio but was not given a post in the Lloyd George government formed the following year, despite Conservative pre-eminence in that government. In 1917, having discussed the idea with colleagues for some time with no response, he published the controversial "Lansdowne letter", which called for a statement of postwar intentions from the Entente Powers, and an end to the war on the basis of a return to the status quo ante. He was criticised as acting contrary to cabinet policy.

Death

Lord Lansdowne died at Clonmel, Ireland on 3 June 1927 at the age of 82. His widow died in 1932, and their tombs are in the churchyard at Derry Hill, near their Bowood estate in Wiltshire.

Family

thumb|upright|Lady Maud Evelyn Hamilton, Marchioness of Lansdowne by Cowell, Simla, India

Henry Petty-FitzMaurice married Lady Maud Evelyn Hamilton, a daughter of James Hamilton, 1st Duke of Abercorn and his wife Lady Lady Louisa Jane Russell, daughter of John Russell, 6th Duke of Bedford in 1869. The couple had four children: married firstly Henry Beresford, 6th Marquess of Waterford and secondly Osborne Beauclerk, 12th Duke of St Albans.

Arms

Honorific eponyms

upright|thumb|Lord Lansdowne Public School and its famous stone at Robert Street, [[Toronto, Ontario, Canada]]

Geographic locations:

The town of Lansdowne in India
Ontario: Lansdowne Avenue, Toronto
Ontario: Lansdowne Street, Sudbury
Ontario: Lansdowne Park, Ottawa
Ontario: Lansdowne Street, Peterborough
Ontario: Lansdowne Avenue, Sarnia
New Brunswick: Lansdowne Street, Campbellton
New Brunswick: Lansdowne Street, Fredericton
Quebec: (Upper) Lansdowne Avenue, Westmount
Saskatchewan: Lansdowne Avenue, Imperial
: Mount Lansdowne, Yukon
Lansdowne Road, Kolkata, India.
Lansdowne, Nova Scotia
British Columbia:Lansdowne Road, Saanich

Schools:

Ontario: Lansdowne Public School, Sudbury
Ontario: Lord Lansdowne Public School, Toronto
Manitoba: Lansdowne Public School, Winnipeg
Ontario: Lansdowne Public School, Sarnia

Bridge:

Lansdowne Bridge, Rohri, Sindh, Pakistan – a rigid girder bridge built 1879–1887 used by railway traffic

Buildings:

Lansdowne Building, Mysore, Karnataka, India, c. 1892 – a market being repaired and restored after a partial collapse in 2012
Lansdowne Court, Kolkata, India – residential development
Lansdowne Hall, Cooch Behar, India – Community Hall, Library, Masonic Purposes. now Cooch Behar District Magistrate's Office

Market:

Lansdowne Market, Kolkata, India.

Station:

Lansdowne (TTC), Toronto
Lansdowne station (SkyTrain), Vancouver

Education:

McGill University, Montreal, 1884, honorific Doctor of law

External links

1903 World's Work illustrated article with photo of Petty-Fitzmaurice