William Gerard Hamilton

This article is about the 18th-century English poet and politician. For other poets of this name, see William Hamilton.

William Gerrard Hamilton (1729-1796), from Parliamentary Logick, 1808. Courtesy Library Thing.

William Gerard Hamilton (28 January 1729 - 16 July 1796) was an English poet, and a politician who served as a member of Parliament in both England and Ireland.

Life

Overview

Hamilton, popularly known as “Single-Speech Hamilton,” was born in London on 28 January 1729, the son of a Scottish bencher of Lincoln’s Inn. He was educated at Winchester and at Oriel College, Oxford. Inheriting his father’s fortune he entered political life and became M.P. for Petersfield, Hampshire. His maiden speech, delivered on the 13th of November 1755, during the debate on the address, which excited Walpole’s admiration, is generally supposed to have been his only effort in the House of Commons. But the nickname “Single Speech” is undoubtedly misleading, and Hamilton is known to have spoken with success on other occasions, both in the House of Commons and in the Irish parliament. In 1756 he was appointed one of the commissioners for trade and plantations, and in 1761 he became chief secretary to Lord Halifax, the lord-lieutenant of Ireland, as well as Irish MP for Killebegs and English MP for Pontefract. He was chancellor of the exchequer in Ireland in 1763, and subsequently filled various other administrative offices. Hamilton was thought very highly of by Dr Johnson, and it is certain that he was strongly opposed to the British taxation of America. He died in London on 16 July 1796, and was buried in the chancel vault of St Martin’s-in-the-fields.

Youth and education

Hamilton was born on 28 January 1729, and baptised on 25 February in Lincoln's Inn Chapel. He was the only son of William Hamilton, a bencher of Lincoln's Inn, and his wife Helen, daughter of David Hay of Woodcockdale, Linlithgowshire; his grandfather was William Hamilton (died 1724).

He was educated at Winchester College and Oriel College, Oxford, where he matriculated, at the age of 16, on 4 March 1745, but did not take any degree. He was admitted a student of Lincoln's Inn on 4 May 1744, but soon gave up all thoughts of following the legal profession.

Career

His father, "who had been the first Scot who ever pleaded at the English bar, and, as it was said of him, should have been the last" (Walpole, Memoirs of the Reign of George II, ii. 44), died on 15 January 1754, leaving him a sufficient fortune to enable him to follow his own inclinations and enter political life. At the general election in April of that year Hamilton was returned to parliament as a member for Petersfield, Hampshire.

On 13 November 1755 he made his celebrated maiden speech during the great debate on the address, which lasted from 2 in the afternoon to a quarter to 5 the next morning. There is no report of this speech extant; but Horace Walpole, in giving an account of the debate in a letter to Conway, records:

Then there was a young Mr. Hamilton, who spoke for the first time, and was at once perfection. His speech was set, and full of antithesis; but those antitheses were full of argument. Indeed, his speech was the most argumentative of the whole day; and he broke through the regularity of his own composition, answered other people, and fell into his own track again with the greatest ease. His figure is advantageous, his voice strong and clear, his manner spirited, and the whole with an ease of an established speaker. You will ask, what could be beyond this? Nothing but what was beyond what ever was, and that was Pitt!".

It was from this speech that Hamilton acquired the misleading nickname of "Single-speech." There can be no doubt that he made a 2nd speech in the house, as Walpole, in a letter to Conway dated 4 March 1756, says : "The young Hamilton has spoken and shone again."

Through the instrumentality of Fox, Hamilton was on 24 April 1756 appointed a commissioner for trade and plantations; George, earl of Halifax, being then at the head of the commission. Upon the appointment of Halifax as lord-lieutenant of Ireland, in March 1761, Hamilton resigned this office, and became chief secretary to the new lord-lieutenant, whom he accompanied to Dublin in October.

At the general election in the spring of 1761 he was returned to the English parliament for the borough of Pontefract, and to the Irish parliament for the borough of Killebegs. During the session of the Irish parliament which began in October 1761, and lasted to the end of April of the following year, Hamilton made 5 speeches. They are said "to have fully answered the expectations of his auditors, on whom so great was the impression of his eloquence that at the distance of near fifty years it is not quite effaced from the minds of such of them as are yet living" (Parliamentary Logick, Preface, p. xxii). Copies of the rough drafts of 2 of these speeches have been preserved (ib. pp. 139-60, 165-94).

In April 1763 Hamilton was appointed chancellor of the exchequer in Ireland, on the resignation of Sir William Yorke. Hamilton served also as chief secretary to Hugh, duke of Northumberland, who succeeded Halifax as lord-lieutenant in this year. Through the influence of Archbishop Stone, however, Hamilton was dismissed from this office towards the close of the session of 1764.

He was a member of the Irish privy council, and in 1763 was appointed a bencher of the King's Inns, Dublin.

He did not sit in the Irish parliament again after the dissolution in 1768. At the general election in that year he was returned to the English parliament for Old Sarum, for Wareham in 1774, for Wilton in 1780, and for Haslemere in 1790. He refused Lord Shelburne's offer of the secretaryship at war in 1782 (Lord Auckland, Journal, 1861, i. 22), and resigned the office of chancellor of the exchequer in April 1784, receiving a pension of 2,000l. a year, and being succeeded by John Foster.

Private life

Hamilton never married. "This Mr. Hamilton," says Frances Burney, "is extremely tall and handsome, has an air of haughty and fashionable superiority, is intelligent, dry, sarcastic, and clever. I should have received much pleasure from his conversational powers had I not previously been prejudiced against him by hearing that he is infinitely artful, double, and crafty" (Madame D'Arblay, Diary, 1843, i. 293).

Though he never spoke in the House of Commons after his return from Ireland, yet he contrived to retain his fame as an orator; and so highly were his literary talents rated that many of his contemporaries attributed to him the authorship of the Letters of Junius (Wraxall, Historical Memoirs, 1884, i. 344-345).

Though it was probably true that he got the few speeches which he delivered by heart, and that he was always ready to use the brains of others instead of his own, there can be little doubt that he was a shrewd judge of men and things. As an example of the soundness of his judgment his letter to Calcraft, written in 1767 on the subject of American taxation, may be quoted. "For my own part," he writes, 'I think you have no right to tax them, and that every measure built upon this supposed right stands upon a rotten foundation, and must consequently tumble down, perhaps upon the heads of the workmen" (Chatham Correspondence, iii. 203).

In the spring of 1763 Hamilton obtained a pension of 300l. for Edmund Burke, who had for some 4 years past acted as a kind of private secretary to him, and in that capacity had accompanied Hamilton to Ireland. It is not altogether quite clear what brought about the rupture of this connection, but it would appear that Hamilton was anxious to secure Burke's undivided services for himself. These Burke refused to give, and "to get rid of him completely," writes Burke to Flood in a letter dated 18 May 1765, "and not to carry a memorial of such a person about me, I offered to transfer it [the pension] to his attorney in trust for him. This offer he thought proper to accept." In another letter on the same subject to John Hely Hutchinson, Burke asserts that "six of the best years of my life he [Hamilton] took me from every pursuit of literary reputation or improvement of my fortune. In that time he made his own fortune (a very large one), and he has also taken to himself the very little one which I had made."

Soon after this quarrel Hamilton appears to have sought Johnson's assistance in political and literary matters. Johnson had a great esteem for him; and on an occasion paid the following highly labored compliment to his powers of conversation : "I am very unwilling to be left alone, sir, and therefore I go with my company down the first pair of stairs, in some hopes that they may, perhaps, return again. I go with you, sir, as far as the street-door" (Boswell, Life of Johnson [ed. G. B. Hill], i. 490).

Death

Hamilton was not returned to the new parliament of 1796. He died in Upper Brook Street, London, on 16 July 1796, in the 68th year of his age, and was buried on 22 July in the chancel vault of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields.

Writing

Hamilton has left nothing behind him to warrant the brilliant reputation which he undoubtedly acquired during his life. Lord Charlemont described Hamilton as "a man whose talents were equal to every undertaking; and yet from indolence, or from too fastidious vanity, or from what other cause I know not, he has done nothing" (Prior, Life of Malone, p. 299).

He is said to have printed a volume of Poems (Oxford, 4to) in 1750 for private circulation, but there is no copy of this edition in the British Museum.

Malone published Hamilton's works after his death under the title of Parliamentary Logick; to which are subjoined Two Speeches delivered in the House of Commons of Ireland, and other Pieces, by the Right Honourable William Gerard Hamilton. With an Appendix containing Considerations on the Corn Laws by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., never before printed (London, 8vo). An engraving by W. Evans of a portrait of Hamilton by J. R. Smith, formerly in the Stowe Collection, forms the frontispiece to the book, which was severely criticised by Lord Jeffrey in the Edinburgh Review (xv. 163-75).

A number of Hamilton's letters, throwing a considerable light upon the political history of the period, and addressed to John Calcraft the elder and Earl Temple respectively, are printed in Chatham's Correspondence and the Grenville Papers. There are also several of Hamilton's letters among the Percy Correspondence, in the possession of Lord Emly (Hist. MSS. Comm. 8th Rep. App. i., 174-208).

Publications

Poetry

• Four Odes. London: R. Manby & H.S. Cox, 1750.
  • also published in Parliamentary Logick, 1808.
• A Slight View of the Village and School of R—: In imitation of Gray's 'Eaton College'. London: E. Dilly, 1780.
• The Death of the Thrush: A tale. London: T. Longman, 1780.

Collected editions

• Parliamentary Logick; to which are subjoined two speeches, delivered in the House of Commons of Ireland, and other pieces (edited by Edmund Malone). London: C. & R. Baldwin for Thomas Payne, 1808.

Except where noted, bibliographical information courtesy WorldCat.

See also

• List of British poets

References

•  Barker, George Russell William (1890) "Hamilton, William Gerrard" in Stephen, Leslie; Lee, Sidney Dictionary of National Biography 24 London: Smith, Elder, pp. 232-234  Wikisource, Web, June 8, 2020.
• Martin, Peter (2005). Edmond Malone, Shakespearean Scholar: A literary biography. Cambridge University Press. ISBN 0-521-61982-3. 

External links

Poems

• "Ode on Beauty: To *****"
• "Ode to Sleep"
• "Ode to Taste"
• "Ode to the Right Honourable the Lady **** on the Death of her Son"
• William Gerrard Hamilton at the Eighteenth-Century Poetry Archive (4 odes)

About

• Hamilton, William Gerard (1729-1796) at History of Parliament Online

This article incorporates text from a publication now in the public domain, the Dictionary of National Biography (edited by Leslie Stephen). London: Smith, Elder, 1885-1900. Original article is at: Hamilton, William Gerrard