GRANT DUFF, Mountstuart Elphinstone (1829-1906), of Eden , Aberdeenshire

‘A many-sided man’, Grant Duff (as he was generally known) was a cosmopolitan Liberal politician and intellectual who had a strong belief in the inevitable tide of progress.1Manchester Courier, 13 Jan. 1906. First returned for Elgin Burghs in 1857, he gave general support to the administrations of Lords Palmerston and Russell, but was critical of the lack of domestic reforms. In Grant Duff’s view, the Liberal party had to take up new progressive causes if it was to remain ‘a Liberal-Reforming-Movement party’.2M.E. Grant Duff, Elgin speeches (1871), 8. Above all, he believed that meritocratic reforms were necessary to make Britain’s venerable institutions, especially educational establishments, fit for purpose in the modern age. More broadly he looked to William Gladstone, whom he admired as ‘the very incarnation of debating power’, to provide progressive leadership in the post-Palmerstonian era.3Aberdeen Journal, 19 July 1865; Duff, Elgin speeches, 67.

Grant Duff had a striking appearance, with bright red hair and beard. Despite his broad knowledge and intellect he was not always effective in debate. In 1864 Sir John Trelawny, Liberal MP for Tavistock, wrote:

Grant Duff could not get a hearing. What an odd intellectual ferret it is! Clever, cultivated & industrious (I fancy) – why does he not succeed? Is he conceited? or does he not read his House well?4The parliamentary diaries of Sir John Trelawny, 1858-1865, ed. T.A. Jenkins (1990), 281.

He was a regular and occasionally long speaker. From the early 1860s he typically spoke ten to twenty times a session.

Grant Duff was the son and heir of James Cuninghame Grant Duff, the 5th laird of Eden, Aberdeenshire, a minor Scottish gentleman.5Burke’s landed gentry (1937), 657-8. After completing his education at Oxford Grant Duff won a competition for the law studentship offered by the Inns of Court, and graduated with an LL. B. from the University of London.6Dod’s parliamentary companion (1858), 182. Grant Duff was returned unopposed for Elgin Burghs as a self-styled ‘advanced Liberal’ at a by-election in 1857.7Elgin Courier, 18 Dec. 1857. Aided by his kinship with the Duffs, earls of Fife, he was unchallenged until his retirement in 1881 with the exception of the 1880 general election. During his first campaign he expressed the fashionable cry for meritocratic reform, contending that the ‘government of the country is too exclusively vested in one class, and I would like to see an infusion of the middle class’.8Ibid. Thereafter he gave annual accounts of his parliamentary conduct to his constituents that were later published as Elgin speeches (1871).

Between 1859 and 1866 Grant Duff travelled extensively around Europe, which was undertaken ‘mainly as a part of my political education’.9M.E. Grant Duff, Notes from a diary, 1851-72, 2 vols. (1897), i, p. ix. A fluent German speaker, he wrote a series of articles on the recent history, current state and future prospects of a number of countries which were later published as Studies in European politics (1866).10M.E. Grant Duff, Studies in European politics (1866) included chapters on Spain, Austria, Russia, Prussia, the German Confederation, Belgium and Denmark that had previously been published in the North British Review, Fraser’s Magazine and the National Review. A second volume had to be abandoned due to his appointment to ministerial office in 1868, but he published ‘Italy in 1867’, North British Review, xlvii (1867), 463-96. Interestingly, Grant Duff did not write about France even though that was the country with which he was most familiar, regularly spending Easter, autumn and winter in Paris. In 1868 the outgoing Conservative foreign secretary Lord Stanley wrote to Grant Duff acknowledging ‘the many useful hints I have gleaned’ from the book. The nobleman added ‘I know of no English politician except yourself, who has given time and thought to a systematic and thorough examination of foreign countries’.11Lord Stanley to M.E. Grant Duff, 11 Dec. 1868, qu. in Duff, Notes from a diary, 1851-72, ii. 124.

Although Grant Duff did not ‘feel entire or absolute sympathy’ with Palmerston’s government, he supported it largely for its management of foreign policy. In his 1859 speech during the debate on the address he had lambasted the ‘extraordinary incapacity’ of Derby’s ministry over foreign affairs.12Hansard, 9 June 1859, vol. 154, c. 206. Like other advanced Liberals, Grant Duff was favourable to Garibaldi’s insurrection and Italian nationalism and unity.13Hansard, 11 May 1860, vol. 158, cc. 1128-30. He believed that the development of good, constitutional government was more important than national self-determination, but conceded that ‘this nationality cry is the cry of the time, and that, wherever it is sufficiently strong, it must in the end be yielded to’, 11 Apr. 1862.14See also Grant Duff, Elgin speeches, 42-3.

However, his support for European liberalism was tempered with realism. He expressed sympathy for the Polish revolt in the early 1860s, but thought the British government was right not to offer false hope to a rebellion that was about to be crushed by the Russians.15Hansard, 27 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 924-5; Duff, Studies in European politics, 87-95. He was against British intervention in the dispute over Schleswig-Holstein between Prussia and Denmark. He made a speech in the ‘German interest’, 4 Feb. 1864, complaining of the British public’s uncritical support for the Danish underdog, but was equally scathing about the Prussian government. He identified most with the ‘great German Liberal party’ and the diet of the German Confederation, which unlike Prussia had a constitutional system of parliamentary government.16Grant Duff, Elgin speeches, 40.

While Grant Duff concurred in the foreign policy of the Liberal government from 1859 to 1866, he was increasingly frustrated at the lack of a progressive domestic policy.17Hansard, 6 Feb. 1863, vol. 169, cc. 156-7. Without reforming measures, there was little incentive for Liberals to support their government. ‘Are we to be bound together by personal ties to the Gentlemen upon the Treasury Bench?’, he asked on one occasion.18Hansard, 24 July 1863, vol. 172, c. 1392. He lamented that it was left to Liberal backbenchers to bring forward measures such as parliamentary reform or the abolition of church rates, which should have been initiated by Liberal ministers.19Grant Duff, Elgin speeches, 31-2. When Liberal backbenchers proposed select committees on the Irish church, Grant Duff voiced strong support for disestablishment, 29 June 1863, 28 Mar. 1865, which was another policy he thought the government should take up. After the first speech, Gladstone told him that ‘I am sorry I did not hear your speech the other night. I am told you spoke your mind more distinctly than any one’.20Grant Duff, Notes from a diary, 1851-72, i. 235.

Grant Duff repeatedly took the initiative in pressing for meritocratic reforms. He moved unsuccessfully for a parliamentary inquiry into the diplomatic service, 19 June 1860. Serving on the committee appointed the following year he proposed introducing ‘a very guarded system of competitive examination’.21Grant Duff, Notes from a diary, 1851-72, i. 160; PP 1861 (459), vi. 3, 17. Grant Duff proposed that the top twelve candidates who passed a civil service examination open to all British subjects be put forward to the foreign secretary to be considered for attaché appointments. After it was rejected, Disraeli told Grant Duff that ‘it would tend to weaken government. People talk against parliamentary patronage, but without it the whole thing would blow up’.22Grant Duff, Notes from a diary, 1851-72, i. 160. However, Grant Duff later expressed satisfaction that the select committee had ushered in a series of changes that gradually transformed the diplomatic service.23M.E. Grant Duff, Out of the past: some biographical essays (2 vols. 1903), i. 185. His motion to reform the Inns of Court so that all barristers underwent systematic training in legal theory tested by an examination was negatived without a division, 1 July 1864.

Most significantly Grant Duff secured the appointment of the royal commission on public schools, better known as the Clarendon commission, in 1861. While Grant Duff promoted meritocratic reform generally, he argued that this was particularly important for educational institutions. He prepared the ground by circulating a paper to other MPs and corresponding with leading politicians including Sir George Lewis, Gladstone and Sir Stafford Northcote, as well as Thomas Arnold, headmaster of Rugby school.24Grant Duff, Notes from a diary, 1851-72, i. 157-8; Hansard, 23 Apr. 1861, vol. 162, cc. 983-5; 4 June 1861, vol. 163, c. 546. After the Clarendon commission reported in 1864, Grant Duff argued that too much emphasis was placed on memorising and writing out Latin and Greek and agreed that the curricula should be broadened to include modern languages and other subjects.25Hansard, 6 May 1864, vol. 175, cc. 105-27. He later pressed for a royal commission into middle-class endowed schools, having earlier proposed that the endowments of inoperative charities be applied to education.26Hansard, 11 June 1863, vol. 171, cc. 712-17; 29 July 1864, vol. 176, c. 2191 When the royal commission on Scottish education reported in 1867, Grant Duff took the opportunity to voice support for its recommendations to gradually establish a national system under a central body.27Hansard, 21 June 1867, vol. 188, cc. 303-21. His speech was described by the former lord advocate James Moncrieff as ‘clear and very able’.28Ibid., 343. He called for improved pay and conditions for Scottish schoolmasters, 3 July 1868.

Between 1863 and 1868 Grant Duff was one of the sponsors of bills to abolish the Anglican tests for Oxford University, his alma mater.29PP 1864 (18), iv. 411-14; 1865 (85), iv. 517-20; 1866 (15), v. 369-72; 1867 (16), vi. 399-402; 1867-68 (30), iii. 589-92. Although he viewed it as a concession to Dissenters and liberal opinion within the university, above all Grant Duff argued that the measure would reinvigorate the university by opening it to a broader range of talent.30Hansard, 16 Mar. 1864, vol. 174, cc. 116-21. He complained that at the moment Oxford was ‘little better than an appendage of the Anglican church’, whereas once it was reformed it could fulfil its destiny as ‘the first seat of learning in Christendom’, 14 June 1865. After 1867 the measure was extended to include the Cambridge University tests as well.31Hansard, 10 Apr. 1867, vol. 186, cc. 1445-6. Although these bills regularly passed the Commons they were blocked by the Lords and the tests for Oxford, Cambridge and Durham were not removed until the 1871 Universities Tests Act passed by Gladstone’s government.

Grant Duff favoured an extension of the franchise to ‘considerably, but not overwhelmingly’ increase the ‘democratic element in our political system’.32Grant Duff, Elgin speeches, 85. However, he thought that both opponents and proponents of reform exaggerated its likely impact.33Hansard, 13 May 1867, vol. 187, cc. 416-17. He dutifully supported Russell and Gladstone’s 1866 reform bill, but later reflected that they had ‘piteously mismanaged’ the whole business.34Duff, Out of the past, i. 194. In Grant Duff’s opinion, Russell should have formed a stronger cabinet and introduced a number of other liberal measures that were likely to pass, before proposing a reform measure for a first reading only. This would have indicated whether the government could count on the support of Liberal MPs before a full measure was introduced in the following session.35Grant Duff, Elgin speeches, 80. In the debates on the 1867 representation of the people bill, Grant Duff was one of the loyalists who supported Gladstone’s abortive attempt to propose a £5 rental franchise and remove the requirement for the personal payment of rates above this level. This was scuppered by the ‘tea room revolt’, but he still divided in favour of Gladstone’s amendment to give compounders the vote, 12 Apr. 1867. In the debates on the Scottish reform bill the following year, Grant Duff welcomed the granting of representation to Scottish universities, but pressed unsuccessfully for Aberdeen to be given an extra MP, 25, 28 May 1868.

Grant Duff was sometimes embarrassed when he strayed outside his areas of expertise. When he proposed that the seat of government in India be moved from Calcutta due to the climate’s affect on Europeans, he was swiftly contradicted by many of the old India hands in the House, 27 June 1862. His denigration of the speaking style of Charles Wood, long-serving secretary of state for India, 21 July 1864, was not calculated to increase his influence with the front bench. He was also unwise to call attention to a speech of Disraeli’s at Merchant Taylors’ Hall, which he claimed was ‘wild’ and insulting to the foreign policy of the previous Liberal government, 12 June 1868. Gladstone thought it regrettable that the issue had raised at all.36Although, characteristically, he took the opportunity to attack Disraeli’s language.

Grant Duff served as under-secretary of state for India in Gladstone’s first government, 1868-74, and as under-secretary of state for the colonies from 1880 until 1881 when Gladstone appointed him governor of Madras.37H.C.G. Matthew, ‘Grant Duff, Sir Mountstuart Elphinstone (1829-1906)’, www.oxforddnb.com. On his return in 1886, Grant Duff resumed his prolific writing career, including publishing six volumes of his diaries.38M.E. Grant Duff, Notes from a diary, 1851-72 (2 vols. 1897), Notes from a diary, 1873-81 (2 vols. 1898); Notes from a diary, kept chiefly in southern India, 1881-6 (2 vols. 1899); Notes from a diary, 1889-91 (2 vols. 1901); Notes from a diary, 1892-5 (2 vols. 1904); Notes from a diary, 1896 to January 23, 1901 (2 vols. 1905). He was, however, careful to excise much of the political content to keep them light, anecdotal and good-natured.39Grant Duff, Notes from a diary, 1851-72, i., p. ix. He reflected on his parliamentary experience in a chapter in volume one of Out of the past: some biographical essays (1903). He was later chairman of the anti-collectivist Liberty and Property Defence League, and had the distinction of serving as president of both the Royal Geographical and Historical Societies.40Matthew, ‘Grant Duff’. On his death in 1906, his personalty was sworn under £85,998 5s. 2d., a figure that perhaps reflected the success of his writing and publishing career. He was succeeded by his eldest son Arthur Cuninghame Grant Duff (1861-1948), a diplomat.41Ibid. His three other sons pursued careers in the army, navy and diplomatic service.42Burke’s landed gentry (1937), 657-8. Grant Duff’s papers, including his diaries, are held by the British Library, Asia, Pacific and Africa Collections (MSS Eur F 234).