just and comprehensive; but he is deficient in the force and grasp of mind which leaves an impression not merely upon contemporaries, but adds to the intellectual riches of a country. His character appears to have been amiable, though somewhat stiff and cold. He was a firm friend, a graceful scholar, a pious if not very earnest bishop.—T.
HURDIS, James, D.D., was born at Bishopstone, Sussex, in 1763, educated at Chichester, and graduated A.M. at Magdalen college, Oxford, in 1787, of which he became a fellow. His scholarship procured him the friendship of Dr. Horne and other distinguished men of Oxford, and the tutorship of Pelham, afterwards bishop of Exeter. In 1788 Hurdis published his first work, "The Village Curate," a poem in blank verse, which was succeeded in 1790 by "Adriano." These poems were very favourably received. Subsequently he produced "Panthea," "Elmer and Ophelia," "The Orphan Twins," and other pieces, especially "Sir Thomas More," a tragedy. The earl of Chichester, his pupil's father, obtained for him the living of Bishopstone; and in 1793 he was elected professor of poetry in the university of Oxford. Hurdis is best known in connection with Hayley and Cowper, whose friendship he enjoyed; indeed, he may in poetry be considered as a follower of Cowper. He is also remembered as a Shaksperian scholar. Hurdis also wrote some theological papers. He died in London, December 22, 1801.—J. F. W.
* HURLSTONE, James Yeates, president of the Society of British Artists, was born in London in 1801, and after the usual course of instruction, appeared as an exhibiter at the Royal Academy about 1820. But shortly after this he joined the ranks of the Society of British Artists, in which he soon became a prominent member, sending his pictures almost exclusively to their gallery for exhibition, and being one of the most active in procuring their charter of incorporation. Mr. Hurlstone has painted several historical and poetical pictures, but his subjects are more commonly taken from Italian and Spanish out-door life: he has also painted many portraits. In his earlier pictures he chiefly appeared to follow the manner, both in largeness of handling and colour, of Sir Joshua Reynolds; but of late years he has approximated more and more, especially in his Spanish peasant boys, and the like, to the colour and composition of Murillo. His knowledge of Spanish life and character has been acquired during several visits to the peninsula.—J. T—e.
HURTADO de Mendoza, Diego. See Mendoza.
HUSKISSON, William, Right Honourable, one of the earliest official inaugurators of a liberal commercial policy in this country, was the son of a gentleman-farmer of good family and estate, and born at Moreton Court, Warwickshire, on the 11th of March, 1770. Educated at various country schools, Mr. Huskisson early displayed a singular aptitude for figures, which in his subsequent official career he had so much occasion to manipulate. After his mother's death in 1774 (his father marrying again), he was taken charge of by her brother, Dr. Gem, who, accompanying as physician the duke of Bedford, sent ambassador to Paris after the peace of 1763, settled in the French metropolis, and cultivated the intimacy of the philosophes, and such foreign residents as Franklin and Jefferson. Huskisson was nineteen, and had resided with his uncle six years in Paris, when the French revolution of 1789 broke out. In his uncle's circle he had acquired liberal ideas, and hailed the Revolution. He became a member of a club of constitutional liberals, the Societé de 1789; and one of his first appearances in public was to deliver a speech at a meeting of this association, strongly denouncing a proposed issue of assignats to the amount of eighty-four millions sterling. Thus early had the currency question engaged his attention. The speech made some sensation in Paris, especially among the English residents, and in the year of its delivery, 1790, he became secretary to the English ambassador. Lord Gower, afterwards marquis of Stafford. Lord Gower was recalled after the insurrectionary movement of the 10th of August, 1792, and Huskisson returned with him to England, and at his residence at Wimbledon frequently met Mr. Pitt and Mr. Dundas. His knowledge of the French language and of French society recommended him to Mr. Dundas as a proper person to undertake the charge of a department in the alien office, for the investigation of the claims of French emigrants to relief. His zeal and assiduity in this post were remarked, and in 1795 he was appointed under-secretary of state for war and the colonies under Mr. Dundas, and is said at the same time to have entered into confidential relations with Mr. Pitt. In 1796 he was returned to the house of commons as member for Morpeth; but through a constitutional difference, which he never entirely shook off, some time elapsed before he took part in the debates. On Mr. Pitt's resignation in 1801, Mr. Huskisson retired with him; and when Mr. Pitt returned to power in 1804, he became secretary of the treasury. On the death of Pitt he went out of office and into opposition, where he remained during the brief administration of "All the Talents." In 1807, on the formation of the duke of Portland's ministry, he resumed his former post of secretary of the treasury; and his share in the correspondence respecting the new arrangement between the public and the bank of England, brought him considerable reputation as an able and lucid financier. He had formed a strong personal and political attachment to Mr. Canning, who early pronounced him "the best practical man in England;" and on Mr. Canning's withdrawal from the ministry in 1809, Huskisson disinterestedly resigned, and would not return to office so long as his friend was excluded from it. Meanwhile, he had published in 1810 a pamphlet on the currency, advocating principles identical with those of the bullion committee, of which he was a member. In 1804, after he had been two years out of parliament, he became member for Liskeard; from 1807 to 1812 he represented Harwich, and Chichester from that year until 1823. On the appointment of Mr. Canning to the Lisbon embassy in 1814, he returned to office as chief commissioner of woods and forests, and found that his disinterestedness in following the political fortunes of his friend had thrown him behind in the official race, and given a priority to juniors like Mr. (afterwards Sir Robert) Peel, and Mr. Robinson, the late earl of Ripon. He was active in the discharge of the duties of his new office, but his free-trade views were not yet sufficiently bold to allow him to oppose the corn-law of 1815, which, on the contrary, he supported. The time, however, was coming when they were to be embodied by himself in legislation. In 1823, on the withdrawal of Mr. Canning from the representation of Liverpool, he was succeeded by Mr. Huskisson as member for that important commercial community, and in the same year he was appointed to the office of president of the board of trade. Under the auspices of his predecessor, Mr. Wallace, and of Mr. Robinson, some changes, with a free-trade tendency, in our commercial policy had marked the recent legislation of the country. During Mr. Huskisson's occupancy of the presidentship of the board of trade this policy was largely developed, and though never pushed to the extent visible in our own days, excited a great deal of clamour, and made him the subject of many and bitter attacks. He began, in 1823, by a further and very important relaxation of the navigation laws—the reciprocity acts—empowering the sovereign, by order in council, to place foreign ships on an equality, as regarded importation and exportation, with those of Britain, in all cases where British ships were admitted by foreign countries to an equality with the ships of those countries. Restrictions on the commerce of the colonies were also relaxed. Then followed a sweeping reduction of protective duties on foreign commodities, which, in the case of the silk-manufacture especially, brought much of temporary odium on the proposer. Mr. Huskisson's expositions of his policy—elaborate, clear, demonstrative, and instructive—were something almost new in parliamentary history, and people were surprised to find that such seeming dry subjects as silk and shipping could be made so interesting. From time to time he was accustomed, moreover, to review the results of his past legislation; to refute by facts and figures the charges brought against it; and to prove that the interests which asserted that they were injured by it, had in reality been benefitted, and had flourished with new vigour. Some time after his appointment to the presidency of the board of trade, he had entered the cabinet; and on the death of Mr. Canning, he was advanced to hold the seals of the colonial office in Lord Goderich's ministry. He remained in office under the duke of Wellington, and was exposed to some obloquy for this, although it might have been thought that he had formerly shown how much he could sacrifice to friendship. Voting against his colleagues on the disfranchisement of East Retford, he placed his office at the disposal of the duke, who interpreted the offer as a resignation, though Mr. Huskisson endeavoured vainly to give the act a different meaning. Mr. Huskisson's withdrawal from the Wellington ministry was followed by that of his friends of its so-called "Canningite" section—Lord Palmerston; Mr. Grant, afterwards
