Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 1.djvu/38

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Adderley
18
Adderley

imbued him. In 1832 he became a gentleman-commoner at Christ Church, Oxford, where his piety suffered no diminution, while he acquired a knowledge of music and art and a love of horse riding and of tobacco. He rode daily till he was eighty-eight, and hunted for many years. At Christ Church he began, too, a life-long friendship with John Robert Godley [q. v.], who greatly influenced him. He took a pass degree in 1835.

From 1836 to 1841 Adderley mainly engaged in travel, study, and the management of his estates. He sought to develop his property on enlightened principles. When he came of age in 1835 the estate at Saltley near Birmingham supported a population of 400, which grew to 27,000 in his lifetime. Planning the streets of the town in 1837 so as to avoid the possibility of slums, he may be called the father of town-planning. In providing, endowing, and supporting places of worship in Saltley he spent 70,000l. He gave Adderley Park to Birmingham; in 1847 he promoted the foundation of the Saltley Church Training College (in which he was interested to the end) and in 1852 he founded the Saltley Reformatory on the model of that of Mettray in France.

The family residence at Hams Hall was not far from the home of Sir Robert Peel at Drayton Manor, Tamworth. Peel urged Adderley to enter Parliament and in June 1841 he was elected as a tory for the northern division of Staffordshire. He held the seat through eight elections, retiring in 1878. Adderley opposed Peel's free trade policy of 1846, although he formally abandoned protection at the general election of 1852. He took at first little part in debate, but wrote occasionally in 1848 on general topics in the 'Morning Chronicle' and on colonial subjects in the 'Spectator' in 1854.

Gradually colonial questions roused Adderley's enthusiasm, and he soon rendered services of the first importance to colonial development. In 1849 he joined his friends Godley, Edward Gibbon Wakefield [q. v.], and Lord Lyttelton in founding the Church of England colony of Canterbury in New Zealand. In the same year he strenuously resisted Lord Grey's proposal to transport convicts to the Cape, and elaborated his argument in a pamphlet, 'Transportation not necessary' (1851). To Adderley's advocacy the Cape colonists assigned the government's abandonment of its threat to send Irish political convicts among them, and by way of gratitude they named Adderley street after him. Penal colonial settlements were abrogated in 1852, partly owing to Adderley's activity.

Meanwhile Adderley helped Wakefield to found in 1849 the Colonial Reform Society for promoting colonial self-government, and of that society he became secretary. In 'The Australian Colonies Bill Discussed' (1849) he urged complete delegation of powers to the colony while throwing on it the cost of any imperial assistance. The independent constitution of New Zealand was drafted at Hams Hall in 1850 and the constitution of the other colonies followed this precedent. In 'Some Reflections on the Speech of Lord John Russell on Colonial Policy' (1850) Adderley declared that principles of self-government could alone yield 'thriving colonies, heartily and inseparably and usefully attached to England.' He powerfully developed his views in 'The Statement of the Present Cape Case' (1851); in his 'Remarks on Mr. Godley's Speech on Self-government for New Zealand' (1857); in his letter to Disraeli on 'The Present Relation of England with her Colonies' (1861; 2nd edit. 1862); and finally in his 'Review of "The Colonial Policy of Lord John Russell's Administration," by Earl Grey [1853], and of subsequent Colonial History' (1869, 3 pts.), a comprehensive survey of the progress of colonial freedom. At the age of ninety, in his 'Imperial Fellowship of Self-governed British Colonies' (1903), he enunciated anew his lifelong conviction that 'colonial self-administration and imperial fellowship' are 'co-ordinate elements ' in 'true colonial relationship.'

In Lord Derby's first administration of 1852 Adderley refused the secretaryship of the board of control, and continued to advocate as a private member of the House of Commons social and educational as well as colonial reforms with an independence of party cries which earned him the epithet of liberal-conservative. In 1852 he introduced a reformatory schools bill, for bringing refractory children or young criminals under educational control. In 1853 he opposed with great foresight the abandonment of the Orange River sovereignty. In 1854 he was responsible for the Young Offenders Act (a part of his 'reformatory' policy), and he introduced the Manchester and Salford education bill, in which a local education rate was first proposed. In 'Punishment is not Education' (1856) and in his 'Tract on