Welsh Journals

LORD ABERDARE AND THE ROYAL NIGER COMPANY HENRY AUSTIN BRUCE, first Baron Aberdare, born at Duffryn, near Aberdare, Glamorgan, in 1815, and educated at Swansea Grammar School, played a prominent part in both Welsh and English public life for over half a century. His considerable wealth derived in part from the coal fields of the Aberdare Valley and, from 1855, he was also a trustee of the Dowlais iron works. In 1852 he became Liberal Member of Parliament for Merthyr Tydfil. He lost the seat in 1868 to the radical Henry Richard in a hotly contested election. But he was out of Parliament for only a few months, winning a by-election in Renfrewshire in January 1869, and became Home Secretary in Gladstone's first administration. He retained this office until August 1873, when he became Lord President of the Council and went to the Lords as Baron Aberdare. His tenure of the Home Office had been a stormy one and he is probably best remembered for his part in the great Licensing Bill controversies of 1871-72. The Gladstone administration fell in February 1874, and Aberdare, although he remained on good terms with his former colleagues,1 never again took ministerial office. His interests took other directions. He devoted himself to penal reform and Welsh education and served on a number of Royal Commissions. In particular, he was chairman of the Committee, appointed in 1880, to enquire into intermediate and higher education in Wales. He was a strong advocate of the idea of a University of Wales and was elected its first Chancellor, just before his death in 1895. He was President of the Royal Historical Society from 1878 to 92 and of the Royal Geographical Society from 1881 to 87.2 In 1882 he was invited to become chairman of the newly-formed National African Company. The driving force behind this was Sir George Taubman Goldie who, in 1879, had united the small British companies trading on the River Niger into the National 1 See. for example, his letters to Lord Granville in the Public Record Office, P.R.O. 30/29, 148 (Granville Private Papers), and to W. E. Gladstone in the British Museum, Add. MSS. 44087 (Gladstone Papers). 8 This biographical sketch is based on: Dictionary of National Biography: Supplement, H. A. Bruce; Letters of the Rt. Hon. Lord Aberdare, printed for private circulation, Oxford, (1902), 2 vols., passim; obituary by Sir George Taubman Goldie in The Geographical Journal, April 1895. 386-90; I. G. Jones, 'The Election of 1868 in Merthyr Tydfil'. Journal of Modern History, XXXIII, no. 3. September 1961.