Welsh Journals

Lord Dunraven and the British Empire Muriel E. Chamberlain TODAY Windham Thomas Wyndham-Quin, 4th Earl of Dunraven, is scarcely remembered even in his home county of Glamorgan. Yet the Dictionary of National Biography commented soon after his death in 1926, 'Few of his contemporaries touched life at more points'. He was constantly on the fringe of great events and, more than once, seemed destined for high office. In particular, he seemed to be the coming man in the colonial policies which were beginning to interest the British public in the 1870s and 1880s. He first attracted attention as a journalist, covering the Abyssinian campaign of 1867-8 for the Daily Telegraph and contributing articles on world events to various periodicals, including the American paper, The World. In 1872 Lord Granville, the Liberal Foreign Secretary, invited him to take minor office, commenting slyly that he, Granville, had accepted a similar invitation as a young man and had finished up as Foreign Secretary. Dunraven, however, drifted away from the Liberal party and eventually took office as Under-Secretary at the Colonial Office under Lord Salisbury. After he had resigned from Lord Salisbury's second administration in 1887 he remained in the public eye as an active campaigner for tariff reform and the first President of the Fair Trade League. In the early 1900s, he tried to act as a mediator in the complex troubles of Ireland, first over the land question and then over the Home Rule question itself. During the first world war, although then aged over 70, he turned his steam yacht, the Grianaig into a hospital ship and served in her himself. There is no mystery as to why Dunraven failed to achieve the high office predicted for him and to which his multifarious talents probably entitled him. He lacked the necessary dedication and commitment. He had many interests outside politics and was never prepared to abandon them for a single-minded pursuit of his