George Otto Trevelyan

Sir George Otto Trevelyan, 2nd Baronet, (20 July 1838 – 17 August 1928) was a British statesman and author. In a ministerial career stretching almost 30 years, he was most notably twice Secretary for Scotland under William Ewart Gladstone and the Earl of Rosebery. He broke with Gladstone over the 1886 Irish Home Rule Bill, but after modifications were made to the bill he re-joined the Liberal Party shortly afterwards. Also a writer and historian, Trevelyan wrote his novel The Competition Wallah in around 1864, and The Life and Letters of Lord Macaulay, his maternal uncle, in 1876.

Background and education

Trevelyan was born in Rothley Temple, Leicestershire, the only son of Sir Charles Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, and Hannah, daughter of Zachary Macaulay and sister of the historian Lord Macaulay. He was educated at Harrow and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he was President of the Cambridge Union Society, and earned second place in the first class of the Classical Tripos in 1861. That same year he wrote his Horace at the University of Athens, a topical drama in verse, parts of which are said to have offended William Whewell and lost Trevelyan a fellowship. He was a Cambridge Apostle.

Political career

In 1862 Trevelyan went out as a civil servant to India, where he spent several years. In 1865 he was elected Liberal Member of Parliament (MP) for Tynemouth and North Shields. At the general election of 1868 he was returned for the Hawick Burghs, which he continued to represent until 1886. When the first Gladstone ministry was formed in December 1868, Trevelyan was appointed Civil Lord of the Admiralty, but resigned in July 1870 on a point of conscience connected with the government Education Bill. He advocated a sweeping reform of the army, including the abolition of the purchase of commissions, and both in and out of parliament he was the foremost supporter for many years of the extension of the county franchise. In the session of 1874 he brought forward his Household Franchise (Counties) Bill, which was lost on the second reading – it was not till ten years later that the agricultural labourer was enfranchised. Among other causes which he warmly supported were women's suffrage, a thorough reform of metropolitan local government, and the drastic reform or abolition of the House of Lords. He was also in favour of the direct veto and other temperance legislation.