| George Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke Of Argyll |
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Information AboutGeorge Douglas Campbell, 8th Duke Of Argyll |
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LIFE He succeeded his father, the Seventh Duke Of Argyll , in 1847 . His talents and eloquence soon raised him to distinction in public life. A close associate of Prince Albert , he served as Lord Privy Seal in the cabinet of Lord Aberdeen , and then as Postmaster General in Lord Palmerston's first cabinet. He was again Privy Seal in the second Palmerston administration, where he was notable as a strong advocate of the Northern cause in the American Civil War . In Gladstone's first government, Argyll became Secretary Of State For India , in which role his refusal to promise support against the Russians to the Emir of Afghanistan helped lead to the Second Afghan War . Argyll's wife, née Elizabeth Georgiana Leveson-Gower , also served as Mistress Of The Robes in this government. In 1871 , while actually serving in the Cabinet, his son and heir, Lord Lorne , married one of Queen Victoria's daughters, Princess Louise , enhancing his status as a leading Grandee. In 1880 he again served under Gladstone, as Lord Privy Seal , but resigned a year later in opposition to the government's Irish policy. In 1886 , he fully broke with Gladstone over the question of Irish Home Rule , although he did not join the Liberal Unionist Party , but pursued an independent course. He died in 1900, 6 days before his 77th birthday. SCHOLARSHIP Argyll was not only a politician, but also an eminent scientist, or at least an eminent publicist on scientific matters, especially Evolution and Economics . He was a leader in the scholarly opposition against Darwinism (1869, 1884b) and an important reality-based (i.e., heterodox, non-classical) economist (1893) and institutionalist (1884a), in which latter capacity he was quite similar to his political opponent, Benjamin Disraeli, 1st Earl Of Beaconsfield . While some of his works seemed quite strangely reactionary and obsolete at the times and for many decades, recent trends in scholarship - in evolutionary and institutional economics, as well as in ("post-genomic") biology - have led to some very positive reevaluation of his work. He was a man of the highest character, honest, courageous, and clear-sighted, and, though regarded by some professional scientists as to a certain extent an amateur, his ability, knowledge, and dialectic power made him a formidable antagonist, and enabled him to exercise a useful, generally conservative, influence on scientific thought and progress. KEY WORKS
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