Dictionary of National Biography, 1927 supplement/Welby, Reginald Earle
WELBY, REGINALD EARLE, first Baron Welby, of Allington (1832–1915), the fifth son of the Rev. John Earle Welby, rector of Harston, Leicestershire, by his wife, Felicia, daughter of the Rev. George Hole, was born at Harston 3 August 1832. His father was a younger son of Sir W. Earle Welby, first baronet, of Denton Manor, Lincolnshire. Though of tory stock young Welby proved to be a child of the Reform Bill and followed his hero Gladstone towards liberalism. From Eton and Trinity College, Cambridge, where he took his B.A. degree in 1855, he passed into the civil service, entering the Treasury in 1856, where he learned the ropes under that great civil servant, Sir Charles E. Trevelyan [q.v.], and became an enthusiastic disciple of Gladstonian and Cobdenite finance—above all a free trader and an exponent of rigid economy in all branches of the public service. As a junior at the Treasury he was instrumental in introducing treasury bills, the ingenious invention of Walter Bagehot [q.v.], into the British financial system. In 1880 he became assistant financial secretary of the Treasury, and ruled the office as permanent secretary from 1885 to 1894.
In the ordinary sense of the word Welby was not a good man of business. He loved a litter; his table was a byword. He was dilatory, inclined to potter over details, slow in coming to the point, and apt to delay a decision. But his industry was immense, and his proficiency in all the mysteries and minutiae of public finance unrivalled. His gift for estimates and for gauging the probable yield of taxes, new or old, was almost uncanny. He believed in a strong Treasury as a necessary check upon the growth of public expenditure and bureaucracy. He admired Queen Victoria for refusing to see civil servants. Her servants were the responsible ministers. It was to them, not to their servants, that she gave audience. On his retirement from the Treasury in 1894 he was created Baron Welby, and contributed occasionally to financial discussions in the House of Lords. Once, when he had pleaded for economy, Lord Salisbury retorted, ‘Who are we that we should try to swim against the tide?’ Henceforward he devoted himself to public work, mainly in connexion with the London County Council, first as alderman, then as vice-chairman, and finally in 1900 as chairman. He became almost as ardent over rates as he had been over taxes, and London is deeply indebted to him for the zeal, energy, and skill which he freely devoted to the furtherance of sound finance and economical administration.
On the death of his friend, Lord Farrer, in 1899, Welby became chairman of the Cobden Club, and assisted in some important publications directed against armaments and protection. Towards the end of his life he devoted many months to a comprehensive survey of public finance from 1815 to 1914, which was presented in the form of a presidential address to the Royal Statistical Society. His last publication was a letter to the Economist, 17 July 1915, exhibiting the effects of the European War on the protective tariffs of the belligerent powers. He died in London 30 October of the same year.
A few days after Lord Welby's death Lord Bryce drew attention to the remarkable group of civil servants—Ralph Lingen, Louis Mallet, Thomas Farrer, Henry Thring, Spencer Walpole, and Henry Jenkyns—to which Welby belonged. He survived them all. His life was probably shortened by the calamity of the War. From its outbreak in August 1914 until late in the following summer, when his health failed, he was an anxious and critical student of war finance. As the months wore on and the debt piled up he became oppressed by fear that all his hopes for social progress and the gradual elimination of poverty were doomed to be shattered.
Lord Welby was a clubbable man, and a bachelor of bachelors. He enjoyed London society for two generations, and few men knew it better. His dinners were perfect. To hear a conversation between him and his cook was an education in culinary science. His standard of civility was high and sometimes was enforced with severity. Though quite free from vanity, conceit, or pomposity, he was quick to resent any breach of manners or intrusiveness. His memory was well stored with odd stories about the old-world officialdom which had passed away with the reform of the civil service. Much wisdom and humour perished with him.
[Private information; personal knowledge.]