Dictionary of National Biography, 1885-1900/Mallet, Louis
MALLET, Sir LOUIS (1823–1890), civil servant and economist, was descended from a Huguenot family which left Rouen in 1558 because of religious persecution, and settled in Geneva, where they soon attained a position of importance in the republic. His grandfather was the celebrated publicist, Mallet du Pan, who had settled in Paris as a journalist, but was forced in 1798 to seek a refuge in England from the storms of the French revolution. His correspondence has been lately republished under the auspices of M. Taine. Louis Mallet’s father, John Lewis Mallet, was well known to Pitt, and owing to Pitt’s influence became a clerk in the audit office soon after 1800. Louis’s mother was Frances, daughter of John Merivale of Barton Place, Exeter. Born in London on 14 March 1823, he entered the public service in 1839 as a clerk in the audit office. In 1847 he was transferred to the Board of Trade, where he soon attained the post of private secretary to the president. In this capacity he served Henry Labouchere (afterwards Lord Taunton) [q. v.], 1848–52, and Lord Stanley of Alderley, 1855–7. It was not until 1860 that a chance of distinction offered itself, which his economic studies and financial ability enabled him to turn to account. In that year he was appointed one of the assistant commissioners under Richard Cobden [q. v.] for drawing up the tariff in accordance with the articles of the treaty of commerce with France, which had provided merely that no duty should exceed thirty per cent. ad valorem. The work of the commissioners was therefore very important and laborious; upon its success depended that of the treaty, and Mallet, in the course of his negotiations, soon impressed Cobden with his ‘strong intelligence and efficiency.’ The extension of commercial treaties throughout Europe, the policy of which, though never frankly accepted by the liberal party, Mallet strenuously advocated, gave him incessant employment at the board of trade until April 1865. From that date till September 1867 he was employed in the negotiations connected with the signature of the treaty with Austria. In 1866 he was made a C.B. and in 1868 he was knighted.
The death of Cobden in 1865 left him the principal authority on questions of commercial policy, and the chief official representative of free trade opinion. He had unfortunately little time for extra official work, but he contributed occasionally to the publications of the Cobden Club (see below) and at a later date he assisted Mr. John Morley in preparing the ‘Life of Cobden.’ In 1872 he retired from the board of trade, but was almost immediately nominated (August 1872) by the Duke of Argyll to the council of India in London. Two years later (February 1874) he succeeded his cousin, Herman Merivale [q. v.], as permanent under-secretary for India. In 1875–6 an official visit to India, unfortunately cut short by illness, enabled him to obtain some practical insight into Indian problems. His work at the India office was of great importance and utility. In the controversy which ended in giving to India the benefit of free trade, in the abolition of the cotton duties, and the reconstruction of the whole customs tariff, Mallet’s was always the guiding hand. He was a steady advocate for the further employment of natives in the lower branches of the Indian services. From the time when, together with Lord Reay, he represented India at the monetary conference at Paris up to his appointment in May 1887 to the royal commission on the relative value of the precious metals, he was a strong bi-metallist, basing his views, not so much on the practical necessities of the Indian government, as on its logical and economic soundness. Mallet was also a royal commissioner on the laws relating to copyright in October 1875, for the Paris exhibition of 1878, and the London exhibition of 1878; while in March 1877 he was a commissioner to negotiate a new treaty of commerce with France.
Mallet retired from the India office, owing to failing health, on 29 Sept. 1883. The value of his forty years of public service was acknowledged by his admission to the privy council on 23 Aug. 1883. He died at Bath on 16 Feb. 1890. Mallet married in 1858 Frances Helen, daughter of the Hon. and Rev. Edward Pellew, and left four sons.
As an official Mallet was distinguished by the broadness of his views and by a sympathy with public needs, which made him very intolerant of narrow officialism. He had much personal influence with political leaders, although with party politics he had nothing to do. He imbibed in youth and retained throughout life the keenest interest in the higher literature of France and England, living by preference among men who divide their time between letters and affairs.
Mallet’s occasional writings were collected in a volume entitled ‘Free Exchange,’ by his son, Mr. Bernard Mallet, in 1881. The first part contains republished pamphlets and articles on (1) ‘The Political Opinions of Richard Cobden;’ (2) ‘The Policy of Commercial Treaties;’ (3) ‘Free Trade and Free Enterprise;’ (4) ‘State Railways;’ (5) ‘Egypt;’ (6) ‘Reciprocity;’ (7) ‘Statement of Bimetallic Theory;’ (8) ‘The National Income and Taxation.’ The second part contains an unfinished treatise on ‘The Law of Value and the Theory of the Un-earned Increment,’ the fruit of his years of retirement. As an economist he had always been, like Jevons, in sympathy with the French school and in disagreement with Mill, and these chapters are an attempt to trace the common economic errors on the land question to their true source—a mistaken theory of value—and to place on a scientific basis the opposition to schemes of ill-considered reform.
The most comprehensive and complete account of the ideas which animated the Cobdenic creed is perhaps to be found in Mallet’s writings. In his view it was a carefully thought out political scheme, embracing every department of the national life; in its international aspect, upon which, like his master, he laid especial stress, it was a policy of concord and peace, which for England followed logically and of necessity upon the repeal of the corn laws; and in its domestic character it was much more than a mere question of tariff reform, it was a distinct bid for the solution of the social problem, and an assertion in its broadest form of the principle of private property, of which free exchange is only an attribute. All Mallet’s writings are characterised by great power, both of abstract thought and of exposition.
[Private information.]