Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/292

This page has been validated.
Hobbes
272
Hobhouse

in the typhoon of 16 Sept., he headed back to Hong-kong, but the boat capsized in Castle Peak bay, 12 miles from Hong-kong, and two Chinese sailors alone escaped. Hoare's body was not recovered.

Both at Ningpo and at Hong-kong Hoare left a permanent mark on the work of his mission by the influence of a fine personality and by his contributions to vernacular literature. Hoare was twice married: (1) in 1882 to Alice Juliana (d. 1883), daughter of Canon John Patteson, of Norwich; and (2) to Ellen, daughter of the Rev. F. F. Gough, who survived him, and by whom he had two sons and three daughters. In addition to the works already noticed, there were issued after his death two volumes of comments on books of the Bible, edited by Walter Moule.

[Record, 28 Sept. 1906; Church Missionary Intelligencer, November and December 1908; private information and personal knowledge.]

A. R. B.


HOBBES, JOHN OLIVER, pseudonym. [See Craigie, Mrs. Pearl Mary Teresa (1867–1906), novelist.]


HOBHOUSE, ARTHUR, first Baron Hobhouse of Hadspen (1819–1904), judge, born at Hadspen House, Somerset, on 10 Nov. 1819, was fourth and youngest son of Henry Hobhouse [q. v.] by his wife Harriet, sixth daughter of John Turton of Sugnall Hall, Stafford. Edmund Hobhouse [q. v. Suppl. II], bishop of Nelson, and Reginald Hobhouse (1818-95), archdeacon of Bodmin, were elder brothers. Passing at eleven from a private school to Eton, he remained there seven years (1830-7). In 1837 he went to Balliol College, Oxford, graduated B.A. in 1840 with a first class in classics, and proceeded M.A. in 1844. Entering at Lincoln's Inn on 22 April 1841, he was called to the bar on 6 May 1845, and soon acquired a large chancery practice. In 1862 he became a Q.C. and a bencher of his inn, serving the office of treasurer in 1880-1. A severe illness in 1866 led him to retire from practice and accept the appointment of charity commissioner. Hobhouse threw himself into the work with energy. He was not only active in administration but advocated a reform of the law governing charitable endowments. The Endowed Schools Act, 1869, was a first step in that direction, and under that act George fourth baron Lyttelton [q.v.], Hobhouse, and Canon H. G. Robinson were appointed commissioners with large powers of reorganising endowed schools. Much was accomplished in regard to endowed schools, but the efforts of Hobhouse and his fellow commissioners received a check in 1871, when the House of Lords rejected their scheme for remodelling the Emanuel Hospital, Westminster. There followed a controversy which was distasteful to Hobhouse, and with little regret he retired in 1872 in order to succeed Sir James Fitzjames Stephen [q. v.] as law member of the council of the governor-general of India. Hobhouse had meanwhile served on the royal commission on the operation of the Land Transfer Act in 1869. Hobhouse 'on his departure for India received strong hints that it would be desirable for him to slacken the pace of the legislative machine,' which had been quickened by the consolidating and codifying activities of Fitzjames Stephen and of Stephen's immediate predecessor, Sir Henry Sumner Maine [q. v.] (Ilbert, Legislative Methods and Forms, p. 138). That suggestion he approved. Whitley Stokes [q. v. Suppl. II], secretary in the legislative department, was mainly responsible for the measures passed during Hobhouse's term of office, with the important exception of the Specific Relief Act, 1877, in which Hobhouse as an equity lawyer took an especial interest, and a revision of the law relating to the transfer of property, which became a statute after he left India. Of strong liberal sentiment, Hobhouse had small sympathy with the general policy of the government of India during the opening of Lord Lytton's viceroyalty. The attitude to Afghanistan was especially repugnant. On the conclusion of his term of office in 1877 he was made a K.C.S.I., and returning to England soon engaged in party politics as a thorough-going opponent of the Afghan policy of the conservative government. In 1880 he and John (afterwards Viscount) Morley unsuccessfully contested Westminster in the liberal interest against Sir Charles Russell, third baronet, of Swallowfield, and W. H. Smith [q. v.]. Hobhouse was at the bottom of the poll.

In 1878 he was made arbitrator under the Epping Forest Act (41 & 42 Vict, c. ccxiii.) and in 1881 he succeeded Sir Joseph Napier [q. v.] on the judicial committee of the privy council. There without salary he did useful judicial work for twenty years. He delivered the decision of the committee in 200 appeals, of which 120 were from India. Several cases were of grave moment. In Merriman v. Williams (7 Appeal Cases 484), an action between the bishop and dean of Grahamstown, Hobhouse set forth fully the history of the