Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 2.djvu/443

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Law

annual subvention. One of Law's useful reforms was to, give the local governments a larger interest in the revenue and expenditure under their control—a principle which was permanently adopted and extended later. As Lord Curzon testified, Law came into closer touch with the commercial community than any predecessor. To projects like the Tata iron and steel works at Sakchi, Bengal [see Tata, Jamsetji Nasarwanji. Suppl. II], he gave earnest encouragement, and he eagerly advocated the new system of co-operative rural credit under government supervision initiated in 1904.

Law, who was made C.S.I. on 1 Jan. 1903, and K.C.S.I. in 1906, resigned his membership of the council on 9 Jan. 1905, some three months before the completion of his term. He dissented from the views of the viceroy in his controversy with Lord Kitchener over army administration, and on coming home served on the committee appointed by the secretary of state in May 1905 to make recommendations on the subject. This report advised changes, which led to Lord Curzon's resignation (East India Army Administration, 1905, Cd. 2718).

To a despatch (22 Oct. 1903) of Lord Curzon's government deprecating participation in the imperial preference policy, which Mr. Chamberlain had begun to advocate, Law appended a dissenting minute. Law's minute was utilised in party discussions in Great Britain and the colonies, and was cited with approval by Mr. Deakin, prime minister of Australia at the imperial conference of 1907 (Official Report of Conf. 1907). On return home, Law became a vice-president of the Tariff Reform League, and actively championed its policy.

Law represented Great Britain on the Cretan reform commission in January 1906, and on the committee which sat in Paris under the provisions of the Act of Algeciras (April 1906) to found the bank of Morocco. Appointed English censor of the bank, he paid thenceforth a fortnightly visit to Paris. Law, who was also connected with many financial enterprises in the City of London, died in Paris on 2 Nov. 1908, his sixty-second birthday. He was buried at Athens on 21 Nov. with the public and military honours due to a Grand Cross of the Order of the Saviour. A central street of Athens is named after him, and tablets to his memory are to be unveiled in the British chapel at Athens, and in St. Patrick's Cathedral, Dublin. In a chapter contributed to his 'Life,' Mr. J. L. Garvin describes him as 'fearing no responsibility yet able to show himself … a safe and dexterous tactician, and audacious in instinct, prudent in method, and yet full of emotional strength, of passionate possibilities, and all manner of great-heartedness.' He married on 18 Oct. 1893 Catherine only daughter of Nicholas Hatsopoulo, a prominent member of an old Byzantine family, who had long owned property In Attica, and had established themselves in Athens on the erection of the Greek kingdom. There were no children of the union.

[Life by Sir Theodore Morison and G. P. Hutchinson, 1911; Gen. Sir H. Brackenbury's Memories, 1909; Sir T. Raleigh's Lord Curzon in India, 1906; E. India: Finan. Statements and Discussions thereon, 1901–2 to 1905–6 and 1911–2; Greece, No. II; Cor. relating to Greek Finances, 1898; Papers on Preferential Tariff for India, 1904, Cd. 1931; For. Office List, 1908; The Times, 4 Nov. 1908; Pioneer Mail of various dates; information kindly supplied by Lady Law.]

F. H. B.

LAW, THOMAS GRAVES (1836–1904), historian and bibliographer, was great-grandson of Edmund Law, bishop of Carlisle [q. v.], and grandson of Edward Law, first earl of Ellenborough [q. v.]. Born on 4 Dec. 1836 at Yeovilton in Somersetshire, Law was third son and fourth of eight surviving children of William Towry Law (1809–1886), Lord Ellenborough's youngest son, by his first wife, Augusta Champagné (d. 1844), fourth daughter of Thomas North Graves, second Baron Graves. The eldest son, Augustus Henry [q. v.], was a Jesuit missionary, and the second son. General Francis Towry Adeane Law, C.B. (1835–1901), saw much military service. The father originally served in the Grenadier guards, but in 1831 had taken orders in the Church of England, and at the time of his son's birth was rector of Yeovilton and chancellor of the diocese of Bath and Wells, of which his kinsman, George Henry Law [q. v.], was bishop.

On the death of his mother in 1844, Law was sent to school at Somerton, but in the following year, on his father's removal to the living of Harborne in Staffordshire, he was successively sent to St. Edmund's School, Birmingham, and (as founder's kin) to Winchester School, then under the charge of Dr. Moberly. In 1851 his father joined the Roman catholic church, a step which necessitated his son's leaving Winchester. In 1862 he studied at University College. London, where he had De Morgan and Francis Newman among his teachers, and in 1853 he entered the