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chequer in Ireland, on the resignation of Sir William Yorke. Hamilton served also as chief secretary to Hugh, duke of Northumberland, who succeeded Halifax as lord-lieutenant in this year. Through the influence of Archbishop Stone, however, Hamilton was dismissed from this office towards the close of the session of 1764. In the spring of 1763 Hamilton obtained a pension of 300l. for Edmund Burke [q. v.], who had for some four years past acted as a kind of private secretary to him, and in that capacity had accompanied Hamilton to Ireland. It is not altogether quite clear what brought about the rupture of this connection, but it would appear that Hamilton w r as anxious to secure Burke's undivided services for himself. These Burke refused to give, and 'to get rid of him completely,' writes Burke to Flood in a letter dated 18 May 1765, 'and not to carry a memorial of such a person about me, I offered to transfer it [the pension] to his attorney in trust for him. This offer he thought proper to accept' (Burke Correspondence, i. 78). In another letter on the same subject to John Hely Hutchinson, Burke asserts that 'six of the best years of my life he [Hamilton] took me from every pursuit of literary reputation or improvement of my fortune. In that time he made his own fortune (a very large one), and he has also taken to himself the very little one which I had made' (ib. p. 67). Soon after this quarrel Hamilton appears to have sought Johnson's assistance in political and literary matters. He did not sit in the Irish parliament again after the dissolution in 1768. At the general election in that year he was returned to the English parliament for Old Sarum, for Wareham in 1774, for Wilton in 1780, and for Haslemere in 1790. He refused Lord Shelburne's offer of the secretaryship at war in 1782 (Lord Auckland, Journal, 1861, i. 22), and resigned the office of chancellor of the exchequer in April 1784, receiving a pension of 2,000l. a year, and being succeeded by John Foster [q.v.] Hamilton was not returned to the new parliament of 1796. He died in Upper Brook Street, London, on 16 July 1796, in the sixty-eighth year of his age, and was buried on the 22nd in the chancel vault of St. Martin's-in-the-Fields. Hamilton never married. 'This Mr. Hamilton,' says Miss Burney, 'is extremely tall and handsome, has an air of haughty and fashion- able superiority, is intelligent, dry, sarcastic, and clever. I should have received much pleasure from his conversational powers had I not previously been prejudiced against him by hearing that he is infinitely artful, double, and crafty' (Madame D'Arblay, Diary, 1843, i. 293). Hamilton has left nothing behind him to warrant the brilliant reputation which he undoubtedly acquired during his life. Though he never spoke in the house after his return from Ireland, yet he contrived to retain his fame as an orator ; and so highly were his literary talents rated that many of his contemporaries attributed to him the authorship of the 'Letters of Junius' (Wraxall, Historical Memoirs, 1884, i. 344-5). Lord Charlemont described Hamilton as 'a man whose talents were equal to every undertaking ; and yet from indolence, or from too fastidious vanity, or from what other cause I know not, he has done nothing' (Prior, Life of Malone, p. 299). Johnson had a great esteem for him ; and on one occasion paid the following highly laboured compliment to his powers of conversation : 'I am very unwilling to be left alone, sir, and therefore I go with my company down the first pair of stairs, in some hopes that they may, perhaps, return again. I go with you, sir, as far as the street-door' (Boswell, Life of Johnson, ed. G. B. Hill, i. 490). Though it was probably true that he got the few speeches which he delivered by heart, and that he was always ready to use the brains of others instead of his own, there can be little doubt that he was a shrewd judge of men and things. As an example of the soundness of his judgment his letter to Calcraft, written in 1767 on the subject of American taxation, may be quoted. 'For my own part,' he writes, 'I think you have no right to tax them, and that every measure built upon this supposed right stands upon a rotten foundation, and must consequently tumble down, perhaps upon the heads of the workmen' (Chatham Correspondence, iii. 203). He was a member of the Irish privy council, and in 1763 was appointed a bencher of the King's Inns, Dublin. He is said to have printed a volume of 'Poems' (Oxford, 4to) in 1750 for private circulation, but there is no copy of this edition in the British Museum. Malone published Hamilton's works after his death under the title of 'Parliamentary Logick : to which are subjoined Two Speeches delivered in the House of Commons of Ireland, and other Pieces, by the Right Honourable William Gerard Hamilton. With an Appendix containing Considerations on the Corn Laws by Samuel Johnson, LL.D., never before printed' (London, 8vo). An engraving by W. Evans of a portrait of Hamilton by J. R. Smith, formerly in the Stowe Collection, forms the frontispiece to the book, which was severely criticised by Lord Jeffrey in the 'Edinburgh Review' (xv. 163-75). A number of Hamilton's letters, throwing a considerable light upon the political history of