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Mallet
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Mallet

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.]

B. M.

MALLET, ROBERT (1810–1881), civil engineer and scientific investigator, son of John Mallet of Devonshire, who settled in Dublin as an iron, brass, and copper founder, was born in Dublin 3 June 1810. He entered Trinity College in December 1826, graduated B.A. 1830, and M.A. and master in engineering 1862. In 1831 he became a partner in his father’s works, assuming the charge of the Victoria foundry, and expanding it into a large concern, which ultimately absorbed all the engineering works of note in Ireland. One of his first undertakings was raising and sustaining the roof of St. George’s Church, Dublin, a massive construction weighing 133 tons; for this work he was in 1841 awarded the Walker premium by the Institution of Civil Engineers. For Guinness & Co., the brewers, he bored an artesian well, besides constructing steam barrel-washing machines and large sky coolers. In 1836 he built a number of swivel bridges over the Shannon. In May 1839 he was elected as associate of the Institution of Civil Engineers, and was made a member in 1842. He next turned his attention to the supply of water to Dublin, and surveyed the river Dodder in 1841 at his own expense, with a view to furnishing a supply of pure water, and of procuring water for the paper-mills in summer-time. Between 1845 and 1848 he erected many terminal railway stations, engine sheds, and workshops, besides the Nore viaduct, a bridge 200 feet in span, with girders of 22 feet in depth. The Fastnet Rock lighthouse was built by him in 1848–9. His name is well known by his invention of the buckled plate, which