Medicine, not the law, was Douglas’s first choice of profession, but he at length abandoned the latter, as he had the former, opting for a public career. This was at 50 years of age, when he had taken silk after a career more laborious than successful. On the Welsh circuit he made no more than £500 p.a. and he supplemented it by acting as counsel in controverted elections. He had reported those that followed the election of 1774 (and also gained credit by reporting Lord Mansfield’s decisions in King’s bench from 1778); by 1784 disputed elections earned him some £3,000. He was ‘a tall man, with a high nose, whose looks bespoke his nation at any distance’, had ‘a great facility at acquired knowledge, but had no genius’. He was, however, socially ambitious and, within two years of being introduced by Lord Sheffield to the former premier Lord North’s family, married North’s daughter Katherine, her father’s rival in wit and ugliness. Politically he was acceptable: he had joined Brooks’s Club on 4 Jan. and the Whig Club in November 1789, six weeks after his marriage. He was one of the counsel for the prosecution of Warren Hastings and, had the Whigs come to power that year, he was ‘seriously thought of for solicitor-general’; but his friend Sir Gilbert Elliot reported him as being averse to it,
thinking it would be disadvantageous ... in point of income, and too precarious as to future prospects to sacrifice to it anything of consequence at present. He would be obliged to come into Parliament, which would deprive him of the principal business which he has, and which is extremely profitable, I mean the committee and other parliamentary business. He would also lose the next crop of the general election, which he computes at £6,000 in the first two years of the new Parliament, after which he intends to come into Parliament. He would also be obliged to give up his Welsh circuit ... and for all this the profits of the solicitor-general do not exceed £700 a year ... Instead of this he is therefore, I believe, to be solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales, which is little more than honorary, but it keeps him in the line of preferment, and he is also to be appointed counsel to either one or perhaps two of the public boards which are very good things. This is his own plan and has been adopted with the greatest kindness and cordiality by the Duke of Portland.
These hopes were dashed, and despite the Prince’s promise he did not become his solicitor-general. In 1790 he was counsel in election cases as usual.
That he was a fit husband for Lord North’s daughter Sir Gilbert Elliot had no doubt, when her family made discreet inquiries and he informed them:
I had always understood that he was a gentleman in his birth, though certainly not of any considerable origin in point of fortune—which was a case extremely common in Scotland, as well as usual enough in all other countries; that in the meanwhile he is certainly as good a gentleman now as if he were of the oldest family in England; for his education, his manners, his profession, and his success in it, with the income he enjoyed, were as good titles to be placed in the rank of gentleman as many of the most eminent men in the kingdom could show.
The political capital Douglas might make out of his marriage was not lost in 1792 by North’s death: it gave him his political freedom at a moment when the Whigs were hopelessly divided in opposition. He seceded from the Whig Club with the Portland Whigs and approved his friend Elliot’s efforts to wean Portland from Fox. Elliot reported, 7 Feb. 1793:
Douglas has a silk gown, which he wished for, but considered himself as entitled to it, and does not acknowledge it as any obligation to the chancellor. He is indeed very much disgusted with the chancellor on account of his not being made solicitor-general to the Prince of Wales, for which Douglas says he had both Lord Loughborough’s promise and the Prince’s about the time of the Regency. ... Douglas is also very angry with the chancellor on other accounts, but Douglas was always unreasonable in his own claims, and I do not think his present complaints well founded.
A few months later, Elliot noted that he was ‘making a good deal of money independent of election petitions by the disputed canal bills in Parliament’, but in ‘household business’ penny wise and pound foolish.
When the ministry offered Elliot the post of commissioner at Toulon in September 1793, he secured from Douglas the admission that he was weary of his profession and wished to enter public life as under-secretary at the Foreign Office, no less, provided he was assured of financial security. Elliot mentioned this to Dundas and Pitt and, having failed to induce William Elliot to accompany him as secretary, suggested Douglas instead. Pitt concurred and pandered to Douglas’s pleas for future provision, 11 Oct. 1793, but just as Douglas was preparing to set off with Elliot, declined any pledge beyond this special mission for fear of creating a bad precedent. Douglas had stipulated for the under-secretaryship at the Foreign Office (£2,000 p.a.) and a ‘retreat’ of half as much; or £1,500 p.a. as secretary at Toulon, with the assurance of an income equivalent to the preceding stipulation tenable with Parliament. In his disappointment he had no thoughts of a political relapse: on the contrary he vehemently urged William Windham to join the ministry. Through his wife he prodded Dundas to get himself launched. Before the end of the year Pitt had induced Westmorland, viceroy of Ireland, to take him as chief secretary. The Norths, ‘at present orthodox in politics’, concurred and off he went to Dublin, admonished by Edmund Burke.
Douglas was a diligent chief secretary, sitting for St. Canice in the Irish parliament, but there could be no question of his retaining the post when Fitzwilliam replaced Westmorland a year later. His hope of the sinecure reward of appointment as secretary of state in Ireland was dashed by Portland’s insistence that it would be inauspicious not to award it to an Irishman, if a new policy was to operate in Ireland. He was otherwise compensated: Windham reported to Elliot, 27 Jan. 1795, that Douglas was to have ‘the first lordship of the Treasury which may become vacant and also a seat at the Board of Control, without salary’, as well as a pension of £800 p.a., half to descend to his son, and a seat in Parliament. All this, complained a disgusted Canning, ‘as a reward for about six weeks’ services, and was not worth half as much if his services had been for 16 years’.
Douglas’s maiden speech was not surprisingly on the subject of controverted elections, 14 Apr. 1795, but on 19 May, more ambitiously, he attempted a defence of Westmorland’s Irish administration in the debate on Fitzwilliam’s recall. He was shouted down. To Elliot he wrote at the end of that session, ‘I spoke once or twice, and, alas, wretchedly. But I intend not to give it up.’ He was then anxiously awaiting office; but on 2 Nov. 1795 he wrote: ‘I am totally without employment ... I have repeatedly (and ineffectually) remonstrated.’ In fact, he had obtained a place (unsalaried) at the Board of Control in June. The King suggested he might return to Ireland as chief secretary, but Lord Camden would not hear of it.
Douglas was returned by Pitt’s friend Lord Carrington for Midhurst in 1796. He had been indignant when George Rose proposed a seat for Penryn at the cost of £1,500, believing that he was to be provided with a seat gratis, but Pitt did not mean that pledge to extend beyond the dissolution. Perhaps Midhurst was a sop, as in September it was arranged that he should accompany Lord Macartney to the Cape and after 18 months succeed him as governor, with a pension of £2,000 p.a. after five years as governor. He agreed, for an Irish peerage, but his wife disliked the prospect and a month later he declined it on the strength of an opening at the Treasury board. There were difficulties about this too and the provoked Douglas bearded Dundas at Wimbledon ‘till he grew certainly red and sometimes pale’ and ‘fixed him’. He got his Treasury place, though only after his wife’s uncle the bishop of Winchester had disgorged a morsel of clerical patronage to placate Richard Hopkins.
Douglas made himself useful in the House as a committee chairman and teller, apart from discharging Board of Control duties. He said little in debate, until he offered his services to Pitt to promote union with Ireland.
Created Lord Glenbervie, and vacating his seat, he was sworn in as governor in January 1801, just after Pitt’s resignation, which saved him the journey. Lord Malmesbury exploded, 17 Feb. 1801:
Lord Glenbervie is now talked of to preside at the Board of Control. He had solicited the Cape earnestly and repeatedly from Dundas, and obtained, by persecution, the Irish title from Pitt to support his dignity there—the moment they resigned, he went to Addington to solicit office at home, and has actually got the Pay Office.
Charles Abbot was told that Glenbervie had ‘hinted at Ireland, but Mr Addington had blocked that out completely. He doubted about placing him at the India Board, knowing his merits but not liking the probable consequences of his Scotchness.’ Portland informed Addington he would be glad to accept the Pay Office. Dundas was ‘furious’, not less when Glenbervie offered ‘to leave to his entire disposal all the Scotch patronage, if he will let him have the Board of Control, and be the nominal Scotch minister—very uneasy lest Pitt should recover his power, and revenge himself on those who are now accepting office’. On 30 Mar., writing to Addington, Glenbervie hinted that being junior to Thomas Steele at the Pay Office, he was available for other employment. Later that year, after becoming Member for Plympton at ministerial instigation and making himself useful in debate, he was offered the presidency of the Board of Control. He declined it as not being a cabinet office and, in short, no better than his current one. He accepted the vice-presidency of the Board of Trade, over which he presided almost at once in Lord Liverpool’s absence. Next he was a candidate both for a vacancy in Aberdeen Burghs and for the Speaker’s chair, for which he had ‘a violent desire’, but the ministry did not sponsor him in either case. ‘He was offended when Addington told him that he understood [Glenbervie] wanted a diplomatic situation and that he had been thought of for America.’ It was ‘a sort of affront’—to Lord North’s son-in-law. In December 1801 he had introduced the bill to ease commercial relations with ‘our late enemies’, and on 24 May following reminded Addington of his promise to consider him for employment in the negotiation of a commercial treaty with France, gathering from Otto, the French emissary, that the time was ripe for one.
The death of John Robinson opened the surveyorship of woods and forests, ‘one of the best places in the King’s gift’, in December 1802. Glenbervie claimed it as his right. Addington might have liked it (as the King suggested) for his brother Hiley, but conceded it to Glenbervie, in exchange for the Pay Office for Hiley. In Glenbervie’s view he had made the best choice, but he should have been allowed both offices. As it was he was guaranteed £3,000 a year as surveyor, but not promised it for life. He was indifferent to the fate of Addington’s ministry, caring only for his security and for promotion in the peerage. He occasionally spoke in the session of 1802-3, but on 11 Jan. 1804 he wrote: ‘I have been in the House of Commons only the first day. Indeed I told Addington I should attend very little and he civilly said he was sorry I had such a satisfactory reason [his health].’ He gave up his Board of Trade responsibilities. On Pitt’s return to power he was listed ‘doubtful’ and offered to vacate his seat in return for his expenses, but Pitt would not agree to his going out of Parliament. He immersed himself in the business of his office.
Glenbervie was mortified when the Grenville ministry deprived him of his surveyorship. ‘This is the first substantial proof’, he informed the Speaker, 6 Feb. 1806, that Fox ‘has given of that respect for Lady Glenbervie’s father and affection for her late brother which he professed with so much heartfelt pathos the other night in the House’. The same day Lord Minto saw Lord Grenville and Fox to plead for him: he had understood the office was for life; reduced to about £900 a year pension ‘from government’, he was ‘overwhelmed with despair and affliction, and roused from that only by rage’. Minto tried again on 15 Feb. for Lady Glenbervie’s sake and Fox said he would agree to a pension for her, if Grenville did—Grenville did not positively refuse. Her minimum requirement was £600 a year for the joint lives of herself and her son.
Even when the Portland ministry restored him to the surveyorship in 1807 they at first appointed a joint surveyor, and on finding that would not do, left him as sole surveyor, but reduced his salary, not to the level at which he might continue to have his pension. The public was saved £1,600 p.a. When in 1810 his office was reorganized and he became first of three commissioners, John Calcraft suggested to the House that ‘very little was known of his public merits’. On 2 July 1812 he was again attacked in the House, as a jobber, by Thomas Creevey. When in 1814 Lord Liverpool learned of his wish to retire, he preferred that he should not, because of his pension rights; but retire he did. He died 2 May 1823, outliving his wife and his son. Lady Holland wrote:
Poor old man, he never felt much for others, so cannot expect great sympathy for himself. He had, however, one gift which was pleasant, and he retained it to the last, great eagerness of mind in any pursuit in which he engaged: and he always had a pursuit, to the moment of his death even. He was busy in writing a life of Lord North, and the proof sheets were with him to the last.
Had it been fit for publication, wrote Lord Liverpool, it would have been ‘a desideratum for the cause of truth’.