MINTO, Sir Gilbert Elliot, First Earl of (1751— 1814), was descended from an old border family, the Elliots of Minto, and was born at Edinburgh, April 23, 1751. His father, Sir Gilbert Elliot, was a member of the administration of Pitt and Grenville, and is spoken of by Horace Walpole as “one of the ablest men in the House of Commons.” Young Elliot was educated by a private tutor, with whom at the age of twelve he went to Paris, where David Hume, who was then secretary of the embassy, undertook, from friendship to his father, the special charge of superintending his studies. After spending the winters of 1766 and 1767 at Edinburgh University, Elliot entered Oxford. On quitting the university he became a member of Lincoln’s Inn, and was in 1774 called to the bar. He entered parliament in 1776, the year of his father’s death. Although he gave a general support to Lord North’s administration, he from the beginning occupied an independent position, and in 1782 supported the address of the Commons against an offensive war with America. From this time he became a declared follower of Fox and Burke, with the latter of whom he gradually came to be on terms of great intimacy. He was created Baron Minto in 1797, and after filling several diplomatic posts with great success became in 1807 governor-general of India. The character and events of his rule in India are described in vol. xii. p. 805. He was created Earl of Minto and Viscount Melgund in 1813. He returned to England in 1814, and died on June 21st of that year.

See Life and Letters of Sir Gilbert Elliot, first Earl of Minto, from 1751 to 1806,1874; and Life and Letters, 1807-14, 1880. See also Mirabeau.