Election to Parliament: the early years In 1774, Dundas was returned to Parliament for
Midlothian, and joined the party of
Frederick North, Lord North; he was a proud
Scots speaker and he soon distinguished himself by his clear and argumentative speeches. Dundas was not present for that vote, but when it was again before MPs in 1792, Dundas tabled a petition from Edinburgh residents who supported abolition. He then went on to affirm his agreement in principle with Wilberforce's motion: "My opinion has been always against the Slave Trade." He argued, however, that a vote for immediate abolition would be ineffective, as it would drive the slave trade underground or into the hands of foreign nations, beyond Britain's control. He stated: "this trade must be ultimately abolished, but by moderate measures". He suggested that slavery and the slave trade should be abolished together, and proposed an end to hereditary slavery, which would have enabled the children born to present-day slaves to become free persons upon reaching adulthood. For the first time, the House of Commons voted to end the slave trade. Three weeks after the vote, Dundas tabled resolutions setting out a plan to implement gradual abolition by the end of 1799. At that time he told the House that proceeding too quickly would cause West Indian merchants and landowners to continue the trade "in a different mode and other channels". He argued that "if the committee would give the time proposed, they might abolish the trade; but, on the contrary, if this opinion was not followed, their children yet unborn would not see the end of the traffic." MPs ignored his cautions, and voted in favour of ending the trade in slaves by the end of 1796. The motion and resolutions later failed to win the necessary support of the House of Lords, which deferred consideration then dropped the issue altogether. Alternative measures were proposed later in the 1790s. Dundas spoke against specific proposals tabled in 1796, while reiterating his support for abolition in principle, but abstained from voting. The loss of momentum was connected to three years of an ongoing war on three continents, including with revolutionary France. It was not until 1807 that the House of Lords voted in favour of abolishing the trade in slaves. Historian Stephen Farrell has noted that by that time, the political climate had changed, and the economic advantages of abolition had become apparent. The
Slave Trade Act 1807 prohibited the trade in slaves in the British Empire. Ownership of slaves, however, remained legal in most of the British Empire until passage of the
Slavery Abolition Act 1833. Between 1792 and 1807, when the slave trade was eventually abolished, another half a million Africans were transported into slavery in the British colonies. Dundas insisted that any abolition of the slave trade could not succeed without the support of West Indian colonial legislatures. Abolitionists argued that West Indian assemblies would never support such measures, and that by making the abolition of the slave trade dependent on colonial reforms, Dundas was in effect indefinitely delaying it. There is evidence, however, that Dundas had secured agreement of the West Indians before proposing the eight-year timeline. Recent peer-reviewed scholarship has also identified new archival evidence showing that Dundas had the support of several leading abolitionists, while the West Indian slave owners opposed his plan just as much as they opposed immediate abolition.
Key positions in government From June 1793, Dundas was appointed
President of the Board of Control, generally responsible for overseeing the conduct of the
East India Company and British affairs in India, a post he would hold until 1801. As the effective Minister for War as part of his
Home Department responsibilities at the outbreak of the
Wars of the French Revolution, he was Pitt's closest advisor and planner for Britain's military participation in the
First Coalition. Although Dundas was replaced as Home Secretary by the
Duke of Portland in July 1794, Pitt nonetheless wished to maintain direction of the war effort in Dundas's trusted hands, and so created for him the new office of
Secretary of State for War. During the period Dundas also effectively led much of Britain's domestic and foreign intelligence activities, directly receiving reports from foreign and domestic agents, initiating paramilitary operations, and sponsoring propaganda. Dundas was responsible for organising several British expeditions to the Caribbean to seize vulnerable French and Spanish possessions, the largest being that led by
Sir Ralph Abercromy in 1795–6. Dundas spearheaded a vain attempt by the British to capture
Saint-Domingue from the French during the
Haitian Revolution. After they lost territory to the armies of
Toussaint L'Ouverture, and became bogged down in their retreat to the western towns of Mole St Nicholas and Jérémie in Saint-Domingue, the British accepted they could not defeat the armies of black ex-slaves, and negotiated to withdraw from the island, resulting in thousands of British deaths for no gain. Dundas also presided over a crisis in Britain's most important possession, the
Colony of Jamaica. General
George Walpole secured the surrender of the
Jamaican Maroons of
Cudjoe's Town (Trelawny Town), on condition they would not be transported off the island. The governor of Jamaica,
Alexander Lindsay, 6th Earl of Balcarres, used a contrived breach of treaty as a pretext to deport most of the Trelawny Town Maroons to
Nova Scotia. Walpole was disgusted with the governor's actions, pointing out that he had given the
Maroons his word that they would not be transported off the island. Walpole resigned his commission, and went back to England, where he became an MP and protested in vain in the House of Commons how Balcarres had behaved in a duplicitous and dishonest way with the Maroons. Dundas sided with Balcarres in the dispute, and turned down Walpole's requests to get the Maroons returned to Jamaica. Dundas was a vigorous advocate of a strong British presence in the Mediterranean. He promptly met the challenge of Napoleon's attack on Egypt with actions which were vigorous and pivotal. While he did not prevent the French landing, he did play a key role in defeating it, thus enhancing British security in India. From about 1798 on he pleaded frequently to be allowed to resign from his offices on health grounds, but Pitt, who relied on him greatly, refused even to consider it. He was appointed
Keeper of the Privy Seal of Scotland in 1800. Pitt's ministry left office in 1801. In 1802, Dundas was elevated to the
Peerage of the United Kingdom as
Viscount Melville and
Baron Dunira, of
Dunira in Perthshire. When Pitt returned to power in 1804, Dundas again entered office as
First Lord of the Admiralty. Suspicion had arisen, however, as to the financial management of the Admiralty, of which Dundas had been
treasurer between 1782 and 1800. Although his transactions caused no loss of public money, The process ended in Dundas's acquittal. Dundas had already left the
Privy Council in 1805 but he remained in the House of Lords. He was readmitted to the Privy Council in 1807. He declined an offer of an
earldom in 1809. ==Family==