Henry Dundas, 1st Viscount Melville by
Thomas Lawrence Dundas was born on 28 April 1742 at
Arniston House,
Midlothian, to one of Scotland's most distinguished legal families. After studying at the
University of Edinburgh and practising as an
advocate, he first entered
parliament in 1774. The following year, Dundas became
Lord Advocate and arrogated immense power over Scottish affairs to the office. He also took an interest in the welfare of the
Highlands, repealing the
Disarming Act in 1781 and founding the
Highland Society in 1784. Having tried to prevent widespread electoral manipulation, he abandoned these efforts and instead used such practices to his own ends. By 1796, he had effective control of all but two of Scotland's members of parliament. Dundas gained influence under Prime Minister
William Pitt the Younger and soon became
Home Secretary: in this role, he suppressed popular unrest during the
French Revolution. After
France declared war on Britain in 1793, during the
French Revolutionary Wars, he supported consolidation of the
empire and the
union of Great Britain with Ireland alongside
Catholic emancipation. In
the Commons, Dundas opposed
William Wilberforce's legislative efforts to
abolish the slave trade "immediately." He proposed a gradual method that would wind down slavery and the slave trade together, with the slave trade ending by 1800, and while he had some support among abolitionists, Wilberforce and other hardliners opposed his plan, and the West Indian slave interests were also against him. The hardliners amended his plan to have the slave trade end in 1796, but were thwarted by the
House of Lords, who refused to consider it. As
First Lord of the Admiralty, he led the strengthening of the
Royal Navy in the period before the
Battle of Trafalgar. Having been ennobled as
Viscount Melville in 1802, Dundas was
impeached for misappropriation of naval funds and tried by the House of Lords. Dundas was found not guilty on all charges and re-entered the
Privy Council. He died in Edinburgh on 27 May 1811.
Moves to commemorate Dundas , who led the campaign for a monument to Dundas among his naval colleagues In 1812, Dundas's supporters raised a large
obelisk to his memory on his
Dunira estate near
Comrie,
Perthshire. At the same time, Dundas's family, with support from subscribers among the public, supported the creation of a monument to Dundas in Edinburgh. The result was the marble statue by
Francis Leggatt Chantrey in
Parliament Hall, completed in 1818. The existence of this memorial later led some to question the relevance of the St Andrew Square project. In March 1821, shortly before construction began, a correspondent in
The Scotsman, a
Whig newspaper, argued the existence of this statue made another memorial to the same figure in the same city irrelevant. The idea of another monument to Dundas in Edinburgh was first raised at a meeting of the
Pitt Club of Scotland in May 1814. This may have motivated Vice Admiral Sir
William Johnstone Hope to initiate a movement for such a monument within the
Royal Navy. Hope started the Melville Monument Committee, of which he was convener. In government, Dundas had become known as the "Seaman's Friend" for his advancement of measures to support sailors of the Royal Navy and their dependents. In its initial stages, the project was both led by naval officers and supported exclusively by subscriptions from sailors; although civic and legal figures were represented on the committee. Alongside this primarily naval impetus for the monument,
The Scotsman noted strong support from Dundas's own family.
Development in
Rome, which
William Burn used as the basis for his design of the Melville Monument The form and location of the monument were not initially settled and Hope first successfully applied to the
town council for a site at the north east edge of
Calton Hill. A correspondent in the
Caledonian Mercury opposed the Calton Hill site, instead proposing the monument could be built on
Arthur's Seat. By the end of 1818, the committee appeared to have settled on
St Andrew Square at the eastern end of Edinburgh's
New Town. In February 1820, the committee announced it was abandoning St Andrew Square in favour a site at the intersection of Melville Street and what is now Walker Street in the
West End. At the time, this was an under-developed site on the private property of Sir Patrick Walker outside the boundaries of the city. The committee had been negotiating with Walker since December 1818 but soon after the announcement, many on the committee balked at Walker's insistence that he and his descendants would maintain the monument. This entanglement with a private landowner, they feared, would undermine the monument's public character. The proprietors of St Andrew Square responded by renegotiating the contract for the monument. They offered the site free of charge while the city council agreed to maintain the structure. The contract was agreed in January 1821 and St Andrew Square was finally settled as the site of the monument. The town council also agreed to accept responsibility for the monument on its completion. William Armstrong was engaged as builder at an agreed cost of £3,192: well within the £3,430 6s 4d the committee had raised. On 28 April 1821, the anniversary of Dundas's birth, Admirals
Otway and
Milne laid the foundation stone and a
time capsule was sealed into the structure;
George Baird, Principal of the
University of Edinburgh said prayers as part of the ceremony. The day concluded with a celebratory dinner at the Warterloo Tavern.
Construction in the construction of the
Bell Rock Lighthouse; at Stevenson's recommendation, J. & J. Rutherford used a similar crane to construct the Melville Monument. Soon after the contract was signed, Patrick Walker attempted to sue the committee for "breach of engagement" and claim damages of £10,000. In the end, the committee settled for £408, effectively tipping the project into debt. Debt and delay grew, especially after an assessment by
Robert Stevenson recommend strengthening the foundations and constructing the shaft from solid blocks rather than
rubble infill as Burn had proposed. Stevenson's assessment was offered free of charge and had been spurred by the square's residents, many of whom were fearful of the stability of such a large monument. Despite these problems, the committee persevered and, in 1822, agreed to include a statue, designed by
Francis Leggatt Chantrey and carved by
Robert Forrest. At Stevenson's suggestion, J. & J. Rutherford constructed the column using an iron balance crane such as Stevenson had employed during the construction of the
Bell Rock Lighthouse. The column, without its statue, was almost complete by the
visit of George IV to Edinburgh in August 1822. In February 1827, the committee finally made an appeal for public support. By April 1834, this and appeals to the Pitt Club had failed to reduce the debt below £1,100. The committee decided to require each of its own members to pay £41 13s 4d under threat of legal action. In the end, this too proved ineffective and only by 1837 were the final costs were paid by six remaining naval officers on a sub-committee. The ultimate cost of the monument was £8,000.
Initial reception and interpretation Reappraisal of Dundas's legacy had begun soon after his death in 1811. Dundas's younger contemporary, the
Whig lawyer
Henry Cockburn, called Dundas "the absolute dictator of Scotland" for his domination of the country's patronage networks. The monument's lengthy construction coincided with a period in which Dundas's legacy became more divisive. By the early 1830s, debates over the extension of the franchise dominated Edinburgh's politics while Dundas came to represent a repressive Tory administration. In that decade, the town council recorded the complaints of citizens who objected to the city's maintenance of a memorial to an "unpopular" figure whose policies were "unwise and offensive". At its erection, the
Caledonian Mercury negatively compared the monument with similar recent structures,
Lord Hill's Column at
Shrewsbury and the
Britannia Monument at
Great Yarmouth. The newspaper claimed these monuments, lacking the
reliefs that decorate the shaft of
Trajan's Column, appeared "tottering and insecure" while the Melville Monument appeared "rather the remains of an edifice, than an entire object". C.G. Desmarest argues the monument is "imperial in character and context": part of a general movement around the turn of the nineteenth century to honour heroes of Britain's empire. Desmarest cites the
Nelson Monument, the
National Monument and Chantrey's own statue of
Pitt the Younger on
George Street among other examples of this trend in Edinburgh. Memorials of this time in Scotland often depict figures from the arts or from distant history. Such figures express "antiquarian nationalism" and "Unionist nationalism", which assert Scotland's unique national identity without challenging its place within the
United Kingdom. In this context, Dundas represented, in Desmarest's words: "... a defender of the notion that Scotland was not a colony, but an equal partner in the Union".
Subsequent history On 14 July 1837, lightning stuck the monument. The committee remained unable to pay both the cost of repairs and the cost of a protective railing, which had been installed round the base of the monument in 1833. These railings, within whose bounds the square's gardeners kept their equipment, had been removed by 1947. The monument has been protected as a
Category A listed building since 1966. In 2003, the
Institution of Civil Engineers placed an explanatory plaque to the monument at the western entrance to the garden and, in 2008,
Edinburgh World Heritage supported the conservation of the monument as part of its Twelve Monuments scheme. The restoration coincided with a £2.4m refurbishment of
St Andrew Square. The refurbishment concluded with the opening of the square for full public access for the first time in its history. Restoration of the statue proved especially difficult; a special scaffold was constructed around the top of the monument.
21st-century controversy In 2017, the
city council, responding to a petition from environmental campaigner, Adam Ramsay, convened a committee to draft the wording of a new plaque to reflect controversial aspects of Dundas's legacy, including his role in the delay in the abolition of the slave trade. The committee included academic and anti-racism campaigner
Sir Geoff Palmer. The committee also included historian Michael Fry, who argued that, by arguing for "gradual" abolition, Dundas was taking a pragmatic approach to support abolition in a pro-slavery parliament. Although the council aimed to install a new plaque by September 2018, the committee's work remained incomplete by 2020. At this time, activity around the monument included graffiti on the pedestal and a petition to remove the monument altogether. While a permanent plaque awaited planning, the council installed temporary plaques in July 2020. These bore the intended wording of the permanent plaque, which had been drafted by a sub-committee including representatives of the council and
Edinburgh World Heritage along with Palmer. In response, historian Sir
Tom Devine criticised the council's decision-making process as a "kangaroo court". He argued Dundas had been "scapegoated" for the delay in the abolition of the slave trade, which, he claimed, would have been impossible at the time in any case. In March 2021, the council approved the installation of a permanent plaque "dedicated to the memory of the more than half a million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas's actions". The plaque also states Dundas "defended and expanded the British empire, imposing colonial rule on indigenous peoples" and "curbed democratic dissent in Scotland". The plaque was installed in October 2021, coinciding with the council's launch of a public survey into Edinburgh's colonial legacy and with the creation of the Edinburgh Slavery and Colonial Legacy Review Group, chaired by Palmer. In response to the approval of the plaque, two of Dundas's descendants – Jennifer Dundas and Bobby Dundas, the current
Viscount Melville – criticised the wording of the plaque. They argued their ancestor was one of the first MPs to support abolition and pointed to his role in the legal defence of
Joseph Knight in the
Knight v. Wedderburn: the case which led to the effective abolition of slavery in almost all cases in Scotland. Palmer responded by recognising Dundas's role in Knight's case while refuting the claim that Dundas was an abolitionist. In March 2023 the
City of Edinburgh Council planning committee voted to remove the contentious plaque but the council later explained that as the owners they would not do this. and that the vote was a technicality about planning permission. ==Description==