One of the most distinguished of our retired Civil Servants,
the Right Hon. Sir Louis Mallet, died at Bath early on Sunday morning of an attack of the prevailing epidemic. He entered the public service in the Audit Office, and was then transferred to the Board of Trade, whence he was -chosen by Mr. Cobden, as the man who understood best both the French economy and the French Foreign Office, to help him in negotiating the Treaty of Commerce with France in 1860, and to draw up the tariff. In 186,5 he was sent to Vienna, to do the same work in relation to the Austrian Commercial Treaty, in which he was engaged for two years. In 1874 he became Permanent Under-Secretary to the India Office, in succession to Herman Merivale, and there he remained till his retirement in 1883 from ill-health. He was the grandson of the eminent French journalist, Mallet du Pan, and combined with a great deal of the French lucidity and charm of style, all the coolness and equanimity of the English temperament, and also a keen insight into character, and in spite of his deep and even eager political convictions, a rare enjoyment of the humours of politics. He was a great student of economy and currency, and, strange to say, he did not even believe in his own infallibility on currency questions. He was an excellent correspondent, and the most fascinating of friends, happy in his wife, happy in his family, and though saddened by frequent and persistent ill-health, one of the most cheerful and benign of the inner circle of influential political thinkers who knew personally both the Parliamentary and the departmental statesmen. His loss will be keenly felt by a very wide circle of friends, to whom he was one of the most interesting figures of his time.
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