an English statesman, writer, and politician who sat in the House of Commons in 1660, and in the House of Lords after he was raised to the peerage in 1668. Halifax's speeches have not been preserved, and his political writings on this account have all the greater value. The Character of a Trimmer (1684 or 1685) was his most ambitious production, written seemingly as advice to the king and as a manifesto of his own opinions. In it he discusses the political problems of the time and their solution on broad principles.
