Sir Charles Edward Trevelyan, 1st Baronet, KCB (2 April 1807 – 19 June 1886) was an English civil servant and colonial administrator.

Today Trevelyan is mostly remembered for his reluctance to disburse direct government food and monetary aid to the Irish during the famine due to his strong belief in laissez-faire economics.

[1][page needed] Trevelyan's defenders say that larger factors than his own acts and beliefs were more central to the problem of the famine and its high mortality.

Balfour stated that "his early life was influenced by his parents' membership of the Clapham Sect – a group of sophisticated families noted for their severity of principle as much as for their fervent evangelism.

He occupied several important and influential positions in various parts of India, but his priggish and often indiscreet behaviour endeared him to few of his colleagues and involved him in almost continual controversy.

[8] In Ireland a million people starved to death, as the Irish watched with increasing fury as boatloads of homegrown oats and grain departed on schedule from their shores for shipment to England.

At Dungarvan, in County Waterford, British troops were pelted with stones as they shot into the crowd, killing at least two people and wounding several others.

He married twice: He entered the East India Company's Bengal civil service as a writer in 1826, having displayed from an early age a great proficiency in Asian languages and dialects.

On 4 January 1827, Trevelyan was appointed assistant to Sir Charles Theophilus Metcalfe, the commissioner at Delhi, where, during a residence of four years, he was entrusted with the conduct of several important missions.

Trevelyan was especially zealous in the cause of education, and in 1835, largely owing to his persistence, government was led to decide in favour of the promulgation of European literature and science among the Indians.

On 21 January 1840, he entered on the duties of assistant secretary to Her Majesty's Treasury in London, and discharged the functions of that office for nineteen years.

The Great Famine in Ireland began as a catastrophe of extraordinary magnitude, but its effects were severely worsened by the actions and inactions of the Whig government, headed by Lord John Russell in the crucial years from 1846 to 1852.

Many members of the British upper and middle classes believed that the famine was a divine judgment—an act of Providence[citation needed] although these views also existed in the Irish Catholic Church.

A leading exponent of the providentialist perspective was Trevelyan, who was chiefly responsible for administering Irish relief policy throughout the famine years.

Karen Sonnelitter discusses the subject in her edited collection of primary sources, The Great Irish Famine: A History in Documents.

[14] After the end of the Peelite Relief Programs, the Whig–Liberal government instituted the Labour Rate Act, which provided aid only to the most severely affected areas of the famine.

[13] This Labour Act took time to be implemented, as was Trevelyan's intention, allowing the British government to spend the bare minimum to feed those starving from the famine.

[16] Trevelyan said in his 9 October 1846 letter to Lord Monteagle that "the government establishments are strained to the utmost to alleviate this great calamity and avert this danger" as was within their power so to do.

[17] The Times agreed with Trevelyan, faulting the gentry for not instructing their proprietors to improve their estates and not planting crops other than the potato.

Having maintained his knowledge of oriental affairs by close attention to all subjects affecting the interest of India, he entered upon his duties as governor of Madras in the spring of 1859.

[citation needed] An assessment was carried out, a police system organised in every part, and, contrary to the traditions of the East India Company, land was sold in fee simple to any one who wished to purchase.

On 9 March, a letter was sent to Madras stating the central government's objection to the transmission of such a message in an open telegram at a time when native feeling could not be considered stable.

At the same time, the representative of the Madras government in the legislative council of India was prohibited from following the instructions of his superiors to lay their views upon the table and to advocate on their behalf.

His tenure of office was marked by important administrative reforms and by extensive measures for the development of natural resources in India by means of public works.

In 1862, Colonel Douglas Hamilton was given a roving commission by Trevelyan to conduct surveys and make drawings for the Government of all the hill plateaus in Southern India which were likely to suit as Sanitaria, or quarters for European troops.

The modest social position of the family was suddenly elevated to one of wealth and property, recorded as an important event in the history of the baronetcy.

George Trevelyan was a slaveholder, announced a plan to travel to the Caribbean and apologize for the family's ownership of 1,004 enslaved Africans.