[6] He stood again for Plymouth in the general election of April 1880 and in the bye-election held there in June 1880 (after the conservative Edward Bates had been unseated on the grounds of illegal payments by his agents).
Although Young wasn't elected, he was given a role within the Gladstone administration and was one of the three Royal Commissioners on Coolie Immigration who were appointed by the Colonial Office in 1870 to investigate the conditions of Chinese and Indian labourers in British Guiana (now known as Guyana) who had been brought there to work the sugar plantations after the abolition of slavery.
[6][1][7][8] The commission's work involved spending several months in British Guiana, whilst there he joined a small group, led by Charles Barrington Brown, exploring the Kaieteur Waterfall on the River Potaro.
[5][16] In 1882 he was appointed Charity Commissioner under the Endowed Schools Acts[1] and in that role he gave evidence to the Royal Commission on Secondary Education (1895) led by Viscount Bryce.
The Commission's report described him as "one of our most important witnesses",[17] in his evidence he maintained that the numerous entrance scholarships offered for open competition at Oxford and Cambridge are having "an injurious effect on the Secondary Education of the middle classes".
Having spent the night on the rocks of the Schneehorn (3,402 m or 11,161 ft), they gained the Silberlücke the following morning, the depression between the Jungfrau and Silberhorn, and from there in little more than three hours reached the summit.
[22] George Young was leading this party without guides and felt responsible for the incident; he never went mountaineering again and "If the Alps were mentioned in his presence, inadvertently, by a visitor, he would rise quietly and leave the room".