George Savile, 1st Marquess of Halifax, PC, DL, FRS, was 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.

IT would have given no displeasure to Sir George Savile, First Marquess Of Halifax, to think that by later generations of his countrymen he should be almost forgotten. States men are easily forgotten. A prosperous lie made Titus Oates immortal; but the man who was the practical genius of the English Revolution, and the acutest critical genius among English politicians, is now little more than a name. What is most commonly remembered about him is that he was called the Trimmer The nickname was put upon him angrily by his contemporaries, and was worn proudly by himself. The imputation it conveyed was, no doubt, that he trimmed his sails to the varying breezes of Opinion but in his famous pamphlet, the noise of which still echoes distantly in the public ear, he changed the metaphor. A boat, he said, goes ill, and is in danger of capsizing, if the people in it weigh it down all on one side, or all on the other. But there is a kind Of men who conceive that it would do as well if the boat went even, without endangering the passengers And it is hard to imagine, he adds, how it should come to be a fault, or a heresy, to attempt to trim the boat. (excerpt from the Introduction)