Sir George Dallas 1st Bart.

Younger son of Robert Dallas (died 1797), insurance broker, of 2 Cooper's Court, St Michael, Cornhill, and his wife, Elizabeth, daughter of the Revd James Smith, minister of Kilbirnie, Ayrshire. He was educated at Geneva with his brother, Sir Robert Dallas (1756–1824) (q.v.), later lord chief justice of the common pleas. The two men were among four co-heirs of the residuary estate of William Gemmell (q.v.).

1776-1788: in Bengal as a writer for the East India Company.

12 June 1788: married Catherine Margaret (died 1846), fourth daughter of Sir John Blackwood, baronet, and his wife, Dorcas, afterwards Baroness Dufferin and Claneboye; they had four sons and three daughters.

Wrote considerable number of pamphlets, including a vindication of Warren Hastings, on the French Revolution (to which he was very hostile), on Ireland (writing as an anti-Jacobin) etc.

Advocate of merchants in the Anglo-India trade and a more liberal system of commercial relations between Britain and India.

Frequently took part in debates at India House, where "his opinion had great influence".

Died in Brighton, 14 January 1833; buried in St Andrew's Church, Waterloo Street, Brighton, where there is a monument to his memory.

Father of Robert Charles Dallas [q.v.], who succeeded him as baronet.

G. F. R. Barker, ‘Dallas, Sir George, first baronet (1758–1833)’, rev. Rebecca Mills, Oxford Dictionary of National Biography (Oxford, Oxford University Press, 2004), online edn, May 2008, http://www.oxforddnb.com/view/article/7036?docPos=2 [accessed 31/10/2012].

R. G. Thorne (ed.), The House of Commons, 1790-1820 (5 vols., London, Secker & Warburg for the History of Parliament Trust, 1986), vol. 3.

Detailed contemporary obituary in The Annual Biography and Obituary (London, Longman, Orme, Rees, Brown, Green and Longman, 1834), Vol. 18, pp. 30-40.