Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 3.djvu/335

Rh the eye of every visitor from South Britain, as truly worthy of the form of worship for which they are designed.

Sir William had known Mr Alison from his infancy : and from the situation which the latter now held in the Cowgate chapel, they were brought into much closer and more intimate friendship, from which both these eminent men derived, for the remainder of their lives, the most unalloyed satisfaction. Mr Alison attended Sir William during the long and lingering- illness which at length closed his beneficent life, and afterwards preached the eloquent and impressive funeral sermon, which is published with his discourses, and pourtrays the character we have here humbly endeavoured to delineate in a more detailed form.

When the new bankrupt act, which had been enacted only for a limited time, expired in 1783, Sir William Forbes was appointed convener of the mercantile committee in Edinburgh, which corresponded with the committees of Glasgow and Aberdeen, of which provost Colquhoun and Mr Milne were respectively conveners; and their united efforts and intelligence produced the great improvement upon the law which was effected by that act. By it the sequestration law, which under the old statute had extended to all descriptions of debtors, was confined to merchants, traders, and others properly falling under its spirit; the well known regulations for the equalization of arrestments and poindings within sixty days, were introduced; sequestrations, which included at first only the personal estate, were extended to the whole property; and the greatest improvement of all was introduced, namely, the restriction of what was formerly alternative to a system of private trust, under judicial control. Sir William Forbes, who corresponded with the London solicitor who drew the bill, had the principal share in suggesting these the great outlines of the system of mercantile bankruptcy in this country; and accordingly, when the convention of royal burghs who paid the expense attending it, voted thanks to the lord advocate for carrying it through parliament, they at the same time (10th July, 1783,) directed their preses to "convey the thanks of the convention to Sir William Forbes, Hay Campbell, Esq., solicitor-general for Scotland, and Mr Milne, for their great and uncommon attention to the bill."

On the death of Mr Forbes of Pitsligo, only son of lord Pitsligo, in 1782, whose estate and title were forfeited for his accession to the rebellion in 1745, Sir William Forbes, as the nearest heir in the female line of the eldest branch of the family of Forbes, claimed and obtained, from the Lyon court, the designation and arms of Pitsligo. He was the heir of the peerage under the destination in the patent, if it had not been forfeited.

Hitherto Sir William Forbes's character has been considered merely as that of a public-spirited, active, and benevolent gentleman, who, by great activity and spotless integrity, had been eminently prosperous in life, and devoted, in the true spirit of Christian charity, a large portion of his ample means and valuable time to the relief of his fellow creatures, or works of public utility and improvement; but this was not his only character : he was also a gentleman of the highest. breeding, and most dignified manners; the life of every scene of innocent amusement or recreation; the head of the most cultivated and elegant society in the capital; and a link between the old Scottish aristocratical families, to which he belonged by birth, and the rising commercial opulence with which he was connected by profession, as well as the literary circle, with which he was intimate from his acquirements.

In 1768, he spent nearly a twelvemonth in London, in Sir Robert, then Mr, Herries' family; and such was the opinion formed of his abilities even at that early period, that Sir Robert anxiously wished him to settle in the metropolis in busi-