Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 9.djvu/271

Rh diminution of his private fortune, that in 1813 he was obliged to resign it. Two years before this took place, he was appointed cashier of excise for Scotland, in consequence of which he resigned his seat in parliament. He had previously, in 1810, been raised to the rank of a privy councillor. On his resignation of the presidentship of the Board of Agriculture, an event justly deemed of the highest national importance, in consequence of his great public services during forty years, many a grateful survey of his past life was made, and the worth by which it had been distinguished was affectionately commemorated.

Although the remainder of Sir John Sinclair's life was equally distinguished by active enterprising usefulness, our limits permit nothing more than a hasty summary of its chief events. In 1814 he made an excursion to the Netherlands, being his fourth visit to the Continent, and on this occasion his object was to examine the comparative prices of grain in Great Britain and the continental countries, and ascertain the best means of putting a stop to inequality of price for the future. He then passed over to Holland, to investigate the management of the Dutch dairies, so superior in their produce to those of other countries. The escape of Napoleon from Elba interrupted his farther progress, and on returning to England, he published his "Hints on the Agricultural State of the Netherlands compared with that of Great Britain;" in which he explained at full the improvements of foreign agriculture, for the imitation of British farmers. After the battle of Waterloo Sir John revisited Holland and the Netherlands, and afterwards France, where he made a close agricultural inspection of its provinces; but the minute subdivision of landed property in that country gave him little hope of the improvement of French agriculture. On his return to England he saw, with much anxiety, the sudden recoil which peace had produced in our trade, commerce, and agriculture, and carefully sought for a remedy. The result of his speculations was a pamphlet, which he published in October, 1815, entitled "Thoughts on the Agricultural and Financial State of the Country, and on the means of rescuing the Landed Farming Interests from their present depressed state." These evils he traced to the return of peace prices of produce, while war taxes were continued; and the remedy he proposed was, an increase in the currency, a bounty on exportation, and public loans for the benefit of landlord and tenant.

In passing on to 1819, we find Sir John Sinclair as busy as ever, and employed in the way most congenial to his intellectual character. This was the task of code-making, which he was anxious to apply to matters still more important than those that had hitherto been subjected to his industry. He contemplated a great work, to be entitled "A Code or Digest of Religion," in which the mind of the reader was to be led, step by step, from the first simple principles of natural religion, to the last and most profound of revelation. This plan, of which he sketched the first portion, and printed for private distribution among his friends, he was obliged to lay aside, in consequence of the more secular public questions that were daily growing, and pressing upon his notice. His theory, however, was afterwards realized in part by other agencies, in the "Bridgewater Treatises." Another printed paper which he circulated among his friends, was "On the Superior Advantages of the Codean System of Knowledge." It was his wish that every department of learning, science, and literature, hitherto spread over such a boundless field, and so much beyond the reach of common minds, should be collected, condensed, and simplified for the purposes of general instruction—and for this purpose, to associate the