Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 01.djvu/392

  in the districts of local magistrates who were invested with a summary jurisdiction in petty civil suits, the establishment of trial by jury, the introduction of a paper currency, arrangements for increasing the supply of labour by immigration, and for establishing steam communication with England viâ Aden, and a reduction of the public expenditure. On relinquishing the government he was presented with addresses by representatives of all the leading bodies in the colony.

Sir George Anderson's appointment to the government of Ceylon at the time at which it was made was a distinguished mark of confidence; for owing to a rebellion on the part of the Cinghalese which had recently taken place, the ill-judged measures which had accompanied its suppression, and the personal differences which had arisen between the late governor, Lord Torrington, and some of the chief officials in the island, the colony was in a very disorganised condition. The state of feeling which resulted from these occurrences could not fail more or less to embarrass the position of the new governor. Party spirit ran high, and the situation was aggravated by differences which unfortunately arose between the bishop of Colombo and several of his clergy. Anderson seems to have fully sustained his previous reputation. As in India and in Mauritius, so also in Ceylon, reforms in the judicial system, having for their object promptitude in the administration of justice and simplification of the procedure of the courts, engaged much of his attention. He developed the resources of the colony by improving the communications, exercised a strict control over the expenditure, and by his conciliatory bearing towards the chiefs and principal headmen of the central province, he restored the confidence of the Cinghalese portion of the population. After governing the colony for nearly four years and a half, the failure of his health compelled him to resign his post in the spring of 1855. He had been advanced to a knight commandership of the Bath on his appointment to Ceylon. He died 17 March 1857, in the sixty-seventh year of his age.

Anderson was married three times, and left a widow and fifteen children, the eldest of whom, the late Sir Henry Lacon Anderson, K.C.S.I., also a Bombay civil servant, rose to a high position in that presidency, and died in March 1879, being then a secretary at the India office.



ANDERSON, JAMES (1662–1728), Scotch genealogist and antiquary, was born at Edinburgh 5 Aug. 1662, being a son of the Rev. Patrick Anderson, a nonjuring clergyman, who was sometime minister of Lamington, in Lanarkshire, and who, during the persecutions in the reign of Charles II, had been incarcerated in the state prison on the Bass Rock. He was educated at the university of Edinburgh, where he was admitted to the degree of M.A. 27 May 1680. Having chosen to adopt the profession of the law, he served his apprenticeship to Sir Hugh Paterson, an eminent member of the Society of Writers to the Signet, and was admitted to the privileges of that body of legal practitioners 6 June 1601. His profession afforded him numerous opportunities to study ancient documents. He soon became fond of antiquarian research, and it appears from his correspondence that at an early period he formed an intimacy with Captain John Slezer, the author of the 'Theatrum Scotiæ,' whose historical investigations and personal disappointments bear so striking a resemblance to his own. It is probable, however, that Anderson might have passed through life in comparative obscurity but for a circumstance which occurred during the excitement consequent upon the proposed union between England and Scotland. In 1704, while feeling ran very high on this subject, an English lawyer named William Atwood, who had been chief-justice of New York, published a pamphlet entitled 'The Superiority and direct Dominion of the Imperial Crown and Kingdom of England over the Crown and Kingdom of Scotland.' The author of this work revived the claims of Edward I to the crown of Scotland, with many insulting sneers at the pretensions of Scottish independence. It curiously happened that Anderson, though altogether unknown to Atwood, was appealed to by him as an eye-witness to vouch for the "trustworthiness of some of the charters and grants by the kings of Scotland. The charters in question are the well-known documents, supposed to have been forged by Harding the chronicler, of which no one now supports the authenticity. Anderson, in consequence of such an appeal, deemed himself bound in duty to his country to publish what he knew of the matter, and to vindicate the memory of some of the best of the Scottish kings, who were accused by Atwood of a base and voluntary surrender of their sovereignty. Accordingly, in 1705, he published 'An Historical Essay, showing that the Crown and Kingdom of Scotland is Imperial and Independent,' Edinb. 1705, 8vo. It is a clear,