Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/458

Baird was elected and ordained to the professorship of oriental languages at Edinburgh. He had won for himself so high a reputation that in 1793, on the death of Principal Robertson, he was appointed his successor in the principalship. He was then in his thirty-third year. As principal he was called upon to punish a breach of the discipline of the university committed by three students who subsequently attained to pre-eminent distinction. A challenge had been addressed to one of the professors, and the parties implicated in the misdemeanour were Lord Henry Petty (afterwards Marquis of Lansdowne), Henry Brougham (afterwards Lord Brougham and Vaux), and Francis Horner (afterwards M.P.) These students were summoned before the Senatus Academicus. Only Brougham appeared, and the rebuke of the principal was so delivered and accepted that a warm friendship ensued, and lasted long after Brougham had entered public life.

In 1799 Principal Baird was translated to the new North parish church. In 1801, on the death of Dr. Blair, he was appointed his successor in the high parish church, where he remained until his death.

He married the eldest daughter of Thomas Elder, Esq., lord provost of Edinburgh. Towards the close of his life he threw his whole soul into a scheme for the education of the poor in the highlands and islands of Scotland. He submitted his proposals to the supreme court of the kirk—the general assembly—in May 1824, advocating with statesmanlike breadth of view enlarged education in the great centres, and especially the extension of the system to the neglected Celtic race. The general assembly of 1825 gave its sanction to the scheme, and it was launched most auspiciously. His intellectual and social influence provided all over Scotland for the education of the poor. In his sixty-seventh year, when enfeebled in health, he traversed the entire highlands of Argyll, the west of Inverness and Ross, and the western islands, from Lewis to Kintyre. In his sixty-eighth year he similarly visited the north highlands, and the Orkneys and Shetland, Through his influence Dr. Andrew Bell, of Madras, bequeathed 5,000l. for education in the highlands of Scotland. In 1832 the thanks of the general assembly were conveyed to him by the moderator for the year, the illustrious Dr. Thomas Chalmers, then in the zenith of his oratorical powers. Baird died on 14 Jan. 1840, at Manuel, near Linlithgow, in his seventy-ninth year.

 BAIRD, JAMES (1802–1876), a wealthy ironmaster and benefactor to the church of Scotland, was born at Kirkwood, 5 Dec. 1802. He was the fourth son of Alexander Baird by Jean, daughter of Mr. James Moffat, Whitburn. Alexander Baird was almost exclusively a farmer and miller until he made his first purely commercial venture by leasing, in 1809, the Woodside coalworks, near Dalserf, which he managed in addition to his land, and to which he added in 1816 the coalfield of Rochsolloch, near Airdrie, and in 1822, the coalfield of Merrystown. James received his early education at the parish school of Old Monkland, and, the circumstances of the family having improved, passed a short time at the university of Glasgow (Scotsman, 21 June 1876). In May 1826 Alexander Baird, then of Lockwood, and his sons William, Alexander, and James, obtained a lease from Mr. Hamilton Colt, Gartsherrie, of the coalfields of Sunnyside, Hollandhirst, and New Gartsherrie. In 1828 the Bairds became ironmasters as well as coalowners by acquiring a forty years' lease of the ironstone in the lands of Cairnhill, adjoining Gartsherrie. They afterwards erected blast furnaces, the first of which was put in blast 4 May 1830, and when in the same year the founder of the firm went out of the business, his sons formed a partnership, under the style and title of William Baird & Co. Alexander Baird died at Newmains in 1833 James Baird assumed in 1830 the active management of the business, and especially gave his attention to the improvement of the machinery. The result of his improvements was to raise the production of a furnace from 60 to 250 tons a week. By 1842 the Gartsherrie works boasted their full number of sixteen furnaces. The Bairds proceeded to acquire coal and iron works in other parts of Lanarkshire, as well as in the counties of Ayr, Stirling, Dumbarton, and Cumberland. Under the title of the Eglinton Iron Company, they added works at Eglinton 1846, Blair 1852, Muirkirk and Lugar 1856, and Portland 1864, and thus possessed between forty and fifty furnaces, with a power of turning out 300,000 tons of iron per annum and of giving employment to nearly 10,000 men and boys. The brothers invested their revenues in the purchase of land, and the estates acquired by the family in the course of their career represented in round numbers the sum of 2,000,000l. James Baird represented the Falkirk group of burghs in the House of Commons from 1851-2 and 1852-7,