Page:Dictionary of National Biography volume 02.djvu/74

 exchequer in July 1846 Mr. Arbuthnot was appointed to his present situation; and Sir C. Wood considers it due to him to record his obligation to him for his constant and zealous exertions at all times, and for the able assistance which he (Sir C. Wood) has received from him in times of great difficulty and on subjects of the greatest moment and importance, and he strongly recommends Mr. Arbuthnot to the board for some distinguished mark of that approbation with which such public services as he has performed must be regarded." My lords have only to add to this just tribute to Mr. Arbuthnot's merits that during the fifteen years which have since elapsed, he has continued his useful career with the same devotion to the public service, and with the still larger opportunities of usefulness which his increased experience afforded him.'

Mr. Arbuthnot's work, as the foregoing minute shows, was not confined to the ordinary business of the treasury. He was constantly consulted on important questions of currency and banking, upon both of which subjects he was regarded as a high authority. As private secretary to Sir Robert Peel at the time when the latter passed through parliament the Bank Charter Act of 1844, Mr. Arbuthnot was intimately associated with the great minister in the framing of that measure, and some years afterwards, when the question of a revision of the act was under consideration, he published a pamphlet containing an able justification of its principles and provisions. In later years he was frequently consulted on questions connected with the Indian currency, when it was proposed to attempt the substitution of a gold for a silver currency in that country; and about the same time he submitted to the lords of the treasury a series of valuable reports upon the currency of Japan in connection with difficulties which had arisen from certain provisions of the treaty executed between the British and Japanese governments in 1858.

Mr. Arbuthnot's paper on Civil Patronage, written in 1854, with reference to alleged defects in the organisation of the permanent civil service, which had been brought to notice in a report made by Sir and Sir  in the previous year, contains a very able defence of the system of appointment which then prevailed, and a powerful refutation of the arguments advanced in the report in question. His style of writing was singularly vigorous and clear, and the rapidity and energy with which he wrote constituted not the least of his many merits as a public servant.

Mr. Arbuthnot was twice offered the appointment of financial member of the council of the governor-general of India, first on the death of Mr. James Wilson in 1860, and again on the retirement of Sir Charles Trevelyan in 1865, but on both occasions he was compelled by the state of his health to decline the offer.

[Records of her Majesty's Treasury; Report on the Organisation of the Civil Service, published 1854; Pamphlet, entitled 'Sir Robert Peel's Act of 1844, regulating the issue of Bank Notes, vindicated by G. Arbuthnot,' 1857; Arbuthnot's Reports on the Japanese Currency, 1862-3; Macmillan's Magazine, August 1870; Globe, August 1865.]  ARBUTHNOT, JOHN (1667–1735), physician and wit, was the son of a Scotch episcopal clergyman settled at Arbuthnot, Kincardineshire. He is said to have studied at Aberdeen, but he took his doctor's degree in medicine at St. Andrew's on 11 Sept. 1696. His father lost his preferment upon the revolution, and retired to a small estate of his own; and the sons, who shared his high-church principles, found it desirable to seek their fortunes abroad. One of them, Robert, became ultimately a banker in Paris; his extraordinary amiability is celebrated by Pope (Letter to Digby, 1 Sept. 1722); he married a rich widow of Suffolk in 1726 (Swift to Stopford, 20 July 1726); and he was suspected of Jacobite tendencies (Gent. Mag. ii. 578, 766, 782). Another was in the army (Journal to Stella, 26 Sept. 1711). John Arbuthnot settled in London, where he first stayed at the house of Mr. William Pate, a woollendraper, and gave lessons in mathematics. In 1697 he published 'An Examination of Dr. Woodward's Account of the Deluge, &c.,' criticising a crude theory suggested by Woodward (1695) in an 'Essay towards a Natural History of the Earth.' Arbuthnot next published an able 'Essay on the Usefulness of Mathematical Learning, in a letter from a gentleman in the city to his friend in Oxford,' dated 25 Nov. 1700. He was elected a fellow of the Royal Society, 30 Nov. 1704; and in 1710 he contributed a paper to its 'Transactions' upon the slight average excess of male over female births; which he regards as a providential arrangement intended to provide against the greater risks of the male sex, and as proving that polygamy is contrary to the law of nature. Arbuthnot was meanwhile rising in his profession, and had the good luck to be at Epsom when Prince George of Denmark was suddenly taken ill and to prescribe for him successfully. He was appointed physician 