Page:The library a magazine of bibliography and library literature, Volume 6.djvu/143

 The Statistical Accounts of Scotland. 131 indebted for so valuable a publication. John Sinclair he became Sir John in 1786 the eldest son of George Sinclair, of Ulbster, in Caithness, was born at Thurso Castle in 1754, lived a long, active, laborious and eminently useful life, and died in Edinburgh in 1835, in the 82nd year of his age. Statesman, agriculturist, statistician, lawyer, traveller, author, and philanthropist, all are truly applicable to this man, and all taken together fail to take in the man in full. Member of Parliament for different con- stituencies from 1790 to 1807 founder and first president of the Board of Agriculture. As traveller he, in the years 1785-87 made a journey through France, Holland, Denmark, Sweden, Russia, Poland, Austria, and Prussia, during which tour he had intercourse with many of the most distinguished personages on the continent, and personal interviews with several of the crowned heads of Europe ; all the time chiefly interesting himself in questions concerning agriculture and com. merce, which afterwards proved a great help in his efforts for the improvement of our national agriculture. As author, you make the attempt to classify his books, pamphlets, &c., of which he wrote the enormous number of 367 under such headings as literary, statistical, agricultural, political, financial, medical, naval and military, and still you have to add the convenient heading of " miscellaneous." As philanthropist, note the effectual efforts he made in relief of the wants and sufferings of his countrymen in the north of Scotland during the terrible famine of 1782 relief provided not only through his earnest appeals to private benevolence, but by his influence and perse- verance succeeding in wringing from a reluctant Government the grant of a sum of ^"15,000, by which he was enabled to pro- vide food for no fewer than 111,521 starving people, and thereby averting the horrors of disease and probable revolution which usually follow in the wake of protracted famine and privation. Note one other philanthropic action of his. Among the enact- ments passed for the pacification of the Highlands after the rebellion of 1745, was one prohibiting the wearing of the ancient Highland dress. Only to the heart and knees of a true Highlander could the degradation and discomfort involved in the enforcement of such an Act be known, and endeared to all Highlanders must ever be the one who was instrumental in gett- ing that degrading enactment removed from the Statute Book. To Sir John Sinclair belongs that honour, and in this relation one writer says :