The Times Great Scottish Lives: Obituaries of Scotland’s Finest

Sir John Sinclair, Bart.

Agricultural reformer whose ‘Statistical Account’ collected details of every parish in North Britain

6 January 1836

Sir John Sinclair was born at Thurso Castle, in the county of Caithness, on the 10th of May, 1754. He received the rudiments of a classical education at the High School of Edinburgh, and having carried on his studies at the Universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow, he completed them at Oxford. At Glasgow he was a favourite pupil of the celebrated Adam Smith, who admitted him to familiar intercourse, and from whose conversation, as well as lectures, he imbibed a taste for political inquiries.

On the two first occasions which called forth his talents as a writer, his object was to rouse the sinking energies of the country in times of great disaster and embarrassment. At the close of the American war, the suspicion rapidly gained ground, under the influence of Dr. Price and Lord Stair, that the finances of the country were embarrassed beyond recovery, and that a national bankruptcy was inevitable. In reply to this dangerous assertion Sir John wrote a tract entitled Thoughts on the State of our Finances, which essentially contributed to restore the credit of Great Britain on the Continent. It “deserved letters of gold,” was the strong language of the British Minister at the Hague, to express his sense of its importance. In 1780 Sir John wrote his vindication of the British navy. No great victories had for a long period been gained at sea, and so general was the panic spread by the expected junction of the French and Spanish Beets, that even Lord Mulgrave, though a Lord of the Admiralty, was understood to have been carried away by the torrent of despondency. In a pamphlet entitled Thoughts on the Naval Strength of the British Empire, Sir John Sinclair so effectually revived the public confidence, that Lord Mulgrave himself returned him thanks for a defence of our naval service so powerful and so well timed.

It was in the same year, 1780, that Sir John was first chosen to represent his native county; and, with the exception of a short interval, he continued in the House of Commons till the year 1811, a period of above 30 years.

During a visit to the continent in 1785-6, Sir John’s activity and perseverance enabled him to obtain information upon several points of great national utility; in particular on the art of coinage and on the manufacture of earthenware and of gunpowder. He described the last of these improvements to his friend Bishop Watson, Professor of Chemistry at Cambridge, before communicating it to the Board of Ordnance; and so important was the service rendered to the public, that the bishop in his memoirs represents his subordinate share in the transaction amongst his strongest claims to public gratitude.

Among the earliest and most laborious of Sir John Sinclair’s literary undertakings was his History of the Public Revenue, from the Remotest Eras to the Peace of Amiens − a work which supplied the necessary data for effecting various improvements in our financial system, and especially for the introduction of the income-tax, without which the war could never have been brought to a successful issue.

It was on Sir John Sinclair’s suggestion, that in 1793 Mr. Pitt proposed in Parliament the issue of Exchequer-bills for the relief of the commercial interest, then labouring under great distress. How soon and how effectually credit was restored by that politic measure, all merchants old enough to recollect the crisis must willingly, and many of them gratefully, acknowledge. Nor was Sir John’s diligence in executing his plan inferior to his sagacity in devising it; much depended upon a large sum of money reaching Glasgow before a certain day; by applying every stimulus to all the agents he was enabled to accomplish this important object, contrary to the expectations of his most sanguine friends. Meeting the Prime Minister the same evening in the House of Commons, he began explaining to him his success, when Mr. Pitt interrupted him − ”No, no, you are too late for Glasgow; the money cannot go for two days.” − ”It is already gone,” was Sir John’s triumphant reply; “it went by the mail this afternoon.”

The gratitude of the Minister was in proportion to the magnitude of the service. He desired Sir John to specify some favour to be conferred upon him by the Crown. He requested the support of Government to his intended proposition for the establishment of “a Board of Agriculture.”

A spirit of enterprise and of invention was excited among the farming classes, and a dignity attached to agriculture which it never had before acquired. Agricultural associations suddenly sprung up on every side; reports were published, in 50 volumes octavo, describing accurately every county in the United Kingdom, and the substance of the information thus accumulated was digested, by Sir John himself, into his Code of Agriculture, a work which has now reached the fifth edition.

Among the labours undertaken by Sir John Sinclair, the most arduous, and perhaps the most successful, was The Statistical Account of Scotland. So little had the subject been at that time attended to, that the very term “statistics” was of his invention (see Walker’s Dictionary). The work was first commenced in 1790; it was prosecuted uninterruptedly for seven years, during which a correspondence was carried on with all the clergy of the church of Scotland, amounting nearly to 1,000; and it was brought successfully to completion by the gradual publication of 21 thick octavo volumes, in which a separate account is given of every parish in North Britain. Sir John made no attempt to derive even a partial compensation by the sale of his performance, for the immense expenditure he had incurred, but generously made over the whole work to the above mentioned body. A new edition, under their direction, is now in progress.

Along with his agricultural and statistical inquiries Sir John Sinclair from time to time exerted himself for the extension of the British fisheries. Having reason to believe that large quantities of herrings annually resorted to the coast of Caithness, he advanced a sum of money towards enabling certain enterprising individuals to decide the question. Their report was so favourable, that he prevailed upon the British Fishing Society to form a settlement in that county. The fishery thus established and encouraged has ever since continued rising in importance. It employs, on the coast of Caithness alone, about 14,000 individuals; it produces annually above 150,000 barrels of herrings; and being since extended to the neighbouring counties, has become the most productive fishery in Europe.

A tall athletic figure, in a military garb, his pretension to that costume was grounded on an important benefit to the public − that of raising, in 1794, a regiment of fencibles. Sir John’s first battalion, consisting of 600 men, served in England; and the second, 1,000 strong, in Ireland. The latter corps furnished above 200 volunteers for the expedition to Egypt.

Among the measures recommended by Sir John Sinclair in Parliament, he always himself attached peculiar value to the grant for forming bridges, roads, and harbours throughout Scotland. To his other public services may be added that he originated and long presided over the Society for the Improvement of British Wool, and introduced, at his own risk, into the north of Scotland, the Cheviot breed of sheep, of which so many millions have, in consequence, pastured on our Highland hills; lastly, that he suggested in the House of Commons the appointment of a committee on the famines in the Highlands, and by prevailing on them to wave the want of precedent, and grant relief without delay, he was the means of saving thousands from starvation.

The value of the various services above enumerated has been acknowledged from all quarters by the most competent judges. King George III honoured him with friendly notice and correspondence conferred upon him the dignity of a privy councillor, and is understood to have intended for him further marks of Royal favour. Various agricultural associations presented him with pieces of plate. Out of 33 counties in Scotland no less than 25 voted him their thanks. The magistrates of Thurso, the town adjoining his own residence, publicly and gratefully acknowledged “that amidst other pursuits of a more extensive tendency, the improvement of his native county had been the peculiar object of his care and attention;” and the freeholders of Caithness passed resolutions thanking him for having brought to a completion measures “which laid a solid foundation for the future prosperity of the county.”

His funeral took place within the chapel of Holyrood Palace, on the 30th of December, and although it was the wish of the family that the ceremony should be strictly private, yet the Lord Provost, magistrates, and Town Council, in their robes, and a deputation from the Highland Society of Scotland, of which Sir John was a distinguished member, solicited permission to join the procession on its entering the precincts of the palace, an unexpected tribute of respect which the friends of the deceased, we believe, did not decline, and which strongly marks the feeling which his loss has occasioned in the metropolis of Scotland. Sir John is succeeded in his title and estates by Sir George Sinclair, the present member for Caithness.

Sir Charles Napier, G.C.B.

‘Few officers have seen more service or suffered more from the casualties of war’

30 August 1853

We regret to announce the death of this distinguished soldier, whose services, spread over a period of half a century, have shed no small lustre on the British arms. The melancholy event took place at his seat at Oaklands, near Portsmouth, yesterday morning, at 10 o’clock. We understand he had been suffering severely from illness for some time past, and death was therefore not unexpected by his friends.

Few officers have seen more hard service, or suffered more from the casualties of war, than Sir Charles Napier. He was literally covered with wounds, and his hairbreadth escapes amid dangers from which he never shrunk would require a volume to enumerate. Sir Charles entered the army as an ensign in January, 1794, and was a lieutenant in May of the same year. In 1803 he became captain, and in 1806 acquired the rank of major; was a lieutenant-colonel in 1811, colonel in 1825, a major-general in 1837, and a lieutenant-general in 1846. He was also colonel of the 221 Regiment of Foot. The following is a brief list of the more important services in which he was engaged: –

In 1798 he was engaged in the suppression of the Irish rebellion, and again in putting down the insurrection of 1803. In the Peninsula he commanded the 50th throughout the campaign, terminating with the battle of Corunna, and was made prisoner after receiving no fewer than five wounds, viz, leg broken by a musket shot, a sabre cut to the head, wound in the back with a bayonet, ribs broken by a cannon shot, and several severe contusions from the buttend of a musket.

In the latter end of 1809 he returned to the Peninsula, where he remained till 1811, and was present at the action of the Coa, where he had two horses shot under him; at Busaco, where he was shot through the face, and had his jaw broken and eye injured; at the battle of Fuentes d’Onor, at the second siege of Badajos, and a great number of skirmishes. In 1813 he served in a floating expedition on the coast of the United States of America, and landed a great number of times at Craney Island and other places. He served in the campaign of 1815, and was present at the storming of Cambray. Sir Charles, as is well known, commanded the force employed in Scinde, and, on the 17th of February, 1843, with only 2,800 British troops, attacked and defeated, after a desperate action of three hours duration, 22,000 of the enemy strongly posted at Meeanee. On the 21st of February Hydrabad surrendered to him; and on the 24th of March, with 5,000 men, he attacked and signally defeated 20,000 of the enemy posted in a very strong and difficult position at Dabba, near Hydrabad, thus completing the entire subjugation of Scinde. Early in 1845, with a force consisting of about 5,000 men of all arms, he took the field against the mountain and desert tribes situated on the right bank of the Indus to the north of Shikarpore, and, after an arduous campaign, effected the total destruction of these robber tribes.

In 1849 Sir Charles was appointed Commander-in-Chief of the Forces in India, but this position he did not long retain. For his services at the Corunna he received the gold medal, and also the silver war medal, with two clasps, for Busaco and Fuentes d’Onor. Long and arduous as his military services had been, he found time for the more peaceful pursuits of literature, and was the author of works on the colonies, on colonisation, and military law, &c. Sir Charles was born in 1782, and consequently was 71 years of age.

Field Marshal Sir Colin Campbell – Lord Clyde

Distinguished soldier who held the ‘thin red line’ at Balaclava

15 August 1863

On the 20th of October, 1792, there was born in Glasgow a child in whose veins the gentle blood of the Highland lady commingled with that of the Lowland mechanic. No ray of hope or fortune illuminated his humble cradle; but by his own right hand, and by the exhibition of qualities which have raised nameless lads to fortune before now, that child came to fill a place among the foremost soldiers and highest dignitaries of the day. At a very early age Colin Campbell was taken from Scotland and put to school abroad and in England, and for many years he never revisited his native land.

As Ensign in the East Norfolk Regiment, he was taken to a military outfitter’s − a pigtail was attached to the back of his head, a tight-fitting, epauletted, short-waisted, red coat covered with lace, a pair of leather knee-breeches, and betasseled Hessian boots were also duly provided for him, and he was sent off the same evening to Canterbury to join the 9th Regiment of Foot, which may be said to have commenced its military career. He had no time to enjoy the pleasure of his fine uniform, for the regiment marched the next day to embark for the Peninsula; in later years he was wont to recall the miseries of his first march to Margate in his leather tights and Hessians, and to declare that he endured more pain in that unaccustomed, and unsuitable, attire than he ever knew in his long afterlife of march-making.

For three weeks from the time when he had quitted the schoolboy’s desk at Gosport he saw the French infantry cresting the hillsides of Vimiera, and took part in the opening actions of that series of campaigns which, after many checks and some reverses, led to the liberation of thankless Spain from the yoke of Bonaparte. Scarce landed from the transport which carried him from the shores of Spain, he was ordered off to participate in the shame, suffering, and disasters of the Walcheren expedition in 1809. The fever struck into his body so keenly that, until he went to China 30 years afterwards, “Walcheren,” as he said, “was with me every season.” From Walcheren he returned to Spain in 1810, where, with better fortune and guidance, he shared in the battle of Barossa in March, 1811, and the defence of Tarifa in January 5, 1812; and in 1812 he was transferred to a corps of the Spanish army, with which he was actively employed against the French in a long series of harassing skirmishes and operations. He was particularly struck with the Spaniards’ powers of marching, their great sobriety and frugality. In 1813 he joined the Duke of Wellington’s army again, and plunged into the thickest of the hard fighting which took place in that memorable year. He passed unscathed through Vittoria, the greatest of our victories after Waterloo, but in the desperate encounter at St. Sebastian he received two wounds. On the 9th of November, 1813, he became a Captain by brevet, and in that position had added to his wounds a bullet path through the thigh, received at the passage of the Bidassoa, which remained for 12 years. By the time he left France and proceeded to America, to serve against the Federal Government in 1814, he bore as many marks as the body of the saint who gave the name to the fortress where Sir Colin’s wounds spoke for and returned themselves against his will; for an actual sabre slice, a thorough bayonet stab, and an ingoing bullet put all modesty to shame and insisted on mention in the despatches.

He had now been transferred to the 60th Rifles, and when the brief war was over in which we drove the President out of Washington after the “Races of Bladensburg,” and were beaten at New Orleans, Colin Campbell was left on the same rung of the ladder of promotion, and he sturdily but not contentedly hung on it till he was 33 years of age − a Captain still. In 1823 he served as Brigade-Major, then obtained a sum to purchase his Lieutenant-Colonelcy.

When the interests of commerce and civilisation made it necessary for Great Britain to declare war against China in 1812, Colin Campbell went out in command of the 98th, and for 11 months his regiment was packed aboard a man-of-war, with a neglect of all consideration for health and comfort, which cruelly avenged itself upon officers and men. From China to India is a common step, though it is not attended with benefit to the constitution. Colonel Campbell had a short repose in Hindostan, but it was broken by the outbreak of the Sikh war. In virtue of his seniority he was appointed to the command of the Third Division of the army of the Punjab, and he soon flamed out on the field with more than the old Peninsular fire, and led his men with such skill that in all the great battles in which we stood foot to foot with the sternest foe we ever met or are likely to meet in India, his soldiers appeared in the very crisis of the fight. However, his critics were not disposed to be more favourable to him because he did not conceal his ill opinion of the Indian army, and considered the Sepoys as the mere bamboo of the lance, which was valueless unless it were tipped with the steel of British infantry. He was not regarded with favour by the Indian authorities, and his command on the frontier was terminated.

Colin Campbell was now, however, on the upward path. The ship of the State drifted into the Russian war, and from her decks, in 1834, marched the Glasgow boy at the head of three kilted and plumed regiments, which, fortunate in their chief and in their place, won much honour with little loss at the Alma, and almost as much reputation, in so far as one of them was concerned, with no loss at all on the famous day of Balaclava, when the thin red line of the 93rd was opposed to the Russian cavalry. Lord Raglan, to whom Sir Colin Campbell was not much known except by report, knew, however, that he was one whose eye never closed and whose hand never relaxed, and therefore he covered up the right flank of his army with the Highland Brigade, and gave their General the charge of Balaclava and all its works. There he had, indeed, little of the glory of battle, but much wearying anxiety and incessant vigilance. He was overlooked for promotion, until he returned to the Crimea to take a command which would no doubt have worthily employed him had not peace abruptly prevented the campaign. He had been gazetted a Major-General in 1854. In the October of the same year he was appointed to the colonelcy of the 67th Regiment. On the 4th of June, 1856, he was made Lieutenant-General, and in that rank he fairly settled down, almost surprised at his late honours, if not quite satisfied with the part he had played in the great war wherein they were bestowed.

But his opus magnum was yet to be accomplished. When we were startled by the Indian mutiny, it was not a favourite in high places or a dilettante soldier who was selected to save our tottering empire. There was a sigh of satisfaction and content throughout the country when we were told that Sir Colin Campbell had at a moment’s notice, and with alacrity, taken command of the forces engaged in putting down that which history will call the Great Mutiny. From the time that Sir Colin Campbell took the field and set his columns in motion, rebellion, the offspring of mutiny, withered and died.

When his labours in the field were over, and he had returned home to receive the acknowledgments of the whole country, the thanks of Parliament, the approbation of his Sovereign, and the honours he so valued as a soldier, he was not permitted to rest quietly on the laurels he had gathered. At the review of the Volunteers at Brighton he took the command at the request of the higher powers; but after it was over he said it was his last day in the field, and he shaved off his moustache as a sign that he had retired from active service. A few months ago he had a severe illness, in which the lungs and heart were implicated, but the old shot-and-steel-rent body resisted the attack of the great enemy, and to the delight of his friends he seemed to become nearly as well as ever he had been of latter years, and no one was more firm and vigorous for his years. Appointed Colonel of the Coldstream Guards in 1860, Field Marshal in 1862, Colin Campbell, Lord Clyde, had attained heights far beyond the flights of his highest ambition. At last came the illness of which he died, not perhaps as in his young days he would have desired, but as in his old age he would have surely sought to pass away − amid the tender cares and subdued sorrow of those who loved him well, and not the less that he had been the comrade of the soldier whose family stood by his pillow.