MACCULLOCH, Horatio (1805-1867), Scotch landscape painter, was born in Glasgow in 1805. An early friendship with Sir Daniel Macnee, and William Leitch, the water-colourist, was the means of turning the lad’s attention to art, which he studied for a year under John Knox, a Glasgow landscapist of some repute, with whom Macnee was apprenticed at the time. After leaving the studio of Knox, we find him engaged at Cumnock, painting the ornamental lids of snuff-boxes in the manufactory of the Messrs Smith, and afterwards he was employed in Edinburgh by Lizars, the engraver, to colour the illustrations in Selby’s British Birds and similar works. Meanwhile he was diligently prosecuting his studies in higher walks of art, and working unweariedly from nature, greatly influenced in his early practice by the watercolours of H. W. Williams,—“Grecian Williams” as he was called,—whose works had a charm for the young painter after the drier and more elaborate method of his first master. Returning to Glasgow in some four or five years, he was employed by Mr Lumsden, the lord provost, on several large pictures for the decoration of a public hall which he had erected in St George’s Place, and be did a little as a theatrical scene-painter in Kilmarnock and other provincial towns. About this time he was greatly impressed with a picture by Thomson of Duddingston, and upon the works of this artist, the greatest Scottish landscapist that had yet appeared, the art of Macculloch may be said to have been founded. Gradually he asserted his individuality, and formed his own style on a closer study of nature than had been possible to his predecessor, and his works form an interesting link of connexion between the old world of Scottish landscape and the new. By its love of elaborate and ...balanced compositions, by its choice «of noble and exceptional scenes, his art connects itself with that of sixty years ago; by its brilliant and varied colouring, by its care for detail, it differentiates itself from the quietude and the stately abstraction of the older landscape. In 1829 Macculloch first figured in the Royal Scottish Academy’s exhibition, with a View of the Clyde, and, year by year, till his death on the 24th of June 1867, he was a liberal contributor to its displays. In 1838 he was elected a member of the Scottish Academy, Und came to reside in Edinburgh, where his genial manners gathered round him a large and appreciative circle of the artists and litterateurs of the city.
Among the more important of the long series of landscapes which he produced, subjects almost exclusively from Scottish scenery, may be mentioned—Moonlight Deer Startled, 1840; Moor Scene, Sunset, 1841; A Dream of the Highlands, 1844; Inversnaid Ferry, Loch Lomond, 1847; A Highland Deer Forest, 1856.; Ben Venue from Silver Strand, 1862; and Bothwell Castle, 1863. Several works by Macculloch were engraved by William Miller and William Forrest, and a volume of photographs from hi? landscapes, with an excellent biographical notice of the artist by Alexander Fraser, B.S.A., was published in Edinburgh in 1872.
MACCULLOCH, John (1773-1835), one of the most eminent geologists of his time, descended from the Maccullochs of Nether Ard well in Galloway, was born in Guernsey, 6th October 1773, his mother being a native of that island. Having displayed remarkable powers as a boy, he was sent to study medicine in the university of Edinburgh, took his diploma there, and entered the army as assistant surgeon. Attaching himself to the artillery, he became chemist to the Board of Ordnance (1803), and thus began relations with the Government which materially affected his future career. He still continued, however, to practise for a time as a physician, and then resided at Blackheath. In the year 1811 be communicated his first papers to the Geological Society. They were devoted to an elucidation of the geological structure of Guernsey, of the Channel Islands, and of Heligoland. The evidence they afforded of his capacity, and the fact that he already had received a scientific appointment, probably led to his being selected by Government to make some geological and mineralogical investigations in Scotland. He was asked to report upon stones adapted for use in powder-mills, upon the suitability of the chief Scottish mountains for a repetition of the pendulum experiments previously conducted by Maskelyne and Playfair at Schiehallion, and on the deviations of the plumb-line along the meridian of the Trigonometrical Survey. In the course of the explorations necessary for the purposes of these reports he made extensive observations on the geology and mineralogy of Scotland. He formed also a collection of the mineral productions and rocks of that country, which he presented to the Geological Society in 1814. At that time comparatively little had been done in the investigation of Scottish geology. Finding the field so entirely his own, and so full of promise, he devoted himself to its cultivation with great ardour. One of his earliest and most important labours was the examination of the whole range of islands along the west of Scotland, at that time not easily visited, and presenting many obstacles to a scientific explorer. The results of this survey appeared (1819) in the form of his Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, including the Isle of Man (2 vols. 8vo, with an atlas of plates in 4to), which forms one of the classical treatises on British geology. He continued to write papers, chiefly on the rocks and minerals of Scotland, and had at last gathered so large an amount of information that the Government was prevailed upon in the year 1826 to employ him in the preparation of a geological map of Scotland. From that date up to the time of his death he returned each summer to Scotland and traversed every district of the kingdom, inserting the geological features upon Arrowsmith’s map, which was the only one then available for his purpose. He lived to complete this great labour, and to prepare also a small volume explanatory of the map, but he died before these were published in 1836. Among his other works the following may be mentioned :— A Geological Classification of Rocks, ιvith Descriptive Synopses, comprising the Elements of Geology, 1 vol. 8vo, 1821; The Highlands and Western Islands of Scotland, in a series of letters to Sir Walter Scott, 4 vols. 8vo, 1824; A System of Geology, with a Theory of the Earth and an examination of its Connexion with the Sacred Records, 2 vols. 8vo, 1831. His versatility of acquirement was shown by the publication also of works on malaria, remittent and intermittent diseases, the art of making wines, natural and revealed religion, besides numerous memoirs in various departments of natural history and antiquities. During a visit to Cornwall he was killed by being dragged along in the wheel of his carriage, 21st August 1835.
Dr Macculloch’s name will ever be regarded with honour as one of the pioneers of geology in Britain. Essentially a mineralogist and petrographer, he was the first to trace out with some approach to truth the general distribution of the various rock-formations of Scotland. His temperament unhappily led him to look with jealousy and mistrust upon the labours of some of his more illustrious contemporaries, and even to ignore them in his published writings. In particular he appears to have been irritated by the rapid advances made by palaeontological geology, and the increasingly large place given to that department of the science, while his own favourite domain of minerals and rocks was proportionately neglected. His feelings of dissent were strongly expressed in the posthumous memoir to accompany his map of Scotland; but their bitterness may in part be attributed to the influence of failing health. Much hostile criticism was expended on his description of the manners and customs of the Highlanders, which were certainly amusing and picturesque, though sometimes his love of an effective period seems to have led him to exaggeration. The way in which he was appointed to conduct a geological survey of Scotland, unknown to the public bodies of that country, also led to considerable opposition. But the solid services rendered by Macculloch to the progress of geology πjust be regarded as far outweighing any objections that have been made to his literary work or peculiarities of character.
M β CULLOCH, John Ramsay (1779-1864), a distinguished writer on political economy and statistics, was born on 1st March 1779, at Whithorn in Wigtownshire. His family belonged to the class of “statesmen,” or small landed proprietors. Having received his early education from his maternal grandfather, a Scotch clergyman, he came to Edinburgh, and was for some time employed there as a clerk in the office of a writer to the signet. But, the Scotsman newspaper having been established at the beginning of 1817, M 4 Culloch sent a contribution to the fourth number, the merit of which was at once recognized; he soon became connected with the management of the paper, and during 1818 and 1819 acted as editor. Most of his articles in the Scotsman related to questions of political economy, and he delivered lectures in Edinburgh on that science. He now also began to write on subjects of the same class in the Edinburgh Review, his first contribution to that periodical being an article on Ricardo’s Principles of Political Economy in 1818. Within the next few years he gave both public lectures and private instruction in London on political economy, and had amongst his hearers or pupils many persons of high social position, and some who were important in the political world. In 1823 he was chosen to fill the lectureship established by subscription in honour of the memory of Ricardo. A movement was set on foot in 1825 by Jeffrey and others to induce the Government to found in the university of Edinburgh a chair of political economy, separate from that of moral philosophy, the intention being to obtain the appointment for MOulloch. This project fell to the ground; but in 1828 he was made professor of political economy in the London University. He then fixed his residence permanently in London, where he continued his literary work, being now one of the regular writers in the Edinburgh Review. Indeed it appears from a letter of his to Macvey Napier in 1830 that he regarded himself, though Napier did not admit the justice of the claim, as entitled to be the sole contributor of economical articles to the Review. In 1838 he was appointed comptroller of Her Majesty’s Stationery Office; the duties of this position, which he held till his death, he discharged with conscientious fidelity, and introduced important reforms in the management of the department. Sir Robert Peel, in recognition of the services he had rendered to political science, conferred on him a literary pension of £200 per annum. He was elected a foreign associate of the Institute of France (Academy of Moral and Political Sciences). He died, after a short illness, on 11th November 1864, in the seventy-sixth year of his age. To his personal character and social qualities very favourable testimony is borne by those who knew him best. In general politics he always remained a Whig pure and simple; though he was in intimate relations with James Mill and his circle, he never shared the Radical opinions of that group.
M ζ Cu11och cannot be regarded as an original thinker on political economy. He did not contribute any new ideas to that science, or introduce any noteworthy correction of the views, either as to method or doctrine, generally accepted by the dominant school of his day. But the work he did must be pronounced, in· relation to the wants of his time, a very valuable one. It was at an important crisis that he appeared in the field of economical discussion. The principles of free trade had been powerfully asserted before the public in the celebrated petition of the merchants of London, drawn up by Mr Tooke and presented to parliament by Mr Alexander Baring in 1820. Political economy, to which the bullion controversy had previously attracted much attention, was more and more engaging the minds of political writers and of statesmen. But the new views had to encounter fierce and sometimes unscrupulous opposition. The Edinburgh Review was the principal organ of the reformers, and was maintaining, when M t Culloch became a writer in it, an energetic warfare against the policy founded on the mercantile theory of wealth. Naturally endowed with strong sense and sagacity, and possessing a rare capacity for arduous and prolonged mental exertion, he threw himself, with the ardour of conviction, into the great struggle. There can be no doubt that his labours on the whole contributed largely to the diffusion of just ideas on the economic questions then under debate, and to the right direction of the national legislation with respect to them. It must at the same time be admitted that his treatment of the subjects with which he dealt is not marked by any special breadth or elevation. He adopted too hastily the theoretic exaggerations of some of Smith’s successors, and exhibited in full measure their habitual deadness, in the study of social questions, to all but material considerations. In his evidence before the parliamentary committee on the state of Ireland in 1825 he stated opinions, afterwards more fully asserted in the Edinburgh Review, on the subject of Irish absenteeism, which tended to disgust persons of intelligence and right feeling with a science which, as interpreted by him, seemed to lead to practical absurdities, and in other quartets had, it is to be feared, the effect of supplying a plausible . excuse for carelessness on the part of the rich and great with respect to the inferior classes of society. These opinions could not be justified even on strictly economic grounds, as has since been shown by Longfield and Senior. M*CuUoch had in him an element of intellectual wilfulness or perverse self-assertion, compared by his friends and admirers to the despotic dogmatism of Johnson, which both in conversation and in his writings led him into the enunciation and defence of paradoxes; a notable example of this is furnished by the obstinacy with which to the last, in the teeth of evidence, he clung to the doctrine of the impolicy of cheap postage. M , Culloch was deficient in literary taste, and never attained any high degree of excellence in style. His expression is often slipshod, and a certain coarseness in his images sometimes throws an air of vulgarity over his pages. His name will probably be less permanently associated with anything he has written on economic science, strictly so called, than with his great statistical and other compilations. His Dictionary of Commerce and Commercial Navigation and his Statistical Account of the British Empire— however they may be expanded and altered, as they have already been, in successive editions—will long remain imposing monuments of his extensive and varied knowledge and his indefatigable industry. Another useful work of reference, also the fruit of wide erudition and much labour, is his Literature of Political Economy. Though weak on the side of the foreign literature of the science, it is very valuable as a guide to British writers, and, in relation to its entire field, has not yet been superseded by any English book.
The following is as complete a list of his publications as it has been found possible to form An Essay on the Reduction of the Interest on the National Debt, 1816; An Essay on the question of Reducing the Interest on the National Debt, 1816; A Discourse on the Rise, Progress, Peculiar objects, and Importance of Political Economy, 1824; the article Political Economy in the supplement to the 6th edition of the Encyclopaedia Britannica, afterwards enlarged into The Principles of Political Economy, with a sketch of the Rise and Progress of the Science, 1830, and again 1843, 1849 (translated into French by Augustin Planche, 1851); Dictionary, Practical, Theoretical, and Historical, of Commerce and Commercial Navigation, 1832; Statistical Account of the British Empire, 1837; Dictionary, Geographical, Statistical, and Historical, of the various Countries, Places, and Natural objects in the World, 1841-42 (several editions of the last three have since appeared, and the first two of them have been reprinted in the United States, and translated into foreign languages); Statements illustrative of the Policy and probable Consequences of the proposed Repeal of the existing CornLaws and the Imposition in their stead of a moderate Fixed Duty on Foreign Corn, 1841; Memorandums on the proposed Importation of Foreign Beef and Livestock, 1842; A Treatise on the Principles and Practical Influence of Taxation and the Funding System, 1845; The Literature of Political Economy, Î845; A Treatise on the Succession to Property Vacant by Death, 1848; Treatise on the Circumstances which determine the Rate of Wages and the Condition of the Labouring Classes, 1851 (an earlier edition had appeared anonymously in 1826); Considerations on Partnership with Limited Liability, 1856; perfaces and notes to a select collection, in 4 vols, of scarce and valuable economical tracts, reprinted at Lord Overstone's expense, 1856-59. He united in one volume (2d ed., 1859) a number of his minor Treatises and Essays on subjects connected with Economic Policy, many of which had appeared as articles in the Encyclopaedia Britannica. He also printed, for private distribution amongst his friends, a catalogue of his library,—which contained a fine collection of books on bls own special subjects,—adding critical and biographical notices. He had edited in 1828 Smith’s Wealth of Nations, with a life of the author, an introductory discourse, notes, and supplemental dissertations; this work he greatly enlarged and improved in the editions of 1838 and 1850. In 1846 he edited Ricardo's works, with a notice of the life and writings of the author.
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