SINCLAIR, Sir John, Bart. (1754-1835), a voluminous Scottish author, was descended from the Sinclairs of Ulbster, a branch of the noble house of Caithness. He was the eldest son of George Sinclair and Janet, daughter of William, Lord Strathnaver, and was born at Thurso Castle, 10th May 1754. For a short time he had Logan the poet as a private tutor, and, after studying Greek and Latin at the high school of Edinburgh, entered the university in his thirteenth year. He was admitted a member of the faculty of advocates in 1775, and was subsequently called to the English bar (Lincoln’s Inn), but, prefering politics to law, was in 1780 elected member of parliament for his native county. As Caithness was then only alternately represented with Bute, he was in 1784 chosen for Lostwithiel, Cornwall, and in 1796 for Petersfield, Hampshire, his parliamentary career extending almost uninterruptedly over thirty years till July 1811. In 1782 he began the issue of those pamphlets on various subjects connected with the welfare of the nation which made him perhaps the most voluminous author of his time, his separate publications, as given in his Memoirs, amounting in all to three hundred and sixty-seven. His reputation as a financier and political economist was firmly established by his publication in 1784 of the History of the Public Revenue of the British Empire, to subsequent editions of which was added a Review of the Financial Administration of the Right Hon. William Pitt. The adoption of his plan for the issue of exchequer bills during the great commercial stagnation of 1793 prevented the ruin of a large number of merchants and manufacturers; and in 1797 Pitt consulted him when the treasury threatened to become exhausted, with the result that the scheme known as the “loyalty ...loan” was established. On 4th February 1786 Sinclair was created a baronet of Great Britain. After succeeding his father in 1770 he had set himself to improve the family estates, thus changing in a great degree the aspect of Caithness and affording employment to a largely increased number of the population. In 1791 he established at Edinburgh a society for the improvement of breeds of sheep; and in 1793 he circulated a plan for a board of agriculture and internal improvement. When the board was shortly afterwards established by a charter from the orown he was nominated its first president. From the agricultural reports published by this society he compiled his Code of Agriculture, published in 1819. About 1790 he conceived a plan for a Statistical Account of Scotland, and the work was published in twenty-one volumes, 1791-1799.
Sir John Sinclair was also the author of a number of tracts on naval and military subjects; and in 1794 he raised for the defence of the kingdom a regiment of a thousand men, at first called the “Caithness Fencibles,” afterwards the “Rothesay and Caithness Fencibles”; a second battalion of a thousand men was raised by him in 1795, which took part in suppressing the rebellion in Ireland in 1798. Though originally a supporter in parliament of the war policy of Pitt, he afterwards joined the “armed neutrality” party, which advocated retrenchment and reform. In 1805 he was appointed by Pitt a commissioner for superintending' the construction of roads and bridges in the north of Scotland. He was a member of most of the agricultural societies of the Continent, and held as many as twenty-five foreign diplomas. He was a fellow of the Royal Societies of London and Edinburgh, a fellow of the Antiquarian Society of London, and president of the Highland Society of London. No man of his time took a more comprehensive and enlightened interest in the general welfare of the country or conferred on it more substantial benefits. He enjoyed the esteem and intimate friendship of many eminent contemporaries both at home and abroad, with several of whom he kept up an extensive correspondence. He died 21st December 1835.
By his first wife, a daughter of Alexander Maitland of Stoke Newington near London, he had two daughters, of whom the elder, Hannah, was the authoress of a work on the Principles of the Christian Faith. By his second wife, the Hon. Diana Macdonald, only daughter of Alexander, first Lord Macdonald, he had thirteen children, of whom the eldest son, George (1790-1860), who succeeded to the baronetcy, was a schoolfellow of Byron and Peel at Harrow, and is styled by Byron the “prodigy of our school days”; the third son, John (1797-1875), became archdeacon of Middlesex, and, besides the Memoirs of his father, wrote several theological works; and the fourth daughter, Catherine (1800-1864), who for many years acted as his secretary, after his death achieved some distinction as an authoress, her principal works being Modern Accomplishments, 1836; Scotland and the Scotch, 1840; Modern Flirtation, 1841; and Popular Legends and Bible Truths, 1852.
See Correspondence of the Right Hon. Sir John Sinclair, Βart., with Reminiscences of Distinguished Characters, 2 vols., London, 1831; and Memoirs of the Life and Works of the Right Hon. Sir John Sinclair, 2 vols., Edinburgh, 1837.
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