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A Village Aristotle and the Harmony of Interests: James Anderson (1739-1808) of Monks Hill*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  16 January 2014

Charles F. Mullett
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Extract

Who indeed can say, in answer to Sir Thomas Browne's searching question, “whether the best of men be known, or whether there be not more remarkable men forgot”? Even though the making of books promises to leave no person “forgot,” the question still abides. More than that, it accents a paradox: under the spell of behavioral science the historian wrestles with vast impersonal forces and reduces personalities to a footnote, yet biography flourishes as never before. Whether the harvest reflects academic search for topics, popular interest, or plain conviction that first and last history is about people, their thoughts, their deeds, and their influence, or, for that matter, all three, some aspiring Ph.D. may decide. Here it is enough to consider another facet of Sir Thomas's inquiry. Puzzling in itself, that question becomes even more troubling when the historian is confronted with a man whose legacy does not put him in the calendar of great men, yet whose career warrants far more attention than that given to paltry politicians, incompetent generals, and notorious whores, and indeed may take precedence over that of more highly rated contemporaries in probing the intellectual milieu. James Anderson is such a man.

The notice of his death on October 15, 1808, means little except to the initiate: “At Westham, Essex, James Anderson, LL.D of Mounie in the county of Aberdeen. He was the author of several works on Agriculture, Political Economy, and other subjects of general interest.” So concise a notice scarcely did justice to its subject, and before long magazines repaired the defect, one adding a “faithful portrait of the learned and ingenious Dr. Anderson.”

Type
Research Article
Information
Journal of British Studies , Volume 8 , Issue 1 , November 1968 , pp. 94 - 118
Copyright
Copyright © North American Conference of British Studies 1968

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Footnotes

*

The author is greatly indebted to the University of Missouri Research Council and to the American Philosophical Society for assistance that made this study possible. C. F. M.

References

1. “Hydriotaphia: Urne-Buriall or a Discourse of the Sepulchrall Urnes Lately Found in Norfolk,” The Works of Sir Thomas Browne, ed. Sayle, Charles (Edinburgh, 1912), III, 139Google Scholar.

2. Scots Magazine, LXX (1808), 800Google Scholar.

3. Gentleman's Magazine, LXXVIII, Pt. 2 (1808), 1051–54Google Scholar; LXXIX, Pt. 1 (1809), 401. The identical notice, without the portrait, appeared in Scots Magazine, LXXI (1809), 184–88Google Scholar.

4. Malthus, T. R., Art Essay on Population (London, 1914), II, 141Google Scholar and n. At the same time Malthus agreed “with Mr. A. entirely respecting the importance of directing a greater part of the national industry to agriculture.” Marx, Karl, Capital (London, 1930), I, 548n.Google Scholar; II, 613n., 804n., 808. Schumpeter, Joseph, History of Economic Analysis (New York, 1954), pp. 263–66Google Scholar; Schumpeter, Joseph, Economic Doctrines and Method, an Historical Sketch (New York, 1954), pp. 108, 130Google Scholar. See also Gide, Charles and Rist, Charles, A History of Economic Doctrines (2nd Eng. ed.; Boston, 1948), pp. 148–49Google Scholar.

5. Schumpeter, , History of Economic Analysis, pp. 265–66Google Scholar. Although Anderson propounded his theory of rent as early as 1775 and in various places, the neatest statement appears in The Bee, VI (1791), 293–301Google Scholar, where he defines rent as nothing else than a “simple and ingenious contrivance for equalizing the profits to be drawn from fields of different degrees of fertility and of local circumstances,” and goes on to correlate rent, production, prosperity, and population.

6. Ibid., I (1791), 50-54; Selections from the Correspondence of George Washington and James Anderson LL.D. (Charleston, Mass., 1800), p. 65Google Scholar; Outram, Mary Frances, Margaret Outram 1778-1863 (London, 1932)Google Scholar, passim. Useful sketches appear in Chambers, Robert, A Biographical Dictionary of Eminent Scotsmen (Glasgow, Edinburgh, and London, 1855), I, 56–58Google Scholar; Anderson, William, The Scottish Nation; or the Surnames, Families, Literature, Honours, and Biographical History of the People of Scotland (Edinburgh, 1863), I, 126–29Google Scholar. See also Viner, Jacob, Guide to John Rae's Life of Adam Smith [Reprints of Economic Classics] (New York, 1965), esp. pp. 17–18, 67n., 88, 91, 92Google Scholar. Autobiographical fragments are to be found in James Anderson's prefaces and even in the texts of his writings.

7. Francis Home (1719-1813), professor of materia medica at Edinburgh, received a gold medal in 1757 from the Society for the Improvement of Arts and Manufactures for his Principles of Agriculture and Vegetation. The essay went into its third edition in 1759, came out in a French edition in 1761 and in a German edition in 1779. William Cullen (1710-90), the most influential teacher of medicine in eighteenth-century Britain, achieved a great variety of distinctions. He became professor of chemistry at Edinburgh in 1756. Not least among his characteristics was the absence of fatalism about disease. Anderson, as repeatedly appears, likewise refused to accept the “inevitability” of the status quo.

8. Anderson, James, Essays Relating to Agriculture and Rural Affairs (1775)Google Scholar, Advertisement (by the author). (This and all other works by James Anderson will hereafter be cited by title only.) John Gregory (1724-73), professor of medicine at Edinburgh, took his M.D. at Aberdeen where he both practiced and taught for several years; he also practiced in London and Edinburgh. Cousin to Thomas Reid, he was intimate with many leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment. Bryson, Gladys, Man and Society: The Scottish Inquiry of the Eighteenth Century (Princeton, 1945)CrossRefGoogle Scholar, is a useful introduction to that Enlightenment.

9. Essays Relating to Agriculture, Pt. 1, Preface, passim.

10. Attribution of this last to Anderson is much strengthened by the inclusion of similar opinions in his Observations on the Means of Exciting a Spirit of National Industry; chiefly intended to promote the Agriculture, Commerce, Manufactures, and Fisheries of Scotland. In a series of letters to a friend. Written in the year one thousand seven hundred and seventy-five (Edinburgh, 1777; Dublin, 1779)Google Scholar, Letter XVI. The Dublin edition is dedicated to the Duke of Buccleuch for his great attention to Scottish improvement. For the essays on law see Weekly Magazine, VIII (1770), 77–79Google Scholar; IX (1770), 263-65.

11. Anderson's reviews have been identified by Nangle, B. C., The Monthly Review, First Series (Oxford, 1934)Google Scholar, and Second Series (Oxford, 1955)Google Scholar. Anderson also reviewed perceptively works on social evolution, political economy, and history. In one review, commenting on English influence in France and the traffic in ideas between France and America, he observed that “many circumstances concur to render it highly probable, that some important political revolution, in France, is at no great distance. The system of government which there prevails, is by no means adapted to the enlightened spirit of the people.” See Monthly Review, LXXVII (1787), 561–68Google Scholar.

12. A Practical Treatise on Chimneys; containing full Directions for constructing them in all cases, so as to draw well, and for removing Smoke in Houses (London, 1776; 3rd ed., Edinburgh, 1783)Google Scholar. In the Advertisement to the third edition Anderson related that it was now about twelve years since he had first offered this essay to the public anonymously, but plagiarism prompted him to issue the present edition. The anonymous offering appeared in the Caledonian Mercury in 1769.

13. Weekly Magazine, X (1770), 361–64Google Scholar.

14. Ibid., XI (1771), 257-61; XII (1771), 129-33, 193-97, 259-62, 321-23, 358-60; XIII (1771), 1-4, 65-68, 102-04, 129-32, 164-66, 230-32, 263-65; XXII (1773), 68-70. The periodical series contains not only the comments of others but also items by Anderson omitted from the separate.

15. Ibid., XIV (1771), 162-65.

16. Ibid., XV (1772), 5-8, 36-39. A short time before he had supported loom as opposed to knit stockings (XIV, 333-34), and had defended morality (XV, 4-5).

17. Ibid., XV (1772), 161-65, 225-29, 289-92, 321-24, 353-55, 388-90; XXV (1774), 205-08, 257-60, 288-91, 321-24, 357-59; XXVI (1774), 9-14, 33-38, 161-63, 225-29, 257-61.

18. The six chapters dealt with inclosures and fences, drainage, leveling high ridges, sowing grass seed, haying, and, most revealing, doubts and queries. Anderson published several editions of the Essays (1775, 1777, 1784, 1797, 1800) that in some cases were actually different books rather than new editions.

19. Weekly Magazine, XXXII (1776), 65-68, 97-100, 129-35, 161-65, 193-97, 225-28, 257-60, 321-25, 385–89Google Scholar; XXXIII (1776), 73-75, 97-99, 193-96, 225-28, 260-63; XXXIV (1776), 138-41. This series was inspired by Urbanus, “Considerations on the Unhappy Contest between Great Britain and America, humbly offered to the Public,” Weekly Magazine, XXXI (1776), 385–88Google Scholar, and, in the final installment, by Thomas Paine's Common Sense.

20. A five-page extract of this essay of sixty pages is to be found in McCulloch, J. R., A Select Collection of Scarce and Valuable Economical Tracts (London, 1859), pp. 321–25Google Scholar. The original, directed to Henry Dundas, owed much to the “new corn-bill proposed for Scotland.”

21. Archaeologia: or Miscellaneous Tracts Relating to Antiquity, V (London 1779), 241–66Google Scholar.

22. Letters and Papers on Agriculture, Planting & c. selected from the Correspondence-Book of the Society instituted at Bath, IV (1788), 1–102Google Scholar. See also Annual Register, XXX (1788), 96–101Google Scholar.

23. Archaeologia, VI (London, 1782), 87–99Google Scholar.

24. The Interest of Great Britain with regard to her American Colonies, considered. To which is added An Appendix, Containing the Outlines of a Plan for a General Pacification (London, 1782)Google Scholar. Anderson added the appendix upon hearing of Lord Cornwallis's surrender. This essay was reviewed at length in Scots Magazine, XLIV (1782), 363–65Google Scholar.

25. The True Interest of Great Britain Considered: or A Proposal for establishing The Northern British Fisheries, in which the circumstances that have hitherto frustrated every attempt to establish these Fisheries are investigated, and measures suggested by which these obstructions may be removed, and a spirit of industry universally disseminated among all the inhabitants of even the most remote Provinces and Isles (1783). An Account of the Present State of the Hebrides and Western Coasts of Scotland, in which an attempt is made to explain the circumstances that have hitherto repressed the industry of the natives; and some hints are suggested for encouraging the fisheries, and promoting other improvements in those countries, being the substance of a report to the Lords of Treasury, of facts collected in a tour of the Hebrides, with large additions, together with the evidence given before the committee of fisheries (Edinburgh, 1785; London, 1786)Google Scholar. See also Scots Magazine, XLVII (1785), 417-19, 477-80, 529-31, 633–39Google Scholar; XLVIII (1786), 9-13, for extracts from the report. An extensive, controversial literature emerged from the report. See Justification of Mr. Murdoch M'Kenzie's Nautical Survey of the Orkney Islands and Hebrides, in answer the Accusations of Dr. Anderson [in the Caledonian Mercury] (Edinburgh, 1785)Google Scholar; Extracts relative to the Fisheries on the Northwest Coast of Ireland (London, 1787)Google Scholar; Gentleman's Magazine, LVII, Pt. 1 (1787), 206–08Google Scholar; LVIII, Pt. 1 (1788), 7. Jeremy Bentham, whose views of colonies owed much to Anderson's 1782 pamphlet, in 1783 criticized Anderson for writing too much on the fisheries; his Observations on National Industry was sufficient. Anderson of course resented such criticism. Some years later the two had another exchange, with Anderson so bilious that Bentham endorsed his last outburst “implacable.” Bowring, John (ed.), The Works of Jeremy Bentham (New York, 1962), II, 546n.Google Scholar; X, 127-29, 288.

26. Archaeologia Scotica or, Transactions of the Society of Antiquaries of Scotland, I (1792), 192–98Google Scholar; Annual Register, XXXIV (1798), 121–25Google Scholar; The Bee, V (1791), 193-200, 270–78Google Scholar; VI (1791), 4-12.

27. Annual Register, XXXI (1789), 77–82;Google ScholarRoyal Society of Edinburgh, I (1783), 26–27.Google Scholar Library of Congress, letter from Anderson to George Washington concerning merits of a cast-iron bridge, Sep. 15, 1795, Washington Papers.

28. Observations on Slavery; particularly with a view to its effects on the British Colonies in the West Indies (Manchester, 1789)Google Scholar; Report of the Committee of the Highland Society of Scotland, to whom the subject of Shetland Wool was referred, with an appendix, containing some papers, drawn up by Sir John Sinclair and Dr. Anderson, in reference to the said report (Edinburgh, 1790)Google Scholar.

29. See Mullett, Charles F., “The Bee (1790-1794): A Tour of Crotchet Castle,” South Atlantic Quarterly, LXVI (1967), 70–86Google Scholar.

30. Observations on the Effects of the Coal Duty upon the remote and thinly peopled coasts of Britain; tending to show, that if it were there removed, the industry of the people would be excited, the prosperity of the country promoted, and the amount of the revenue augmented to an astonishing degree (Edinburgh, 1792)Google Scholar; Thoughts on the Privileges and Power of Juries; with Observations on the present State of the Country with regard to Credit (Edinburgh, 1793)Google Scholar; Remarks on the Poor Laws in Scotland (Edinburgh, 1793)Google Scholar.

31. A Practical Treatise on Peat Moss. Considered as in its natural state fitted for affording Fuel, or as susceptible of being converted into Mold capable of yielding abundant crops of useful produce; with full directions for converting it from the state of peat into that of mold, and afterwards cultivating it as a soil (Edinburgh, 1794)Google Scholar. For his earlier contributions and responses to them, see Weekly Magazine, XXII (1773), 102-03, 236-38, 365-66, 389;Google Scholar XXIII (1774), 105-07; XXIV (1774), 33-38, 161-63, 207, 225-28, 289-92, 353-58; XXV (1774), 97-101, 197-200, 291-93.

32. An Account of the Different Kinds of Sheep found in the Russian Dominions; and among the Tartar Hordes of Asia: by Dr. Pallas. To which is added, five appendixes tending to illustrate the natural and economical history of sheep and other domestic animals by James Anderson (Edinburgh, 1794)Google Scholar. Trans. Amer. Phil. Soc., IV (1799), 149–54Google Scholar. See also Letters and Papers of the Bath Society, VIII (1796), 1-35, for another disquisition by Anderson.

33. General View of the Agriculture and Rural Economy of the County of Aberdeen. With Observations on the Means of its Improvement. Drawn up for the Consideration of the Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement (Edinburgh, 1794)Google Scholar. An earlier piece which I have not seen is A Letter to J. Burnett, Esq. on the present State of Aberdeenshire, in regard to provisions (1783). Is this J. Burnett Lord Monboddo?

34. Plans and Descriptions of Single-Horse Carts (Manchester, 1795)Google Scholar; Memoirs of the Literary and Philosophical Society of Manchester, V, Pt. 1 (1798), 89–101Google Scholar; Proc. Amer. Phil. Soc, Minutes of Meetings from 1744-1838, XXII, Pt. 3 (1884), 232–33Google Scholar. This latter paper runs over forty pages. For possible evidence of Anderson's earlier interest in languages, see Weekly Magazine, XIII (1771), 35-37, 68-69, 173–74Google Scholar; XIV (1771), 108-10, 130-32, 389-91; XV (1772), 131-34; XXI (1773), 357-59; XXIII (1774), 65-67. The Bee has much evidence of Anderson's diverse interest in this matter. Without in any way detracting from Anderson's inventiveness and zest for improvement, one must emphasize that several of his contemporaries either anticipated him or pursued the same objectives independently and concurrently. See Pryde, George S., Scotland from 1603 to the Present Day (Edinburgh, 1962), pp. 129, 139Google Scholar.

35. A Practical Treatise on Draining Bogs and Swampy Grounds, illustrated by figures; with Cursory Remarks on the Originality of Elkington's Mode of Draining (London, 1797)Google Scholar; A General Plan of Lease by Lord Kaims, with some remarks upon it by Dr. Anderson, in his agricultural report for the County of Aberdeen (London?, 1797)Google Scholar.

36. An Essay on Quick-Lime, as a Cement and as a Manure (Boston, 1799)Google Scholar.

37. Several essays of earlier composition appeared in Georgical Essays, ed. Hunter, A., II (York, 1803), 529–41Google Scholar; VI (York, 1804), 436-41, 534-41. His complete account of dairy management appeared in Essays on the Management of the Dairy; including the modern practice of the best districts in the Manufacture of Cheese and Butter. Deduced from a series of observations made during thirty years' practice, ed. Twamley, J. (London, 1816)Google Scholar. A Description of a Patent Hot-House, which operates chiefly by the heat of the sun, without the aid of flues, or tan bark, or steam, for the purpose of heating it. To which is added, An Appendix containing remarks upon a letter from T. A. Knight, Esq. on the subject of Mr. Porsyth's Plaster (London, 1803)Google Scholar. The Appendix had to do with preserving trees.

38. Annual Register (1801), p. 452Google Scholar.

39. A Calm Investigation of the Circumstances that have led to the present Scarcity of Grain in Britain: suggesting the means of alleviating that Evil, and of preventing the Recurrence of such a Calamity in the future (London, 1801)Google Scholar; Letter from Dr. Anderson respecting the prevention of Emigration and improving the Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland (London, 1803)Google Scholar.

40. An Essay on Quick-Lime, Advertisement, p. 18.

41. An Account of the Different Kinds of Sheep found in the Russian Dominions, Introduction.

42. Marx, , Capital, II, 808Google Scholar.

43. Boswell's, Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides with Samuel Johnson, LL.D., ed. Pottle, Frederick A. and Bennett, Charles H. (New York, 1936), p. 54Google Scholar.

44. Ibid., pp. 104, 243.

45. These sentiments permeate whatever Anderson wrote on agriculture, whether A Practical Treatise on Peat Moss, Essays Relating to Agriculture, A Calm Investigation, “On Local Agriculture,” in Georgical Essays, VI, 436-41, or the pages of The Bee and Recreations.

46. Ferguson, Adam, An Essay on the History of Civil Society (2nd ed.; London, 1768), p. 220Google Scholar; Colquhoun, Patrick, A Treatise on the Wealth, Power, and Resources of the British Empire (London, 1814), p. 103Google Scholar.

47. Ruskin, John, Unto This Last and Other Essays on Art and Political Economy (London, 1907), pp. 105, 161Google Scholar.

48. Boswell's Journal of a Tour to the Hebrides, pp. 371, 270.

49. That even Anderson's scientific opinions did not die with him gets ample testimony from Charles Darwin who, drawing upon The Bee, Recreations in Agriculture, Letters and Papers of the Bath Society, and An Account of the Different Kinds of Sheep, cited that “ingenious observer” several times. See Darwin, Charles, The Variation of Animals and Plants under Domestication (New York, 1896), I, 98, 112, 349-51, 410, 456Google Scholar; II, 180, 185. In particular Darwin cited Anderson concerning deviations from the “law of symmetry” in the case of one-eared rabbits, three-legged dogs, Irish potatoes, and barberries; for evidence that distinct varieties of peas rarely cross and that by selection over several years the maturity of peas could be hastened between ten and twenty-one days; for opinion on the ancestry of British sheep; and, perhaps most Andersonian of all, for the insight that not only should animals be examined with the greatest care whilst alive, but their carcasses should be scrutinized, “so as to breed from the descendants of such only as, in the language of the butcher cut up well.” One comes away from these citations with added respect for Anderson and heightened appreciation of Darwin: his reading knew no limits.