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Sir John Sinclair, 1754-1835.
Scottish statesmen, statistician and agrarian reformer.
Scion of the Sinclairs of Ulster, a noble family of Caithness, John Sinclair was tutored by the poet John Logan before enrolling in the high school and then the university of Edinburgh at the age of thirteen. He spent a year in Glasgow, studying law under John Millar, before returning to Edinburgh to complete his studies. By this time (1770), he had inherited his father's estates, and actively taken up their management.
In 1774, having passed the bar, he entered Lincoln's Inn. In 1775, he enrolled in Trinity College, Oxford, and was made a member of the Faculty of Advocates in Edinburgh. But law bored him and he soon entered political life. In 1780, he won the Parliamentary seat for Caithness and joined the Tory faction of Lord North. Sinclair was an early proponent of parliamentary reform, authoring several tracts on the matter, notably the anonymous Lucubrations in 1782.
After the death of his first wife in 1785, Sinclair headed for the continent. He spent time with Jacques Necker in Paris, before proceeding on an extensive tour of northern Europe, going as far as Moscow. Upon his return in 1787, Sinclair set about managing and implementing improvements on his Scottish estates. Sinclair had gotten particularly engaged in the improvement of sheep-breeding and wool production, wrote several tracts on the matter and in 1791 founded an society in Edinburgh for the purpose. Along the way, Sinclair received a baronetcy from Pitt the Younger in 1786 and a doctorate in law from the University of Glasgow in 1788.
Perhaps heeding Steuart (1767), or just spurred by the general spirit of Scottish Enlightenment, Sinclair conceived a plan to conduct an extensive empirical survey of Scotland. In 1791, Sinclair prevailed on the General Assembly of the Kirk of Scotland to provide the means and information to compile his massive, twenty-one volume Statistical Account of Scotland. This was the first time the term "statistics" was used in English. It was an anglicized form of the German word "statistik" (forged originally by Gottingen professor Gottfried Achenwall in 1749, to denote the "science of the State"). Sinclair alerted that his own use of the term went beyond its narrow State-centric political definition:
"Many people were at first surprised, at my using the new words, Statistics and Statistical, as it was supposed, that some term in our own language, might have expressed the same meaning. But, in the course of a very extensive tour, through the northern parts of Europe, which I happened to take in 1786, I found that in Germany they were engaged in a species of political inquiry, to which they had given the name Statistics; and though I apply a different idea to that word, for by Statistical is meant in Germany, an inquiry for the purpose of ascertaining the political strength of a country, or questions respecting matters of state; whereas, the idea I annex to the term, is an inquiry into the state of a country, for the purpose of ascertaining the quantum of happiness enjoyed by its inhabitants, and the means of its future improvement ; yet, as I thought that a new word, might attract more public attention, I resolved on adopting it, and I hope that it is now completely naturalized and incorporated within our language." (Sinclair, 1798, Vol. 20: p.xiii-xiv)).
[Note: Strictly-speaking, it was not the term's first appearance in an English text. W. Hooper had used the 'statistics" term in 1770 in his translation of J.F. Bielefeld's Elements of Universal Erudition and Eberhard von Zimmerman in his A Political Survey of the Present State of Europe in Sixteen Tables (1787). But these were direct translations of the German word. Sinclair's use was more unique.]
Unlike older "political arithmeticians", who relied on existing records, Sinclair collected his data by sending out original questionnaires to parish ministers, following these up by visits from his army of "statistical missionaries" (Sinclair estimates that 900 individuals were involved). Sinclair's results were published in 21 large volumes between 1791 and 1799. Sinclair's census, sometimes called the "Old Statistical Account", was the most comprehensive to date and continued to serve until a new account was done in the mid-19th C.
But that was not Sinclair's sole activity. While touring some marginal sheep-farming areas in the Scottish isles, Sinclair realized the need and prospects for improving the British wool industry by protecting herds from disease and improving breeds, but found no organization with the means to promote it. So, although sitting with the opposition in Parliament, Sir John Sinclair persuaded the Pitt government to establish the "Board of Agriculture and Internal Improvement", which was granted a royal charter on August 23, 1793 and a grant-in-aid £3,000. Sinclair's Board scheme was strongly supported by the English agrarian journalist Sir Arthur Young and, more critically, steered through parliament by the Scottish grandee Henry Dundas (a Pitt ally, then serving as Home Secretary). Sinclair was appointed its first president, and Young its first secretary. From this perch, Sinclair encouraged the dissemination of "scientific agriculture" and new farming and herding techniques throughout Britain. In his words, the objective of the Board was to ensure that "every field would soon be cultivated to the best advantage, and every species of stock would soon be brought to their greatest possible perfection". Sinclair would serve on the board until 1809. After his retirement, the Board declined and was eventually abolished in 1822.
Sinclair originally wanted the Board of Agriculture to deploy the Church of England parish clergy to compile a detailed "Statistical Account of England", as he had accomplished in Scotland. But the Anglican Church was too disorganized and unwilling to pull it off. So Sinclair revised his plans and had the Board collect more loose agricultural information from all the counties of Great Britain. The county reports trickled in the 1790s and were published by the Board as the "General Views of Agriculture" collection. The country reports of the General Views were not as systematic as the Scottish statistical account, but rather reported by a variety of interested farmers, surveyors and other amateur volunteers throughout England, Wales and Scotland, each in their own idiosyncratic way. Some of the data was eventually compiled and published by Sinclair himself in his own Code of Agriculture.
Historians frequently blame Sir John Sinclair's 1791 Statistical Account and his promotion of "improvement" for unleashing the tragedy of the "Highland Clearances" - the wholesale expulsion of tenants by clan chiefs in the Scottish Highlands to make way for sheep. The clearances began (or certainly accelerated) in the 1790s and would continue through the 19th Century.
Sinclair participated in the Bullionist debate (1810, 1817), and was against the resumption of payment in specie, and the continuation of paper currency.
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