Page:Men of the Time, eleventh edition.djvu/223

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CAIRD.

ground is now laid for putting our fishery laws on a sound and satisfactory footing. It is highly satisfactory that an inquiry undertaken in the spirit of a proposal to increase the restrictions upon fishing should have resulted in showing that the supply of fish and the interests of fishermen would be best promoted by free and unrestricted fishing." In 1864 Mr. Caird, after many years' perseverance, carried a resolution of the House of Commons in favour of the collection of agricultural statistics, which was followed by a vote of £10,000 for that object. The returns of 1866 for Great Britain, the result of that vote, for the first time complete the agricultural statistics of the United Kingdom, and are now published annually. Whilst in Parliament he was the advocate of all measures bearing on the improvement of land, successfully opposing the proposal to place a new duty on certain descriptions of corn used for feeding cattle, expounding the impolicy of discouraging the growth of barley by an unmodified malt-tax, taking a prominent part in committees and in the House in inquiries and discussions on Irish land tenure, the utilization of sewage, emigration, the game laws, and from year to year explaining the prospects of the country in regard to its supplies of corn. Retaining his practical connection with agriculture, during his parliamentary career, he took a leading part at this time in introducing the Cheddar system of cheese-making into the south-west of Scotland — a system which has greatly contributed to the prosperity of the dairy districts of that part of the country. In 1860 he carried a motion to extend the Census Inquiry in Scotland to the character of the house accommodation of the people, and thus, in the census of 1861, laid bare the startling fact that two-thirds of the people were found to be lodged in houses of only one and two rooms — a condition of things generally thought inadequate for decent accommodation. In 1865 he was appointed to the office of Inclosure Commissioner. In 1869 he revisited Ireland, and published a pamphlet on the Irish land question, soon after which he received the Companionship of the Bath. He has latterly taken an active interest in the successful introduction of sugar-beet cultivation in this country, which he first recommended in 1850. In 1868 and 1869 he published successive papers on the "Food of the People," read before the Statistical Society. In 1878 he was requested by the Government of India to serve on the commission to inquire into the subject of famines. He was created a Knight Commander of the Order of the Bath (civil division) in 1882. Sir James Caird is a magistrate and deputy-lieutenant of his native county, Wigton. He has been twice married — first, in 1843, to Margaret, daughter of Captain Henryson, R.E.; and secondly, in 1865, to Elizabeth Jane, daughter of the late Mr. Robert Dudgeon.

CAIRD, The Rev. John, D.D., a popular and eloquent preacher of the Established Church of Scotland, was born in 1823, at Greenock, where his father was an engineer; studied at the University of Glasgow, and in 1844 was licensed as a preacher. In 1845 he was ordained minister of Newton-on-Ayr, and in the same year was removed to Lady Yester's Church, in Edinburgh, to which charge he was elected by the town-council. In 1850 he accepted the charge of the Established Church at Errol, in Perthshire, whence he removed to Glasgow in 1858. A sermon preached by him before the Queen, in the parish kirk of Crathie, has been published by command of the Queen, who appointed him one of Her Majesty's chaplains for Scot-