some of the most characteristic and most definitely-put metaphysical opinions of the Scottish philosophy of common sense. Of this early metaphysician nothing biographically has come down save that he was a Scotchman ("Scotus")—born at Seaton. He was living early in the 18th century. (Haller, as supra; Lawrence Charteris's M.S., s. v.) So recently as 1833 was printed A Short Account of Scots Divines by him, edited by James Maidment, Edinburgh. (A. B. G.)
Abercromby, James, Lord Dunfermline, third son of the celebrated Sir Ralph Abercromby, was born on the 7th Nov. 1776. Educated for the profession of the law, he was called to the bar at Lincoln's Inn in 1801, but he was prevented from engaging to any considerable extent in general practice by accepting appointments, first as commissioner in bankruptcy, and subsequently, as steward of the estates of the Duke of Devonshire. He commenced his political career in 1807, when he was elected member of Parliament for the borough of Midhurst. His sympathies with the small and struggling Opposition had already been declared, and he at once attached himself to the Whig party, with which he consistently acted throughout life. In 1812 he was returned for Calne, which he continued to represent until his elevation to the Scotch bench in 1830. During this lengthened period he rendered conspicuous and valuable services to his party and the country. In Scotch affairs he took, as was natural, a deep interest; and, by introducing, on two separate occasions, a motion for the redress of a special glaring abuse, he undoubtedly gave a strong impulse to the growing desire for a general reform. In 1824, and again in 1826, he presented a petition from the inhabitants of Edinburgh, and followed it up by a motion "for leave to bring in a Bill for the more effectual representation of the city of Edinburgh in the Commons House of Parliament." The motion was twice rejected, but by such narrow majorities as showed that the monopoly of the self-elected Council of thirty-three was doomed. In 1827, on the accession of the Whigs to power under Mr Canning, Abercromby received the appointment of Judge-Advocate-General and Privy Counsellor. In 1830 he was raised to the judicial bench as Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Scotland. The office was abolished in 1832; and almost contemporaneously, Edinburgh, newly enfranchised, was called to return two members to the first reformed Parliament. As the election marked the commencement of a new political era, the honour to be conferred possessed a peculiar value, and the choice, of the citizens fell most appropriately on Francis Jeffrey and James Abercromby, two of the foremost of those to whom they were indebted for their hard won privileges. In 1834 Mr Abercromby obtained a seat in the cabinet of Lord Grey as Master of the Mint. On the assembling of the new Parliament in 1835, the election of a speaker gave occasion for the first trial of strength between the Reform party and the followers of Sir Robert Peel. After a memorable division, in which more members voted than had ever before been known, Abercromby was elected by 316 votes, to 310 recorded for Manners-Sutton. The choice was amply justified, not only by the urbanity, impartiality, and firmness with which Abercromby discharged the public duties of the chair, but also by the important reforms he introduced in regard to the conduct of private business. In 1839 he resigned the office, and received the customary honour of a peerage, with the title of Lord Dunfermline. The evening of his life was passed in retirement at Colinton, near Edinburgh, where he died on the 17th April 1858. The courage and sagacity which marked his entire conduct as a Liberal were never more conspicuous than when, towards the close of his life, he availed himself of an opportunity of practically asserting his cherished doctrine of absolute religious equality. The important part he took in originating and supporting the United Industrial School in Edinburgh for ragged children, irrespective of their religious belief, deserves to be gratefully acknowledged and remembered, even by those who took the opposite side in the controversy which arose with regard to it.
Abercromby, Patrick, M.D., was the third son of Alexander Abercromby of Fetterneir in Aberdeenshire, and brother of Francis Abercromby, who was created by James II. Lord Glasford. He was born at Forfar in 1656. As throughout Scotland, he could have had there the benefits of a good parish school; but it would seem from after events that his family was Roman Catholic, and hence, in all probability, his education was private. This, and not the unproved charge of perversion from Protestantism in subserviency to James II., explains his Roman Catholicism and adhesion to the fortunes of that king. But, intending to become a doctor of medicine, he entered the University of St Andrews, where he took his degree of M.D. in 1685. From a statement in one of his preface-epistles to his magnum opus, the Martial Achievements of the Scots Nation, he must have spent most of his youthful years abroad. It has been stated that he attended the University of Paris. The Discourse of Wit (1685), assigned to him, belongs to Dr David Abercromby, a contemporary. On his return to Scotland, he is found practising as a physician in Edinburgh, where, besides his professional duties, he gave himself with characteristic zeal to the study of antiquities, a study to which he owes it that his name still lives, for he finds no place in either Haller or Hutchison's Medical Biographies. He was out-and-out a Scot of the old patriotic type, and, living as he did during the agitations for the union of England and Scotland, he took part in the war of pamphlets inaugurated and sustained by prominent men on both sides of the Border. He crossed swords with no less redoubtable a foe than Daniel Defoe in his Advantages of the Act of Security, compared with those of the intended Union (Edinburgh, 1707), and A Vindication of the Same against Mr De Foe (ibid.) The logic and reason were with Defoe, but there was a sentiment in the advocates of independence which was not sufficiently allowed for in the clamour of debate; and, besides, the disadvantages of union were near, hard, and actual, the advantages remote, and contingent on many things and persons. Union wore the look to men like Abercromby and Lord Belhaven of absorption, if not extinction. Abercromby was appointed physician to James II., but the Revolution deprived him of the post. Crawford (in his Peerage, 1716) ascribes the title of Lord Glasford to an intended recognition of ancestral loyalty; its bestowment in 1685 corresponding with the younger brother's graduation as M.D., may perhaps explain his appointment. A minor literary work of Abercromby's was a translation of M. Beague's partizan History (so called) of the War carried on by the Popish Government of Cardinal Beaton, aided by the French, against the English under the Protector Somerset, which appeared in 1707. The work with which Abercromby's name is permanently associated is his already noticed Martial Achievements of the Scots Nation, issued in two noble folios, vol. i. 1711, vol. ii. 1716. In the title-page and preface to vol. i. he disclaims the ambition of being an historian, but in vol. ii., in title-page and preface alike, he is no longer a simple biographer, but an historian. That Dr Abercromby did not use the word "genuine history" in his title-page without warrant is clear on every page of his large work. Granted that, read in the light of after researches, much of the first volume must necessarily be relegated to the region of the mythical, none the less was the historian a laborious and accomplished reader and investigator of all available authorities, as well manuscript as
