venerable philosopher were considered as well entitling him to leave the laborious duties of his three mathematical classes to the care of an assistant, who was
at the same time appointed his future successor. The person chosen was Mr John
Cruickshank, a gentleman who, whether or not he proved fruitful in the talents
which distinguished his predecessor, must be allowed to have been more successful in preserving the discipline of his class, a task for which the absent habits of
Dr Hamilton rendered him rather unfit. In 1825, Dr Hamilton's declining years
were saddened by the death of his second wife, a daughter of Mr Morison of
Elsick, whom he had married in 1782 j and on the 14th day of July, 1829, he
died in the bosom of his family, and in that retirement which his unobtrusive
mind always courted, and which he had never for any considerable period relinquished. Dr Hamilton left three daughters, of whom the second was married to
the late Mr Thomson of Banchory, in Kincardineshire, and the youngest to the
Rev. Robert Swan of Abercrombie, in Fife. He had no family by his second
wife. Several essays were found among Dr Hamilton's papers, which were
published by his friends in 1830, under the title of "The Progress of Society;"
and although the majority of them contain very deep and abstruse remarks
well worthy of attention, there are others which may, perhaps, be said to contain too many of the general principles of which the earlier metaphysicians of
Scotland were very fond, and too little of the close and practical reasoning which
generally distinguishes their author's mind, to be such as he might have thought
fit to have given to the world in their present state. The commercial policy
argued by Dr Hamilton in these tracts, is the system which was first inculcated
by Dr Adam Smith in 1776, and which, after the lapse of seventy years, was
embodied in the great and beneficent free-trade measure of Sir Robert Peel,
under the operation of which the nation is developing its resources of trade and
manufacture with fresh energy, and all ranks of the community, but more especially the working-classes, enjoy an unexampled degree of prosperity. It is to be hoped that the successful experiment of Great Britain will encourage the
other nations, both of the old and new world, to follow so wise and salutary an example, and reciprocate the advantages which they also have derived from it. Dr Hamilton held a peculiar view on the subject of a metallic currency, believing
its value to arise, not from its worth as a commodity, but chiefly from its use as an instrument of exchange. This opinion he maintained with great power and plausibility.
The Essays on Rent, and the consequent theory of the incidence of tithes, argued with a modesty which such an author need hardly have adopted, are well worthy the consideration of those who have turned their attention to these abstruse subjects. The author appears to doubt the theory discovered by Dr Anderson, and followed up by Sir Edward West, Malthus, Ricardo, and M'Culloch, which discovers rent to be the value of the surplus produce of the more fruitful lands of a country, over the produce of the most sterile soil, which the demands of the community require to be taken into cultivation. "What," says our author, in answer to the assumption of Dr Anderson, "would happen if all the land in an appropriated country were of equal fertility ? It would hardly be affirmed that, in that case, all rent would cease." To this the following answer might be made Were the population insufficient to consume the whole produce of rich fertile land, (which could not long be the case.) certainly there would be no rent. Were the consumption equal to or beyond the produce, the rent would be regulated thus: If foreign corn could be introduced at a price as low as that at which it could be raised, there would still be no rent if, either from the state of cultivation of other countries, or the imposition of a duty, corn could only be imported at a price beyond that at which it can
