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MACCULLOCH—M’CULLOCH
  

whereupon the ministry dissolved the assembly and appealed to the country. The result of the general election was to increase M‘Culloch’s majority, and the tariff was again sent to the Council, only to be again rejected. M‘Culloch resigned, but no member of the opposition was willing to form a ministry, and he resumed office. Eventually a conference between the two houses was held, and the Council passed the tariff, after a few modifications in it had been agreed to by the Assembly. Just at the moment that peace was restored, the governor, Sir Charles Darling, was recalled by the home government, on the ground that he had displayed partisanship by assisting M‘Culloch’s government and their majority in the Assembly to coerce the Council. In order to show their gratitude to the dismissed governor, the Assembly decided to grant a sum of £20,000 to Lady Darling. The home government intimated that Sir Charles Darling must retire from the Colonial service if this gift were accepted by his wife, but M‘Culloch included the money in the annual Appropriation Bill, with the result that it was rejected by the Council. The new governor, Viscount Canterbury, was less complaisant than his predecessor, but after an unsuccessful attempt to obtain other advisers, he agreed to recommend the Council to pass the Appropriation Bill with the £20,000 grant included. The Upper House declined to adopt this course, and again rejected the Bill. A long and bitter struggle between the two Chambers ended in another general election in 1868, which still further increased the ministerial majority; but Lord Canterbury, in obedience to instructions from the colonial office, declined to do anything to facilitate the passage of the Darling grant. M‘Culloch resigned, and after protracted negotiations Sir Charles Sladen formed from the minority in the Assembly a ministry which only lasted two months. The deadlock seemed likely to become more stringent than ever, when a communication was received from Sir Charles Darling, that neither he nor his wife could receive anything like a donation from the people of Victoria. The attempt to pass the grant was therefore abandoned, and in July 1868 M‘Culloch resumed office with different colleagues, but resigned in the following year, when he was knighted. He formed a third ministry in 1870. During this third administration he passed a measure through both Houses which secured a life annuity of £1000 per annum to Lady Darling. Additional taxation being necessary, Sir James M‘Culloch was urged by his protectionist supporters to increase the import duties, but he refused, and proposed to provide for the deficit by levying a tax upon town, suburban and country property. This proposal was defeated in the Assembly; Sir James resigned in June 1871, and was appointed agent-general for Victoria in London. He held that appointment till 1873, was created K.C.M.G. in 1874, returned to the colony the same year, and in 1875 formed his fourth and last ministry, which kept power till May 1877, when his party was defeated at the general election. During his eighteen months of office he had to encounter a persistent opposition from Berry and his followers, who systematically obstructed the business of the Assembly, on the ground that the acting-governor, Sir William Stawell, had improperly refused a dissolution. Sir James M‘Culloch, to counteract this obstruction, invented the closure, which was afterwards introduced with some modifications into the house of commons. After his defeat in 1877 Sir James retired from public life and returned to England, where he died on the 30th of January 1893 at Ewell, Surrey. He was twice married—first, in 1841, to Susan, daughter of the Rev. James Renwick, of Muirton, Scotland; secondly, in 1867, to Margaret, daughter of William Inglis, of Walflat, Dumbartonshire. He left the house of Dennistoun Brothers in 1862, and founded a new firm at Melbourne in conjunction with Leishman, Inglis & Co. of London, under the title of M‘Culloch, Sellars & Co. He held several important commercial positions, and was president of the Melbourne Chamber of Commerce.  (G. C. L.) 


MACCULLOCH, JOHN (1773–1835), Scottish geologist, descended from the Maccullochs of Nether Ardwell in Galloway, was born in Guernsey, on the 6th of October 1773, his mother being a native of that island. Having displayed remarkable powers as a boy, he was sent to study medicine in the university of Edinburgh, where he qualified as M.D. in 1793, and then entered the army as assistant surgeon. Attaching himself to the artillery, he became chemist to the board of ordnance (1803). He still continued, however, to practise for a time as a physician, and during the years 1807–1811 he resided at Blackheath. In 1811 he communicated his first papers to the Geological Society. They were devoted to an elucidation of the geological structure of Guernsey, of the Channel Islands, and of Heligoland. The evidence they afforded of his capacity, and the fact that he already had received a scientific appointment, probably led to his being selected in the same year to make some geological and mineralogical investigations in Scotland. He was asked to report upon stones adapted for use in powder-mills, upon the suitability of the chief Scottish mountains for a repetition of the pendulum experiments previously conducted by Maskelyne and Playfair at Schiehallion, and on the deviations of the plumb-line along the meridian of the Trigonometrical Survey. In the course of the explorations necessary for the purposes of these reports he made extensive observations on the geology and mineralogy of Scotland. He formed also a collection of the mineral productions and rocks of that country, which he presented to the Geological Society in 1814. In that year he was appointed geologist to the Trigonometrical Survey; and in 1816–1817 he was president of the Geological Society. Comparatively little had been done in the investigation of Scottish geology, and finding the field so full of promise, he devoted himself to its cultivation with great ardour. One of his most important labours was the examination of the whole range of islands along the west of Scotland, at that time not easily visited, and presenting many obstacles to a scientific explorer. The results of this survey appeared (1819) in the form of his Description of the Western Islands of Scotland, including the Isle of Man (2 vols. 8vo, with an atlas of plates in 4to), which forms one of the classical treatises on British geology. He was elected F.R.S. in 1820. He continued to write papers, chiefly on the rocks and minerals of Scotland, and had at last gathered so large an amount of information that the government was prevailed upon in the year 1826 to employ him in the preparation of a geological map of Scotland. From that date up to the time of his death he returned each summer to Scotland and traversed every district of the kingdom, inserting the geological features upon Arrowsmith’s map, the only one then available for his purpose. He completed the field-work in 1832, and in 1834 his map and memoir were ready for publication, but these were not issued until 1836, the year after he died. Among his other works the following may be mentioned: A Geological Classification of Rocks with Descriptive Synopses of the Species and Varieties, comprising the Elements of Practical Geology (1821); The Highlands and Western Isles of Scotland, in a series of letters to Sir Walter Scott (4 vols. 1824); A System of Geology, with a Theory of the Earth and an Examination of its Connexion with the Sacred Records (2 vols. 1831). During a visit to Cornwall he was killed by being dragged along in the wheel of his carriage, on the 21st of August 1835.

In penning an obituary notice, C. Lyell in 1836 (Proc. Geol. Soc. ii. 357) acknowledged “with gratitude” that he had “received more instruction from Macculloch’s labours in geology than from those of any living writer.”


M‘CULLOCH, JOHN RAMSAY (1789–1864), British economist and statistician, was born on the 1st of March 1789 at Whithorn in Wigtownshire. His family belonged to the class of “statesmen,” or small landed proprietors. He was for some time employed at Edinburgh as a clerk in the office of a writer to the signet. But, the Scotsman newspaper having been established at the beginning of 1817, M‘Culloch sent a contribution to the fourth number, the merit of which was at once recognized; he soon became connected with the management of the paper, and during 1818 and 1819 acted as editor. Most of his articles related to questions of political economy, and he delivered lectures in Edinburgh on that science. He now also began to write on subjects of the same class in the Edinburgh Review,