1779. He was educated at the University of his native city, and we first
hear of him as a member of a celebrated debating society, where he
trained himself to the use of logic. He was not yet sixteen years of age
when he communicated a paper on Light to the Royal Society of London,
which was printed in their transactions; and before he was twenty he had
written discussions of the higher geometry, which, appearing in the same
repository of the best learning, attracted the general attention of
European scholars. In 1802, with his friends Jeffrey, Francis Homer, and
Sidney Smith, he established the Edinburgh Review. In 1806 he published
his celebrated "Inquiry into the Colonial Policy of the European Powers,"
and soon after was called to the English bar, and settled in London,
where he rapidly rose to the highest eminence as a counselor and an
advocate. On the 16th of March, 1808, he appeared in behalf of the
merchants of London, Liverpool, Manchester, &c., before the House of
Commons, in the matter of the Orders in Council restricting trade with
America, and greatly increased his fame by one of the most masterly
arguments he ever delivered. In 1810 he became a member of Parliament,
and he soon distinguished himself here by his speeches on the slave trade
and against the Orders in Council, which, mainly through his means, were
rescinded. Venturing, at the general election of 1812, to contest the
seat for Liverpool with Mr. Canning, he was defeated, and for four years
he devoted himself chiefly to his profession. In this period he made many
of his most famous law arguments, and acquired the enmity of the Prince
Regent by his defense of Leigh Hunt, and his brother, in the case of
their famous libel in "_The Examiner_." In 1816 he commenced those
powerful and indefatigable efforts in behalf of education, by which he is
perhaps best entitled to the gratitude of mankind. As chairman of the
educational committee of forty, he drew up the two voluminous and
masterly reports which disclosed the exact condition of British
civilization, and induced such action on the part of government as