FORBES, DUNCAN, an eminent Scottish lawyer, and Lord President of the Court of Session, was born at Culloden, Inverness-shire, in the year 1685. His natural disposition inclined him to the army; but, as he early discovered a superior genius, he was induced by the advice of friends to apply himself to learning. Having completed his studies at the university of Edinburgh, he removed thence
to Utrecht, and afterwards to Paris, where he directed his attention particularly to the civil law, in which he made great progress. He returned to Scotland in 1710, and was the same year called to the bar, where his abilities soon attracted notice, and procured him extensive practice. In 1717 he was appointed solicitor-general of Scotland; in 1722 he was returned member of parliament for the county of Inverness; in 1725 he was made King's Advocate; and in 1742 he attained the highest judicial dignity in Scotland, that of Lord President of the Court of Session. During the rebellion in 1745 and 1746, he was mainly instrumental in preventing a general rising of the Highlanders in favour of the pretender to the crown, and he even mortgaged his estate in support of the government. But the glory he acquired in checking the spread of the insurrection, by preventing some of the most powerful chiefs from joining the standard of Prince Charles Edward, and in afterwards contributing to re-establish peace and order, was the only reward of his services. Although he had impaired, nay almost ruined, his private fortune in the cause of the public, government declined to make him the smallest recompense. The minister of the day, with the meanness for which it is difficult to account, desired to have a state of his disbursements; an incivility which so much shocked the proud spirit of the patriotic president that he withdrew without deigning to make any reply. He had saved the country, yet they wished to huckster with him about pence. His services had been too great to be requited by any ordinary recompense, and hence they repaid him with ingratitude. It seems, also, that he had displeased the government of the day by the freedom and boldness with which he censured the barbarous system pursued, after the battle of Culloden, in a spirit of vindictive ferocity to which there has been no parallel in modern times, excepting, perhaps, in the wars of La Vendée. The ungrateful treatment which he experienced at the hands of the government he had saved is understood to have preyed on the spirits of President Forbes, and to have produced the fever of which he died in 1747, in the sixty-second year of his age. Throughout the whole course of his life he entertained a lively sense of religion, without the least taint of superstition; and his charity was indiscriminately extended to every sect and denomination of religionists. He was well versed in the Hebrew language; and wrote in a flowing style concerning theology and philosophy, particularly respecting the sources of incredulity. His writings, which had no reference to his profession, were, 1. Thoughts on Religion; 2. A Letter to a Bishop; and, 3. Reflections on Incredulity, 1750, in 2 vols. 12mo.