ANDERSON, James, LL.D., was born at the village of Hermiton, in the county of Edinburgh, in the year 1739. His parents were in humble life, and had possessed a farm for some generations, which he was destined to inherit and to cultivate. At an early age he lost his parents: his education, however, was uninterrupted; and conceiving that an acquaintance with chemistry would promote his professional success, he attended a course of lectures on that science, then delivered by Dr Cullen.
Enlarging the sphere of his employments, Anderson forsook his first possession, and rented in Aberdeenshire a farm of 1300 acres, which was then nearly in a state of nature. But previous to this he became known to men of letters, by some essays on planting, which, under the signature "Agricola," he ventured to commit to the world through the medium of the Edinburgh Weekly Magazine, in 1771.
After withdrawing from his northern farm, where he resided above 20 years, he settled in the vicinity of Edinburgh. His agricultural speculations were still continued; and when a parliamentary grant was about to be proposed to Mr Elkington for a particular mode of draining land, he reclaimed the discovery as having been made by himself many years anterior. In 1791 Dr Anderson projected a periodical publication called The Bee, consisting of miscellaneous original matter, which attained the extent of 18 volumes in octavo. It was published weekly, and a large proportion of it came from his own pen. From this period till 1803 he gave to the world a number of publications chiefly on agricultural subjects, which had no small influence in advancing national improvements. He has the great merit of being the first who satisfactorily unfolded the true theory of rent. He showed by an original and able analysis that rent is not the recompense of the work of nature, nor a consequence of land being made private property, but that it depends on the various degrees of fertility of land, and on the circumstance of its being impossible to apply capital indefinitely to any quality of land, without receiving from it a diminished return.
Dr Anderson remained in his retreat, enjoying the cultivation of his garden; and after a gradual decline, partly occasioned by the over-exertion of the mental energies, he died in the year 1808, aged 69. He was twice married; first, to Miss Seton of Mounie; secondly, to an English lady. By his first marriage he had thirteen children, six of whom survived him. During a period of overstrained political fervour, certain papers formed part of the periodical works already referred to, which were thought to contain a libel on the government. Although Dr Anderson's principles were noted for attachment to the existing administration, he was called upon to give up the author of the obnoxious compositions, which he steadily refused, and, even in the face of the civil
magistrates, charged his printers not to violate their fidelity to him and the author in betraying his name. The business terminated here, until a factious individual insinuated to the same magistrates that the compositions had proceeded from one of the supreme judges, whose party politics were avowedly hostile to those of government. Dr Anderson having learned the reproach, hastened to relieve the object of it by divulging the name of the real author, who, to the universal surprise of the public, proved to be none other than the traducer himself.