WILSON, James, a very remarkable financier, and one of the most practically influential of British economists, was born at Hawick, in Roxburghshire, on the 3d June 1805. He received a sound though plain education at a seminary belonging to the Society of Friends, of which his father was a respected member. At a very early age he went into business as a hat-manufacturer in his native town, and afterwards removed to London, being discontented with so limited a sphere of action. For many years he was very successful in business, and had accumulated considerable property; but in 1837 he was unfortunately induced to engage in an indigo speculation, which proved disastrous. He obtained a release from his creditors on terms which both he and they considered satisfactory, and continued his business as a manufacturer of hats with fair success. When, some years afterwards, it unexpectedly appeared that his former creditors had not succeeded in realizing the anticipated sum from the property assigned to them, he, without solicitation from them, paid the deficiency.
From early youth Mr Wilson had paid great attention to the more practical portion of political economy, and in 1839 he published a small treatise, entitled Influences of the Corn-laws, as affecting all classes of the community, and especially the landed interest; and next year another, on the Fluctuations of Currency, Commerce, and Manufactures, referable to the Corn-laws. Mr Wilson was among the first to maintain that the influence of the corn-laws was essentially prejudicial to every class in the community: to the agricultural part as well as to the manufacturing part; and he stated the argument with an emphasis and lucidity that had a practical effect at the time. In 1843 he started the Economist newspaper, of which he was for many years the chief editor, and was always the sole proprietor. In consequence of his energy and ability, that journal became very efficient in the incul-
cation of free-trade doctrines and the dissemination of liberal opinions. Mr Wilson's name will be long remembered as one of the most efficient of those sound and practical economists who obtained commercial freedom for Great Britain.
In 1841, Mr Wilson published a remarkable tract, called The Revenue, or what shall the Chancellor do? in which he showed very perspicuously the financial expediency of freeing our commercial industry from forced restrictions. The principles on which Sir R. Peel and Mr Gladstone afterwards acted are stated with concise distinctness in this pamphlet, and are illustrated by telling figures. In 1847, Mr Wilson collected from the Economist newspaper a series of articles on capital, currency, and banking, which contain a series of criticisms on the currency acts of Sir R. Peel, and the best contemporary analysis of the panic of 1847, and of the railway mania which preceded it. Mr Wilson was a consistent bullionist, and a strenuous advocate for the sure convertibility of the bank-note, but he was opposed to the technical restrictions of the act of 1844.
In July 1847, Mr Wilson was elected to serve in parliament for Westbury, and very soon established a parliamentary reputation for indefatigable industry, sound business abilities, and an effective readiness in lucid exposition. After he had been a very few months in parliament, he was offered one of the secretaryships of the Board of Control, which he continued to hold until the resignation of Lord John Russell's administration in February 1852. During his tenure of this office he took an active and influential share in the establishment of railways in India, and in the settlement of the peculiar guarantee which the government of India has given to the capital embarked in them.
On the return of the liberal party to power, Mr Wilson accepted the laborious office of financial Secretary to the Treasury, which he continued to fill with singular efficiency for five years. During his tenure of this difficult office, he acquired among the best judges and closest observers a permanent reputation as one of the best administrators of the present day. On the dissolution of Lord Palmerston's administration in the spring of 1857, Mr Wilson resigned his office at the Treasury. During Lord Derby's administration he continued to be in opposition, but was made vice-president of the Board of Trade on the formation of a new liberal ministry in 1859.
In the summer of that year he was appointed financial member of the Council of India. The sepoys mutiny had thrown the finances of India into utter confusion, and Mr Wilson was sent thither to cure a deficit which the financiers of Calcutta seemed unable not only to remedy but even to ascertain. On the 20th October 1859 he sailed for India, and on the 18th February 1860 brought forward at Calcutta an elaborate budget, in which he first proposed the income-tax which is now in operation throughout our eastern empire. On the 5th March 1860 he proposed a careful plan for the establishment and regulation of a paper-currency in India. He likewise commenced a reformation of the system of public accounts in India, with a view of establishing a satisfactory estimate of coming expenditure, and a satisfactory calculation of coming income, neither of which now exist there. These severe labours proved too much even for Mr Wilson's iron frame. He might probably have prolonged his life by an abrupt departure, but he refused to leave Calcutta until his financial measures had reached a certain stage. Unhappily his disease was too rapid. He died of dysentery on 11th August 1860. The regret felt at Calcutta was perhaps unexampled. The higher classes, without exception, and almost the whole population attended his funeral; and when the news of his death arrived in England, it was felt there also, that in such a crisis, at such a post, the loss of such a man was hardly to be replaced. (W. B.—T.)