Dr Francis, an eminent philosopher, was the son of a dissenting minister in the north of Ireland, and was born on the 8th of August 1694. He early discovered a superior capacity; and having gone through a school education, began his course of philosophy at an academy, whence he removed to the university of Glasgow, where he applied himself to the study of literature, in which his progress was commensurate with his uncommon abilities.

He then returned to Ireland, and having entered into the ministry, was just about to be settled in a small congregation of dissenters in the north of Ireland, when some gentlemen near Dublin, who knew his great abilities and virtues, invited him to open a private academy in that city. He complied with this invitation, and met with entire success. He had been established but a short time in Dublin, when his singular merits and accomplishments made him generally known; and his acquaintance was sought by men of all ranks who had any taste for literature, or any respect for learned men. Lord Viscount Molesworth is said to have taken great pleasure in his conversation, and to have assisted him with his criticisms and observations upon his Inquiry into the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, before it was published. He received the same favour from Dr Synge, bishop of Elphin, with whom he also lived in close friendship. The first edition of this work appeared without the author's name, but the merit of the performance was such that he could not long remain concealed. So great was the reputation of the work, and the ideas it had raised of the author, that Lord Granville, who was then lord lieutenant of Ireland, sent his private secretary to inquire at the bookseller's for the author, and when he could not learn his name, he left a letter to be conveyed to him; in consequence of which Hutcheson soon became acquainted with his excellency, and was treated by him, all the time he continued in the government, with distinguished marks of favour and esteem.

From this time his acquaintance began to be still more courted by men of distinction, whether for station or for literature, in Ireland. Archbishop King, the author of the well-known book De Origine Mali, held him in high esteem; and the friendship of that prelate was of great use to him in screening him from two different attempts made to prosecute him for daring to take upon him the education of youth, without having qualified himself by subscribing the ecclesiastical canons, and obtaining a license from the bishops. He also enjoyed a large share in the esteem of the primate Boulter, who through his influence made a donation to the university of Glasgow, of a yearly fund for an exhibitioner, to be bred to any of the learned professions. A few years after the publication of his Inquiry into the Ideas of Beauty and Virtue, his Treatise on the Passions was published. Both these works have often been reprinted, and always admired for the sentiment and language, even by those who have not assented to the philosophy they teach, nor allowed it to have any foundation in nature. About this time he wrote some philosophical papers accounting for laughter, in a way different from that suggested by Hobbes, and more honourable to human nature; which papers were published in the collection called Letters of Hibernicus. After he had taught in a private academy at Dublin for seven or eight years with great reputation and success, he was in the year 1729 called to Scotland to become professor of ethical philosophy in the university of Glasgow. Several young gentlemen came along with him from the academy, and his high reputation drew many more thither both from England and Ireland. Here he spent the remainder of his life, in a manner highly honourable to himself, and ornamental to the university of which he was a member. His time was divided between his studies and the duties of his office, except what he allotted to friendship and society. A firm constitution, and a pretty uniform state of good health, except some few slight attacks of the gout, seemed to promise a long life; yet he did not survive the fifty-third year of his age. He was married, soon after his settlement in Dublin, to Mrs Mary Wilson, a gentleman's daughter in the county of Longford, by whom he left one son, Francis Hutcheson, doctor of medicine, who published, from the original manuscript of his father, A System of Moral Philosophy, in three books, by Francis Hutcheson, LL.D. Glasgow, 1755, in two volumes 4to. See the Dissertations prefixed to this Work by Mr Dugald Stewart and Sir James Macintosh.