ABRAHAM. See SECOND DISSERTATION.

Tucker, Josiah, dean of Gloucester, and an able political writer, was born at Laugharne, in Caernarvonshire, in 1711. Having pursued his studies with ardour at Ruthin school in Denbighshire, he was subsequently enabled to obtain an exhibition to St John's College, Oxford. Having completed his course of study, he took orders, and obtained the curacy of All Saints, Bristol. Some time after he was appointed curate of St Stephen's, Bristol, and the rectory of St Stephen's was bestowed upon him in 1749. He completed his ecclesiastical preferment by obtaining in 1758 the office of dean of Gloucester. This amiable and pious man, after passing through a very stormy time, died on the 4th of November 1799, at the advanced age of eighty-eight. Dr Tucker's first political publication, entitled *A Brief Essay on Trade*, was published in 1748. He subsequently published numerous pamphlets and brochures, some of which obtained a wide circulation, and one of which, *War for the sake of Trade*, 1763, was translated into French with the high commendation of Turgot. The most remarkable of all the dean's tracts was a commercial one entitled *Reflections on the present Matters in Dispute between Great Britain and Ireland*, which appeared in 1785. Besides his *Treatise concerning Civil Government*, 1781, some other pamphlets and sermons, this closes Dr Tucker's labours. Smith's *Wealth of Nations* appeared in 1776. Tucuman which served to shed light on many a tangled question of political economy and of commercial enterprise; but it must not be forgotten that Tucker's Essay on Trade appeared in 1748, and the whole of the pamphlets which flowed from the dean's facile pen bore unquestionable traces of a near relationship to his first work.