The great monument to Sinclair's indefatigable industry is his "Statistical Account of Scotland" in twenty-one volumes, one of the most valuable works on agriculture ever published in any country. It took seven years and seven months of incessant labour to complete. It was then that the word "statistics" and "statistical" were first introduced into the English language by Sinclair. He made use of the clergy to obtain the information he desired. He sent a circular letter to each parish minister in Scotland with 160 questions under four heads: (1) Geography and Natural History. (2) Population. (3) Production. (4) Miscellaneous subjects.
In the collection of data many difficulties occurred. Some of the clergy scorned the idea that one man could collect and collate all this information: others were lazy both in mind and body: and some were old and infirm. Several parishes were vacant, some too huge to fully cover, many were without roads, and not a few separated by tempestuous arms of the sea. To overcome these obstacles he enlisted the aid of the leaders of the Church of Scotland, of which he was a member, and the great landowners, and as a last resort he employed statistical missionaries to supply the missing information. He generously assigned all the profits of this publication to the Scottish Fund for the benefit of the sons of the clergy, and obtained for that Society a Royal grant of £2,000. Among the direct results of this work was the raising of the stipends of ministers and schoolmasters—surely a convincing reply to his critics in the manses—the abolition of what was then called thirlage or the compulsory grinding of corn at a particular mill. Charles Abbot, afterwards Lord Colchester, the originator of the census of England, wrote to Sinclair: "Your success suggested to me the idea," and the various bureaux of statistics in the United States and other countries can be directly traced to the influence of his treatise.
In the year 1788 Sinclair founded the Wool Society. For some time he had been wondering why Shetland wool was so extremely fine. Meeting at the General Assembly in Edinburgh a Shetland minister, he put the question to him and obtained much valuable information which he at once laid before the Highland Society. This led him to form the British Wool Society. It was inaugurated by a grand sheep-shearing festival at Newhall's Inn, Queensferry, near Edinburgh, in the year 1791. To Sinclair, therefore, belongs the credit of initiating the sheep-shearing contests which a few years later developed into Coke's famous "clippings," and which were the precursors of our present agricultural shows. The first agricultural show was held by the Highland and Agricultural Society at Edinburgh in 1822. It was the Long Hill sheep of the East Border that Sinclair re-christened by the now famous name of Cheviot. These sheep soon became naturalised all over the north of Scotland, and in a short time the rent of sheep firms rose to fabulous prices. Pastures of little value under coarse-woolled sheep yielded large returns. As an illustration of the practical value of his improvements it may be mentioned that Sinclair's estate of Langwell, which he had bought for £8,000, he afterwards sold for £40,000: while the estate of Reay in Sutherlandshire was purchased at £300,000. The name Cheviot comes from the range of rounded or cone-shaped hills growing a superior pasture on the Scottish and English border.
In the opening lines of this article I spoke of a childish tale about sheep-shearing. That this legend is not mere fiction may be seen in the following letter of Arthur Young (see Autobiography of Arthur Young, page 159): "From Sir J. Sinclair on clothing for sheep which he sent and desired me to buy. I did so, and the rest of the flock took them, I suppose, for beasts of prey, and fled in all directions, till the clothed sheep, jumping hedges and ditches, soon derobed themselves."
In his third lecture in the "Crown of Wild Olives," Ruskin points out that all the pure and noble arts of peace are founded on war. It is worth while, therefore, to note that the British Board of Agriculture was established when Britain was engaged in the supreme struggle with France, which terminated on the field of Waterloo, that the National Department of Agriculture in the United States was inaugurated in the midst of the Civil War, and that the Transvaal Department of Agriculture was commenced ere peace was signed at Vereeniging. In the year 1793 Sinclair's services in restoring commercial confidence during the crisis which occurred at the outbreak of the French War were recognised by Pitt, who sent for him to come to Downing Street, thanked him on behalf of the Government, and asked him if there was anything that he desired. Sinclair replied that he sought no favours for himself, but the most gratifying of all would be the establishment by Parliament of a great National Corporation to be called "The Board of Agriculture." In due course the Board was successfully established with the King as Patron, Sinclair as President, and Arthur Young as Secretary. The annual Parliamentary grant was £3,000.
In this brief review we have no space to follow the fortune of the Board to the date of the retirement of its inspiring founder, down to the time when it returned £42,000 to the Treasury—not knowing how to spend it—till it finally faded away in the year 1822. Yet the Board accomplished much imperishable work. It carried out agricultural surveys, published several volumes of "communications," promoted prize essays on rural topics, encouraged Elkington, the father of drainage, Macadam the road-maker, and Meikle, the inventor of the threshing machine, and arranged lectures by Sir Humphry Davy on agricultural chemistry, and by Young on tillage.
The north of Scotland at that period owed much to Sinclair. In 1782 he saved the inhabitants from a serious famine by obtaining a Parliamentary grant of £15,000. In the same year, along with some other patriots, he secured the repeal of the law which for thirty-seven years—since the Rebellion of 1745—had forbidden the use of the kilt.
Sinclair was an enthusiastic tree-planter in a country which was once wittily described by an American visitor as a "Great Clearing." He rebuilt Thurso, and founded the herring fisheries at Wick. To ensure the success of this industry he imported Dutch fishermen to teach the Caithnessmen the art of catching and curing herrings. He introduced improved methods of tillage, a regular rotation of crops, and the cultivation of turnips, clover, and rye-grass. One of his many schemes was a General Enclosure Bill, his toast at agricultural gatherings being: "May a Common become an Uncommon Spectacle in Caithness."