Sir John Sinclair

[close] Sir John Sinclair of Ulbster, 1st Baronet, PC, MP, FRS, FRSE, FLS (1754 – 1835) was a Scottish politician, a writer on both finance and agriculture, and the first person to use the word statistics in the English language, in his vast, pioneering work, Statistical Account of Scotland.

Sinclair was the eldest son of George Sinclair of Ulbster, a member of the family of the Earls of Caithness, and his wife Lady Janet Sutherland. He was born at Thurso Castle, Caithness. He was educated at th High School in Edinburgh.

After studying Law at the universities of Edinburgh and Glasgow and at Trinity College, Oxford, he finished his legal studies at Lincoln's Inn in London in 1774. He was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in Scotland in 1775, and also called to the English bar, though he never practised. He had inherited his father's estates in 1770 and had no financial need to work.

In 1780, he was returned to the House of Commons for the Caithness constituency, and subsequently represented several English constituencies, his parliamentary career extending, with few interruptions, until 1811. Sinclair established at Edinburgh a society for the improvement of British wool, and was mainly instrumental in the creation of the Board of Agriculture, of which he was the first president.

His reputation as a financier and economist had been established by the publication, in 1784, of his History of the Public Revenue of the British Empire.

Sinclair supervised the compilation of the Statistical Account of Scotland (21 volumes, 1791 – 1799) which was drawn up from the communications of the Ministers of the different parishes'. This became known as the "Old Statistical Account."