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WALLACE, (DR) ROBERT,
celebrated as the author of a work on the numbers of mankind, and for his
exertions in establishing the Scottish Ministers’ Widows’ Fund, was born on
the 7th January, 1697, O.S. in the parish of Kincardine in Perthshire, of
which his father, Matthew Wallace, was minister. [Scots Magazine, xxxiii.
340. ixxi. 591] As he was an only son, his early education was carefully
attended to. He acquired Latin at the grammar-school of Stirling, and, in
1711, was sent to the university of Edinburgh, where he passed through the
usual routine of study. He was one of the original members of the Rankenian
club, a social literary fraternity, which, from the subsequent celebrity of
many of its members, became remarkably connected with the literary history
of Scotland. Mr Wallace directed his studies towards qualifying himself for
the church of Scotland. In 1722, he was licensed to preach by the presbytery
of Dumblane, and in August, 1723, the marquis of Annandale presented him
with the living of Moffat.
Dr Wallace had an early taste
for mathematics, to which he directed his attention while a student at the
university, and on that study he bestowed many of his spare hours during his
ministry. He has left behind him voluminous manuscript specimens of his
labours; but it will probably be now considered better evidence of his early
proficiency, that in 1720 he was chosen assistant to Dr Gregory, then
suffering under bad health. Wallace was, in 1733, appointed one of the
ministers of the Greyfriars’ church in Edinburgh. The countenance of the
government, which he had previously obtained, he forfeited in 1736, by
refusing to read in his church the act for the more effectually bringing to
justice the murderers of Porteous, which the zealous rage of the ministry
and the house of peers had appointed to be read from the pulpit. He was in
disfavour during the brief reign of the Walpole ministry; but under their
successors was intrusted with the conduct of ecclesiastical affairs. The
revolution in the ministry happened at a moment when Dr Wallace was enabled
to do essential service to his country, by furthering the project of the
Ministers’ Widows’ Fund. The policy of that undertaking was first hinted at
by Mr Mathieson, a minister of the high church of Edinburgh; Dr Wallace in
procuring the sanction of the legislature, and Dr Webster, by an active
correspondence, and the acquisition of statistical information, brought the
plan to its practical bearing, by apportioning the rates, &c., and
afterwards zealously watched and nurtured the infant system. As the share
which Dr Wallace took in the promotion of this measure is not very well
known, it may be mentioned, that it appears from documents in the office of
the trustees of the Ministers’ Widows’ Fund, that he was moderator of the
General Assembly in 1743, which sanctioned the measure. In the ensuing
November he was commissioned by the church, along with Mr George Wishart,
minister of the Tron church, to proceed to London, and watch the proceedings
of the legislature regarding it. He there presented the scheme to the lord
advocate, who reduced it to the form of a Bill. The corrections of Messrs
Wallace and Wishart appear on the scroll of the Bill.
In 1744, Dr Wallace was
appointed one of the royal chaplains for Scotland. He had read to the
Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, of which he was an original member and
active promoter, a "Dissertation on the numbers of Mankind in ancient and
modern times," which he revised and published in 1752. In this work he was
the first to apply to purposes of investigation one of those truisms which,
however plain, are never stated until some active mind employs them as
foundations for more intricate deductions, that the number of human beings
permanently existing in any portion of the earth must be in the ratio of the
quantity of food supplied to them. The explanation of this truth by Dr
Wallace has been acknowledged by Malthus, and the work in which it was
discussed has acquired deserved fame for the mass of curious statistical
information with which the author’s learning furnished it; but in the great
theory which he laboured to establish, the author is generally allowed to
have failed. He maintained, as a sort of corollary to the truth above
mentioned, that where the greatest attention is paid to agriculture, the
greatest number of human beings will be fed, and that the ancients having
paid greater attention to that art than the moderns, the world of antiquity
must have been more populous than that of modern days. Were all food
consumed where it is produced, the proposition would be true, but in a world
of traffickers, a sort of reverse of the proposition may be said to hold
good, viz., that in the period where the smallest proportion of the
human beings on the surface of the earth is employed in agriculture, the
world will be most populous, because for every human being that exists, a
quantity of food sufficient to live upon must be procured; for
procuring this food the easiest method will always be preferred, and
therefore when the proportion of persons engaged in agriculture is the
smaller, we are to presume, not that the less is produced, but that the
easier method of providing for the aggregate number has been followed. The
great engine of facilitating ease of production is commerce, which makes the
abundance of one place supply the deficiency of another, in exchange for
such necessaries and luxuries, as enable the dwellers on the fertile spot to
bestow more of their time in cultivation than they could do, were they
obliged to provide these things for themselves. Hence it is pretty clear,
that increase of populousness has accompanied modern commerce. Previously to
the publication of this treatise, Hume had produced his invaluable critical
essay on the populousness of ancient nations, in which, on
politico-economical truths, he doubted the authenticity of those authorities
on the populousness of antiquity, on many of which Wallace depended. In
publishing his book, Dr Wallace added a long supplement, discussing Hume’s
theory with much learning and curious information, but leaving the grounds
on which the sceptic had doubted the good faith of the authorities
unconfuted. Wallace’s treatise was translated into French, under the
inspection of Montesquieu and was republished in 1809, with a life of the
author. Dr Wallace’s other published works, are "A Sermon, preached in the
High Church of Edinburgh, Monday, January 6, 1745-6, upon occasion of the
Anniversary Meeting of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian
Knowledge;" in which he mingled, with a number of extensive statistical
details concerning education, collected with his usual learning, and tinged
with valuable remarks, a political attack on the Jacobite insurrection of
the period, and the motives of its instigators, "Characteristics of the
Present State of Great Britain," published in 1758; and "Various Prospects
of Mankind, Nature, and Providence," published in 1761; in which he
discussed the abstruse subjects of liberty and necessity, the perfectibility
of human nature, &c. He left behind him a MS. essay on Taste, of
considerable length, which was prepared for the press by his son, Mr George
Wallace, advocate, but never published. From the new aspect which modern
inquiries on this subject have assumed, in their adoption of the cumulative
principle of association, this work can now be of little interest; but it
may be worth while to know, that his "Principles of Taste," or sources from
whence the feeling was perceived to emanate, were divided into, 1st,
grandeur; 2nd, novelty; 3rd, variety; 4th, uniformity, proportion, and
order; 5th, symmetry, congruity, or propriety; and, 6th,
similitude and resemblance, or contrast and dissimilitude.
Dr Wallace died on the 29th
of July, 1771, in consequence of a cold, caught in being overtaken in a walk
by a snow storm. His son George, already mentioned, is known as the author
of a work on the Descent of ancient Peerages, and "Principles of the Law of
Scotland," which has fallen into obscurity. |
