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Significant Scots
William Playfair |
PLAYFAIR, WILLIAM, an ingenious mechanic and
miscellaneous writer, brother to John Playfair, was born in the year 1759.
The personal history of this man when compared with that of his brother,
shows in striking colours the necessity, not only of industry, but of
steadiness and consistency of plan, as adjuncts of genius in raising its
possessor to eminence. Being very young when his father died, his education
was superintended by his brother. His early taste for mechanics prompted his
friends to place him as apprentice to a mill-wright of the name of Miekle.
He afterwards went to England, and in 1780, was engaged as draughtsman in
the service of Mr James Watt. How long he remained in this situation we do
not know, but the vast mass of pamphlets which he was unceasingly producing
must have speedily interfered with his professional regularity, and he seems
to have spent the remainder of his days in alternately making mechanical
discoveries of importance, and penning literary or political pamphlets.
Among the most useful of his mechanical efforts, was the unrequited
discovery of the French telegraph, gathered from a few partial hints, and
afterwards adapted by an alphabet of his own invention to British use. At
the period when he was most busy as a writer, he received no less than five
patents for new inventions; one of these was for the manufacture of sashes,
constructed of a mixture of copper, zinc, and iron. These he termed Eldorado
sashes. Another was for a machine for completing the ornamental part of
fretwork on small implements of silver and other metal; such as sugar tongs,
buckles, &c., which had previously been executed by the hand. For
some time he occupied a silversmith’s shop in London, but, tiring of the
business, or finding it unprofitable, he proceeded to Paris, where, among
other mechanical speculations, he procured an exclusive privilege for the
manufacture of a rolling mill on a new plan. While living in Paris, he was
the means of forming the colony of Scioto in America. Having formed an
acquaintance with Mr Joel Barlow, who had been sent to Paris to negotiate
the disposal by lots of three millions of acres which had been purchased by
a company at New York, on the banks of the Scioto, he undertook to procure
for him the necessary introductions, and to conduct the disposal. The
breaking out of the French revolution favoured the scheme. It was proposed
that the lands should be disposed of at 5s. per acre, one half to be paid at
signing the act of sale, the other to remain on mortgage to the United
States, to be paid within two years after taking possession. In less than
two months 50,000 acres were sold, and two vessels sailed from Havre de
Grace, with the nucleus of the colony. Soon after accomplishing this
project, he made a narrow escape from being arrested by the revolutionary
government, a fate which his strongly expressed objections to the French
revolution rendered a very likely event. On his return to London he
projected a bank termed the Security Bank; its object was the division of
large securities so as to facilitate small loans;—this bank unfortunately
belied its name, and became insolvent, too little attention having been paid
to the securities taken. On the restoration of the Bourbons, he returned to
France, and became editor of Galignani’s Messenger, but he was driven back
to England by a libel prosecution, and continued to gain his subsistence by
essay-writing and translating. His works being in general connected with the
passing politics of the day, need not be all named and characterized. In
books and pamphlets, his distinct works are said to amount to about a
hundred. Several were politico-economical in their subject, discussing the
sinking fund, the resources of France, the Asiatic establishments of
Britain, the prospects of the manufacturing interest, &c. His political
remarks were generally for the purpose of supporting and vindicating the
conduct of Britain towards France, and received the designation "patriotic."
Among his principal publications were a "History of Jacobinism," published
in 1795; an edition of Smith’s Wealth of Nations, with Notes, in 1806; and
"British Family Antiquities," in 9 vols. 4to, published in 1809-11. This
last work forms a Peerage and Baronetage of Britain and Ireland. It contains
a great mass of matter, and is splendidly illustrated, but it is not looked
on by genealogists as a work of much authority. He spent the last days of
his laborious but irregular life without the competence which well-directed
talent generally acquires, and his death was hurried on by anxiety of mind.
He died in Covent Garden on the 11th February, 1823, in the sixty-fourth
year of his age. "In private life," says a biographer, "Mr Playfair was
inoffensive and amiable; not prepossessing in his appearance and address,
but with a strong and decided physiognomy, like that of his late brother.
With a thoughtlessness which is too frequently allied to genius, he
neglected to secure that provision for his family, which from his talents
they were justified to expect; and although he laboured ardently and
abundantly for his country, yet he found it ungrateful, and was left in age
and infirmity to regret that he had neglected his own interests to promote
those of the public." [Annual Obituary, 1824, 460.] |
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