and is reprinted in Oliver's ‘Golden Remains of the Early Masonic Writers’ (1847).
In 1732 appeared the work by which Anderson is chiefly remembered, ‘Royal Genealogies; or, the Genealogical Tables of Emperors, Kings, and Princes, from Adam to these times.’ Professedly based on ‘Genealogische Tabellen’ of Johann Hübner, it was largely supplemented by Anderson's industry. While the earlier sections of the work are of little historical value, the later are often of use in relation to the genealogies of continental dynasties and houses. The volume closes with a synopsis of the English peerage, and in the preface the author intimated his readiness, if adequately encouraged, ‘to delineate and dispose at full length the genealogies of all the peers and great gentry of the Britannic isles.’ Anderson's last work, which he was commissioned to undertake by the first Earl of Egmont and his son from materials furnished by them, bore the title, ‘A Genealogical History of the House of Yvery, in its different branches of Yvery, Lovel, Perceval, and Gournay;’ but the first volume alone was completed when Anderson died on 25 May 1739, and a second volume, subsequently published, was due to another pen (see ‘To the Reader’ in vol. ii.). The work was soon withdrawn from circulation on account of some disparaging remarks in it on the condition of the English peerage and on the character of the Irish people. It was re-issued, however, without the offensive passages, in 1742 (see Notes and Queries, 1st series, iv. 158, and Letters of Horace Walpole (1857), i. 107 n., and ii. 145). Much of the genealogical matter in the book has been pronounced to be mythical (Drummond's Histories of Noble British Families (1846), art. ‘Percival’). Another work of Anderson's, ‘News from Elysium, or Dialogues of the Dead, between Leopold, Roman Emperor, and Louis XIV, King of France,’ was published shortly after his death in 1739.
[Anderson's Works; Brief notice (sub nomine) in Catalogue of the Edinburgh Advocates' Library; Gentleman's Mag. liii. 41–2; Gowans's Catalogue of Books on Freemasonry (New York, 1856); Kloss, Bibliographie der Freimaurerei (1844).]
ANDERSON, JAMES (1739–1808), economist, was born at Hermiston, near Edinburgh, in 1739. At the age of fifteen he lost his parents, and undertook a farm which had long been in his family; he attended Cullen's lectures upon chemistry to improve his agricultural knowledge, and introduced the use of what was afterwards called the ‘Scotch plough.’ He afterwards took a farm called Monkshill, in Aberdeenshire. In 1768 he married Miss Seton, of Mounie, Aberdeenshire, by whom he had a large family. He had published several essays upon agriculture, and in 1780 received the LL.D. degree from Aberdeen. In 1783 he moved to Edinburgh, and privately printed some remarks upon the Western Scotch fisheries. Though otherwise a generally orthodox economist, Anderson desired protection for the fisheries. Bentham remonstrated with him in a forcible letter, which offended Anderson for the moment, though Bentham afterwards wrote to him about the Panopticon in terms implying considerable confidence. Their intimacy dropped after an unexplained misunderstanding in 1793. In 1784 Pitt employed Anderson to survey the fisheries. In some correspondence with Washington, published in 1800, Anderson says that Pitt withheld remuneration because he ‘dared do so.’ In 1790 Anderson started a weekly paper in Edinburgh, called the ‘Bee,’ which, at its conclusion in 1794, filled eighteen volumes, containing many useful papers on economical and other topics. Some papers on the political progress of Great Britain induced government to begin a prosecution, which was dropped upon Anderson's declaring that he would be responsible. One Callender having charged Lord Gardenstone, a judge of sessions and an occasional contributor, with the authorship, Anderson announced that they were written by Callender himself. In 1797 Anderson moved to Isleworth, where he led a retired life, amusing himself with agricultural experiments. From 1799 to 1802 he published, in monthly parts, ‘Recreations in Agriculture, Natural History, Arts, and Miscellaneous Literature,’ which formed six volumes. His first wife died in 1788, and in 1801 he married a lady who survived him. He died 15 Oct. 1808. Anderson is said to have done much for Scotch agriculture. He is specially noticeable as having published in 1777 a pamphlet called ‘An Inquiry into the Nature of the Corn Laws, with a view to the Corn Bill proposed for Scotland,’ which contains a complete statement of the theory of rent generally called after Ricardo. The passage is given in M'Culloch's ‘Literature of Political Economy.’ The same theory is expounded in the ‘Recreations,’ v. 401–28 (see M'Culloch's edition of Adam Smith). He is the author of many tracts: his first publication was ‘Essays on Planting,’ in Ruddiman's ‘Edinburgh Weekly Magazine,’ 1771; others are ‘Observations on the Means of exciting a Spirit of National Industry,’ 1777; ‘An Account of the present State of the
