Hume, JOSEPH

Hume, JOSEPH, politician, was born 22d January 1777, at Montrose. He studied medicine at Edinburgh, and in 1797 became assistant-surgeon in the service of the East India Company. He applied himself to the acquisition of the native languages, and during the Mahratta war, from 1802 to 1807, filled some half-dozen important offices, chief amongst which were those of interpreter and commissary-general. On the conclusion of peace he returned to England in 1808, his fortune made. Becoming imbued with the political philosophy of James Mill and Bentham, he gained admission to parliament, sitting as member for Weymouth, Aberdeen, Middlesex, Kilkenny, and Montrose successively, this last from 1842 to his death, which occurred on 20th February 1855. 'An uncompromising honesty, an instinctive hatred of abuses, an innate love of liberty, and an unflinching will to extend its benefits to others—these, and the close experience of men derived by himself during the earlier part of his life, rendered Mr Hume one of the most powerful, and at the same time one of the most practical, of reformers in a reforming age.' Amongst the schemes and reforms he advocated may be enumerated the establishment of savings-banks, freedom of trade with India, abolition of flogging in the army, of naval impressment, and of imprisonment for debt, repeal of the act prohibiting export of machinery, and of that preventing workmen from going abroad, reduction of election expenses, abrogation of duties on paper, and removal of abuses of all and sundry kinds whatsoever. He was also chief agent in discovering the treasonable designs of the Orange lodges, which proposed to make the Duke of Cumberland king on the decease of William IV.