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Kay's Originals Vol. 2

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41+ BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. various charitable institutions of this city; but he latterly began to concentrate his exertions upon a single object of this kind. In 1818, a Parliamentary Commission having been appointed to inquire into the state of education throughout the United Kingdom, the chairman (Lord Brougham) requested the countenance and aid of the General Assembly in obtaining returns from the parochial clergy of Scotland. This was readily acceded to ; and, as convener of the committee nominated by the Assembly, Dr. Baird took an active part in furthering the object of the Commission. Deeply impressed with the statements set forth in the returns, which were in the first instance forwarded to the Principal, and by him transmitted to Lord Brougham, he was led to that enterprise for the education of the Highlanders with which his name will ever be most honourably associated. In 1824 he proposed to the General Assembly a scheme for establishing schools in the Highlands, to be maintained on such funds as the Church might raise by means of parochial collections and otherwise, and to be superintended by a Committee of the General Assembly. The project was well received, and a great and flourishing institution has been the consequence. The General Assembly’s Education Committee has at present an income of about 23000 per annum, with about 210,000 of capital, and an establishment of more than one hundred schools, giving education to upwards of, eight thousand children. Much of the success of this scheme depended on the co-operation of heritors, in furnishing certain requisites of accommodation to the schoolmasters ; and Dr. Baird zealously exerted himself to secure that co-operation by means of frequent personal intercourse. It was with this view he undertook several laborious journeys to the remotest parts of the Highlands and Islands, at a very advanced period of life ; and the appearance of the venerable Principal among their native hills and vales, on such a mission of benevolence, will ever be remembered by the present generation of Highlanders, and will not pass unrecorded to the next. The Principal latterly retired in a great measure from the more active cares and engagements of life ; and valued, as a good man naturally does, the privilege of spending his later days among the remembered scenes of his boyhood: connecting the present with the past in that manner of pleasing retrospect which always argues a well-spent interval. “ The child is father of the man ; And I could wish my days to be Bound each to each by natural piety.” His clerical career was on the whole eminently prosperous ; and he repaid the favours of his fortune by a character of high respectability, and by some distinguished contributions to the public good-his chief exertions taking their direction from the benevolence of his disposition. Among the class of practical philanthropists, he occupied a place scarcely inferior to that of any other individual of his time. This was at Manuel, in the neighbourhood of Linlithgow, whem‘he chiefly resided
Volume 9 Page 553
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