George Brodie (1786?–1867) was a Scottish lawyer and historian.

Life

Brodie was born on 6 September 1785 in

East Lothian East Lothian (; sco, East Lowden; gd, Lodainn an Ear) is one of the 32 council areas of Scotland, as well as a historic county, registration county and lieutenancy area. The county was called Haddingtonshire until 1921. In 1975, the histo ...

, where his father was a farmer on a large scale, and a contributor to the improvement of Scottish

husbandry Animal husbandry is the branch of agriculture concerned with animals that are raised for meat, fibre, milk, or other products. It includes day-to-day care, selective breeding, and the raising of livestock. Husbandry has a long history, starti ...

. Educated at

Edinburgh High School The Royal High School (RHS) of Edinburgh is a co-educational school administered by the City of Edinburgh Council. The school was founded in 1128 and is one of the oldest schools in Scotland. It serves 1,200 pupils drawn from four feeder primar ...

and the

University of Edinburgh The University of Edinburgh ( sco, University o Edinburgh, gd, Oilthigh Dhùn Èideann; abbreviated as ''Edin.'' in post-nominals) is a public research university based in Edinburgh, Scotland. Granted a royal charter by King James VI in 15 ...

, he became in 1811 a member of the

Faculty of Advocates The Faculty of Advocates is an independent body of lawyers who have been admitted to practise as advocates before the courts of Scotland, especially the Court of Session and the High Court of Justiciary. The Faculty of Advocates is a constitu ...

. He seems to have done little at the bar. He was an ardent whig, and his political creed partly inspired the one work by which he is known, his ''History of the British Empire''. In the Scottish agitation for the first

Reform Bill In the United Kingdom, Reform Act is most commonly used for legislation passed in the 19th century and early 20th century to enfranchise new groups of voters and to redistribute seats in the House of Commons of the Parliament of the United Kingdom. ...

, Brodie presided at a very numerous gathering of the working-men of Edinburgh held on

Arthur's Seat Arthur's Seat ( gd, Suidhe Artair, ) is an ancient volcano which is the main peak of the group of hills in Edinburgh, Scotland, which form most of Holyrood Park, described by Robert Louis Stevenson as "a hill for magnitude, a mountain in virtue ...

in November 1831 against the rejection of the bill by the peers. In 1836 he was appointed historiographer of Scotland, with a salary of £180 a year. Brodie died in London on 22 January 1867.

Works

Brodie's major work was ''History of the British Empire from the accession of Charles the First to the Restoration, with an introduction tracing the progress of society and of the Constitution from the feudal times to the opening of the history, and including a particular examination of Mr. Hume's statements relative to the character of the English government.'' The 'statements' which Brodie undertook to refute were chiefly those in which

David Hume David Hume (; born David Home; 7 May 1711 NS (26 April 1711 OS) – 25 August 1776) Cranston, Maurice, and Thomas Edmund Jessop. 2020 999br>David Hume" ''Encyclopædia Britannica''. Retrieved 18 May 2020. was a Scottish Enlightenment philo ...

found precedents for the claims of the

Stuarts The House of Stuart, originally spelt Stewart, was a royal house of Scotland, England, Ireland and later Great Britain. The family name comes from the office of High Steward of Scotland, which had been held by the family progenitor Walter fi ...

in the action of the Tudor sovereigns. Brodie's history was by far the most elaborate assault on the Stuarts and their apologists, especially Hume and Clarendon, and the most thoroughgoing vindication of the

puritans The Puritans were English Protestants in the 16th and 17th centuries who sought to purify the Church of England of Roman Catholic practices, maintaining that the Church of England had not been fully reformed and should become more Protestant. P ...

, that had then appeared. It was not of high historical value. It was reviewed in the '

Edinburgh Review The ''Edinburgh Review'' is the title of four distinct intellectual and cultural magazines. The best known, longest-lasting, and most influential of the four was the third, which was published regularly from 1802 to 1929. ''Edinburgh Review'', ...

' for March 1824, probably by John Allen of Holland House celebrity (see Lord Jeffrey's letter to him in

Lord Cockburn Henry Thomas Cockburn of Bonaly, Lord Cockburn ( ; Cockpen, Midlothian, 26 October 1779 – Bonaly, Midlothian, 26 April/18 July 1854) was a Scottish lawyer, judge and literary figure. He served as Solicitor General for Scotland between 1830 an ...

's Life of Jeffrey, 2nd ed. 1852, ii. 217). While generally laudatory, the reviewer censured Brodie's indiscriminating partisanship. Guizot has expressed his surprise that so passionate a partisan should have written with so little animation (Preface to the Histoire de la Revolution d'Angleterre, 4th ed. 1860, i. 15). In 1866 appeared a second edition of his History, with the original title slightly expanded into ''A Constitutional History of the British Empire''. Besides the History, Brodie published an edition of Stair's ''Institutes of the Law of Scotland, with commentaries and a supplement as to mercantile law.'' Lord Cockburn says of it and him (Journal, 1874, ii. 113): "His edition of Stair is a deep and difficult legal book. His style is bad, and his method not good.'" Brodie was also author of a pamphlet entitled ''Strictures on the Appellate Jurisdiction of the House of Lords'', 1856.

References

;Attribution {{DEFAULTSORT:Brodie, George 1786 births 1867 deaths 19th-century Scottish historians People from East Lothian