George Dempster of Dunnichen MP (1732-1818) - "Honest George"

George Dempster of Dunnichen has slipped in the estimation of posterity. He gains a place in the Dictionary of National Biography, but loses out in the more recent one volume Chamber's Biographical Dictionary. It's not hard to see why - the best description of his achievements is "worthy", a good Victorian attribute which would appeal to the compilers of the DNB, but makes him an ideal candidate for editing out when tight for space. However, there was more to him than that, as well as good works, there was a mischevious sense of humour in George Dempster.

George Dempster was the third laird of Dunnichen. His great-grandfather had the great good fortune to be a minister in the 1690s, the period in which the greatest turnover of landed gentry till the 20th century took place. Seven bad harvests in ten years saw lairds whose families had been around since the time of Robert the Bruce (or earlier) forced to sell up to those with hard cash who held the "wadsets" or mortgages. One group with hard cash were the merchants, the other was the ministers of the kirk.

Unlike some, Rev. John Dempster does not appear to have gone in for large scale purchases, that was left to his son, George, a grain merchant and banker in Dundee who amassed an enormous amount of land, and controlled a great deal more as manager of the estates of the exiled Jacobite Earl of Panmure.

On the death of the first George, his grandson had no great expectation of immediate wealth, after all his father was only 46, but within two years his father was dead, and George, a young man of 22 inherited a huge amount of land and an income from agricultural rents alone of almost £800 a year.

At first he seemed destined, like so many Dempsters, to be destined for the law, becoming an Advocate in 1755, and spending his time in Edinburgh in enlightenment circles as a member of the "Poker Club", with David Hume, William Robertson and Alexander Carlyle.

He practiced law only for a short time before going into politics, being elected member for the Fife & Forfar Burghs in 1762. It was a contested election, and winning the seat cost him at least £10,000. This was an enormous sum even for those days when electors expected to be well "persuaded" by the largesse of the candidates, and he almost immediately acquired the ironic nickname "Honest George". However, his electorate, when bought, stayed bought and he represented them for 28 years.

Nominally a Rockinghamite Whig, he soon lived up to the "Honest George" tag for he was to prove an independently minded, incorruptable and moderately radical MP, siding with Fox in opposing the American Stamp Act. He also opposed the East India Company's policy of taking political control of the sub-continent, resigning from the board on that issue and as an MP supporting Fox again on the India Bill.

When he eventually retired from parliament in 1790 he devoted his efforts even more to his other great cause, the economic improvement of Scotland. He founded a company to promote the Scottish fishing trade which was the first to pack fresh fish in ice (rather than salting, smoking, or drying them), and he was instrumental in the setting up of lighthouses round the coast.

On land he was also an agricultural improver, and resigned most of his feudal rights to his estates, a fact that was to infuriate the man who purchased Skibo from his great-great nephew in the 19th century.

As well as politics and improvement, George Dempster continued the literary and social life of an enlightenment Scot, maintaining a lifelong friendship with Adam Ferguson the philosopher and historian and being a "firm friend" of Alexander Carlyle. In London he was also a friend of Boswell, who makes frequent mention of him in his London Journal, though Dempster's sense of humour was sometimes too mischevious and his "Scotch tones and rough and roaring freedom of manner" too unpolished for that prickly, insecure social climber. Johnson, too appears to have been no fan, though reading between the lines of Boswell's introduction to the quote, it may have been been because Dempster - then 31 to Johnson's 54 - had bested Johnson in some debate.

"I called upon Mr. Johnson. He said he did not like Dempster. he said he had not met with any man of a long time who had given him such general displeasure. That he was totally unfixed in his principles, and wanted to puzzle other people. I told him that Dempster's principles were poisoned by David Hume, but that he was a good, benevolent sort of man. "Sir," said Mr. Johnson, "I can lay but little stress upon that instinctive, that constitutional, goodness that is not founded upon principle. I grant you that such a man may be a very good member of society. I can conceive him placed in such a situation that he is not much tempted to deviate from what is right; and so, as goodness is most eligible when there is not some strong enticement to transgress is precepts, I can conceive him doing no harm. But if such a man stood in need of money, I should not like to trust him. And even now, I should not trust Mr. Dempster with young ladies, for there is always a temptation." Mr. Johnson was rather hard upon Dempster, but his reasoning is very just."

Someone who does appear to have been a fan, was Robert Burns, for Dempster gets a pleasant mention in one of Burns' lesser poems, a piece of rather dodgy doggerel which appears to be addressed to one of Burns' drinking and carousing companions, James Smith. The couplet is

A title Dempster merits it,
A Garter gie tae Willie Pitt

it's hardly Burns' best, and given the tone of the rest of the poem, may well be ironic. Whether the two ever met, I have no idea. Burns was 27 years Dempster's junior and Dempster outlived the poet by another 22, but they are likely to have had mutual acquaintences in Edinburgh society, and Dempster's character as described by Johnson make him the sort of man that Burns would have liked.

© James Dempster 1997