GRANT ( Sir John Peter )

Some observations on the constitution and forms of proceeding of the court of session in Scotland ; with remarks on the bill now depending in the House of Lords for its reform

      Printed for W. Clarke and Sons, Portugal-Street, Lincoln's Inn, 1807. FIRST EDITION, pages vi, 135, with half-title, 8vo, recent wrapper : a very good copy. His first published work. Grant (1774!1848), chief justice of Calcutta, succeeded to the entailed estate of Rothiemurchus, on the death of his uncle, Patrick Grant, called the !White Laird,! in 1790. He studied law first at Edinburgh then at Lincoln's Inn. He sat in the parliament of 1812 for Great Grimsby, Lincolnshire, and in the two subsequent parliaments for Tavistock. In 1827 he went to India as puisne judge, first at Bombay then at Calcutta, where he was afterwards chief justice. He died at sea on his passage home. Ambitious and energetic, a man of the ancien regime and its Old Corruption, Grant was unreliable, evasive, and sometimes dishonest. The Times described him as !wayward, extravagant and, though not without shining parts, impracticable and unsuccessful in life! Blackwood's Magazine claimed he was !one of those brilliant men who are not born to succeed! (DNB).