Sir John Sinclair, 1st Baronet

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Sir John Sinclair, 1st Baronet (1754-1835) was Scottish politician, writer on finance and agriculture and the first person to use the word 'statistics.' He was a barrister in both Scotland and England, and became a Member of Parliament for Caithness in 1780 and was later an MP for Lostwithiel and Petersfield constituencies in England.

As the first President of the Board of Agriculture in the administration of William Pitt the Younger and founded the government's Department of Agriculture, he managed the first systematic survey to compile social and economic statistics for every parish in Scotland. He was a lay member of the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland and enlisted parish ministers to conduct the survey, which was completed between 1791 and 1799 and published as the 'Statistical Account of Scotland'. [1]

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