HOME, HENnY (Lord ICAmEs), an eminent Scottish lawyer and author, was b. in 1696 at Eames, in Berwickshire. Destined by his friends for the law, he was appren ticed in 1712 to a writer to the signet; but he afterwards decided on adopting the highest branch of his profession, and qualified himself for it mainly by private reading and attendance at the courts. Entering the bar in 1723, he was raised to the bench in Feb., 1752, assuming the title of lord Hanes, and was made one of the lords of justiciary in 1763. He died Dec. 27, 1782. In 1728 he published Remarkable Deci.ions of the Court of Session from 1716 to 1728. The materials of this work were in 1741 embodied in his Dictionary of the Decisions of the Court of Session during its whole history, which, though now superseded, was of great use to lawyers at the time, and was thought worthy of being continued by lord Woodhouselee. He is best known, however, by his Essays on the Principles of Morality and .Aratural Religion (1751), containing a solution of the question of human freedom, which brought on him the suspicion of infidelity, and raised con siderable controversy in the courts of the church and through the press: his Introduction to the Art of Thinking (1761); and above all, his celebrated Principles of Critigun, the work on which his fame now chiefly rests. In 1773 appeared his Sketches of the History
of Man, which may be found entertaining, but are now of very little scientific value. Though thus busily occupied with judicial and literary labors, he took a very active interest in agriculture and commerce, and wrote a useful tract on the former, entitled The Gentleman Farmer, being an Attempt to improve Agriculture by subjecting it to the Test of Rational Principles. His last work, Loose Thoughts on Education (1781), was written in his 85th year. See lord Woodhouselee's Memoirs of the Life and Writings of Home (2 vols. 4to, Edin. 1807).