11031E, JAMES DEACON, born 28th of April 1774, at Newington in tho county of Surrey, was the sou of 31r. James Hume, sometime secretary and afterwards a commissioner of the customs, and who was nephew of Dr. Hume, bishop of Salisbury. He was sent when very young to Westminster School, and in that establishment received during the head maeterships of Dr. Smith and Dr. Vincent the whole of hie school education. In 1790 Mr. Hume was appointed to a clerkship in the Custom House, where ho soon became convictions for that energy of character which accompanied him through life, so that at an unusually early age he was appointed to 811 an office of much responsibility in the department. In 1798 Mr. Hume married, and shortly after fixed his residence at Pinner, near Harrow, where he rented a oonsiderable extent of laud, and commenced practical farmer upon a large scale, not however neglecting his official duties. He was always deeply interested ia the scieuee of agriculture in all its branches, and frequently iu after-life referred to his practical expe rience as a farmer in support of those doctrines of political economy of which he became a zealous and enlightened advocate.
In 1822 he was induced to relinquish his rural pursuits and again to take up his residence in London. By this time his value had come to be highly appreciated by the government by means of reports which it became his duty to prepare upon subjects connected with the revenue, and in the followiug year he was appointed to reduce into one simple oode the many hundred statutes (upwards of 1500), often contradictory of each other and not unfrequently unintelligible, which at that time formed "the intricate and labyrinthine chaos" of our custom-house legislation. This work had become one of necessity for the guidance as well of the government as of the commercial world. To no other man probably could its performance have been intrusted with anything like the same propriety. Three of the most valuable years of his life were devoted to the task, and to the unremitting labour which he applied to its accomplishment his friends attributed that inroad upon his bodily powers which was visible iu the latter years of his life, and which too probably brought him to the grave sooner than with hie originally excellent constitution was to bo expected. The labour of
the task was intense. During its progress he allowed himself no relaxation, and acquired the habit, which he afterwards continued, of working through the hours of the night and far into the morning. Of the value of the work thus performed it is hardly possible for any one to form an adequate estimate who should not have been practically acquainted with the condition of disorder that previously accompanied an important branch of the public business, and into which the acts prepared by Mr. Hume introduced clearness, harmony, and regularity. In the eleven intelligible acts of parliament prepared under Mr. Flume's direction, and passed in 1825, everything was preserved that it was desirable to retain, while all that had become worthless in the many hundreds of repealed statutes was discarded. So intricate and confuted had the lave indeed been reudered by successive patch-work pieces of 'legislation, that even those persons who had made it the study of their lives were often at fault in its application, and the practice of our tribunals upon this branch was frequently contradictory.
So sensible were the ministers by whom this work was intrusted to Mr. Hume of the ability with which it was performed, that he was presented by the treasury on its completion with the sum of 50001. over and above the salary of his office, from the duties of which he had been relieved during the period devoted to the task ; and thereafter scarcely any question of importance was decided, having reference to the trade of the country, without his opinion concerning it having first been obtained. So frequent did these consultations become, that a room was fitted up for his use in the office of the Board of Trade; and at length, in July 1829, his services were wholly transferred to that department, where au office was created for him as joint-assistant secretary. In the performance of the important duties thus intrusted to him, Mr. Hume used the same degree of zeal and intelligence which had marked his previous course, and which secured for him the respect and confidence of the suocessivo chiefs of the department.