In testimony of the Magistrates and Council's admiration of his powerful talents exerted on different occasions in behalf of objects of important national interest, and of the pleasure they have on reflecting that, a native of this city, he has ever shown the warmest zeal for its prosperity, and a pupil of its High School and University, he here laid the foundation, and exhibited the early proofs, of those varied literary and scientific acquirements which have since so splendidly adorned his maturer years.
"I am your fellow citizen, born, bred and educated in this town - how much I owe to that I want utterance to express. Suffice it to say that I deem I owe everything to that education I received in Edinburgh . . . I have not seen one plan, or any one system adapted to the teaching of youth, rightly to estimate the blessings of a free government and to train them up to become good citizens and valuable members of society, as that adopted in the High School, I mean the old High School of Edinburgh, and the Scottish Universities. Such a school is altogether invaluable in a free state -in a state having higher objects in view by the education of its youth, than a mere knowledge of the Latin and Greek languages and the study of prosody. A school like the old High School of Edinburgh is invaluable, and for what is it so? It is because men of the highest and lowest rank in society send their children to be educated there."