Henry Home, Lord Kames

Henry Home, Lord Kames (1696 – 27 December 1782) was a Scottish advocate, judge, philosopher, writer and agricultural improver. A central figure of the Scottish Enlightenment, a founder member of the Philosophical Society of Edinburgh, and active in the Select Society, his protégés included David Hume, Adam Smith, and James Boswell.

Born at Kames House, between Eccles and Birgham, Berwickshire, he was educated at home by a private tutor. He studied law at Edinburgh, was called to the bar in 1724, and became an advocate. He soon acquired reputation by a number of publications on the civil and Scottish law, and was one of the leaders of the Scottish Enlightenment. In 1752, he was "raised to the bench", thus acquiring the title of Lord Kames.

Home was on the panel of judges in the Joseph Knight case which ruled that there could be no slavery in Scotland.

His address in 1775 is shown as New Street on the Canongate.

Home wrote much about the importance of property to society. In his Essay Upon Several Subjects Concerning British Antiquities, written just after the Jacobite rising of 1745 he described how the politics of Scotland were not based on loyalty to Kings or Queens as Jacobites had said but on royal land grants given in return for loyalty.

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