The Melville Monument stands in St Andrew’s Square opposite Dundas House which I blipped last Wednesday and commemorates Henry Dundas who was a relative of Sir Lawrence Dundas.  The column is 47m (150 ft) tall including the 4.2 m (14ft) statue on top.  Henry Dundas, !st Viscount Melville (1742 – 1811) trained as a lawyer then became an MP and subsequently held various important government ministerial posts including Home Secretary in the UK government  and was nicknamed the “Uncrowned King of Scotland.”
“Henry Dundas held a prominent position in Scotland's legal system before moving into politics. His interest in Scottish affairs saw him establish Scottish power and influence in government. In 1781 he repealed the Disarming Act to allow Highlanders to wear kilts and tartans again; lobbied for the restoration of forfeited Jacobite estates to their rightful owners; promoted the foundation of the Highland Society and the British Fisheries Society; and encouraged Thomas Telford to improve communication systems with the north. He deplored the Highland Clearances and heavy Scottish emigration to America”.
As a lawyer he had also won the emancipation of a slave Joseph Knight from his Scottish owner resulting in the Court declaring that slavery and the slave trade should be abolished together, and proposed an end to hereditary slavery, which would have enabled the children born to present-day slaves to become free persons upon reaching adulthood and was "instrumental in prohibiting not only negro slavery but also native serfdom in Scotland”.
However he has recently become very controversial especially since the Black Lives Matter movement.  Although he agreed with William Wilberforce in principle for the abolition of the slave trade he did not agree with the means as he felt it should be abolished gradually so as not to undermine the economy.  As a result of the delay the abolition of the transatlantic slave trade was not achieved until 1807 and it is estimated that this resulted in many more people being transported from Africa to British colonies in the West Indies.  A plaque erected in 2021 states that it is “dedicated to the memory of more than half a million Africans whose enslavement was a consequence of Henry Dundas’s actions.”
In many ways he does seem to have done a lot for Scotland but his reputation is now tarnished as are many other people who were once held in high regard