 During his time in Edinburgh, he became notorious for his radical political views and became an outspoken advocate of republicanism.Inevitably, these views made him enemies, and together with the collapse of his banking business, it led him to forsake his native city for the rest of his life – returning only occasionally for brief visits to his mother.There are no likenesses of him in his younger days, but as an old man "Chambers' Biographical Dictionary" describes him as "his bushy head and whiskers were as white as the Himalayan snow, and in such contrast to the active expressive face which beamed from the centre of the mass, that he was likened to a royal Bengal tiger – a resemblance of which he was even proud."