Scottish editor, born at Ormiston, Haddingtonshire, on the 7th of October 1782, the son of a farmer and cattle-dealer. He was almost entirely self-educated, and when a young man became a clerk in Edinburgh. In 1817, with others, he established the Scotsman newspaper in Edinburgh and at first acted as its editor. Offered a post as clerk in the customhouse, he resigned his editorial position, resuming it in 1820, and resigning it again in 1845. In 1820 Maclaren was made editor of the sixth edition of the Encyclopædia Britannica. From 1864–1866 he was president of the Geological Society of Edinburgh, in which city he died on the 10th of September 1866.
