Mr. S. Laing, the new Finance Minister in India - from a photograph by John Watkin, 1860. Mr. Samuel Laing, M.P. for the Wick Burghs, and Secretary of the Treasury...has just accepted the seat at the Indian Council in Calcutta...[He] was for many years a private (mathematical) tutor of the highest class in Cambridge. He was called to the Bar by the Hon. Society of Lincolns Inn in 1840, but does not appear at once to have practised his profession...In 1844 he published an elaborate "Report on British and Foreign Railways"...In 1848 he was made chairman and managing director of the Brighton Railway Company, and during his five years of office the passenger traffic on the line was nearly doubled. In 1852 he became chairman of the Crystal Palace Company. He has been engaged in the direction of the Grand Central and Grand Junction Railways in France; of the Antwerp and Rotterdam and Simbart lines in Holland; and the Great Western Railway of Canada...He was again returned for the Wick Burghs in 1859, and, on Lord Palmerstons accession to office, was appointed Secretary to the Treasury. From "Illustrated London News", 1860.