THE LORD-ADVOCATES OF SCOTLAND.*
ilyrnotrun there is a slight flavour of the political pamphlet about the two volumes in which Mr. George Omond, an Edin- burgh advocate, has traced the history of the most venerable and important politico-legal office in Scotland, they form a valuable work. One word as to Mr. Omond's style, and for a special reason. Mr. John Morley has somewhere said that all English publicists are, as stylists, disciples either of Macaulay or of Mill. How far this was true when Mr. Morley wrote, how little it may be true now, seeing that fashion in style changes almost as rapidly as fashion in dress, and that the literary model of ten years ago is the butt of every undergraduate's contempt to-day, are questions which, although interesting in themselves, we are not now concerned to answer. But there is no doubt as to the enormous influence Macaulay, when at the height of his literary fame, had in making—perhaps still more in marring—the styles of young men of a literary turn, and who were in the stage of pliancy when the volumes of his History appeared. Nowhere was his influence greater than in Scotland. His old connection with it as Member for Edinburgh made him the idol of the Scotch youth, who regarded him, moreover, as, in spite of his birth and education, a Scotchman of the Gladstonian or "every fibre" type. Every lad at college who dreamed of living by journalism, every ambi- tious young advocate who thought to emulate Jeffrey, and find his way to political power, the leadership of the Scotch Bar, or a seat on the Bench, by making his first impression in the great Reviews, imitated Macaulay, while Macaulay was the rage. Thus, the style of the greatest of the Scotch literary masters except Carlyle—and even yet Macaulay is preferred to 'Carlyle in Scotland, by all but a thoughtful minority—is very noticeable in the Essays and Reviews of the late Henry Hill Lancaster, apparently the last of the Edinburgh advocates that have aimed at attaining a high literary as well as legal reputa- tion, and who died on the threshold of what promised to be a prosperous, if not also brilliant career. Mr. Omond is, we take it, an advocate of much younger standing than Mr. Lancaster, yet" ancient founts of inspiration well through all his fancy yet," and to almost a ludicrous extent. Could Macaulay himself have read these volumes, he would • have exclaimed, in what Carlyle described as his "plain Norse" manner, "Macaulay, or the Devil !" We have here imitations of the old and familiar snippety sentences of the History. Such are, "In 1587 the King came of age. Parliament met in July." Or "Morton had been beheaded. Murray had been murdered. Bothwell had died in exile." Here again is a slice—rather under-done, it must be allowed—off the Macaulay joint, by way of a description of ' The Lord—ddrocates of Scotland, from the Close of the Fifteenth Century to the Passing of the Reform Bill. Bs George W. 'T. Omond, Advocate. 2 vo/n. Edinburgh: David Douglaa. the official changes in Scotland that came in the wake of the Restoration,—" Sir Thomas Hope's place was filled by the fierce and haughty Fletcher; the unscrupulous and wily Primrose succeeded Johnston of Warriston as Lord Clerk Register; and instead of Leslie, there was seen the savage face of Dalziel, un- shaven since the death of Charles I." When the brilliant, but not "superstitiously scrupulous" Henry Dandas makes his first appearance in London society, it is described by Mr. Omond in a passage which recalls the famous essay on Warren Hastings :—" The memoirs and letters of that time are so graphic that we seem to enter at will the charmed circle, and to see the candles shining on the fine clothes of the men and the towering head-dresses of the ladies. The whole scene is depicted by the industrious writers of the day. Mrs. Montagne's dinners, where the hostess, though nearly sixty, displayed to her guests the vivacity of half her years ; the drawing-room, with the picture of Palteney over the chimney-piece ; Mrs. Thrale, entering with her husband, and little thinking that a time would come, when, by an act of folly, she should forfeit the esteem of all her friends ; the beautiful Duchess of Devonshire drinking in the words of Johnson; Garrick and Horace Walpole telling anecdotes or giving riddles ; Frances Burney and her father standing with Reynolds in the background, watching the scene with interest." The ring of Macaulay here is unmistakeable. But there is a difference between Macaulay's pictures and Mr. Omond's, a difference very nearly as marked as that between Samuel Johnson's "brandy for heroes" and the innocent claret-cup of the present day.
Partisanship and style apart, this work must be considered a very important addition to the historical literature of Scotland. Mr. Omond's method is a good one, and he has adhered to it steadily from the beginning to the end of his two volumes. His original purpose was not to give complete biogra- phies of the fifty-two more or less eminent men who have fulfilled the duties of Lord (originally King's) Advocate, from Sir John Ross, of Monta,grenan, who was appointed about 1480 by James Ill., and fought for his un- fortunate master at the battle of Sauchieburn, to Francis Jeffrey, whom some of us can still remember. It is rather, in his own words, "To trace the history of an office the holders of which have enjoyed peculiar opportunities of influencing the course of politics and the development of the law in Scotland during a period of about four hundred years, and to describe the various arrangements which, since the Union, have been made for the management of Scottish affairs." But incident- ally Mr. Omond tells all that one really wishes to know of the personal and family history of the various Scotch Lord- Advocates. His book is, in effect, a collection of portraits of "Scotch worthies ;" nor does he fail to depict the manners of the times in which they lived. Some of the ablest of Scotchmen have filled the office of Lord-Advocate,—Spens, the disciple and protector of Knox ; Thomas Hamilton, alias "Tam o' the Cowgate," the first "Lord," as distinguished from " King's " Advocate, who made the first James his easy tool, and as President of the Court of Session, Secretary for Scotland, and Earl of Haddington, was really dictator of his country ; Sir Thomas Hope, who stood between Charles I. and the Cove- nanters, with whom he sympathised ; the "bloody," but also able and literary Mackenzie; the Dalrymples ; Duncan Forbes of Culloden, one of the deepest drinkers and most sagacious politicians of a troubled time ; Henry Erskine, wit, poor man's friend, and Liberal before his time ; Henry Dundas, who, as Lord-Advocate, and still more as Viscount Melville, repeated the
dictatorial success of "Tam o' the Cowgate," helping thereby to make Scotland the preserve of Liberalism it now is; and finally, Francis Jeffrey. A book about Scotchmen would, it seems, be incomplete which did not contain anecdotes about the drinking customs of their country. So Mr. Omond refreshes the memory with a good number of such stories. We are told once again how, on the day of the funeral of Duncan Forbes's mother, "a number of mourners assembled at Culloden. By an old Scottish custom, which is only now dying out, the party drank freely in the house. Duncan was entrusted with the task of attending to the guests, and did so with such hospitality that when the funeral procession reached the grave, it was found that the coffin had been forgotten." Mr. Omond also revives the convivial
pranks of Pitt, and Dundas, and Thurlow ; tells how, returning from Addiscombe to Duudas's house at Wimbled*, they rode through the turnpike gate between Tooting and Streatham without paying toll, and were fired at by the keeper of the gate as being robbers, or, as it is put in the Ballad,— "Row, as he wandered darkling o'er the plain, His reason drown'd in Jenkinson's champagne, A rustic's band,—but righteous fate withstood,— Had shed a Premier's for a robber's blood."
Bat in respect of the major and the minor morals alike, the Scotch Lord-Advocates seem to have been men of their time and their country. They were scarcely ever worse than either ; many of them, such as Hope, Erskine, Forbes (in his serious
and sober days), and Jeffrey, were better. No Lord-Advocate, no Scotch lawyer, except the brutal Braxfleld, has a worse repu-
tation than Sir George Mackenzie, the terror and persecutor of the Covenanters in the days of Charles II., the oppressor of the people by advocating whose rights he first attained popularity and power. Yet he was not worse or more cruel than his brother-apostates South of the Tweed, and stood stoutly by the Stuart cause when it was clearly seen to be a falling one. The process of the selection of Lord-Advocates in the past, although it, perhaps, can hardly be called natural, seems, on the whole, to have been a fair one ; the best men got ultimately to the offi- cial top. When a brilliant pleader or an able politician was not forthcoming, the most industrious plodder at the bar had his innings, like Craigie, who was Lord-Advocate at the time of the rebellion of 1745, and appears, although a dull man that de- tested politics, to have shown both sense and courage, although he had as his military colleague in opposing the Pretender, Sir John Cope, who does not appear to have had too much of either. The Scotch Lord-Advocates have, in nine cases out of ten, been representative Scotchmen, and hence their power.
The evolution of the duties and power of the Lord-Advocate as traced by Mr. Omond cannot be said to have been altogether regular. The original King's Advocate seems to have been
a lawyer of experience and capacity, whose duty it was to recover in the Courts fines and forfeitures for the King. Then he obtained Privy Council dignity, became recognised as the Public Prosecutor, and even sat on the Bench before which it was his business to plead. It may be said to have been the Restoration and the Union of 1707, between them abolishing the Scotch Privy Council and making a separate Scotch Department an uncertainty, from being a fixture of politics, that raised the Lord-Advocate to be the politico-legal function- ary or virtual Minister for Scotland he now is. The Scotch Secretaryship of State was not finally abolished till 1746.
Walpole, then Premier, suspected the Duke of Roxburghe, the holder of the office at that time, of clandestinely opposing his policy so far as that concerned Scotland, and got rid of him.
Duncan Forbes, who was then Lord-Advocate, was much pleased, and in one of his letters, from which Mr. Omond quotes, wrote these notable words :—" For some time, at least, we shall not be troubled with that nuisance which we long have
complained of,—a Scots Secretary, either at full length or in miniature. If any one Scotsman has absolute power, we are in the same slavery as ever, whether that person be a fair man or a black man, a peer or a commoner, six foot or five foot high ; and the dependence of his country will be on that man, and not on those tin.; made him." The most powerful of the Lord. Advocates after the abolition of the Scotch Secretaryship was Henry Dundas. He had the whole patronage of Scot- land in his hands. But political reform and the reduction of the number of Scotch posts conferred by patronage have prevented any Lord-Advocate since Dundas obtaining a posi- tion of such personal power. Altogether, therefore, the history of the Lord-Advocateship must be allowed to be one of ups and downs; and as the Local Government Board Bill of last Session showed, a modification of its functions is threatened.
We have said Mr. Omond's work has the flavour of a pam- phlet, for he distinctly leads up to the conclusion that the re-creation of a Scotch Political Department is desirable.
"The establishment of such a Department," he says (Vol. II., pp. 334-335), "would not 'degrade,' as is sometimes maintained, 'the ancient office of Lord-Advocate: The holder of the office would still enjoy the high political influence possessed by his predecessors from time immemorial, although he lost that sole control of Scottish affairs which by mere accident passed into the hands of the Lord-Advocate, during the period which followed the abolition of the office of Secretary of State for Scot- land." Upon the question here raised and raised in Parliament last Session, we here express no opinion, but it may be safely said that the Scotch Lord-Advocate of the future, however his nominal position may be modified, will be the leader of the Scotch Commons, and in a much truer and larger sense than
was even Dundas, provided always that he is in himself strong,. and is willing or can afford to throw himself unreservedly into. a political career. His professional training must, it is obvious, give him advantages possessed neither by the ordinary Scotch Peer nor by the ordinary Scotch Member of Parliament, and the relieving him of the relics of Scotch patronage would simply render his power parer and more constitutional.
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