LORD A DVOCATE jEFFREY.—It forms a novel and peculiar feature
in the canvass which this celebrated gentleman has just concluded in the Forfar burghs, that he has everywhere:been received by the people with an en- thusiasm of approbation. Candidates on the Government side have for the most part paid about as much attention to the feelings of the com- munity in their pothering for votes in that part of the island, as the pur- chaser of a sugar estate does to the feelings of the negroes that till it ; and the community has in turn paid as much attention to theirs. Mr. Jeffrey's progress, on the contrary, has been a progress of triumph, so far as the estimation of the people could make it so; nor has he been altogether unsuccessful with their " 'canine " governors. He was enter- tained at Dundee on Friday last week, with a splendour of attendance such as that stirring and wealthy town has seldom 'displayed. Covers were laid for four hundred persons, and that number actually assem- bled at dinner. We cannot give Lord Advocate Jeffrey's speech on the occasion ; and we regret this the less, that many of his bril- liancies necessarily escape from the fingers of a provincial reporter, and that the speech which is given to him in the Scotch news- papers, though good and clever, conveys but a very inadequate idea of the eloquence of one of the best speakers in the island. The sentiments, however, have not suffered ; and to these we have much pleasure in adverting. Friday was, we believe, the first time since the Union that a Government officer ventured to state, to a numerous and intelligent assemblage, wishing to be his constituents, that his only claim to their suffrages was the estimate they had formed of his public character " for consistency in advocating those liberal and disinterested political principles which he had supported through life unsullied." This is the triumph of the "yellow and blue," in its most enlightened and constant contributor. Nor has anyGovernment officer—we believe we may add, any Government candidate—ever been bold enough to tell the world, that "the Scotch representation in burgh and in county was a mere hocus pocus—that it depended neither on property nor intelligence—that he was prepared to tell these truths loudly and continuously to the Go- vernment of which he was a servant—a Government whose only pillars of support, whose sole claims to indulgence or reception, were economy and reform." These, we dare assert, are sentiments never before whispered by any man in Ministerial authority in Scotland, nor suffered to be whispered where any such had dominiolvor influence. So much for the march of intellect ! The toasts on the occasion were as curiously indicative of the times as the speeches. What is to be said of " Parlia- mentary Reform," with three times three, and one cheer more, given under the nose of a Lord Advocate ? The learned husband of Dame Rae would have fainted at the echo of such sounds. Then there was " Burgh Reform"--whisper it not to Councillor or Deacon —given by whom ? by the quasi Provost of Dundee! The roguess in the excess of their exultation, actually added the "Liberty
of the Press ! Think of that ! And the French Revolution war toasted, arid the Belgic Revolution ! Mr. Herapath is at a loss to acz count for the frequent appearance of the Aurora Borealis of late ; but how was so much light to exist in the North, without a few flashes of it darting southward ? A laboured pamphlet has been published by the friends of Captain Ogilvy—it is, we see, inserted in the Scotch newspapers as an adver- tisement—in which great blame is thrown on Lord Advocate Jeffrey for his- assumed connexion with the arrest, at Cupar, of an individual named Kidd, to prevent the said Kidd from voting against him. There is also a strong complaint against the application of the Treating Act to Scotland, for the purpose of ousting Colonel Ogilvy. In this latter we fully and entirely sympathize. Had the four Burgh Councils possessed one drop of the sturdy blood of their country, they would have replied to the Committee's wanton stretch of power, by reelecting Colonel Ogilvy. The Treating Act is an English statute, passed three years before the Union ; and it has never till now been applied to Scotland, for the whole period of one hundred and twenty-three years. As to the other ground of complaint, we suspect there has been much mystification on both sides. The Dundee Advertiser, we perceive, is displeased at the dictatorial style in which we spoke, some time ago, on the nullity of the Dundee vote. It hints of " altered circumstances" with which we are unac-
quainted, and of moral points, and a great many things besides. The plain truth we repeat :.'Dundee has no more legal right to a vote for the
Lord Advocate than Old Sarum has. The whole procedure is a farce,' and what is worse, a farce that has been already damned. The people of Dundee have done themselves honour in the feelings manifested to- wards Mr. Jeffrey; they only sully it by countenancing the empty claim of their defunct Council. As to reform being assisted by it- " everything helps, said the wren !"—do the enlightened inhabitants of Dundee imagine that it is necessary, by a sorry trick, to place Mr. Jef- fery in Parliament for a couple of months, in order to carry reform ? Oh dear !
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