THE DUNDAS MEMOIRS.* REGARDED alike from the political and from
the social point of view, this book, based chiefly on family papers, is very valuable as a contribution to, and an elucidation of, the history of Scot- land. Yet, in a sense, it is a performance of Hamlet with the Prince of Denmark left out of the cast. Every one has heard of "Scotland under the Dundases,"—the remarkable family, composed chiefly of lawyers, that dominated Scotch politics and dispensed Scotch patronage for about a century prior to the passing of the Reform Bill of 1832. Of this family, the beet known in England, though not perhaps either the beet or the ablest, was Henry Dundee, the bosom-friend of the second Pitt, who, under his chief, managed the affairs of India for a number of years, presided at the Home Office during the period that followed the French Revolution, for a time conducted the war with France, and was mainly responsible for the transactions which culminated in the abolition of the Irish Parliament and the passing of the Act of Union. He was elevated to the Peerage as Viscount Melville, and his impeachment on the charge of malversation while Treasurer to the Navy is commonly under- stood to have hastened the death of Pitt. At all events, his acquittal was not announced till after Pitt's death. To this Lord Melville a tall column lifts its head in one of the leading squares of Edinburgh, and lies,—in the opinion of many Scotchmen, who regard him very much as they regard the Bloody Mackenzie and the bloodier Claverhouse, partly because he was in his day the leading champion of a peculiarly
• Ti,, Aroistoa Memoirs : Three Centuries of a Scottish Mese, 1571.1838. Edited from the Family Papers by George W. T. Omond, Adrocate. Edinburgh David Douglas. 1887.
tyrannical and obscurantist Toryism, and partly because he did not over a bottle secure from Pitt a sinecure post or a pension for Robert Burns. Yet Mr. Omond does not include a biography of Henry Dundee in his carefully prepared Arniston Memoirs. It was his original intention to do this ; "but," he says, "it became apparent as the work proceeded, that a complete account of his career—which, in some of its most interesting and important aspects, was that of a British Minister—could not be given without entering upon a variety of subjects inconsistent with the scope of the present volume." Mr. Omond has resolved, there- fore, to make Henry Dundee's correspondence with his brother and nephew, with and through whom he " managed " Scotland, the basis of a separate work, which will be a Life of Henry Landes. The wisdom of Mr. Omond's resolution can only be pronounced upon when it has been given effect to. Undoubtedly, a life of Henry Dandas ought to be an interesting book; and if the correspondence to which Mr. Omond alludes throw light on the character of Pitt, it will also be of great value. But if this correspondence should prove to be concerned mainly with the petty political intrigues and the pettier patronage of Scotland, Mr. Omond would have acted more wisely to have included it in this work, even at the cost of widening its scope or enlarging its size.
The rise of the Dundases, the most distinguished branch of which, from the social point of view, is that of which the Earl of Zetlan d is the representative, does not differ materially from the rise of any other Scotch family. There is the usual legend of a Norman founder, one of whose descendants takes the side of Wallace in the War of Independence ; and in due course the- family gets a local habitation by the purchase of the estate of Arniston, in the county of Midlothian, in 1571, by George Dundee. The real founder of the Arniston branch of the family was Sir James Dandas, the son of this George, who was born in 1570, and died in 1628, and was in his day Governor of Berwick. He added to the family acres, and showed himself an active and, for the time, enlightened agriculturist. "By the use of coal and lime, found abundantly upon his estate, he brought into regular cultivation land hitherto cropped only at long intervals, and reclaimed moorlands which had till then lain waste." His eon, also knighted as Sir James Dundee, was content for a period to play the parts of a country gentleman and an elder of the Kirk, which he had joined. After the Restoration, however, he became a Lord of Session, behaving with exceptional con- scientiousness in respect of the maintenance essentially intact of his religious creed ; and thus began the long connection between the Scotch Bench and his family. The first Lord Arniston'e son, Robert, took the side of Williani of Orange in 1688, and in the year following he was made a Lord of Session. He was less notable, however, as a lawyer and poli, tician than as an improver of his own estates. But his second son, Robert, who was born in 1685, and called to the Scotch Bar in 1709, was distinguished in both capaoitiea, and also—as Scott has recorded in Guy .Mannering—as an exceptionally hard drinker with an exceptionally hard head. He rose rapidly ía his profession, and held in succession the posts of Solicitor- General and Lord Advocate. From the latter he was dismissed by Walpole in consequence of his having opposed the Malt-tax proposed by that Minister for Scotland. He was elevated to the Bench as Lord Arniston in 1737. Eleven years later, on the death of Duncan Forbes, of Culloden, he obtained the highest of Scotch legal posts, being appointed Lord President of the Coed of Session. This position he held till his death in 1753. He was an able, energetic man, and although be was called to preside over the Scotch Bench at too advanced an age to dis- tinguish himself greatly, yet Sir Hew Dah-ymple wrote of him.: —"I knew the great lawyers of the last age,—Mackenzie, Lockhart, and my own father, Stair; Dundee excels them all." Mr. Omond somewhat enlivens his history of the first President Dundas by giving from the household books kept at Arniston the bills of fare—for dinner and supper—daring a week in 1748. The solids then in fashion were much the same as those now used. There is no mention of champagne or of any sparkling wines as their accompaniments; but only of claret, white wine, and "strong ale," which last seems to have occupied the place subsequently held in Scotch life by whisky. At all events, between 1740 and 1749, the Arniston household consumed on an average £140 worth of wine, and only £10 worth of spirits.
In the second Lord President Dundee, son of the first, and elder brother of Henry, Lord Melville, we reach the culmination of the power,the success, and the capacity of the Arniston family.
Born in 1713, he rose, like his father, to be Solicitor-General and Lord Advocate ; was in office at the time of the '43; became Lord President in 1760, and held that post till his death in 1787. "The second Lord President was probably the greatest Judge who ever presided in the Court of Session ; certainly, as the head of the Supreme Court, he was regarded by his compeers aewithout a rival. He cleared the rolls of Court of a vast accumulation of arrears. He paid the most minute attention to the duties of his office." In a short autobiographical sketch by the second Lord President, which Mr. Omond prints, these are given among "the principles which insured what success in life I have enjoyed,—(1), studying mankind to learn their tem- pers ; (2), accommodating myself to various tempers ; (3), pre- serving inflexible integrity."
Henry Dundas filled for a time the office of Lord Advocate, but was diverted into British' politics. On the death of his brother, the Lord President, he became the leading spirit of the Dundases; and Mr. Omond publishes some rather anxious letters from him to his nephew Robert, who had in turn become Lord Advocate at the time (1793) of the trial before Lord Brasfield of Muir, Palmer, and the other " Friends of the People." This Lord Advocate Dundas was essentially an amiable man, and although he had to prosecute the Scotch Revolutionaries, he behaved with moderation as compared with the Judge. Mr. Omond probably does not exaggerate in the severe language he applies to Lord Brasfield. At the same time, we doubt if the epithet " coward " can properly be applied to him. For did he not at the very height of his unpopularity decline the protection of the police in Edinburgh P
The first Lord Melville died in 1811, very suddenly, and almost immediately after dining with his nephew, who had now become Lord Chief Baron of the Exchequer. After his death interest in the Dundee family declines considerably. Scions of the Arniston and of the Melville Dundases played, indeed, their parts both in English and in Scotch politics, but none attained to the eminence of either the second Lord President, or of his brother. The remainder of Mr. Omond's book is valuable chiefly as throwing some light on political life behind the scenes prior to the passing of the first Reform Bill. It is odd to read this, written in 1828, a propos of Huskisson's retirement from the Duke of Wellington's Administration, by Henry Dundee, son of Lord Chief Baron Dundas, to his brother Robert :—" Peel has disappointed the hopes of many people ; he has not nerve enough In fact, he gives way in everything." Here, again, is an estimate of Canning by another member of the Dundee family :—" That Canning is a rogue, I am convinced ; and were I to give you a history of all the details of his late intrigues, which are now become common topics of conversation in society, you would be astonished at the lies and tricks of the right honourable gentleman."
It may be questioned if ever in Scotland or anywhere else a family will again arise with such peculiar power as the Dundases. They were essentially wire-pullers and managers of men,—shrewd, resolute, certainly not more unprincipled than the majority of their personal rivals or political opponents. They could use to seductive purpose what Burke has termed "the jargon of influence, and party, and patronage," which he predicted would be "swept into oblivion." That result has not yet been arrived at. But the strain of the day—unhappily not the strain of every hour of the day—is of a higher mood. Though conscience and intelligence are not yet supreme, it is a growing fashion to appeal to them, and not to the baser forms of self-interest, in political life.
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