SCOTTISH Society at the Union was marked by one peculiarity which demands our particular notice: it had no middle class. This is the key to the general situation. "There are only two ranks of men among us," says Hume of his own time, "gentlemen who have some fortune and education, and the meanest slaving poor." There was neither wealth nor trade of any consequence in the country, as we have seen, and the usual result of these in free countries, a true middle class. The gentry, the clergy, and the peasantry, this latter including the farm. ers and traders were the three classes into which the nation was divided. The feudal division of society, therefore, still existed, and, as we shall see, much of the feudal spirit. The gentry were mostly old families, and as such kept their hold on the hearts of the dwellers on their lands and in their neighborhood—unless when they had dyed their hands in the blood of their countrymen and found that "the claims of long descent" were instinctively honored by them. It came naturally, and as an habit of blood, to the Lowland peasant to acknowledge these as his social superiors. The stubborn self-assertion which he had shown was as yet strictly confined to questions of dogma and Church discipline - and would be until a greater shaking of crowns and kingdoms than he had been a witness of had taken place, and had irresistibly turned his attention to LIVING AGE, No. 2055; Nov. 10, 1883. ↑ Essays. The Parties of Great Britain. Note. The Philosophical Works of David Hume, vol. iii. Edinburgh: 1826. questions of personal and political rights; and if these were neither assailed nor derided, he was not more deferential than loyal. The "gentlemen " spoken of by Hume, and of whom he was himself one, had, at this time, a scorn of mercantile and industrial pursuits equal to that of the gen tlemen of France, and the wearers of the black cock's feather, the proud Duinhewassels. Handicrafts they despised, and handicraftsmen they treated with contempt. At that period, the gentleman merchant, manufacturer, or money-dealer, the civil engineer, architect, editor, or artist, were nearly unknown in Scotland; and the only form in which a man poor and well-born could retain the rank of gentleman, if he did not follow one of the learned professions, was by obtaining a commission in the army, or a government "Our manufactures civil appointment.* or trades," says a contemporary, carried on by the meanest of the people, who had small stocks and were of no reputation. 66 were Our weavers were few in number, and held in the greatest contempt. As manufacture was in no esteem," he continues, "men of fortune thought it beneath them to breed their children to any business of that sort, and therefore the professions of law, physic, etc., have been reckoned the only suitable employ. ments for persons of birth and fortune.t But as only a few of these "persons of birth" could find a good settlement in their own country, by following out any of the professions, numbers of them went abroad to swell the list, already large, of the scholars and soldiers of fortune who had passed across the seas during the two previous centuries to lands where they hoped the scholar, to find an honored, undisturbed home; the soldier, some favors, perhaps fame.‡ More, however, preferred the ease and indigence and coarse, semi-barbarous pleasures of the capital, where, without a single worthy object to engage their energies, they lounged about, haughty and fierce, divided Burton, Life and Correspondence of David Hume, vol. i., p. 196. The Interest of Scotland Considered, pp. 82, 121. M'Ure, History of Glasgow, pp. 345-7, is amusing on the pride and poverty of Scotsmen. by faction and addicted to liquor, keeping | taking the one side, the son the other.* it in continual brawls and scandals, and Earl Crawford, a pharisee of the pharifreely using their swords, which were still sees, was one of the most craven of worn by gentlemen, to settle all their dif- souls.† Lockhart, Montgomery, Hume, ferences.* and Fletcher, poisoned by chagrin, were the willing tools and mouthpieces of treason and slander. Seldom has so large a group of really able men offered itself so unblushingly to the shafts of the satirists, the judgment of the historian, the jibe of the peasant. They live in history only because of the bitterness of their political creed and their maddened selfishness. Only do we touch upon the heroic and the memorable in the last passages of the lives of Argyll and Montrose and Baillie of Jerviswoode; and we feel when we do so an instant sense of relief and an exhilaration of spirit. These were unworthy sons of unworthy fathers. The one portion of our history which all Scotsmen shrink from is the history of the Convention of Estates. It needs but it has never found an apologist. Its leading and most active-minded members have been sketched by our great his torical colorist, and, unfortunately for human nature, the unlovely portraits are too well witnessed to by the memoirs and correspondence and legal decisions of the period; and these we cannot even casually consider without being forced to admit that the chief men in the Convention were as dishonest and unblushing seekers These were the men who, as fathers or of office as either Scotland or England sons, either countenanced Charles the had ever seen. Virtue of the higher Second and James the Second in their order, Roman or Christian, was an ex- wicked misgovernment of Scotland, or tremely rare thing among them. Simplic- were utterly indifferent to its wrongfulity and honor, its fairest twin blossoms, had not yet made fragrant and beautiful the unwholesome and forbidding gloom of their castles. No imperishable scene revealing and embalming precious traits of personal and national character, has been recorded of the Convention, and floated down to our time to be in turn proudly handed on to after generations. Sycophancy, self-seeking, dissimulation, and treachery, it must be admitted, were the leading characteristics of its members; and their evident motives in every crisis were mean and paltry. The Dalrymples, the ablest of them, were the just astonishment of their age. Their names are now synonymous with suppleness and sinuosity of political conscience. Never, perhaps, had Scotland two more capable ministers; but never had Scotland two such perfect disciples of Machiavelli. They set the example of saving their house by having no traditionary policy or principle, and of adopting the artifice which subsequently became common among the politicians of Scotland, "of hedging," of dividing their allegiance between the rival governments, the father Scott's Heart of Midlothian, ch. x.; Ferguson's Poems; Domestic Annals, vol. iii. ness and cruelty. These were the men who, on a change of masters, threw consistency to the winds and offered their allegiance to William of Orange, and begged for place from Carstares; and who had hardly sworn allegiance, when, yielding to their vicious constitutional turn, they at once took to plotting on be half of the exiled family, and to treasonable correspondence with its drunken, unkingly head. Their religion and their politics were the creatures of whim and worldly interest. This, no doubt, was their special temptation; for hardly any of them had one penny to rub upon another, so deep and incurable was their poverty. Whatever, therefore, ministered or was likely to minister to their advantage in wealth or lands, was eagerly clutched at and fearlessly gambled for. Every one had his price, it was believed, Macaulay may be compared with Laing, History of Scotland, vol. ii., pp. 106, 198; Burton, History of Scotland, 1689-1748, chaps. 1 and 2; Court of Session nals and Correspondence of the Viscount, and the First and Second Earls of Stair, by J. M. Graham, vol. i., 1875. † Burton, History of Scotland, 1689-1748, vol. i., pp. 23-25. and could be bought.* Hunger is a sure | tage of again and again by the crown, until deadener of conscience and weakener of moral eyesight. The poverty of the Scottish gentry was their one overmastering care for centuries. Hence they took sides and showed a compliancy and sacrificed consistency with an ease and frequency which astonish us as showing no less than a real divorce between morality and theology. For long their circumstances bore a close resemblance to the circumstances of the Bedouin and the Borderer in which most things, human and divine, are always and easily sacrificed to personal ends. in the seventeenth century it became a mockery and a sham. The first defect was that the three estates sat in one chamber with the lord chancellor as president. This had an obviously unfavorable effect on the freedom of debate and voting. The second and more serious defect was that all the legislative power was vested in a committee. As far back, says Robertson,* as our records enable us to trace the constitution of our Parliaments, we find a committee distinguished by the name of lords of articles. It was their business to prepare and to digest all matNow, it would be against all experience ters which were to be laid before the Parto find men of this sort the fathers and liament. There was rarely any business fosterers of Parliamentary and popular introduced into Parliament, but what had liberty. Nor in this case does history belie our experience, but on the contrary, makes it perfectly plain that the morals and politics of these men had many points of contact and mutual influence. They were not our sires in our love of political probable that what they rejected could not liberty. No, assuredly no. Whatever be introduced into the house. They not political purity and freedom existed in Scotland, existed, it is only too clear, in spite of them; and those sparks of the divine flame which burned in the souls of the Scottish people did so, unfed and untended by them. A brief glance at Scottish Parliamentary history will put this beyond doubt. II. DURING the reigns of the first Stuart kings we often hear of the Parliament; but if we were to conclude from this that it was like our present Parliament, a truly representative assembly, we should make a very great mistake. It never was this, and it never was meant to be this. It never was a power to which the Scottish people looked for redress of grievances or for the defence of their rights. No scenes in its annals illuminate the political history of the Middle Ages: it has no names famous in constitutional debate which haunt and inspire us. From the first there was a fatal flaw in its constitution which was never mended, nor sought to be mended, and which was taken advan passed through this committee; every motion for a new law was first made there, and approved or rejected by it; what they approved was passed into a bill and presented to Parliament; and it seems only therefore directed all the proceedings of Parliament, but possessed a nega tive before debate. These were extraordinary powers to be vested in a committee; but equally extroardinary in the seventeenth century was the mode of its election. It was composed of an equal number out of each of the three estates of eight peers, eight churchmen, and eight burgesses, to which were added latlerly the eight great officers of the crown. But never was there a more impudent pretence of representation. The bishops chose the peers, the peers the bishops; and these chose other sixteen representatives of the shires and burghs! The whole power was therefore in the hands of the bishops, who were the slaves and sycophants of the crown; and as their choice fell on those who were attached to the court, the lords of the articles were the tools and creatures of the king. Hence from the time of David II. till the Great Rebellion in England had roused some parliamentary feeling in Scotland, the Parliament cannot be said to have met at History of Scotland, book i.; see whole passage Burton, History of Scotland, 1689-1748, vol. i., pp. and note. Cosmo Innes' Sketches of Early Scotch History, ch. vii. all. It met only on two days. On the trivial social aims. The villagers in the first it met to adjourn; on the second it neighborhood of the castle or hall could met to receive and adopt the reports of not be summoned as their forefathers, by its committee. During all these centu- a whistle or bugle call; but they were not ries, from the fourteenth to the middle of less influenced for the practical purposes the seventeenth, not an article, or as we of their time by the immediate interests should say, a bill, was brought in and of their position; and so strongly did discussed, opposed, supported, voted upon these affect all that like Caleb Balderin open Parliament. And there was no stone, in "The Bride of Lammermoor,' speaker to guard the liberties of the Com- the pleasing of their feudal lord was apmons- who were of small account in that parently the chief end of their existence; assembly-though in no legislative as the thought of opposing or thwarting him sembly was a speaker ever more needed.* was shrunk from as biasphemy. The Scottish Parliament, in fact, was as to form, the purest piece of feudalism in the world; more so than the StatesGeneral, and more so even than the Arragonese Cortes; † and as to practice, was simply a court for the registering of the king's decrees, for giving legal form to every prejudice and purpose of the court. We read of it in 1621 passing one hundred and fourteen acts on the last day of the session! We are at a loss to comprehend how it could do this, until we turn to the Minutes of Estates, where we see with some astonishment how the thing was not only possible but very easy. The whole proceedings, for example, before the house in one of the most memorable enactments in Scottish history, the Act against Conventicles, are thus indicated in the minutes: "Brought in from the Articles, twice read, approven, and touched with the sceptre." No objection is raised, no indignant anger is heard, no pitying entreaty to stay the tyrant's hand thrills the hearers and momentarily paralyzes the brutal minions of Charles. The same servility and meanness of spirit was shown in burghal affairs. The burghs, whether royal burghs or burghs of barony, must always have been nests and nurseries of obsequiousness. Generally the creation of some neighboring noble who was himself by right the chief magistrate or provost, but who usually either deputed his office to a nominee, or his powers to a substitute called his bailie; and being bound to render him, as feudal superior, various kinds of service, it was impossible there could be independence of opinion, and it was inevitable that there should be a general subjection of mind to the patron. Nothing could prevent this. Our county histories abound with illustrations of this menial stage of our history; of its petty tyrannies; its * Cosmo Innes, Scotch Legal Antiquities, chap. iii. Hallam's History of England, chap. xvii. † Quoted from a letter of Professor Stubbs in Mackay's Memoir of Sir James Dalrymple, p. 161. The apotheosis of this spirit was the burgh elections. These were not elections at all but nominations, in which the first principles of popular representation were openly subverted. Complete selfgovernment had been conferred at the outset upon the burghs. The municipal franchise was the right of every holder of a rood of land; and by the ancient burgh laws, the aldermen and bailies were to be elected by the whole community, that is, the whole body of regular burgesses. But the very manner in which most of the burghs came into existence and were fostered, checked the play and growth of municipal freedom; although it would appear to have been frequently asserted amid much popular excitement against feudal domination. Unhappily, an act was passed in 1469 which nipped this promise of liberty.* It enacted that the Town Councils in future should be selfelected, that "the auld consail of the town sall chuse the new consail," etc. This act, worthy of the lords of the arti cles, concurring with the general circumstances of the nation, made every Town Council a set of oligarchs, instead of a body of representatives, responsible to and openly checked by the community whose interests they were pledged to see to. It could have no other issue. Never were such sleepy hollows of vanity and stupid self-satisfaction. Self-elected and beyond public opinion, they did as they pleased for generations with the lands, revenues, and offices of the burghs, until, at the close of the eighteenth century, they became, one and all, "sinks of political and municipal iniquity, steeped in the baseness which they propagated, and types and causes of the corruption that surrounded them."† land, vol. i. Preface. Scotland in the Middle Ages, * Ancient Laws and Customs of the Burghs of Scot ch. v. † Cockburn's Memorials, p. 98. Burton. vol. viii., p. 188. Report from the Select Committee on the Royal Burghs of Scotland, 12 July, 1819. Edin.Statistical Account of Scotland. 66 III. NOT less, but much more unrighteous and corrupt than the Parliament and the burghs were the courts of law. The highest court in the realm, the Court of Session, had been for generations "an established perversion of justice;" and continued to be open to suspicion long after the Union. It was foul with favoritism; and, what was worse, justice was bought and sold in it. Open bribery was the recognized custom, the clients' gifts the most important item in each case. Each judge had a depute member of the bar, called a peat" or "pet," whose special business was to conduct and see to this bribery or "solicitation" as it was called. "Pieces of plate and bags of money were sent to the king's counsel, to influence their conduct, and poured forth," says a contemporary writer, "like billets of wood upon their floors, without even the decency of concealment."† No one seemed to think this practice a monstrous wrong; and the man who did not avail himself of it was sure to lose in law, and get himself laughed at for his scrupulosity. It was also usual for parties who had a case in court to deliver their information direct into the hands of the judges who were to try it, in their own houses; and the decisions of the bench were frequently given after the court had risen in private, and as could be arranged. Wick edness was in the place of judgment, and iniquity in the place of righteousness. Never was there in any country, not even excepting France before the Revolution, a set of judges more accustomed to prostitute their sacred office than the fifteen lords of session; and the phrase "Show me the man and I shall show you the law," which has come down from that period, exactly expresses their principles and their motives. It was not without cause, therefore, that the celebrated Forbes of Culloden, their first president of spotless name, used to drink to such of the judges as did not deserve the gal lows.t But worse still were the inferior courts. Courts of law they were not, as they did not exist for the interpretation of common law or jurisprudence by responsible quali fied men. They were the courts of the Carstares' State Papers; Secretary Johnson to Carstares, p. 184. ↑ Scott's Bride of Lammermoor, ch. i. The references on this point are unusually abundant. See Court of Session Garland; Memoir of Sir J. Dalrymple; Chambers' Traditions of Edinburgh. barons as the Parliament was the court of the king; in reality part of the machinery which belonged to the heritable jurisdic tions, as the sheriffdoms, bailieries, and royalties, which belonged by inheritance to the great families of each county, were called. The office of hereditary sheriff was usually vested in one of the largest landowners in the county, one whose connections happened to be among the most influential in it, and who was therefore supposed to have most interest in and was most likely to contribute to its welfare. His executive power was generally limited only by the gallows, and these he even sometimes set up and used. He was subject of course to the crown, and his judg ments could be appealed against; but which of his tenantry, who among the peasantry or villagers, nay who but his peers would not always feel it to be at least safest to acquiesce in his judgments, and though burning with indignation, be dumb in his presence? In the sheriff's as in the Supreme Court, money answered all things. The sheriff reaped large profits from the fines imposed by him or his deputies, and his deputies, not being, strange to say, salaried officials, paid themselves out of the same convenient fund. Hence the door was opened to endless vexations and iniquities. Hence fines were almost always imposed. Hence crimes and offences were condoned by arrangement with the private or public prosecutor. Nor was this all. The Star Chamber mode of pressing accused parties to purge themselves on oath was common in cases where guilt was assumed and where evidence was not likely to be forthcoming. Righteousness and pity, in short, had no place in these courts. Besides the sheriffdom there were the regalities. A regality, like a palatinate, was a separate little kingdom carved out of the realm, whose chief was allowed the free use of legal powers; that is to say, he was absolute in all matters belonging to his estate and people; the dispenser of justice, the fountain of mercy, the maker of law and custom. Sir Walter Scott has described one of these in "The Legend of Montrose ;" and Inveraray Castle as there described, with its twin emblems and twin terrors of regality, the pit and gallows, was quite according to the fashion of feudal times. As an institution belonging to a barbarous age, when the chief was overlord and responsible only to the king, The Hereditary Sheriffs of Galloway, by Sir Andrew Agnew, Bart., 1864, pp. 74-79. |