Scottish Bar

“ Pleydell and his clerk Driver, Scott has immortalised the convivial habits of the Scottish Bar. The actual incident, as stated in the note, occurred to Dundas of Arniston at the time he was Lord Advocate. How ably the judges comported themselves at the table is well proved in Cockburn's description of Lord Hermand, who, he says, 'had acted in more of the severest scenes of old Scotch drinking than any man at least living. Commonplace topers think drinking a pleasure ”

“ The bar, as a profession, has been very materially lowered; for it is impossible to expect that the same class of men as formerly will devote themselves assiduously to the law, when it no longer holds out to their ambition the reasonable prospect of an ultimate prize. No Scottish advocate now-a-days can hope to be comfortably shelved save on the Bench, and it is a long and weary toil to attain that coveted eminence. There are hardly any middle situations left, which a man of any talent or enterprise would accept. ”

“ The amount that he can consume without turning a hair is quite appalling. I have seen a Scotchman drink three bottles of Glenlivet on a railway journey from King’s Cross to Edinburgh, and when he got out at Edinburgh he strutted doucely to the refreshment bar and demanded further whiskey. In London, and particularly in Fleet Street, his feats in this connection are notorious. In the more central quarters of London there are a number of hostelries which are almost wholly devoted to Scottish requirements in the way of ardent liquors. ”

“ What mattered it to them that now and then some long-tongued fellow who had started a newspaper was stowed away in jail, or that an Edinburgh lawyer like Muir was transported for being incontinent in his politics? Could not people let well alone, obey the authorities, earn their oatmeal, and drink their whisky in peace? Few of Scott’s novels come down so far as to this period of Scottish life, and it has not been much described in our other literature of fiction ”

“ If subserviency ever merited reward, Scott certainly deserved his. But his arrogant manner on the bench was sometimes resented by the bar, and, in consequence of his gross rudeness to a barrister of the name of Hackett, it was resolved ‘that until the chief justice publicly apologised no barrister would hold a brief, appear in the king's bench, or sign any pleadings in court.’ He was compelled to submit, and published a very ample apology in the newspapers, which, with much tact, he antedated as though it had been written voluntarily and without the censure of the bar. ”

“ It’s aye the cheapest lawyer’s fee,
To taste the barrel.
From the number of writers, solicitors, and advocates who still every year enter the legal profession, one may infer that this national peculiarity shows no marked sign of abatement. The institution of local courts of first instance, all over the country, has enabled the Scot to indulge in the luxury of law, without the trouble and expense of going up to Edinburgh. ”

“ It need hardly be said that such a professional judge, assisted in important criminal cases by a jury, and checked in civil suits by right of appeal to his principal, makes a clearer fountain of justice than the Great Unpaid of an English Bench, who with the best intentions as to fairness must often depend on their clerk for law. In some points of procedure, too, the Scottish system sets a good example to the English. ”

“ The public-house in Scotland is not respectable: in England it is. Why this should be I can only guess. The Scot may be a bigger hypocrite than the Englishman; what is more probable is that he may be a harder drinker. In Scotland entering a public-house is synonymous with getting drunk. Yet there are what you might call alcoholic gradations. A respectable farmer may enter a bar without comment, but a teacher must not enter it. He is the guide of the young, and he must be an example. ”

“ Teachers seldom enter village bars ... and yet Scotland is notorious for drinking. If the teachers determined to become regular bar [Pg 91] customers I conclude that Scotland would drink herself off the face of the map.
I have a theory that the Calvinistic attitude to the public-house is the chief cause of Scots drunkenness. When a Scot enters a bar he knows that he won't have the courage to be seen coming out again ... and he very naturally says to himself: "Ach, to hell! Aw'll hae another just to fortify mysel' for gaein' oot!" The public-house isn't a public-house at all ”

“ Even now the general hour of breakfast in Edinburgh is determined by the time when the courts open in the morning; and, dispersed through their homes, or at dinner-parties, in the evening, it is the members of the legal profession that lead the social talk. In the old Dundas days it was the same, with the addition that then the lawyers were perhaps more numerous in proportion to the rest of the community than they are now, and were more closely inter-connected by birth and marriage with the Scottish nobility and lairds. ”

“ No wonder if, under such circumstances, when remonstrance is disregarded, and the expression of popular opinion either misrepresented or suppressed, men begin to question the prudence of an arrangement which confides the chief conduct of Scottish affairs to a lawyer and judge-expectant, whose functions are so multifarious as to interfere with their regular discharge. ”

“ Even the less attractive parts of his new vocation were calculated to give him a more complete insight into the smaller workings of poor human nature than can ever perhaps be gathered from the experience of the legal profession in its higher walk;—the etiquette of the bar in Scotland, as in England, being averse to personal intercourse between the advocate and his client. ”

“ The lass, who had not to pay for the whisky, but had been obliged to go to the well to fetch the water for the toddy, coolly answered, "I dinna ken, mem, but they've drucken sax gang o' water."
We cannot imagine a better illustration of the general habits that prevailed in Scottish society in regard to drinking about the time we speak of than one which occurs in the recently-published "Memoirs of a Banking House," that of the late Sir William Forbes, Bart, of Pitsligo. The book comprises much that is interesting to the family, and to Scotchmen. ”

“ The young lawyer was, indeed, unwittingly preparing for his mission to paint Scottish scenery so vividly, and Scottish character so charmingly, that he may almost be said to have created a new country which succeeding generations delight to visit. No man was ever a greater benefactor to Scotland, whose glories and beauties he was the first to reveal, showing how the most thrifty, practical, and parsimonious people may be at the same time the most poetic. ”

“ How many of us are there with whom law-abiding habits, decorous respectability, form but a thin covering of ice over unplumbed depths of lawless desire? Not long since, when a wretched criminal case in which the disappearance of a pearl necklace was involved, was agitating every Scottish club and tea-table, a charming old Scottish lady, whose career from childhood up has been one of unblemished virtue, was heard to bemoan the manner of commission of the crime. ”

“ The history of our Scotch colliers will be found a curious and instructive one. Their slavery seems not to have been derived from the ancient tunes of general serfship, but to have originated in comparatively modern acts of the Scottish Parliament, and in decisions of the Court of Session—in acts of a Parliament in which the poor ignorant subterranean men of the country were, of course, wholly unrepresented, and in decisions of a Court in which no agent of theirs ever made appearance in their behalf. ”

“ Here, you may see Scott's place within the bar, where he wrote many a page of Waverley novels to the drone of judicial proceeding. You will hear a good deal of shrewdness, and, as their Lordships do not altogether disdain pleasantry, a fair proportion of dry fun. The broadest of broad Scotch is now banished from the bench; but the courts still retain a certain national flavour. We have a solemn enjoyable way of lingering on a case. We treat law as a fine art, and relish and digest a good distinction. There is no hurry: point after point must be rightly examined and reduced to principle ”

“ It is true that you meet with no Rothschild, or any other pawnbroker for kings, in this ancient apartment of the Scottish Parliament; but, if you be more a lover of mind than of money, you are sure to meet with what will please you a great deal better. Before the Judges have taken their places in the Inner Courts, you cannot miss the tall figure, the gleesome grey eye, the snub nose, and all the other characteristics of the spirit of the wizard and the soul of the man, that mark Sir Walter Scott. A dozen of chosen friends, some Whig and some Tory, hang about him ”

“ By this time, the fears of the East India Company and of the English mercantile class generally had been roused; it was believed that the Scottish adventurers would compete with them destructively in every place where they now enjoyed a lucrative trade. The parliament took up the cry, and voted that the noblemen and gentlemen named in the Scottish act were guilty of a high crime and misdemeanour. Irritated rather than terrified by this denunciation, these gentlemen calmly proceeded with their business in Scotland. ”

“ The interest possessed by Sir William Scott and Makerston was powerful enough to procure the two following acts of the Privy Council of Scotland, directed against Walter of Raeburn as an heretic and convert to Quakerism, appointing him to be imprisoned first in Edinburgh jail, and then in that of Jedburgh; and his children to be taken by force from the society and direction of their parents, and educated at a distance from them, besides the assignment of a sum for their maintenance, sufficient in those times to be burdensome to a moderate Scottish estate. ”

“ Though his lameness remained the same, his body29 became tall and robust, and he was thus enabled to apply himself with the necessary degree of energy to his studies for the bar. At the same time that he attended the Lectures of Professor Dick on Civil Law in the college, he performed the duties of a writer’s apprentice under his father; that being the most approved method by which a barrister could acquire a technical knowledge of his profession, though it has never been uniformly practised.
Respect for his parents and for the common duties of life, was always a strong feeling in Scott ”

“ From inns one naturally turns to drink, which forms the theme of so large a proportion of Scottish stories. It must be admitted311 that this prominence is a sad indication of the extent to which for generations past alcoholic liquors of all kinds have been consumed in the country. I used to imagine that the ‘trade,’ that is, the calling of publican, was in the hands of Scotsmen, who were themselves entirely to blame not only for the drinking, but for the selling of whisky. On a visit to Antrim, however, I learned that others besides natives of Scotland have a share in the traffic. ”

“ No man ever attains a position at the Bar in which he can afford to despise the opinion of his fellow-men. The eulogies of public journals, even the praise and patronage of attorneys, are of no worth compared with the respect of the Bar. As a French advocate wrote: “A solid reputation proceeds only from the Court.”
Charles Russell, who stood on a somewhat lonely eminence at the head of his profession, and dealt with the affairs of his fellows in a very rough-handed and independent manner, was at heart very jealous of the good opinion of the Bar. ”

“ I had now an opportunity of seeing, for the first time, the genius of this singular people displayed under a new and brilliant form—the eloquence of the bar.
In England the Bar holds a high rank; from its essential value to the maintenance of public right in a country, where every possession, property, and principle of man comes continually in the shape of a question of right, and where the true supremacy is in the law. But in Ireland, the spirit of the nation compensated for the deficiency of power in the law ”

“ For the Scottish lawyers regard with a sacred and scrupulous horror every question so shaped by the counsel examining, as to convey to a witness the least intimation of the nature of the answer which is desired from him. These scruples, though founded on an excellent principle, are sometimes carried to an absurd pitch of nicety, especially as it is generally easy for a lawyer who has his wits about him to elude the objection. Fairbrother did so in the present case. ”

“ We ought certainly to be grateful for the change which has taken place from such a system; for this change has made a great revolution in Scottish social life. The charm and the romance long attached in the minds of some of our countrymen to the whole system and concerns of hard drinking was indeed most lamentable and absurd. ”

“ If the production of a legal system forms but a small apologia for a Parliament which existed [xxvi] for several centuries, it nevertheless entitles the Scottish Estates to be reckoned among the forces which have made the nation; and it is legitimate cause of satisfaction that, in spite of all the forces of misgovernment which held sway for so long, the peculiarity of the law of Scotland is its regard for the poor and the weak. ”

“ The memoirs and correspondence of the time often show her seeking recreation in popular sports and pastimes; indeed, Randolph describes life at the Scottish Court for the first two years after her return from France as one continual round of "feasts, banquetting, masking, and running at the ring, and such like". [33] It was to Mary, as Knox testifies, that [Pg 18] the introduction into Scotland of those primitive dramatic performances known as Masques or Triumphs was due. They soon became so popular that they formed the chief entertainment at every festival. ”