connection with the great and glorious realm of England, and trust we have not disgraced it either in the field of battle or the walks of literature. But when we turn to the Statute-book, and examine what improvement the laws of Scotland have received from the Union, we are constrained to admit that Scotland hardly received any legislative amelioration during the whole of the eighteenth century, with the exception of the act abolishing ward holdings and heritable jurisdictions, in 1746; and that was not conferred by the benevolence of English wisdom, but extorted by the terrors of the Highland broadsword. The vast improvements in our criminal practice which have taken place within the last twenty years, were not owing to any admixture of English legislation, but to the admirable wisdom and experienced sagacity of Sir William Rae, the Scotch Lord Advocate, who followed out solely and exclusively the principles of Scotch jurisprudence. Four great changes only of late years, we admit, are of English origin. The Reform Bill, the Burgh Reform, the Introduction of Trial by Jury in civil causes-for it had existed from the earliest period in this country in criminal-and the immense change in legal forms introduced by the Judicature Act. Whether they are improvements or not, time alone can show, and a half century will not enable the nation to determine with accuracy. But so far as experience has hitherto gone, we believe there are few Scotchmen, even of the Reform party, capable of judging on the subjects, who do not already secretly regret our ancient institutions, and the hands in which political influence was placed by our original constitution.**

And if Scotland has prospered solely in consequence of the external influence of England, and in spite of the tyranny and selfishness of its native legislature, how, we would ask, has the same influence proved so destructive to Ireland? When we turn to that country, we hear nothing from the Liberal party but vituperation and abuse of the cruelty, injustice, and tyranny of England; the whole

These anticipations have already been realised. That able and enlightened public officer, the present Lord Advocate, (Rutherfurd,) whom I am proud to call my friend, has introduced into Parliament in this session a bill, with the entire concurrence of the whole country, the object of which is to provide for litigants an escape from the experienced evils of jury trial, by enabling them to select the trial of the judge or arbiters in preference; and to remedy the numerous defects in the Judicature Act in the Court of Session. (Note, May 1850.)

wretchedness, crimes, and suffering of its unhappy people are, without hesitation, ascribed by the whole Whigs and Radicals to the blasting influence of English ascendency; but yet that same ascendency, we are told by the same party, was the sole cause of the prosperity of Scotland, and, despite the tyranny of its native rulers, overspread the land with plenteousness. Will they be so good as to tell us how the same foreign ascendency, which to Ireland was the simoom of the desert, has proved to Scotland only the zephyr of spring? Will they explain how it happened that the English statesmen lavished their wisdom on Scotland, during the seventeenth century, to the exclusion of their native country; and that no traces in the English Statutebook were to be found of those admirable principles of legislation which for two centuries have been established in Scotland, till the days of Sir Samuel Romilly and Mr Brougham? Will the numerous foreign and domestic vituperators of the old Scottish institutions be kind enough to point out the English model from which any of the admirable ancient Scottish statutes we have mentioned were taken, or specify the name of the English monarch, minister, or legislator, whose influence or authority procured the enacting in its native Parliaments of any one of these truly wonderful laws? They cannot-we defy them to point out the slightest trace of English influence or example in any of these monuments of native wisdom; and, in fact, before the union of the crowns, the Scottish Parliament were so thoroughly exasperated against their southern neighbours, that it would have been sufficient to insure the rejection of any measure, that it had been supposed to have emanated from English influence; and after that event, till the union of the kingdoms, the inhabitants of South Britain were too much occupied by their intestine quarrels to have any time to bestow a thought on their savage neighbours to the north of the Tweed, except as to sowing the seeds of dissension or corruption among their nobles-a mode of government in which they were for long but too successful.

In truth, the early precocity of Scotland in legislative wisdom, and the extraordinary provisions made by its native Parliaments in remote periods, not only for the wellbeing of the people, but the coercion alike of regal tyranny and

aristocratic oppression, and the instruction, relief, and security of the poorer classes, is one of the most remarkable facts in the whole history of modern Europe, and one well deserving of the special attention of historians and statesmen, both in that and the neighbouring country. When we recollect what was the state of that remote and sterile kingdom in the four centuries preceding the Union, during which these extraordinary monuments of legislative wisdom were erected; when we remember that for the first two centuries of that period it was lacerated by an almost incessant warfare for its national independence, invaded twenty times by immense foreign armies, repeatedly pierced to the heart by foreign power, and plundered and devastated everywhere by foreign bands; when we call to mind that during this constant and grinding military exertion its fields were perpetually laid waste, its cities burned, its merchant vessels captured, and the seeds equally of agricultural, manufacturing, and commercial prosperity, nipped in the bud ; when we observe that during the two next centuries, when the English had abandoned their attempts to conquer the kingdom by main force, they had constant recourse to the still more disastrous method of management which consisted in the corruption and division of the nobles, and that, by the continual application of that potent engine, the integrity of a great portion of the aristocracy was totally destroyed, and the nation kept in a perpetual state of feudal disorder-from which no one derived benefit but the arch-fiends who put their base and selfish passions in motion-we are lost in astonishment at the laws which were framed during such periods of anarchy, and the noble principles of legislation adopted by a people too often, to appearance, occupied only with the wretched and distracting objects of individual ambition.

The ordinary attempts to account for the wonder by the influence of France, the authority of the civil law, and the institution of the "Lords of the Articles," as they were termed, or committee of Parliament, intrusted with the preparation of all legislative measures, though not destitute of influence, are obviously inadequate to explain its occurrence. For who poured wisdom into the minds of the Lords of the Articles? Who filled the barons of a remote, poor, and

half-savage state with ideas of legislative protection to the labouring classes, and political wisdom, which did not appear even in the favoured soil of South Britain for centuries after? Who taught that rude and illiterate people what to adopt, and what reject, out of the immense mass of the civil law? And where shall we find in the institutions of the old French monarchy anything like the benevolent wisdom, regard for the poor and destitute, and bulwarks of freedom, which are the glorious characteristics of the old Scottish statutes? It belongs to the historian of Scotland to point out the causes to which this extraordinary fact has been owing; but we cannot refrain from hinting at our own opinions on the subject. The solution of the phenomenon, we conceive, is to be found, 1. In the long, heroic, and persevering struggle which the Scotch made for their national independence an effort which, like the successful combat with adversity in an individual, developed many of the most valuable qualities of national character. 2. In the strong and deep hold which the Reformation took of the people, and the boundless extrication of thought, and dispelling of prejudice, which in consequence ensued, during the last half of the sixteenth and the whole of the seventeenth century. 3. In the fortunate constitution of the national Parliament, which gave a full and fair representation to the whole property of the nation, and entirely excluded that selfish and partial legislation which never fails to follow the ascendency of mere numbers. Already we see the Liberal party holding up their hands in derision; but before we are done with this subject, or the nation is fully enlightened by experience on the subject, we are much mistaken if we do not advance much which will shake the opinions of all candid men, even on the Reform side.

VOL. II.

2 T

SHIPS, COLONIES, AND COMMERCE*

MY LORD PROVOST AND GENTLEMEN,-Great as is the satisfaction with which on all occasions I meet my fellowcitizens, and warm as is the gratitude which I feel for the kindness with which they receive me, I can safely affirm that I never experienced either in so strong a degree as I do at this moment. We are now assembled to commemorate one of the most interesting events in the history of our country-the colonisation of a new and highly important island in the southern hemisphere, and the spread of the British race in the vast archipelago of the East. If anything could add to the satisfaction which I feel in being present on such an occasion, it is the toast which your kindness has intrusted to me, and its singular connexion with the time in which I now address you. Four-and-thirty years have elapsed this day on the 20th October 1805 - since the conqueror of continental Europe stood on the heights of Ulm, to behold the captive army of Germany defile before him. When every head around him swam with the giddy intoxication of the spectacle; while every eye in the vanquished thousands who crowded past was turned with involuntary homage towards the hero who had filled the world with his renown; the steady mind of Napoleon regarded only the future; and discerning through the blaze of present glory, the shadow of coming events, he said to those around him -"Gentlemen, this is all well; but I want greater things than these; I want ships, colonies, and commerce. On the day after these memorable words were spoken on the

*

Speech delivered at a dinner given in Glasgow on the 20th October 1839 to the first colonists who left the Clyde for New Zealand, in the vessel "Tory."