INTRODUCTION

xxxv

H. N. 40.

Edinburgh, became a judge with the title of Lord Abbots-
hall. There were besides four extraOrdinary lords who were
never lawyers, and were not bound to attend and hear
causes pleaded, but they had the right to vote. At the
Revolution one of the reasons aSsigned for declaring the
Crown v acant was the changing of the nature of the
judges' gifts ad vitam ar~t culpam, and giving them com-
missions ad bene placitu»a to dispose them to compliance with
arbitary sourses, and turning them out of their offices when
they did not comply." 1'hus in 1681, when the Test Act
was passed, fiv e judges were dismissed, four ordinary, includ-
ing the President, Stair, and one extraordinary, Argyll, and
a new commission issued. When the Court was so con-
stituted, it could hardly inspire implicit confidence, and the
instances are numerous in which Lauder complains that
injustice has been done, and the principles of the law per-
verted through the influence of political and private moth'es.
Evel1 the most eminent of the judges were not in his opinion
clear from this blot. 1 hav e quoted one passage in which
Lauder hints at Staies partiality for Argt 11. In another
case in which Argy 11 was concerned he observes, 1 Every on
saw that w ould be the fate of that action, considering the
pershewar"s probable intres in the President." 1 In 1672 1
when, as he considered, a well-established rule of law had

1 Lauder was a very young man at the bar when he wrote these strictures on
Stair. They may 1~ compared with and in part corrected by a passage in Sir
G. ~lackenlÍe's ~lfcrrroirs, p. 240, which also bears on the appointment of in-
competent judges. Lauderdale by promoting four ignorant persons, who had
not been bred as la\\1'erS, without interruption, and in two years' time, to be
judges in it [the Session], viz., Batton, Sir Andrew Ramsay, Mr. Robert
Preston, and fittrichie, he rendered thereby the Session the object of all men's
contempt. And the Ad\'ocates being disobliged by the regulations did en-
de:wour, as far as in them lay, to disco\"er to the people the errors of those who
had opprest them and they being now become numcrous, and most of them
being idle, though men of excellent parts, wanting rather clients than wit and
learning, that society became the only distributor of fame, and in effect the
fittcst instrument for all atterations for such as were eminent, did by their
authority, and such as were idle, by well contrived and witty raillery, make