active assistance, given by the conqueror, to the man whose broadsword erewhile had been at his throat.

Forbes was, at the time of the rebellion, a depute of the lord-advocate; and holding that office, it was his duty to appear as the accuser of his countrymen. This, however, was a duty so distasteful to his feelings, that he refused. But he saw, that the mere abstinence, on his part, from discharging this duty, would only throw them into hands less merciful. To sustain them, therefore, in their sorrow, and afford them the chance of a fair trial, we have the following instance of his forget fulness of official duty :

"Edinburgh, November 16th, 1716. "DEAR BROTHER-The design of this is to acquaint you that a contribution is a carrying on, [which himself set agoing] for the relief of the poor prisoners at Carlisle, from their necessitous condition. It is certainly Christian, and by no means disloyal, to sustain them in their indigent estate until they are found guilty. The law has brought them to England to be tried by foreign juries; so far it is well. But no law can hinder a Scotchman to wish that his countrymen, not hitherto condemned, should not be a derision to strangers, or perish for want of necessary defence or sustenance, out of their own country. Therefore, if any contribution is carried on for the above purpose with you, it is fit you should give it all the countenance you can by exhortation and example."

ary debate. He found no scope for his ambition in the limited routine of professional duty in a provincial town; and, though at the head of his profession, he went to parliament, at great pecuniary sacrifice. In London he became acquainted with men who have bound their names to the English language. He is stated in the Scots Magazine, in a contemporary sketch, to have been on intimate terms with Pope, Swift, Arbuthnot and Gay. He was certainly very intimate with Walpole, Lords Lyttleton and Hardwicke; and he addressed Lord Mansfield, as "Dear Will"-being often a coadjutor with him in the appeals from Scotland to the house of lords, in which he was almost always one of the counsel.

Of his appearances in the house of commons, we can find as little trace as of other contemporary orators. Reporters were not then in being, to marry the orator's burning words to immortal print. He does not appear to have been a frequent speaker; but we rather think that Mr. Burton underrates the quality of his oratory, for in a contemporary memoir the mode in which he was regarded in the house of commons is thus stated: "The thetic and learned discourses, were soon taken uprightness and integrity of his heart, with his panotice of in the house of commons. What flows of eloquence proceeded from his tongue let the learned say."

After he became lord-advocate, his attendance upon parliament was of the most unremitting description; for, in 1734, when his brother was dying, he wrote the whipper-in of government an excuse from Edinburgh in the following terms:

It is said that in after life he was, at the court of George II., reproached for this humanity. He replied as became the purity of his motive; and "You can recollect, that since first I had the the reply was never remembered to his advan-honor to serve the crown, I never was one day abtage.

He also published a fierce pamphlet, in which he, a young barrister, presumed to lecture the powerful Sir Robert Walpole, on the impolicy of a war of extermination in the Highlands. He suggested other remedies than the coarse implements of the hangman; condemning in unsparing terms the whole conduct of the government-their cruel rigor to some, their favoritism to others-the inequality of punishment when there was equality of crime the abuses connected with the forfeiture of possessions, and the calamities that must result from the unceasing persecution of whole masses of the unhappy Highlanders, "punished with want and misery, for the offences of their friends; suffered to wander about the country, sighing out their complaints to Heaven, and drawing at once the compassion, and moving the indignation, of every human creature."

sent from parliament. I attended the first and the last, and every intermediate day of every session, whatever calls I had from my private affairs to be here; while, at the same time, my friend the solicitor-general was permitted to stay out the whole term in this place; the attendance of one of us upon the courts, in term time, being thought necessary for his majesty's service."

In a letter which he wrote long afterwards, when occupying the office of president of the court of session, he refers incidentally to the difficulty he had in inducing English statesmen to attend to Scottish affairs. After informing his correspondent, Lord Mansfield, then solicitor-general, of the bills he had drawn up, and which the lord-advocate had carried with him to London, he thus proceeds :

:

"Now, dear sir, what brings you this trouble is an apprehension that my lord-advocate may stand Forbes was of a cheerful disposition, which ren- in need of assistance to rouse the attention of the dered him in his younger days the life of convivial men of business, who take the lead in parliament, meetings. He sometimes, however, after the to what may concern this remote country, unless manner of the day, drank himself into excesses the evil to be obviated is very mischievous to, and which affected his health. Lovat refers to an ill- sensibly felt in England. What degrees of acness thus, in a letter to his brother: 66 Clarkey quaintance or familiarity my lord advocate stands (Dr. Clark) swears, if he keeps to his directions, in with the leaders in parliament, I cannot tell; that in two years he will be as strong and as well, but as I, who in my day had the good fortune to and as fit for drinking as he was twenty years stand pretty well with our government, found it ago." His experience in this way was useful to extremely difficult to bring them with any great him, for by treating the electors, he carried the degree of attention or concern to think of Scotch election of the Inverness burghs, for which he was matters, I greatly doubt he may find it at least as returned to parliament in 1722. It has been un- much so, at a season when their thoughts are emusual for a Scottish advocate practising in Edin- ployed in subjects rather more interesting; and burgh, to enter parliament, unless called there by therefore my earnest request to you is, that you official duty; but Forbes was a man never at rest, will undertake the management of it in full convieunless engaged in some public schemes, which he tion that the fate of Scotland, at least for this gencould only enforce on the public arena of parliament-eration, depends on it."—MSS.

The lord-advocate appears to have been over-spitting out his last tooth with his expiring breath, awed by the great men of the south; and Forbes, "should never change his opinions." whose disposition was as unbending as iron, when there was anything at stake affecting his country's interests, immediately denounced this complying disposition on the ground that "nothing can be more dangerous to this country than that turn in a man of your lordship's character and abilities, when the laws or constitution of it is in question." -MSS.

He managed the affairs of Scotland in such a way that the government, in the year 1725, abolished the office of secretary for Scotland; and although it was revived in 1731, and continued in existence till 1746, yet Forbes, till the day he died, was the real administrator of Scottish affairs, civil and military. The generals, the revenue officers, and the officers of justice, received his instructions and obeyed them. His mode of carrying his purposes into effect, came with the almost invincible recommendation of being urged with temper-by his always cautiously feeling his way, in case his measure should rub against some favorite prejudice, or affect some personal interest. The spirit thus infused into his conduct formed a universal language, understood by all men, and was listened to with pleasure even by those whom it did not convince.

In the year 1725, Dundas of Arniston-Forbes' rival at the bar, and his successor as president of the court-resigned the office of lord-advocate, in consequence of one of those changes in the politics of Scotland, the object and nature of which are now unworthy of resuscitation. Forbes was appointed his successor, and from the vantage ground of official position he commenced his operations on behalf of his "poor country," as he affectionately called it. It is beyond our limits, to give even a The most comprehensive statement we can make catalogue of the measures relative to the commerce, loses all its effect in the generalities to which our agriculture, manufactures, and laws of Scotland, space confines us. In his memorials, instructions, which this most energetic man prepared, and in a and letters, upon all subjects-as they are contained great measure carried through. One remarkable in the Culloden Papers, in the Life by Mr. Burton, circumstance in his history at this period was the and in a mass of MSS. which has been communicrusade which he made against the use of tea-an cated to us, and of which we have made considerarticle which may be said to have revolutionized the able use-there is a racy vigor, of which we find social habits of mankind. In room of this, he ourselves able to exhibit but a few specimens. A wished to substitute ale, which afforded a lucrative reference to these books will illustrate not merely tax. His letters on the subject cover scores of the personal character of Forbes, but afford also pages; and he persecuted every man of any influ- considerable insight into the comparatively obscure ence, until he effected somewhat by means of im- civil history of Scotland at that day. It was an portunity, what he might not have obtained as the era in our history, when Scotland had obtained reconsequences of argument. Cobbett himself could pose from the almost ceaseless revolutions and not more forcibly bewail the miseries consequent on tumults of two hundred years. The union had the disuse of malt. After giving a gloomy descrip- swept away innumerable sources of dispute and tion of what might be expected, if the malt-tax national jealousy. The people, left to direct their should not be productive, he bitterly puts it down, energies to the pursuits of industry, fell into regular that "the cause of the mischief we complain of is, subordination, shook off the remains of barbarism, evidently, the excessive use of tea, which is now and grew wise from the past experience of their become so common, that the meanest families, even dissensions and their ignorance. If Forbes did not of laboring people, make their morning's meal of it, see all the remote relations and indirect tendencies and thereby wholly disuse the ale, which hereto- of the change-if he was often too desponding in the fore was their accustomed drink; and the same drug view he took of the future destinies of his "poor supplies all the laboring women with their after- country," he has the entire merit of having innoon's entertainment, to the exclusion of the two-vigorated her by his example and his counsels; and penny." In letters to Lord Hardwicke he often-sending her shooting ahead of the richer land enforced the same views: "If England," he said, which had taught her the lesson-he left a country " is not as yet so sensible of the mischief, as to be affording equal exercise for memory and for hope. willing to submit to the necessary cure, I can As a specimen of the spirit with which he answer for this poor country, that they will readily watched over the Scottish manufactures, when he submit to any prohibition, however severe, that was president of the court of session, the following shall deliver them from the insufferable use of those may be taken from a letter to Lord Tweeddale, the drugs."-MSS. To encourage them in this, he secretary for Scotland in 1743 :set to work to put down smuggling by the arm of the law and the powers of argument; and, what must have been agreeable to himself, he succeeded with the latter. "The president," said his friend, Dr. Murdoch, in a letter to his son, dated in 1744, was very well a few weeks ago, and has been roaring so loud against smuggling, in a very honest, vehement pamphlet he printed, that most of the smuggling counties, gentry as well as commonality, have entered into combinations for its extirpation." -MSS. The justice-clerk, (Lord Grange,) when he was a young man, only showed him "a grim sort of civility," because he was "so plaguy stubborn," and this character he maintained throughout his whole life, in regard to any measure he ever undertook. The harmless tea found in him an unrelenting enemy, when almost every person had adopted it. "A philosopher," said Pangloss,

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"I spent, by your lordship's direction, some time this summer, harvest, and winter, with my lord-advocate on this subject. He promised to me he would leave nothing undone. I well know that, without powerful intercession, he will not be listened to; and it is upon your lordship this poor country depends for that intercession. It is of some consequence for me to know whether anything is in this session to be effectually done; because, if it is, I, for my part, will cheerfully go on, and drudge, as heretofore; but if nothing is likely to be done, I shall choose to be quiet, and not give myself unnecessary trouble.”—MSS.

On the same day he wrote on the same subject to Sir Andrew Mitchell, who was afterwards minister at Brussels

"I verily believe that you have left nothing undone to forward a design so essential to the being

of this miserable country; and I must suspect that the reason why I have heard nothing from you is, that you have had nothing comfortable to say. My lord-advocate has been now a month in London, and as he carried along with him the product of our joint labors, I should think by this time it should have settled the point, whether anything is to be done for us in this session of parliament or not. If nothing is to be done, there is an end to very flattering hopes; and those manufactures, from which alone I looked for a sort of resurrection to this dead country, must infallibly die."-MSS.

the end of the last century, was one of the most inefficient in existence. Fifteen judges sat at once upon the bench; and of course the necessary consequence of such a crowd was a continual bickering among themselves, and the use of epithets towards each other, which supplied in vigor what they wanted in courtesy and decorum. Their number freed them from responsibility; and their votes were given as much from caprice, or friendship, or enmity, to party or counsel, as from any regard to law or justice. No reports have survived, except on the faint breath of tradition, of the stormy scenes In 1734 his brother died, and he succeeded to the that sometimes disgraced the court; but enough reestates of Culloden. About this time, too, a mains to tell us that the bench, when Forbes took marked change came over his religious opinions, the chair, was in its lowest state, and that before which deepened in intensity, and he was thus in- he left it, he brought it to a condition that it has duced to commence the study of Hebrew, for the perhaps never equalled since. Mr. Burton has purpose of acquiring a more thorough knowledge forcibly shown this, by calling attention to the fact of the Scriptures. He is said to have become a that it was while Forbes was president the greater proficient in the oriental languages; and he clothed number of those " leading cases," preserved by in print some views upon religious subjects, in Kilkerran, which have guided our subsequent juristwo works, being "A Letter to a Bishop," and prudence, were pronounced. Let a decision be "Thoughts concerning Religion, natural and re- cited from that era, and it is beyond attack. A vealed"-works which Warburton, in a letter to more remarkable proof of the talents of Forbes, as Hurd, pronounced to be "little jewels." He de-a lawyer, could not be advanced. While much fended in these books, with much acuteness, the before him, and much that followed, in the decisions Hutchinsonian theology-a system which professed of our courts, has fallen before the learning and into find in the Hebrew Scriptures, when interpreted vestigation of later times, the decisions of his time according to the radical import of the Hebrew ex- have stood unassailable. The change was perceptipressions, a complete system of natural philosophy bly felt even in his own day, since Hardwicke even as well as of religious truth. is found writing him thus:-"I conceive great pleasure in the different degree of weight and credit with which your decisions come before the house, from what they did a few years ago, an alteration which I presaged would happen, and do most sincerely congratulate your lordship on the event."

Another incident deserves mention, as illustrative of his uncompromising independence. The Porteous Mob has been rendered immortal by the genius of Scott. It was one of those daring acts that we would look for only in lawless times. A band of conspirators, regularly organized, broke the city jail, and dragged to the gallows, where they hanged him, a criminal whom the queen, as regent during the sovereign's absence, had pardoned. Never was there a storm more furious raised in London. The ministry took up the matter with a heat equal to the queen's, and introduced into parliament a bill which degraded and imprisoned the chief magistrate of Edinburgh, abolished the city guard, and inflicted other acts of degradation. It was a vindictive measure, introduced by men in the furor of passion, and when of course they were all the more unreasonable and impatient of opposition. The person who ought to have introduced this measure was the lord-advocate of Scotland; but the man who was most persevering in his opposition was that important officer. The attorney and solicitor-general of England took the place which he had deserted; and to the amazement of the whole country, a lord-advocate opposing the wishes of government and of the queen, in a matter where their feelings were so keen, was exhibited by Forbes, at a time when the chief law office of his country had become vacant. His opposition, and that of Argyle in the upper house, was so far successful, that the bill was shorn of much of its of fensive matter before it passed into a law.

The government perhaps saw, that they could not avoid offering the presidency of the court of sessions to the first lawyer and most eloquent advocate of his day. Perhaps they had also virtue enough to admire his independence; at all events, he took his seat as lord president in June, 1737; and there he effected a revolution, greater even than in any department he had hitherto intermeddled with.

The court of session, at the beginning and near

To effect all this, he had much to contend with in the obstinacy of his colleagues. But his firm spirit, his established fame, his great talents, and the general superiority of the man, silenced opposition, and ultimately procured, if not sympathy, at least acquiescence. He could not prevent their voting according to their interests or their passions, but he was there to administer a rebuke, which he was not the man to omit, if it served his purpose. He got rules of court passed for the expediting business, and carried them into effect with a pertinacity that no vis inertia of his colleagues could resist. Three years after his advancement to the bench, he could make the boast to Lord Hardwicke, that, at the expense of "several hundred hours' extra labor, no cause ripe for judgment remained undetermined, a circumstance which has not happened in any man's memory, and of which the mob are very fond." Like Lord Kenyon, too, he was ever a friend to the poor suitor, if he saw him oppressed. Nay, he was at his old practices, in getting up subscriptions among the judges themselves, for the relief of the unhappy, in the consideration of whose fortunes judges have so much to do. His compassion was always of this description" I pity him five shillings; how much do you?" His contemporary biographer, describing him as a judge, says that "he was so mild and affable in discourse that none could resist his persuasion; he encouraged the lords to do justice, and if he observed any bias in them, proceeding from the face of a great man, he would say, By God's grace I shall give my thoughts sincerely, and your lordships will judge in this matter as you will be answerable to God. When he spoke there was a profound silence-the lawyers and lords put themselves in a listening pos

The money, we believe, was never repaid him or his descendants; and the estate of Culloden is now of half the extent it was when Forbes acquired it. In regard to the measures introduced into Parliament to prevent the recurrence of like commotions, it appears that he never was consulted; nay, that the men in power, as the best justification of themselves, threw ridicule on him, traduced his character, and neglected his recommendations. He spoke of this in the same dignified strain, as of the other insults that clouded his latter days. In a letter to his friend, Sir Andrew Mitchell, which he never imagined the world would hear of, we obtain a better view of this part of his life than from almost anything we now possess. We give it entire, as it has not hitherto been printed :

over, and when my duty no longer requires my
attendance in this place, I cannot exactly say. I
know how little likely advice obtruded is to pre-
vail; and yet I am not certain that the same sort
of zeal, flowing from the same principles that led
me northwards after the last summer session, may
not lead southwards after this. I am sensible the
opposition I may now meet with is more formidable,
and less likely to be got the better of by my puny
influence, than that of the Highlanders appeared to
me to be last year. But if, upon summing up all
considerations, when I have some more leisure than
I possess at present, it shall appear to me to be my
duty to move towards you, I certainly shall march."
He did not long survive this. His death took
place in December, 1747, at the comparatively early
age of 57.
A few weeks before he died, he wrote
his son, advising him "to go to London, where I
believe I may have some friends yet. They will
tell the king that his faithful servant Duncan Forbes
has left you a very poor man. Farewell." His
son hurried to his bedside, and preserved a memo-
randum of his last hours.

EDIR. 15th July, 1746. "Mrs. M'Laurin sent me yours of the 5th. I am sensible of the concern you take in what affects me, and very thankful for it. It was no small misfortune to the public, as well as it was abundantly mortifying to me, that the want of harmony in the ministers prevented the furnishing the supplies called for, which, had they arrived in due time, "My father entered into the everlasting life of would have put an end long ago to the calamities God, trusting, hoping, and believing through the that attended an actual rebellion. I do not at all blood of Christ, eternal life and happiness. When wonder that my conduct was ridiculed by those to I first saw my father on the bed of death, his blesswhom the steadiness of it was some reproach. But ing and prayer to me was-'My dear John, you I am a little surprised that they found anybody to have just come in time to see your poor father die. listen to them. These things, however, are now May the great God of heaven and earth ever bless over, and I trouble my head with them no more. and preserve you! You have come to a very poor I did what my conscience told me was my duty. I fortune, partly through my own extravagance, and acted, I believe, to the conviction of all the king's the oppression of power. I am sure you will forenemies, like a man; my conscience acquits me; give me, because what I did was with a good and I don't care twopence what those, who are so intention. I know you to be an honest-hearted lad silly as to be my enemies without provocation, may Andrew Mitchell loves you affectionately-my think or say. My knight-errantry is now at an end-I hope forever. I have been sweating for these six weeks past at my regular drudgery, without meddling with any other business; but under very great concern, I must confess, for this unhappy country, which is like to suffer for crimes it is not guilty of, and seems in its distress to have no eye to pity it, nor hand ready to interpose for its relief.

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Upon the rebellion receiving its finishing stroke from the duke, it was my opinion that our ministers would conclude the settling the peace of this unhappy country. And the forming a system for preventing proceedings so dangerous and destructive for the future, required the most mature deliberation. I must confess I had vanity enough to imagine that I should have been called upon for my sentiments on that subject, as my zeal ought to have been unsuspected, and as the consideration of it was delicate, and, to my thinking, of very great consequence. If I had not known more than most people of the complexion of the country, I could not have performed half the service that such of our leaders as are in tolerable good humor with me, affect to tell me they believe I did. But to my great convenience, tho' not much to the satisfaction of my mind, the undertakers for quieting and for keeping quiet this part of the island have not given me the trouble of answering them any question; neither have they dropt the least signification that my attendance is wanted where those things are to be consulted about. This, dear Andrew, is my present situation; and as the duty of my office required my attendance in this place, (unless it had, under the royal sign-manual, been dispensed with,) you would not at all wonder at my being where I now am. What may happen when the term is

heart bleeds for poor John Steel-I recommend him to you. There is but one thing I repent me of in my whole life-not to have taken better care of you. May the great God of heaven and earth bless and preserve you. I trust in the blood of Christ. Be always religious; fear and love God. You may go; you can be of no service to me here.'

And thus he died, according to the universal opinion, of a broken heart. A deep melancholy laid him prostrate; he was unable to endure the outrages which he had no influence to prevent. His was not one of those minds which sink in selfestimation, to the level to which the world has reduced them, and accommodate themselves with equanimity to their fortune. Too liberal for his own interest, and too sensitive for his own happiness, he became the victim of an exquisite sensibility under the calumnies of malice and the judgments of ignorance; and the struggle ended, as in kindred natures it has often done, in entire dereliction of himself and despondency at last.

It is difficult to speak of such a man as Forbes, without ascending to extravagance and hyperbole. If he was not one of the flaming constellations which has shot to its station in the heavens, he was, at least, one of the few of the departed great, that will live in Scottish history. Of such, we have only four or five in all; and in ranking the patriot of the 18th, with the two great reformers of the 16th centuries, and with the heroes of the war of independence, we do no injustice to their glorious memory. He has the same claim, in his patriotic labors, to our gratitude and applause. There was no apathy with him, dead to all feeling but what was personal; and while, like all men, he could bear another's misfortunes very much like a Christian, he differed from most men in this, that he never