66 a want not Arnold thinks, the virtue of an aristocracy | shape of private counsel to William. Cirlies in openness to ideas, never was a body cumstances, together with his profession, less worthy of the name than the nobility excluded him from public life. Hence his of Scotland. Happily, influences were biography wants interest now at work which opened a career to supplied by his guarded correspondence. new men." It is our purpose, with the But Mr. Story's book has graver faults aid of the books which are at the head of than the fault of dulness. It is marked this article, to give some account of the by a tone of loftiness which the reader foremost of these - the two Dalrymples, finds nothing to justify. There is little father and son-founders of a family evidence of research; interest is not which, through several generations, pro- awakened by novelty of material or origiduced men eminent in literature, law, arms, nality of thought. Historical insight is and diplomacy. wanting; there are grievous mistakes in as in a rhapsody Mr. Graham's work, with the least pre-judgments of character tension, is the most valuable of the three. It embraces the life of the founder of the house, of his son, the first Earl of Stair, and of his grandson the field-marshal and diplomatist - the "magnanimous Stair" of Carlyle's Frederick. He has published, for the first time, many letters of importance and interest. He has done his own part with taste and judgment. His narrative is brief but clear; his candour and impartiality beyond praise. Mr. Mackay's book is a more elaborate effort. It is, as he calls it, "a study in the history of Scotland and Scotch law." And, as such, it has many merits. But it is confused and without method. Hence it leaves no vivid impression on the reader's mind a fatal defect in a biography. We shall have occasion, also, in the course of this article, to note instances of bad taste, of over-confidence, of one-sided judgment, in Mr. Mackay's volume. And we are, therefore, the more anxious now to recognize his considerable research, his liberality of thought, and the freshness and vigour which animate his pages. Of Mr. Story's labours we cannot speak so favourably. That the book is a dull book is not altogether the author's fault. Assuredly Carstairs was no common man. Equal in astuteness and sagacity to the master of Stair himself, he was in honesty and fidelity superior perhaps to all the politicians of his age and nation. There is reason to believe, with some degree of certainty, that he rendered good service to the State, in forwarding, against ignorance and prejudice, the true interests of Scotland. But those services, during the most important part of his career, took the about Claverhouse, and the praises of that unscrupulous turncoat Sir James Stewart. It is difficult not to be offended by the ungenerous spirit which finds pleasure in the repetition of the idle slander that William encouraged Monmouth's adventure in order to rid himself of a rival; it is impossible not to smile at the taste which can find in the position of Carstairs at William's death a parallel to Diocletian at Salona and Charles V. at Yuste. Inaccuracy is shown even in the slipshod way the references are noted; * the style, level enough as a rule, is disfigured by frequent and vain attempts at effect.† Worst of all, there are not a few traces of that bitterness towards any who chance to differ from Mr. Story-especially on matters ecclesiastical — which so painfully characterizes the school to which he belongs. But we pass gladly from the duty of criticism to the more pleasing portion of our task. The greatest of Scottish jurists was born in Ayrshire in the year 1619, of a family by no means so obscure as his enemies in after days were prone to allege. As thus: "Burnet, vol. iii." "Fountainhall, Wodrow, p. 148." ↑ The following style of writing is the reverse of impressive: "The chamber of the Privy Council echoed day, might be seen Dalzell striking the prisoners under with the howls of the victims of the boot. There, one examination over the mouth with his sword-hilt till the blood sprang; on another, Lauderdale baring his brawny arms above the elbow, and swearing by Jehovah' that he would force the gentlemen of Scotland to enter into those bonds" (p. 45). Nor is a distinct idea of a political situation conveyed thus: "Jacobite stratagems, Episcopal pretensions, Presbyterian jealousies, national prejudices, personal dishonesties, and political corruptions weltered together in illimitable battle and confusion” (p. 275). doubtless appreciated the value to the administration of Stair's character and abilities, stood his friend. He was summoned to London, and admitted to an interview with Charles, who possibly may have remembered with favour the secretary of Breda and the Hague. The result was a permission to accompany his signature of the declaration with the verbal statement, that "he was content to declare against whatever was opposite to his Majesty's just right and prerogative." These words are no real qualification of the terms of the declaration, and it is difficult to believe that any mind can have regarded the utterance of them as other than a farce.* To such paltering with conscience we prefer the frank readiness of Lauderdale to "sign a cartful of such oaths before he would lose his place." He was educated at the University of tated. His family was Presbyterian. He Glasgow, where he graduated in 1637; himself had all his life been a Presbyteand four years later was appointed, after a | rian. "In the late troubles" he had for competitive examination - as was the wont two years borne arms "for Christ's crown then a professor or regent in philoso- and Covenant." He had, at one time, rephy. In 1648 he resigned this position solved to resign; but a slight concession for the more stirring profession of the bar, from those in power sufficed to overcome to which he was called in his twenty-ninth his scruples. Lauderdale, who seems to year. Almost immediately thereafter he have had as much liking for Stair as it was was appointed secretary to the commis-in his nature to have for any man, and who sions which went to Holland seeking a virtuous Covenanter in Charles II. He is known during these visits to have formed the acquaintance of Salmasius, and he may be reasonably supposed to have profited by intercourse with the many eminent Dutch jurists then living. Sagacity, far inferior to that of Dalrymple, would have forbidden any more active support of Charles' fortunes; the future president, for about ten years, pursued in safe insignificance his professional avocations. In 1657- not ten years after he had been called to the bar - Monk recommended him to Cromwell for the office of judge, as being "a very honest man and a good lawyer." Stair's acceptance of this office seems to Mr. Mackay a thing requiring excuse. In our judgment it was one of the most justifiable steps in his somewhat shifty public life. Nor do we think it worth while to defend a course of which an example was set by such men as Hale in his own profession, and Blake in another. Far more questionable was his conduct under Charles. He was knighted immediately after the restoration, and included in the first commission of Scottish judges. But in 1662 a declaration was imposed on all persons in offices of trust. This measure was aimed directly at Presbyterians. The declarant affirmed solity against those who suffered for serving emnly the illegality of all leagues, covenants, and gatherings in the late troubles; "and particularly, that those oaths, whereof the one was commonly called The National Covenant' (as it was sworn and explained in the year 1638 and thereafter), and the other entitled 'A Solemn League and Covenant,' were and are, in themselves unlawful oaths, and were taken by and imposed upon the subjects of this kingdom against the fundamental laws "I don't know what the devil the crop-eared Whig Stair was created president of the Court of Session, and made a member of the Privy Council in 1671. He held these offices for ten years - years during which, in the calm judgment of Hallam, the wickedness of the administration can find no parallel in modern history. For this Mr. Mackay proposes no defence; Mr. Graham adopts the defence stated by Stair himself in his "Apology," which is simply that he did not approve of "sever es God in the way they were persuaded;" that he "did what he durst to save them." The defence is not very successful· pecially when we consider the small result of his exertions. The distinction between commissions granted for the per Burley took the test of drinking the health of the priVery different from the qualification with which mate of St. Andrews in Niel Blane's Change House"May each prelate in Scotland soon be as the Right Reverend James Sharpe." Well might Bothwell say, and liberties of the same." Stair hesi-means." formance of necessary public duties and those which "relate to councils for establishing usurped power or burdening the people," by which Stair justified his holding office under Cromwell, cannot avail him in this matter. Lauderdale was then carrying out his scheme of subverting the Constitution and governing Scotland by the Privy Council, without a Parliament; and every one who sat with him in the Privy Council must be held responsible for the guilt of that scheme. No one would impute to Stair the malignity of the apostate Sharpe, or the pleasure in human suffering which showed itself in the dark nature of James; but a dislike to witness the infliction of torture was a merit which he shared with the majority of his colleagues, and his preference for moderate counsels was only evinced by absence or silence. By the practice of such prudential arts no man can obtain exoneration from whatever blame may attach to the government of which, from motives of ambition or interest, he consents to be a member. stickled at this test we are wholly unable to understand. But it is unsafe to pronounce judgment on matters of conscience - especially when the consciences are those of Scottish statesmen of the seventeenth century. The main fact is, that government never offered him the chance of signing. To have done so would have been a farce. His ruin was determined on. Moderation, not unlike his own, had brought destruction on Argyle. The president's declared hostility to Popery was worse than moderation. His dismissal came from the same cause which, a few years later, raised Perth and Melfort over Queensberry: and which in England led to the downfall of the Hydes the resolve of James to have in his service no minister who would not do his bidding even in the matter of religious profession. Stair retired to the country, but was not allowed to enjoy his retirement. The eye of the tyrant was upon him. In 1662 Claverhouse was sent to urge on the persecution in Wigton and Galloway. Of course, he found cause of offence in everything done by the fallen president. It is half melancholy, half ludicrous, to read Stair's appeals to Queensberry, imploring favour, protesting loyalty, and remonstrating against being "disquieted" because his wife won't attend the parish church, which, he plaintively adds, "I cannot help an inability easy of credence if the lady had any likeness to the mother of the bride of Lammermoor.* At last, acting on a friendly hint from Sir George Mackenzie, he fled to Holland. But the time had now come when caution and moderation could no longer avail. The Duke of York came to Scotland as commissioner in 1679, animated, even then, by that determination to raise up Popery which in the end cost him his crown. It was soon apparent that any such design would be opposed by all but the most subservient of Scottish statesmen. Stair, at his first interview with the duke, gave offence by welcoming him to an "entirely Protestant country.' He filled up the measure of his iniquity by carrying in Parliament an addition to the Test At Leyden-fit refuge for an exiled Act of 1681, defining the Protestant re-scholar Stair found a society, composed ligion as "the religion contained in the Confession of Faith recorded in the first Parliament of James VI." He tells us that his object was "to prove the safest hedge against Popery," and this object was perfectly apprehended by James. Accordingly, Stair on going to London, either to obtain permission to take the test with a qualification, as he had done the declaration of 1662; or, as some have said, with the view of securing for his more complaisant son the place which he foresaw he himself would have to resign, was, at the instance of the Duke of York, refused an audience of the king; and a new commission was issued in which his name did not appear. Stair assures he would not have signed the test. Why a man who had signed the declaration of 1662, and had been for ten years a member of the Privy Council, should have us of the most eminent and learned men in Europe, ready to soothe his six years of banishment. Of his life there little is known. He gave himself to literary pursuits; he supported, in a languid way, the enterprise of Argyle; while resting his hopes, we can readily believe, on a very different deliverer. He, least of all men, was likely to have been led away by the proverbial credulity of exiles. He was recommended by Fagel to the notice of William, who soon saw and valued his Mr. Mackay's biographical enthusiasm prompts him to stand up for Lady Stair. But he might have remembered that she is thus described by one of her descendants: "In Lady Ashton the character of our great-great-grandmother seems in many respects more faithfully delineated, or at least, less misrepresented. She was an ambitious and interested woman, of a mas culine character and understanding." Letter from Mr. Dalrymple Elphinstone in the introduction to "The Bride of Lammermoor." cool sagacity. He entered eagerly into William's great design, professing himself willing to venture his head, his own and his children's fortunes, in such an undertaking a declaration the magnanimity of which is somewhat impaired by the fact that the family estates were perfectly safe in any event, being at that very time enjoyed by his eldest son, serving James as lord advocate and lord justice clerk. But William could not afford to look closely into such matters. He knew Stair was able; he had reason to believe him willing to serve the good cause. He, therefore, honoured him with much confidence, and took him over to England in the "Brill." Here Stair's work as a statesman begins. He is said, indeed, to have shared the councils of Monk before the march into England which restored the monarchy. But, with this exception, he had hitherto lived the life of a mere lawyer, avoiding, even to the disregard of duty, any part in State affairs. To such a course he had been led partly by timidity, partly because he disliked the governments he continued to serve. Both causes were now removed. His political views were in accord with the new order of things; there was no longer room for timidity: the only hope of safety to him or his lay in the stability of William's throne. Even now, however, the part which he took was not a public one. He lived in a beautiful villa on the banks of the Thames belonging to the widow of his old patron Lauderdale, and guided the deliberations of William on Scotch affairs by his experience and sagacity. He was, in the crisis of the Revolution, the confidential adviser Carstairs afterwards became. And, in truth, the sagacity which directed William in these things must have been sagacity of no common order. If, as there is every reason to believe, Stair suggested the mode in which the convention which was to meet at Edinburgh should be summoned in righteous disregard of existing laws; if, by his advice, nobles who had been deprived of their honours by the tyranny of the Stuarts were invited to resume their seats in Parliament; if, by his advice, the franchise was so extended that none but Papists were excluded from the vote; if he had any share in William's letter to the convention when it did assemble, and in the private instructions sent to the friends of the government, in which we see not only a statesmanlike view of the position, but an intimate and accurate knowledge of Scotch parties and of the Scotch character; then few advisers have ever given wiser counsel to a prince. Ecclesiastical matters presented, perhaps, the most serious and the most lasting difficulty. William was undoubtedly desirous that the Scotch should be induced to accept a moderate form of Episcopacy. The establishment of Presbytery in Scotland made every Scotch Episcopalian a Jacobite, and was, moreover, in the highest degree distasteful to English churchmen, high and low alike. Nor is it uncharitable to suppose that a prince as greedy of power as any who have ever governed England may have had some preference for a form of Church government which, to say the least, has always been associated with the ascendancy of the crown. Stair, knowing Scotland, knew the maintenance of Episcopacy to be impracticable. Aided probably by Carstairs, he had little difficulty in bringing William to this opinion. But a further and most important object was that William should be saved from the unpopularity sure to be incurred by him in England were he to countenance the overthrow of Episcopacy in the north. The matter must be decided before he could have any say in it, or any title to interfere. Stair effected this by prevailing upon the managers of the convention to insert a clause in the Claim of Right declaring Episcopacy an insupportable institution, odious to the nation, which must be abolished. William, therefore, if he accepted the crown of Scotland at all, had no choice but to accept it on a contract of which this was the first condition. It seems to have been undetermined whether Stair should be restored to his place as president, then held by Sir George Lockhart. In his "Apology" he says he would not have taken the place while Sir George lived; adding, frankly enough, "nor had I any doubt but that the king would have provided me as well as by it.' The murder of Lockhart in March 1689 removed all difficulty; and Stair thus writes, with a certain half-sincerity, as to his own feelings at the time: "That shameful murder of Sir George Lockhart touched the king much, and made him say to me he saw it was necessary that I should resume my place again, which I was willing, though it was my right, he should continue to enjoy, being younger and abler to endure the toil than I." Accordingly he was re-appointed president of the Court of Sessions, and held that office till his death in 1695. These years were certainly the most useful, and . retorted with charges against Claverhouse probably the happiest, of his life. He enjoyed the position which he preferred to any other; he could, without scruple, take what part became him in public affairs. And the part from which he as a judge was debarred, he saw taken, with rare ability and energy, by his son. The attacks of numerous and bitter enemies had no effect on his fortunes, and were not, therefore, likely to disturb his cold and equable temper. Yet these attacks, both on the president and his son, were unexampled in persistency and malignancy. Politicians of every rank and every party were never weary of denouncing the Dalrymples as the cause of everything that was amiss in Scotland. Acts of Parlia- But the Council was bent on his ruin. ment were passed for the express purpose Perhaps they discerned that the astute of driving them from office. But all was Dalrymples had devised, and were followof no avail. William refused his assent ing out, a dexterous policy for preserving to the acts, and showed the value he put family estates in troublous times. The upon the denunciations by raising the father took one side of politics, the eldest president to the peerage. One pamphlet, son the other; so that, in any event, forhowever, probably the joint work of the feiture was avoided. This policy, less in plotter Ferguson and the traitor Montgom- the spirit of chivalry than in the spirit of ery, could not, it was thought, even in the old Milnwood's dying injunction to "keep interest of government, be left unnoticed. the gear together," was, not to mention polAccordingly Stair published a short reply, iticians of lesser rank, subsequently adoptentitled "An Apology for Sir James Dal-ed by the noble houses of Hamilton, rymple, President of the Session, by himself." The document may be read with interest, but does not materially affect our estimate of Stair. Some charges, mainly connected with legal matters, to which weight was no doubt attached at the time, but which are now utterly unimportant, he successfully refutes. To the graver charges of having supported the tyranny of Lauderdale, and of having been in public life "a Proteus and a changeling," no defence was possible; and the endeavour to maintain one discovers more ingenuity than candour or truthfulness. Queensberry, and Athole. But the Dalrymples are entitled to the credit of having invented it. So far back as Lord Stair's journey to London in 1681 he is said to have laid schemes for the succession of his son to the dignities which he saw he himself would be compelled to lay down — which of course implied the son's readiness to desert the politics of his father. Fountainhall distinctly says that this feeling was at the bottom of the proceedings now taken against Sir John: "The high treasurer was incensed that Sir John would give them no discoveries against The career of Sir John Dalrymple, the the Earl of Aberdeen; and that, by his president's eldest son, shorter than that of father's retreat, he had secured the estate his father, is marked by bolder features, from their gripe." In September 1664 and presents a more varied interest. Born he was seized in his own house at midin 1648, he was called to the Scotch bar night, "without any shadow of ground," soon after his father became lord presi- says Forbes, and brought before the Coundent in 1670. The first ten years after his cil sitting at Holyrood. No charge apcall afforded little to vary the monotony of pears to have been preferred against him; professional life; but in 1682 there came but notwithstanding, "they caused bring a change. In the autumn of that year the him between a great guard of soldiers in father fled to Holland; ere the close of it open daylight, from the Abbey, on foot the son was denounced by Claverhouse to the prison, like a malefactor." They before the Privy Council. He was accused kept him there three months; then liber. of "leasing-making, sedition, perjury;"ated him on bail for 500l., confining him, of having laughed at a proclamation; and however, to Edinburgh, and eventually to of having offered Claverhouse a bribe of a circuit of ten miles round the city. 150%. "to connive at the irregularities of his mother the Lady Stair."* Dalrymple * Irregularities, of course, in matters ecclesiastical. Decisions, i. p. 201. † Fountainhali," Decisions," i. p. 303. |