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cessor, 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 catalogue of the measures relative to the commerce, agriculture, manufactures, and laws of Scotland, which this most energetic man prepared, and in a great measure carried through. One remarkable circumstance in his history at this period, was the crusade which he made against the use of Tea-an article which may be said to have revolutionized the social habits of mankind. In room of this, he wished to substitute ale, which afforded a lucrative tax. His letters on the subject cover scores of pages; and he persecuted every man of any influence, until he effected somewhat by means of importunity, what he might not have obtained as the consequences of argument. Cobbett himself could not more forcibly bewail the miseries consequent on the disuse of malt. After giving a gloomy description of what might be expected, if the malt-tax should not be productive, he bitterly puts it down, that "the cause of the mischief we complain of is, evidently, the excessive use of tea, which is now become so common, that the meanest families even of labouring people, make their morning's meal of it, and thereby wholly disuse the ale, which heretofore was their accustomed drink; and the same drug supplies all the labouring women with their afternoon's entertainment, to the exclusion of the two-penny." In letters to Lord Hardwicke, he often enforced the same views: "If England," he said, "is not as yet so sensible of the mischief, as to be willing to submit to the necessary cure, I can answer for this poor country, that they will readily submit to any prohibition, however severe, that shall deliver them from the insufferable use of those drugs."-MSS. To encourage them in this, he 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 commonalty, 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 plaguey 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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spitting out his last tooth with his expiring breath, "should never change his opinions."

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 favourite 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.

The most comprehensive statement we can make, loses all its effect in the generalities to which our space confines us. In his memorials, instructions, and letters, upon all subjects as they are contained in the Culloden Papers, in the Life by Mr. Burton, and in a mass of MSS. which has been communicated to us, and of which we have made considerable use-there is a racy vigour, of which we find ourselves able to exhibit but a few specimens. A reference to these books will illustrate not merely the personal character of Forbes, but afford also considerable insight into the comparatively obscure civil history of Scotland at that day. It was an era in our history, when Scotland had obtained repose from the almost ceaseless revolutions and tumults of two hundred years. The Union had swept away innumerable sources of dispute and national jealousy. The people, left to direct their energies to the pursuits of industry, fell into regular subordination, shook off the remains of barbarism, and grew wise from the past experience of their dissensions and their ignorance. If Forbes did not see all the remote relations and indirect tendencies of the change-if he was often too desponding in the view he took of the future destinies of his "poor country," he has the entire merit of having invigorated her by his example and his counsels; and sending her shooting a-head of the richer land which had taught her the lesson-he left a country affording equal exercise for memory and for hope.

As a specimen of the spirit with which he watched over the Scottish manufactures, when he was President of the Court of Session, the following may be taken from a letter to Lord Tweeddale, the Secretary for Scotland in 1743 :

"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 labours, 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.

In 1734 his brother died, and he succeeded to the estates of Culloden. About this time, too, a marked change came over his religious opinions, which deepened in intensity, and he was thus induced to commence the study of Hebrew, for the purpose of acquiring a more thorough knowledge of the Scriptures. He is said to have become a proficient in the Oriental languages; and he clothed in print some views upon religious subjects, in two works, being "A Letter to a Bishop," and "Thoughts concerning Religion, natural and revealed,"-works which Warburton, in a letter to Hurd pronounced to be "little jewels." He defended in these books, with much acuteness, the Hutchinsonian theology-a system which professed to find in the Hebrew scriptures, when interpreted according to the radical import of the Hebrew expressions, a complete system of Natural Philosophy as well as of religious truth.

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 offensive matter before it passed into a law.

The Government perhaps saw, that they could not avoid offering the Presidency of the Court of Session 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 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 vigour, 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 that sometimes disgraced the Court; but enough remains to tell us that the Bench, when Forbes took the chair, was in its lowest state, and that before he left it, he brought it to a condition that it has perhaps never equalled since. Mr. Burton has forcibly shown this, by calling attention to the fact that it was while Forbes was President the greater number of those "leading cases," preserved by Kilkerran, which have guided our subsequent jurisprudence, were pronounced. Let a decision be cited from that era, and it is beyond attack. A more -remarkable proof of the talents of Forbes, as a lawyer, could not be advanced. While much before him, and much that followed,

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in the decisions of our Courts, has fallen before the learning and investigation of later times, the decisions of his time have stood unassailable. The change was perceptibly felt even in his own day, since Hardwicke even 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." 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 labour, 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 posture."-A profound silence in

the old Court of Session!

The Rebellion of '45 found Forbes engaged in the active duties of his own profession, in the concoction of new schemes for the promotion of manufactures, and in endeavouring to get adopted a policy towards the Scottish Highlanders, which, if adopted, would have saved them from the calamities that afterwards overtook them. He proposed that regiments on behalf of Govern ment, should be raised out of the disaffected clans, and commis