166 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Parliient House.
plead in any court in Scotland, and in all Scottish
appeals before the House of Lords-is a body,
of course, inseparably connected, as yet, with the
old Parliament House. From among that body
the judges of the supreme courts and sheriffs of
the various counties are selected. It is the most
distinguished corporate body in Scotland, and of
old, especially, was composed of the representatives
alike of the landed aristocracy, the rank
and intellect of Scotland ; and for more than three
centuries the dignity of the Scottish bench and bar
has been maintained by a succession of distinguished
men, illustrious, not only in their own
peculiar department of legal knowledge, but in
most branches of literature and science ; and it has
produced some men whose worksare read and whose
influence is felt wherever the language of Great
Britain is known.
The whole internal economy of the legal bodies,
and of the courts of law, is governed by the Acts
wildest imagery, have foreseen the Edinburgh and
the Scotland of to-day !
Till so lately as 1779 the Parliament House,
retained the divisions, furnishing, and-save the
royal portraits-other features, which it had borne
in the days when Scotland had a national legislature.
Since that time the associations of this hall-the
Westminster Hall of Edinburgh-are only such as
relate to men eminent in the College of Justice, for
learning or great legal lore, among whom we may
note Duncan Forbes, Lords Monboddo and Kames,
Hume, Erskine, and Mackenzie, and, indeed,
nearly all the men of note in past Scottish literature.
?? Our own generation has witnessed there Cockbum,
Brougham, Horner, Jeffrey, and Scott, sharing
in the grave offices of the court, or takinga part in the
broad humour and wit for which the members of ? the Faculty ? are so celebrated ; and still the visitor
to ,this learned and literary lounge cannot fail to be
gratified in a high degree, while watching the different
groups who gather in the Hall, and noting the
lines of thought or humour, and the infinite variety
of physiognomy for which the wigged and gowned
loiterers of the Law Courts are peculiarly famed.?
consequence of a difikrence having arisen between
the Facultyand the Lords of Session, banished the
whole of the former twelve miles from Edinburgh.
The subject in dispute was whether any appeal
lay from the Court of Session to the Parliament.
It is obvious that in this contest between the bench
and the bar, law and the practice of the court,.
independent of expediency, could alone be con--
sidered, and the Faculty remained banished until
the unlimited supremacy of the Court should be
acknowledged; but what would those sturdy advocates
of the seventeenth century have thought of
appeals to a Parliament sitting at Westminster ?
In 1702 the Faculty became again embroiled.
Upon the accession of Queen Anne a new Parliament
was not summoned, that which sat during
the reign of her predecessor being reassembled.
The Duke of Hamilton and seventy-nine members
protested against this as being illegal, and withdrew
from the House. The Faculty of Advocates passed
-
The Hall is now open from where the throne
stood to the great south window. Once it was
divided into two portions-the southern separated
from the rest by a screen, accommodated the Court
of Session ; the northern, comprising a subsection
used for the Sheriff Court, was chiefly a kind of
lobby, and was degraded by a set of little booths,.
occupied as taverns, booksellers? shops, and toy--
shops, like those in the Krames. Among others,
.Creech had a stall ; and such was once the conditioe
of Westminster Hall. Spottiswoode of that ilk,
who published a work on ?Forms of Process,?
in I 7 I 8, records that there were then ? two keepers
of the session-house, who had small salaries to de
the menial offices there, and that no small part of
their annual perquisites came from the kramrrs in
the outer hall.?
The great Hall is now used as a promenade and
waiting-room by the advocates and other practitioners
connected with the supreme courts, and
during the sitting of these presents a very animated
scene ; and there George IV. was received in kingly
state at a grand banquet, on his visit to the city
in 1822.
Parliament House.] THE COLLEGE OF JUSTICE. -
a vote among themselves in favour of that protest,
declaring it to be founded on the laws of the realm,
for which they were prosecuted before Parliament,
and sharply reprimanded, a circumstance which
gave great offence to the nation..
The affairs ot the Faculty are managed by a
Dean, or President, a Treasurer, Clerk, and selected
Council ; and, besides the usual branches
of a liberal education, those who are admitted
.as advocates must have gone through a regular
course of civil and Scottish law.
Connected with the Court of Session is the
Society of Clerks, or Writers to the Royal Signet,
whose business it is to subscribe the writs that
pass under that signet in Scotland, and practise as
attorneys before the Courts of Session, Justiciary,
and the Jury Court The office of Keeper of the
Signet is a lucrative one, but is performed by a
deputy. The qualifications for admission to this
body are an apprenticeship for five years with one of
the members, after two years? attendance at the University,
and on a course of lectures on conveyancing
given by a lecturer appointed by the Society, and
also on the Scottish law class in the University.
Besides these Writers to the Signet, who enjoy
the right of conducting exclusively certain branches
.of legal procedure, there is another, but? inferior,
society of practitioners, who act as attorneys before
the various Courts, in which they were of long
standing, but were only incorporated in 1797, under
the title of Solicitors before the Supreme Courts,
The Judges of the Courts of Session and Justiciary,
with members of these before-mentioned
corporate bodies, and the officers of Court, form
the College of Justice instituted by James V., and
of which the Judges of the Court of Session enjoy
the title of Senators.
The halls for the administration of justice immediately
adjoin the Parliament House. The Court
af Session is divided into what are nanied the
Outer and Inner Houses. The former consists of
five judges, or Lords Ordinary, occupying separate
Courts, where cases are heard for the first time;
tbe latter comprises two Courts, technically known
.as the First and Second Divisions. Four Judges
sit in each of these, and it is before them that
litigants, if dissatisfied with the Outer House decision,
may bring their cases for final judgment,
unless .afterwards they indulge in the expensive
luxury of appealing to the House of Lords.
The Courts of the Lords Ordinary enter from
the corridor at the south end of the great hall, and
Those of the Inner House from a long lobby on the
east side of it.
Although the .College of Justice was instituted
by James V., and held its first sederunt in the
old Tolbooth on the 27th of May, 1532, it
was first projected by his uncle, the Regent-
Duke of Albany. The Court originally consisted
of the Lord Chancellor, the Lord President,
fourteen Lords Ordinary, or Senators (one-half
clergy and one-half laity), and afterwards an indefinite
number of supernumerary judges, designated
Extraordinary Lords. The annual expenses of
this Court were defrayed from the revenues of
the clergy, who bitterly, but vainly, remonstrated
against this taxation. It may not be uninteresting
to give here the names of the first members of the
Supreme Judicature :-
Alexander, Abbot of Cambuskenneth, Lord
President ; Richard Bothwell, Rector of Askirk
(whose father was Provost .of Edinburgh in the
time of James 111,); John Dingwall, Provost of
the Trinity Church; Henry White, Dean of
Brechin ; William Gibson, Dean of Restalrig ;
Thomas Hay, Dean of Dunbar; Robert Reid,
Abbot of Kinloss ; George Kerr, Provost of
Dunglass ; Sir William Scott of Balwearie ; Sir
John Campbell of Lundie ; Sir James Colville
of Easter Wemyss; Sir Adam Otterburne of
Auldhame ; Nicolas Crawford. of Oxengangs ; Sir
Francis Bothwell (who was provost of the city
in 1535); and James Lawson of the Highriggs.
The memoirs which have been preserved of
the administration of justice by the Court of
Session in the olden time are not much to its
honour. The arbitrary nature of it is referred to
by Buchanan, and in the time of James VI. we
find the Lord Chancellor, Sir Alexander Seaton
(Lord Fyvie in 1598), superintending the lawsuits
of a friend, and instructing him in the mode and
manner in which they should be conducted. But
Scott of Scotstarvit gives us a sorry account of
this peer, who owed his preferment to Anne of
Denmark. The strongest proof of the corrupt
nature of the Court is given us by the -4ct passed
by the sixth parliament of. James VI., in 1579,
by which the Lords were prohibited, ? No uther be
thamselves, or be their wives, or servantes, to take
in ony times cumming, bud, bribe, gudes, or geir,
fra quhat-sum-ever person or persones presently
havand, or that hereafter sal1 happen to have
ony actions or causes persewed before them,?
under pain of confiscation (Glendoick?s Acts, fol.).
The necessity for this law plainly evinws that
the secret acceptance of bribes must have been
common among the judges of the time; while,
in other instances, the warlike spirit of the people
paralysed the powers of the Court.
When a noble, or chief of rank, was summoned tu
