BI 0 GR AP HI C AL S KET C HE S. 365
In the “ Court of Session Garland,” by Boswell, the biographer of Johnson,
the hypercritical accuracy of his lordship is thus alluded to :-
“ This cause,” cries Hailes, “to judge I can’t pretend,
Forjustice, I perceive, wants an e at the end.”’
t
In 1776 he became one of the Lords of Justiciary; and his conduct as a
judge in the criminal court elicited universal approbation. It had been too
much the practice of judges to throw their weight into the scale of the crown,”
acting more as public prosecutors than as impartial arbiters. Not so with Lord
Hailes : his conduct was regulated by a different sense of duty. While he held
the scales of Justice, his conduct towards the accused was distinguished for
impartiality ; and wherever a doubt arose in the course of a criminal prosecution,
he never failed to give the culprit the benefit of it.
No judge, perhaps, ever presided in a court of justiciary, who supported the
dignity of his station with greater propriety, or invested the forms of procedure
with greater solemnity. The manner in which he administered the oaths of
court was deeply impressive. “ Rising slowly from his seat,” says his biographer,
“with a gravity peculiarly his own, he pronounced the words in a manner so
serious, as to impress the most profligate mind with the conviction that he was
himself awed with the immediate presence of that awful Majesty to whom the
appeal was made. It is perhaps impossible for human vigilance cir sagacity
altogether to prevent perjury in courts of justice ; but he was a villain of no
common order that could perjure himself in the presence of Lord Hailes.”
High as his lordship stands in the memory of his country as a judge of the
land, he is still better known to the world as a scholar and an author. . Those
hours of relaxation from official duties, which others usually spend in amusement,
were sedulously devoted to the service of literature. His historical researches
are peculiarly valuable ; and he was the first writer who threw aside those fictions
by which Scottish history had previously been disfigured. The literary labours
of Lord Hailes extend over a period of thirty-nine years-from the date of the
first publication, in 1751, till the date of his last, in 1790 ; and the works issued
under his own superintendence amount to almost an equal number.
Although eminently qualified by his acquirements to become one of the
brightest ornaments of social life, his lordship’s intercourse with society was
very limited. Among his many eminent contemporaries, there were only a
few persons with whom he lived on terms of familiar intercourse ; and these
were “ selected as much on account of their moral and religious worth as for
their genius and learning.”
In theology Lord Hailes entertained very different views from those held by
This couplet is said to refer to an actual occurrence, Lord Hailes havil;g seriously objected to a
law-paper wherein the word justice had been inadvertently spelt without the final e. As a farther
ilwtauce of the hical nicety and minute accuracy of his lordship, it may be stated, that, wherever
he detected the smallest literal error or typographical inaccuracy in any of the printed papen laid
before him, he never failed to send for the agent in order to reprimand him ; aud even when it waa
explained to his lordship that the paper had been printed in the utmost hurry, and that the workmen
had been employed all night upon it, he could not be induced to overlook the fault.
