BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 217
tioned county for above twenty years; and in 1792 was promoted to the bench.‘
He was zealous in the discharge of the important duties of his office till within
a very few years of his death, when he resigned his gown and retired from the
bustle of public life, to spend the remainder of his days in quietness with his
family, and to enjoy the society of a very few of the devoted friends of his early
years.
Lord Polkemmet, while on the bench, was remarkable for his good nature.
Although not considered as a first-rate lawyer, or at all fitted to solve difficult
legal questions, he had a fund of good sense, which in the great mass of cases
enabled him to discharge his judicial duties with propriety. His lordship not
unfrequently used the broad Scottish dialect when addressing counsel. Upon
one occasion Henry Erskine had been heard at very great length in a casea
presumption that it was not a very good one, as he was not accustomed to
waste his time in idle harangue (as is too much the practice now-a-days), when
he had the right side of a cause. The judge was somewhat mystified by this,
as he thought, uncalled-for piece of declamation. He shrewdly suspected that
it was a regular attempt to bamboozle; but he was not to be done. At the
termination of the pleading he observed-‘‘ A vera fine speech, Harg-vera ;
but I’ll just mak‘ it play wimble-wamble in my wame o’er my toddy till the
morrow.” He accordingly made (to use the ordinary legal phrase) avizandumin
other words, took the process home, and returned it in due time, with an
interlocutor (decision)-showing that the lawyer’s eloquence had been in vain
expended.
Lord Polkemmet was twice married; first to a daughter of Sir James
Colquhoun of Luss, Bart., by whom he had a large family, five of whom-one
son and four daughters-survived him. He married, secondly, Miss Janet
Sinclair, a sister of Sir John Sinclair, Bart., and cousin-german to his first
wife.
It was the intention of Government to confer the dignity of a baronet upon
his lordship, and the necessary arrangements were in progress for that purpose,
when he died. The honour was subsequently conferred on his son, Sir William
Baillie, Bart., in 1823. Lord Polkemmet was a great supporter of the Church,
and intimate with many of the clergy, who had always a hearty welcome at
Polkemmet.
She had no family, and died in 1833.
He was a tall, good-looking man.’
His lordship is said to have owed his preferment to Lord Braxfield, who had been his professional
adviser in a suit in which he was engaged His
opponent had offered liberal terms of compromise, which, by the advice of Braxfield, were rejectedunfortunately,
as it happened, for his client was ultimately unsuccessful. As he thought himself the
cause of his friend’s suffering a considerable loss, he did all he could to repair it, by procuring for him
a seat on the bench. Braxfield, though he loved his friend, loved his joke too ; and as Baillie wm
not an orator, some one having objected to the appointment very strongly, cqpecially on that ground,
Braxfield replied, “ Nonsense, man ; I’ve bargained that he’s never to speak.” A very clever imitation
of Lord Polkemmet’s judicial style is given in the celebrated Diamond Beetle Case, ajac &esprit
by a most accomplished individual, and one of the Senaton of the College of Justice.
a He was remarkable for the length of his fingers, and at the impugning of the Theses, which
takes place in presence of the judgea, the candidate for legal honoun was certiorated of the proper
to the succession to an estate of some value.
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