POLITICS OF THE ATHENS.

“As when the sea breaks o’er its bounds,
And overflows the level grounds,
Those banks and dams, that, like a screen,
Did keep it out, now keep it in;
So, when tyrannic usurpation
Invades the freedom of a nation,
The laws o’ th’ land, that were intended
To keep it out, are made defend it.”—Butler.

Although the Athens be the point at which the whole politics of Scotland have their origin and their termination; and, although the parties there be more uniform and incessant in their hostility than in the remote parts of the country; yet, it is impossible to understand the composition, spirit, and conduct of those parties, without premising a few words on the general question.

Now, though England growls, and Ireland brawls and fights, neither of them is perhaps so degraded in its political system as Scotland. The great body of the Scottish people may indeed be said to have no political rights at all; and the members that are sent to the House of Commons as the representatives of Scotland, may just as properly be considered the representatives of Bengal or Barbadoes, with which they have often fully as much connexion, and in the welfare of which they are fully as much interested. In the Scottish counties, the real proprietors of the soil are not necessarily the voters for members of parliament; and, in the royal burghs of Scotland, the great body of the freemen and burgesses, instead of possessing the parliamentary franchise, are almost necessarily in opposition to those who do possess it. Freeholds, in the Scottish counties, are held either by charters directly from the King, or by charter from subjects as their vassals. No part of the lands in Scotland being now in the hands of the crown, the extent of holdings by crown charter cannot be increased; and, as the rents of the crown vassals were valued a considerable time ago, an increase of rent, either from the improvement of the estate, or from any other cause, does not increase its political value. None but those who hold of the crown, and whose valued rents are of the stipulated amount, can vote for members of parliament; though, if the valued rental amount to any number of times the sum necessary for a qualification, the holder of the crown charter for that rental possesses as many votes as the amount will bear. In theory, therefore, there is a difference between the value of Scotch property in land, and the representation of that property in parliament. The value of the land varies with the prosperity of the country, while the extent of the representation remains the same. This is an injustice; but it is by no means the only or the greatest one of which the Scottish landholder has to complain. The property in the crown charter, or superiority, as it is called, is different from the property in the land: the lands may be sold, and the votes retained by the seller; the votes may be sold, without selling the land; or the land may be sold to one purchaser, and the votes to another.

This system is productive of so many evils, that, in many instances, a Scotch county representation is substantially no representation at all. The local interests and improvements of the counties are apt to be neglected, the county interest is easily thrown into the scale of any party or faction,—more especially if that party or faction be subservient to the administration,—and, as the county member, when ministerial, has great influence over all the government offices and patronage connected with the county, the chances are, that these will be bestowed upon persons who are either ignorant of their duties, from a want of local knowledge, or disliked by the independent proprietors upon party grounds. The old and decaying families, whose fallen fortunes force them to sell their lands, and whose pride as well as whose interest induces them to retain their superiorities, for the purpose of turning them to political account, are thus ranged in opposition to the more active and intelligent, who, by the exercise of their own talents, have acquired the means of purchasing land; and thus, independently of the old and theoretic distinctions of tories and whigs, there is perhaps more to create and render conspicuous the distinction between the liberal and the servile, in the Scotch counties, than in those either of England or of Ireland.

In the royal burghs of Scotland, the separation between those who really possess the property and are interested in the welfare of the burgh, and those who are in possession of the elective franchise, is still more glaring in its absurdity, and pernicious in its effects. During the minority of James III. of Scotland, in 1469, when that prince was only seventeen years old, and when the turbulent nobles were setting the laws at defiance, and, by bands of armed ruffians in the streets, compelling the freemen of the royal burghs to choose their creatures as magistrates,—a statute was enacted, which was deemed salutary at the time, but which has since reduced the political influence of the whole burgesses of Scotland to a mere nonentity, and made the Scotch burgh representation one of the most convenient and efficient engines of corruption that ever was devised. That statute gave to the official men, seldom exceeding twenty in any burgh, and generally the mere creatures of some chief or leader, who frequently has no connexion with the burgh at all—the power of electing their successors in office,—that is, of placing the whole parliamentary franchise, the whole revenues of the burgh, every species of patronage that it can exercise, and every alteration and improvement that it would require, solely and irretrievably at the control and disposal of about twenty persons, and giving it to them and their assignees as a perpetual inheritance.

Now, although these twenty men should be the most intelligent that each burgh could afford, yet, as the people have no voice in the election of them, and no control over the acts of their management, however corrupt, pernicious, or ruinous, it is impossible that they can be regarded as any thing else than an useless and pernicious excrescence,—a local despotism, of the most hurtful and humiliating description, and a marketable commodity, always willing to hire themselves to whoever should bribe the highest. Circumstanced as they are, however, it is impossible that they can be the most intelligent men in their respective burghs. Being a minority, and a very small and insignificant one, public opinion must always be against them; and this circumstance alone has a degrading and debasing tendency. The object of the leading men among them must naturally be to preserve their own superiority and influence; and therefore they must naturally procure the election of recruits whose wisdom shall not be dangerous to their own influence, and whose feelings of honour shall have no tendency to revolt at the iniquities of the system; and thus, while the system is in itself as corrupting as can well be imagined, it has a tendency to draw towards it those who are both disposed and qualified for being corrupted. The specimens of those burghal office-bearers, which I had seen in the Athens during the King’s visit, were to me a decided proof of the badness of the system under which they are appointed; and the derision in which they appeared to be held by the people, and the pleasure which their disappointments and rebuffs seemed to afford, told plainly enough the estimation in which they are held; and the Scotch are by much too prudent and cautious a people not to pitch their estimate, both of things and of persons, in a very nice proportion to the value.

Now, independently of its mischievous political effects, there is something in this system which is peculiarly injurious to the local police and improvements of Scotland. If the way in which those local rulers are chosen gives general offence, and if their own qualifications be so confessedly inferior as to excite contempt, it is not possible that the regulations which they frame, even assuming that they could be good in themselves, could be carried into effect with that decision, and supported with that cordiality, on the part of the public, which a wholesome police requires; as little is it likely that such men, so appointed, could either plan judicious and liberal improvements, or carry them into execution. Opposed to the people in their very formation, the people must be presumed to oppose them in every part of their conduct where opposition is practicable, and so annoy them in the rest of it as to make them confine themselves to that—to which indeed the whole spirit of the system is exceedingly prone—their own personal importance and aggrandizement.

But it is with reference to the general politics of Scotland as centring in the Athens, that this system of burghal election exerts its most pernicious and permanent influence; for whoever chooses to go to the expense, (and where very weighty purses are not run against each other that is by no means great,) can purchase the votes of Scotch provosts, bailies, and counsellors, with as much ease and certainty as he could do the necks of as many geese. No doubt there are temporary and local exceptions, just as there have been wise legislators, upright judges, and generous commanders, in the very worst systems of despotism; but those exceptions, from all that I could ever learn, have been so few in number, and so far between, both in space and in time, as not to diminish the truth of the general likeness.

If indeed any other proof, than a knowledge of the system, and a sight of the men, were wanted, to show how extremely convenient a tool those Scotch burghal magistrates are, in the hands of whatever party has the political influence in Scotland for the time, that proof would be found in the great pertinacity with which the official men of the Athens have fought for the preservation of the system, and the miserable sophistications to which they have been obliged to have recourse in order so to disguise it as that it might be at all palatable to the better informed or more liberal official men in England. Within the last thirty years, the burgesses of Scotland have made two strong and almost unanimous efforts to shake it off. They have shown how ruinous it is to themselves, how degrading to the magisterial office, and how ill in accordance with that freedom which England boasts. But the lords advocate and other keepers of—what shall I say?—Ay—their own places, have worked about it and about it; and “darkened counsel by words without knowledge,” till some unfortunate circumstance of the times has enabled them to couple the attempt at its destruction with that with which it has no connexion—sedition and rebellion against the British government. The one attempt was spoiled by the breaking out of the French Revolution, and the disturbances which at that time took place in Scotland; and the subsequent attempt failed in consequence of those grumblings of the people, which were occasioned by a time of scarcity of provisions and want of employment.

The state of the country representation, and the system of the burgh government, would be in themselves sufficient to lay the ministerial party in the Athens open to suspicion, and to fill the rest of the inhabitants with discontent. But these are heightened by other circumstances. The judges, and more especially the crown lawyers, have a power over the people of Scotland, at which Englishmen would stand aghast. The judges (no matter whether they exercise it or not) have, directly or indirectly, the power of nominating every one of the jury by which a Scotchman is tried,—or, if they have not this power in its full extent now, they had it till very lately. In the case of ordinary crimes, this power, though a theoretical imperfection, might not be very dangerous in practice,—because, in ordinary crimes, there is nothing to entice a judge away from the natural dictates and natural course of justice; but, in offences of a political description, the case must be different,—because all or at least a majority of the judges, being persons who, at some period of their lives, are helped forward by ministerial influence, cannot be supposed to be entirely divested of those feelings of gratitude which are natural to all classes and conditions of men.

The lord advocate of Scotland is, from the very nature of his office, much more a political character than any judge. In all questions between the King and his subjects, or between the people and the criminal law, he is not only the King’s principal officer, but the express representative of the King himself; and, except in the truly kingly and glorious attribute of granting pardon, he has more ample powers than the King has by the law of England. It is true, that, through the instrumentality of his attorney-general, the King can file warrants against such of his English subjects as are guilty of offences, tending to injure his person, or subvert his government, and bring them to trial without the intervention of a grand jury; and it is also true, that this power has been exercised in cases where neither the person nor the government of the King could have been in the smallest danger; but still, great as this power is in itself, and dangerous as the frequent exercise of it is to liberty, it is nothing in comparison of what the Scotch lord advocate possesses. The attorney-general is always understood to institute his proceedings in consequence of a representation from the sovereign himself, or from the great officers of the state; and, by law, it is strictly confined to what are called state offences. The lord advocate, on the other hand, is, of his own pleasure, and without necessary consultation with any one, not only the public prosecutor in all cases of trial, but the arbiter who decides who shall or shall not be tried; and, in the latter capacity, he, of the plenitude of his own power, performs all the functions of an English grand jury. When a crime, either against society or against the state, has been committed, or when a person is suspected of the one or the other description of crime, the procurator fiscal of the district or burgh, (who, in many instances, is an ignorant and bungling attorney, whose friends, or whose secret services, have procured that office for him, as much on account of his incapacity for making a decent living by the ordinary practice of his profession, as for any other reason,) takes “a precognition,” that is, a secret and inquisitorial examination of ex-parte evidence, which he transmits to the lord advocate as the ground upon which that officer may or may not proceed, just as he pleases. If it please the lord advocate that the party thus accused shall be indicted, he prepares the necessary instruments; and the trial must be begun, if the party accused shall petition the court for it, within forty days of his being imprisoned, and held to bail, and finished within other forty days; but in all cases which come before the lords of justiciary, either in their sessional court in the Athens, or at their periodical circuits in the different counties, the lord advocate is substantially both the public prosecutor and the grand jury that sends the case to trial. Where a special commission of oyer and terminer is issued for the trial of persons accused of high treason, a grand jury, of not fewer than seventeen, and not more than twenty-one, have a power of returning as true, or ignoring the bills of indictment, if twelve of their number shall be of that opinion. But, even with this limitation, the power of the lord advocate, more especially as relates to political offences, is such as to heighten the animosity, which the state of the elective franchise is calculated to produce, between the comparatively small portion of the Scottish people who are influenced by the hope or possession of office, and the much larger portion who are under no such influence.

The distance of the Athens from the seat of the executive and legislative powers of the empire; and the colouring which it is possible that a representation may receive from those who carry it to headquarters, also tend to lessen the confidence which the people of Scotland might otherwise be disposed to place in the men who form as it were the official links of connexion between them and their King; and when it is considered how much connexion and influence can do even at headquarters, it is easy to imagine how much greater their extent must be at such an outpost as the Athens.

There would be no end of a statement of the complaints which I found the independent Caledonians had to make against their delegated authorities. From what I saw in the Athens, and from what I heard in my excursion over the country, I could plainly discover that the people of Scotland are perhaps more uniformly and more sincerely devoted to all the better parts of the constitution, and to the person and family of the King, than the people of England; but I could at the same time perceive that they felt towards the immediate holders of Scottish power and office, a much stronger dislike than is to be found in England. At the same time, they all seemed anxious to make it appear that those official men wished to identify themselves, and even their failings, so much with the general government of the country, that they were ever ready to denounce accusations against themselves as attacks on the government; and many instances were mentioned to me in which a very excusable, and, as I would have thought, a very deserved ridicule of a small man of office, had been considered and represented as the very next step to levying war upon the King.

The tendency which the Athenians have to make themselves, their sayings, and their doings, the grand objects of thought and conversation, helps to give currency and additional bitterness to this political rancour. If a scrap of paper which a procurator fiscal cannot read, or a sharp instrument of which a loyal magistrate cannot exactly understand the use, happen to be found in any district, more especially in any of the populous and manufacturing districts of Scotland, the chance is, that if there be any symptom in the public mind which sophistry can twist into an attitude of irritation, the one shall find its way to the Athens as a seditious circular, and the other as a rebellious pike. The official men of the Athens have no great knowledge of articles of these descriptions, and as of late years the lords advocates in particular have not only been a very sensitive and vigilant race, but have been of those mental dimensions which are the better for a discovery or two to give them importance, there have, during those years, been things suspected of rebellious propensities, which would have been regarded as quite harmless in any other part of the island. A merchant who has extensive dealings with Russia, and who is also concerned in the north sea whale fishing, informed me that in the memorable year 1819, a few letters written in the Russian character, and two dozen of harpoons, were taken from his warehouse with great ceremony, forwarded to Edinburgh at considerable expense, and, as he supposed, cost the authorities there, not only much profound cogitation among themselves, but an application to the secretary of state, ere they were sent back to him. Indeed, were I to recount all the transactions of this description that were mentioned to me during my residence in Scotland, I should fill several volumes with instances of the lamentable and ludicrous effects of uninformed zeal in official men: to record such matters would, however, be an attempt to preserve the memory of persons and things which no effort could keep from oblivion.

In the peculiar politics of the Athens, it struck me, that though there are only two parties,—the men in office, with their connexions and dependants, and the men who are not in office,—yet that there are several distinct grounds of opposition, some of which neither party are very willing to avow, and therefore they lump them all together in the convenient cant terms of Tory and Whig. Both parties are radically and substantially loyal; and both parties, though in different degrees, and sought for by different measures, may have a regard for the prosperity of their country generally, and for the glory and aggrandizement of the Athens, in a particular and pre-eminent degree; but still, their wars of the tongue, and the unpleasant inroads which these wars make upon domestic prosperity and happiness, are just as unpleasant as though the one party were about to draw the sword for absolute despotism, and the other for blind and indiscriminate democracy.

The Athenian Tories are perhaps the most place-devoted race in the British dominions. Office is their god; and, as is sometimes the case with other devotees, their devotion is fervent in proportion to the feeling they have of their own unworthiness. In defence of that which they worship, they have no more variety of voice than the winged warders of the Roman capitol. Hence, as I said of the burghal magistracies, they cling to each other, and by that very means separate themselves more from the people than the necessity of the case requires. Their strength consists, mainly, in those imperfections of the elective franchise, and powers of the law officers of the Crown, to which I have alluded; and as those cannot well be defended in argument, eloquence is of little use to them, and they seem to have no great partiality for those who possess it. When they make an attack as a body, in any other way than through the instrumentality of the law, (which they can employ only when the waters of society are a little troubled,) they do it snugly and covertly,—by letting people feel that they have the dispensing of rewards; by standing between a candidate and an office for which he is qualified, or by something of a similar kind. I was told that, at one period, and that not a very remote one, they would hit a man whose politics they did not like, through the medium of his banker; but latterly, the will or the power, or at any rate the practice of this, has been lessened, if not abolished.

At some periods, indeed, they have shown direct hostilities: they have spoken and written with considerable loudness, and considerable license; but the system, at least the local system, of which they have undertaken the championship, has not furnished them with sound principles or satisfactory arguments; and their mode of conducting themselves has shown that they were deficient both in skill and in tact. They have been exposed, certainly, and ashamed of themselves, very possibly.

The Athenian Whigs are a mixed multitude, and though they all agree in their opposition to the other party, they are by no means agreed among themselves,—that is, as far as I could discover, they are not all influenced by the same principles, or seeking the same object. The party who are in office, have always among their opponents, and frequently foremost amongst them, a party whose principles and disposition differ not much from their own—namely, the party who wish to get in. As, however, those longers for office cannot, like the enjoyers of office, support themselves by their politics, they have no principle of union, and therefore do not, like the others, unfurl the ensigns, and raise the war-cry, as a party. Were they to do this, it would not only defeat their own object, but cause them to be more disliked by the independent part of the people, than the persons who are in possession. Feeding, whether with pudding or with place, has a tendency to smooth the turbulent passions; while hungering, whether for food or for office, has an effect exactly the opposite. Hence, even the Athenian placeman, whose appetite is most ravenous, and who is prone to snarl at those whom he suspects of a desire to take his portion from him, is the more civil from being in office, unless when he thinks that his honours or emoluments are in danger. Upon this principle, he is kind to those whom he thinks indifferent, and polite, and occasionally generous, to all whom he imagines can strengthen his influence, without turning round in the end, and attempting to share it with him. Hence, also, the place-hunter, I mean him who hunts for it in opposition to the present holder, is always irritable and jealous, and keeps his wishes and his plans as much to himself as ever he can. Thus, such of the Athenian Whigs as would be placemen to the very core, if they had “good opportunities for the ’ork,” are careful to blend, and lose if possible, their peculiar propensities, in the general mass of those who, without any specific or immediate view to their own personal interest, seek for a reform of what they conceive to be the political abuses of their country.

In this way, all that is selfish among the Athenian Whigs can be kept in the back-ground; and as the principles which they abet are much more rational in themselves, much more agreeable to the general feelings of mankind, and much better adapted for declamation, than those which their opponents profess—when they venture to profess any thing, the Whigs always have had, and always will continue to have, the best of the argument, and the finest of the eloquence upon their side. But though they be by far the most numerous, and the most specious, their chances of success bear no proportion either to their numbers or the apparent superiority of their cause. The opposite party have the command of the public purse, and when the two parties strive, they are thus enabled to throw the expense of both sides upon their antagonists. Such are a few of the principles and practices of Athenian politics,—a war of words, of which it would be no easy matter to define the object, or calculate the end.