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.