The Sun.
London, England, 1865-01-13 00:00:00

The Lord-Advocate on English Law and
Feeling.

The Lord-Advocate, ALP., delivered an addiess
to the Scottish Trade Protection Society, on the

Bankrupt Law, at Edinburgh, on Wednesday even-

ing. Tlere was a large attendance in Queen-street
Hall, and the chairman of the society (Bailie Moss-

man) introduced the business of the evening.
The LORD-ADVOCATE stated that the subject of
his lecture would be the English Law of Bankruptcy,
as to which he intended to offer information rather
than criticism. Tie 'premised his observations by

some remarks on the state of national feeling
be-
tween England and Scotland. He 'said—ln the dis-

cussion of international merits or demerits, of course,
there are predilections and prejudices on either side.
We see through the coloured glasses of our national

tendencies, and judge our neighbour, even although
it be unconsciously, by the standards which our
habits and associations have raised among us. We
are jealous of English innovations—they are not

less jealous of those that come from our side of the

Tweed. Which is the more uiireasonable or the more

provincial in this respect it is not necessary to de-

That the Scotsman is tenacious of that which

pertains to his nationality I have no occasion to
deny; that lie is proud of his country's history, proud
of her public spirit, and of the place which her sons
have taken in the world, probably none of us are
ashamed to confess ; but now and then an e4cagge-
ration of his spirit breaks out in unreasoning fear
and loud outcry at the apprehension of the invasion
of English institutions. It is the quill and not the
arm of the Southron that is now the subject of
alarm—not the blue bonnets, but the white wigs

against whom the Border is to be defended—an
incursion of hostile and hungry lawyers on the sacred

domain of the jurisprudence of Scotland. (A laugh.)

It was but last year that I tabled a proposal for re-
form in our forms of procedure in our Scottish

courts ; and it struck me that as Westminster Hall
and the Court of Chancery had reformed themselves
10 years ago, and very mainly by building on and

improving our forms, and as experiment had
resulted in a most striking and remarkable success
in facilitating and shortening procedure, I could
not go far wrong in following the example.
But the spirit of Scottish nationality was
awake, and the fiery cross was displayed in-
stantly to spread the alarm. English terminology
—apart altogether from what the terms meant—
was an offence in Caledonian ears ; and for the
time, believing discretion to be the better part of
valour, I retreated with my English allies, and, I
suppose, if I renew the attempt, must accoutre my-
self with weapons drawn from our national armoury.
But our neighbours south of the Tweed are quite as
bad—nay, they are worse. One could understand
that the poorer country should be jealous of the
richer—tenacious of encroachment, standing on its

dignity, suspicious of affront. That the sister who
is the shorter in stature should make the most of her

height, and sometimes stand on tiptoe, is natural
and pardonable. (A laugh.) To what extent we
indulge in it we can hardly judge, for it is difficult
to judge ourselves impartially ; but whence comes,
or what causes, the strange provincial sensitiveness
on this subject in England—or rather, I should say,
London, for it is chiefly confined to that quarter—l
never could understand. Is it the memory of the
raids of the Border, or the recollection of the day
when the least gainly of the Stuarts, with a broad

Scotch accent and ayscanty Scottish retinue, arrived

on horseback from the north and took up his quar-

tern in the palace of the Tudors, or is it the memory
of Bute and Mansfield burning in the breasts of the
descendants of Wilkes and Junius, which tinges the
opinions of London critics with so strong a national
colour ? It is not antipathy, for they are kindly,
and warm-hearted, and hospitable ; it is not
jealousy, for they are the stronger. Neither is it
contempt, for generally our countrymen command
respect, and I believe deserve it ; but it is a kind

_ .
of irresistible instinct which impels those who suffer

under it, if they refer to the law of Scotland, or
the religion of Scotland, or the whisky of Scot-
land—nay, if they review a book written or nar-
rate an act done by a Scotsman—to couple with
their criticism some dissertation on national
characteristics. I wonder it does not occur to
them how thoroughly provincial the habit is. A
French, or German, or Italian, or American critic
would not pause for a moment to consider 'whether
the author of a work in the English language was
an Englishman or a Scotchman. Distinctions and
peculiarities, which seem large on the narrow field
disappear entirely on the wider ; and it would be
well for us in all such matters to look at ourselves
in the looking-glass of Europe, and consider whe-
ther, after all this perpetual harping on national dis,
tinctions between two such countries be not precisely
on a level with the petty rivalries of a country town
or the contending fashions of a cathedral close. In
this view the sin is mainly other side of the Tweed.
When we advert to the writings, or speeches, or ca-

reer of Englishmen,•we sink their nationality. We
deal with them as they deal with the rest of the
world, in the individualising spirit which men of en-
larged view and liberal cultivation ought to exhibit.
Sometimes, however, our liberality takes a different
direction. Sometimes the Scottish lion lays all his
terror by, and is seized by an unreasoning fondness
for the English leopard. These fits come on at inter-
vals, and when they come require to be watched. It
suddenly becomes fashionable to decry Scottish in-
stitutions, and trumpet those of England. Incense
is offered at our sister's shrine, and our native mo-
desty descends into self-depreciation of the most ex-
travagant description. We then beg for favours
which, if offered, we should have resented, and break
forth in ecstacy about institutions we have never
taken the trouble to understand. I saw the other
day a letter in a London newspaper, recommending
that we should adopt the English system of criminal
prosecution—that is to say, to adopt the system
which England alone of any civilised nation follows,
to leave the prosecution of public crimes in the hands
of private prosecutors, and saddle ourselves with the
dead weight of grand juries and coroners' inquests,
from which the more enlightened English jurists have
long wished to be relieved. Loud were the rejoicings
when jury trials in civil cases were imported from
the south. The advent of this " bulwark of British
freedom" was hailed with ringing plaudits, and the
day was considered a fortunate one in the legal
calendar. Far be it from me to disparage the boon.
Still, in some respects it cannot be denied that dis-
tance lent a little enchantment to the view, as both
clients and jurymen sometimes discover ; and per-
haps, had we known then all which we know now,
one adaptation of the system would have been more
careful and more skilful. One forpa of this national
modesty exhibited itself some 10 years ago in a very
acute state of development. We wanted—of all
morbid cravings imaginable—the English Bankrupt
Law. We loudly demanded, in the paroxyism of
the disease, why the blessings of official assignees
were not bestowed on us ; we went into fits abou t
a court of bankruptcy, and filled the air of Parlia-
ment with the wailing,s of Glasgow commerce bereft
of its place among the nations, and left an outcast
in our cold northern air, uncherished by commis-
sioners and unprotected by registrars. Kindly
English friends were good enough to fan the flame,
enlighten our ignorance, and point out the way in
which our grievances might be redressed. Little
pamphlets were written, little speeches were spoken,
and a bill was prepared which was to heal the
afflicted spirit of Scotland and cure its bankrupt
woes. And indeed, so fierce had been the access of
the fever that the patient had almost been forced to
accept on his recovery what he had' raved for in
his delirium. It was the big bill which cured him.
The reality looked so little like the bright moon he
had cried for that it startled and sobered him, and a
year or two afterwards, when his senses had entirely
returned, we passed an act on bankruptcy, which,
though by no means perfect, has been well and