Lord President Campbell, after the fashion of those times, was somewhat addicted to browbeating young counsel; and as bearding a judge on the Bench is not a likely way to rise in favour, his lordship generally got it all his own way. Upon one occasion, however, he caught a tartar. His lordship had what are termed pig's eyes, and his voice was thin and weak. Corbet, a bold and sarcastic counsel in his younger days, had been pleading before the Inner House, and as usual the President commenced his attack, when his intended victim thus addressed him: "My lord, it is not for me to enter into any altercation with your lordship, for no one knows better than I do the great difference between us; you occupy the highest place on the Bench, and I the lowest at the Bar; and then, my lord, I have not your lordship's voice of thunder—I have not your lordship's rolling eye of command."
ROBERT MACQUEEN, LORD BRAXFIELD.
Robert Macqueen (Lord Braxfield), the prototype of Stevenson's "Weir of Hermiston," was known as the "hanging judge"—the Judge Jeffreys of Scotland; but he was a sound judge. He argued a point in a colloquial style, asking a question, and himself supplying the answer in his clear, abrupt manner. But he was illiterate, and without the least desire for refined enjoyment, holding in disdain natures less coarse than his own; he shocked the feelings of those even of an age which had less decorum than prevailed in that which succeeded, and would not be tolerated by the working classes of to-day. Playing whist with a lady, he exclaimed, "What are ye doin', ye damned auld ...," and then recollecting himself, "Your pardon's begged, madam; I took ye for my wife." When his butler gave up his place because his lordship's wife was always scolding him: "Lord," he exclaimed, "ye've little to complain o'; ye may be thankfu' ye're no mairred to her."
His most notorious sayings from the Bench were uttered during the trials for sedition towards the end of the eighteenth century, and even some of these are too coarse for repetition. "Ye're a very clever chiel," he said to one of the prisoners; "but ye wad be nane the waur o' a hangin'." And to a juror arriving late in Court he said, "Come awa, Maister Horner, come awa and help us to hang ane o' they damned scoondrels." Hanging was his term for all kinds of punishment.
To Margarot, a Baptist minister of Dundee—another of the political prisoners of that time—he said, "Hae ye ony coonsel, man?"—"No," replied Margarot. "Dae ye want tae hae ony appointed?" continued the Justice-Clerk. "No," replied the prisoner, "I only want an interpreter to make me understand what your lordship says."