But by this time their lordships had called a new cause.
A few additions to the notes, in a more liberal space, will complete what I have to set down regarding the lawyers of the last age.
THE PARLIAMENT HOUSE.
LOCKHART OF COVINGTON.[126]
Lockhart used to be spoken of by all old men about the Court of Session as a paragon. He had been at the bar from 1722, and had attained the highest eminence long before going upon the bench, which he did at an unusually late period of life; yet so different were those times from the present that, according to the report of Sir William Macleod Bannatyne to myself in 1833, Lockhart realised only about a thousand a year by his exertions, then thought a magnificent income. The first man at the Scottish bar in our day is believed to gain at least six times this sum annually. Lockhart had an isolated house behind the Parliament Close, which was afterwards used as the Post-office.[127] It was removed some years ago to make way for the extension of the buildings connected with the court; leaving only its coach-house surviving, now occupied as a broker’s shop in the Cowgate.
Mr Lockhart and Mr Fergusson (afterwards Lord Pitfour) were rival barristers—agreeing, however, in their politics, which were of a Jacobite complexion. While the trials of the poor forty-five men were going on at Carlisle, these Scottish lawyers heard with indignation of the unscrupulous measures adopted to procure convictions. They immediately set off for Carlisle, arranging with each other that Lockhart should examine evidence, while Fergusson pleaded and addressed the jury; and offering their services, they were gladly accepted as counsel by the unfortunates whose trials were yet to take place. Each exerted his abilities, in his respective duties, with the greatest solicitude, but with very little effect. The jurors of Carlisle had been so frightened by the Highland army that they thought everything in the shape or hue of tartan a damning proof of guilt; and, in truth, there seemed to be no discrimination whatever exerted in inquiring into the merits of any particular criminal; and it might have been just as fair, and much more convenient, to try them by wholesale or in companies. At length one of our barristers fell upon an ingenious expedient, which had a better effect than all the eloquence he had expended. He directed his man-servant to dress himself in some tartan habiliments, to skulk about for a short time in the neighbourhood of the town, and then permit himself to be taken. The man did so, and was soon brought into court, and accused of the crime of high treason, and would have been condemned to death had not his master stood up, claimed him as his servant, and proved beyond dispute that the supposed criminal had been in immediate attendance upon his person during the whole time of the Rebellion. This staggered the jury, and, with the aid of a little amplification from the mouth of the young advocate, served to make them more cautious afterwards in the delivery of their important fiat.