“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.