After acting as Lord Advocate for nearly six years, on 14th November, 1789, Campbell was appointed President of the Court of Session on the death of Sir Thomas Miller, Bart., and assumed the judicial title of Lord Succoth. He was placed at the head of the Commission of Oyer and Terminer, issued in the year 1794, for the trial of those accused of high treason in Scotland at that disturbed period, and was highly commended by English lawyers for the manner in which he acquitted himself in that capacity.
Campbell held the office of Lord President for nineteen years, and upon his resignation was succeeded by Robert Blair of Avonton. He presided for the last time on 11th July, 1808, being the final occasion on which the old Court of Session, consisting of fifteen judges, sat together. After the vacation, the Court sat for the first time in two Divisions. On 17th September, in the same year, he was created a baronet. He died on 28th March, 1823, in the eighty-ninth year of his age.
Campbell was an able lawyer, but without any great forensic gifts. His written pleadings were models of perspicuity, force, and eloquence, but his speeches though admirable in matter, were unattractive in delivery. Cockburn says of him, “His voice was low and dull, his face sedate and hard. Even when heaving internally with strong passion, externally he was like a knot of wood” (“Memorials of his Time,” 1856, p. 127). He was inferior to none of his brethren in depth of learning, and in private life was highly esteemed.
After his retirement from the bench, Campbell presided over two different Commissions appointed to inquire into the state of the Courts of law in Scotland, which he conducted with his accustomed industry and talent. He lived for many years in James’s Court, Edinburgh; but during the later years or his life he chiefly resided at his paternal estate of Garscube, Dumbartonshire, where he kept his active mind continually engaged in various literary and agricultural pursuits.
Campbell was married to Susan Mary, daughter of Archibald Murray of Cringletie, one of the Commissaries of Edinburgh, by whom he had six daughters and two sons, one of whom only survived, viz., Sir Archibald Campbell of Succoth, Bart., who was appointed one of the Senators of the College of Justice on 17th May, 1809. He retired in 1825.
Robert Dundas of Arniston, Lord Chief Baron of the Court of Exchequer (1758-1819), the eldest son of Robert Dundas of Arniston the younger (1713-1787), Lord President of the Court of Session, was born on 6th June, 1758. He was a nephew of the celebrated Henry Dundas, Viscount Melville and Baron Dunira, whose daughter he afterwards married. He was educated for the legal profession, and became a member of the Faculty of Advocates on 3rd July, 1779, immediately after which he was appointed Procurator for the Church of Scotland. On the promotion of Sir Ilay Campbell to the office of Lord Advocate in April, 1784, Dundas, then a very young man, succeeded him as Solicitor-General; and on the elevation of the former to the bench as Lord President in November, 1789, the latter was appointed to supply his place as Lord Advocate, being then only in the thirty-first year of his age.
This office Dundas held for twelve years, during which time he sat in Parliament as a member for the county of Edinburgh (1790-6). He introduced into Parliament in 1793 a bill for defining and regulating the powers of the Commission of Teinds; but, from the little countenance extended towards it by the Ministry, and the strong opposition of the landed proprietors, he was under the necessity of withdrawing the measure.
Dundas conducted for the Crown, as Lord Advocate, the great prosecutions for sedition at Edinburgh in 1793-4; and on the occasion of the riots in connection with the Scottish Burghs Reform the windows of his house were broken by a hostile mob (“Kay’s Portraits,” 1877, vol. i., pp. 374-5). He acted as Dean of the Faculty of Advocates from 1796 to 1801; and, in 1799, was appointed Joint-Keeper of the General Register of Sasines for Scotland.
On 1st June, 1801, Dundas was appointed Chief Baron of the Exchequer in Scotland, on the resignation of Chief Baron Montgomery. He held this office till within a short time of his death, which happened at Arniston on 17th June, 1819, in the sixty-second year of his age. His town residence was in St. John Street, Canongate.
The excellences which marked the character of Dundas were many, and all of the most amiable and endearing kind. In manner he was mild and affable, in disposition humane and generous, and in principle singularly tolerant and liberal—qualities which gained him universal esteem. As presiding judge of the Court of Exchequer, he on every occasion evinced a desire to soften the rigour of the law when a legitimate opportunity presented itself for so doing. If it appeared to him that an offender had erred unknowingly or from inadvertence, he invariably interposed his good offices to mitigate the sentence. “It was in his private life, however,” says his biographer, “and within the circle of his own family and friends, that the virtues of this excellent man were chiefly conspicuous, and that his loss was most severely felt. Of him it may be said he died leaving no good man his enemy, and attended with that sincere regret which only those can hope for who have occupied the like important stations and acquitted themselves as well.”