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CHAP. CLXII.

and enters

on his trials to pass advo

cate.

Council and Session passed an act of sederunt, ordaining "that hereafter no person shall be admitted a member of the He returns Faculty of Advocates but such as having been effectively to Scotland, tried upon his proficiency, not only in civil law, but also in the municipal law and practice of Scotland, shall be found duly qualified by the examinators appointed by the Faculty for that purpose; as also, the private examinators are hereby prohibited and discharged to proceed to the examination of any intrant upon the civil law, unless he shall previously produce reasonable evidence to their satisfaction THAT HE HAS ATTAINED THE AGE OF TWENTY YEARS COMPLETE; which proof or evidence shall by them be reported to the Dean and Faculty, if he shall be found duly qualified by his knowledge in the civil law. And the said Lords further statute and ordain, that no person shall be admitted to the trial of his knowledge of the municipal law and practice foresaid until one full year shall have elapsed after his examination upon the canon law."

Having passed his civil-law trials very creditably, Wedderburn devoted himself to Craig, M'Kenzie, and Bankton, comparing the Scotch with the English system of jurisprudence, through the medium of Blackstone's Commentaries recently published in London,- and when the proper time had arrived he was fully prepared for a compliance with all the prescribed requisitions prior to putting on the gown. In addition to his trials in the municipal law, he had now to write a Latin thesis on a juridical subject, and to defend it against all impugners. Our northern brethren, like ourselves of the English Inns of Court, had relaxed much the strictness. of ancient discipline on such occasions. Fifteen public examinators (generally the fifteen junior members of the Bar), were still appointed by the Faculty to impugn every thesis, but they showed no pugnacity, however questionable might be the positions to be impugned. *

Soon after, even the form of appointing impugners by the Faculty was dropped, and the usage since has been for each impugnee to choose some of his own friends at the bar to go through the farce of impugning. This is pretty much on a footing with the disputation in Lincoln's Inn beginning with the

CLXII.

In due time, before the appointed day, appeared on the CHAP. College gates the following notice and challenge:

"DISPUTATIO JURIDICA

Ad Tit. I. Lib. XIX. Pand.
De Actionibus empti venditi,
QUAM,

FAVENTE NUMINE

Ex auctoritate clarissimi ac consultissimi Viri,
D. ROBERTI DUNDAS,
Ab Arniston,

Inclytæ Facultatis juridica Decani,
Nec non

Ex ejusdem FACULTATIS Consensu et decreto, pro
ADVOCATI munere consequendo,
publicæ disquisitioni subjicit,

ALEXANDE WEDDERBURN, Auct. & Resp.

Ad diem 29. Junii, 1754, hora 12 meridiana, loc. sol."

Then and there did he thus begin:

He

"Quintus Scævola, Pontifex maximus, summam vim dicebat esse in iis arbitriis, in quibus adderetur EX FIDE BONA, fideique bonæ nomen existimabat manare latissimè, idque versari in rebus emptis venditis: in his magni esse judicis statuere, quid quemque cuique præstare oporteret. Hinc oritur disquisitio de actionibus empti venditi, quæ, ut uterque contrahentium, quod sibi invicem præstari oportet, judicis auctoritate, etiam ab invito, consequatur, comparatæ sunt." then proceeded to lay down very learnedly the law of vendor and purchaser, fortifying all his positions by references to the Corpus Juris Civilis, and stating the points on which doctors differed. Thus:-"Neratius ait, venditorem in re tradenda debere præstare emptori, ut in lite de possessione potior sit; sed Julianus, l. 15. Dig., nec videri traditum, si superior in possessione emptor futurus non sit, l. ii. § 13. ff. h. t. ᏚᎥ tamen emptor incertum quid, veluti jactum retis, emerit, venditor tantum tenetur præstare quantum in se est; si igitur retem jactaverit, etiamsi nihil ceperit, emptore pretium præstare necesse habebit, l. ii. § 18. ff. h. t. in fin. Si vero jactum retis emerit et jactare retem piscator noluerit, incertum ejus rei æstimandum, Celsus ait, 7. xii. ff. h. t." There is a tradition that the young impugners started some puzzling ob

statement of the case "John Danvers seized in fee,”—and they stand equally in

A.D. 1754. His Latin thesis.

CLXII.

A.D. 1754.
His dispu-

tation.

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CHAP jections to him respecting the cast of the net--putting analogous questions touching the sale of the fees of an advocate during his first session, and whether the price would be due"etiamsi nihil ceperit"-and the degree of diligence with which he would be required to ply in the Parliament Houseand how far he would be held bound at the instance of the "emptor" to be civil to the solicitors? But the aspirant answered them triumphantly. He was accordingly in due form presented to the Fifteen as worthy to be made a member of the Faculty, and he was invested with the long robe, wearing a cocked hat over his powdered hair, — for barristers' wigs were not yet known beyond the Tweed.

Dedication to Lord

Aberdour

The following is the entry of his call in the Records of the Faculty of Advocates:

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Edinburgh, 29th June, 1754. "Mr. Alexander Wedderburn, son to Mr. Peter Wedderburn, Advocate, was publicly examined upon Tit. I. Lib. XIX. Pand. 'De actionibus empti venditi,' and found qualified."

Under the Imprimatur of Sir Gilbert Elliot and Sir David Dalrymple on behalf of the Faculty, he printed and published his thesis with the following dedication:

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CHAPTER CLXIII.

CONTINUATION OF THE LIFE OF LORD LOUGHBOROUGH TILL
HE FINALLY LEFT SCOTLAND.

CHAP. CLXIII.

tinues three

years at

bar.

FOR three whole years Wedderburn continued regularly and energetically to ply his profession in Scotland, except that each spring he slipped away for a few weeks to London, 1754-1757. to eat dinners in the Inner Temple Hall, so that he might He constill have the English bar as a resource. In 1755 he was supposed to gain a great advantage by the elevation of the Scotch his father to the bench, from succeeding to the business of certain family clients, and from the expected favour of the court to the causes patronised by the son of a judge a feeling much more prevalent in Scotland than in England. Each successive year he was appointed by the faculty one of the advocates for the poor-one of the fifteen public examiners and impugners and one of the curators of the Advocates' Library.

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The following is the account he gave of his maiden brief: "Knowing the character of my countrymen at that time, I was at great pains to study and assume a very grave, solemn deportment for a young man, which my marked features, notwithstanding my small stature, would render more imposing. Men then wore in winter small muffs, and I flatter myself that as I paced to the Parliament House, no man of fifty could look more thoughtful or steady. My first client was a citizen whom I did not know. He called upon me in the course of the cause, and becoming familiar with him, I asked him, 'how he came to employ me?' The answer was, 'Why I had noticed you in the High-street going to Court*

* To understand this thoroughly, the habits of Edinburgh in the middle of the last century · the groups assembled for conversation near the Cross, and the practice of shopkeepers to stand at their shop-doors, and to notice all who passed, saluting those whom they knew should be kept in remembrance. myself, when a boy, have witnessed a remnant of such habits- whereas now

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I

His first

brief.

CHAP. CLXIII.

His eloquence in

the General Assembly of the

Church of

Scotland.

He is or

dained an elder, and returned for the burgh of

the most punctual of any as the clock struck nine, and you looked so grave and business-like, that I resolved from your appearance to have you for my advocate."" He spoke with great satisfaction of the success resulting from the deportment he had assumed.

Although he seems to have excited a very considerable sensation in his own country, while he remained there, I can find no trace of his eloquence in the Court of Session till the very close of his career there*, and my southern readers will be astonished to hear, that the great theatre for his rhetorical displays was the General Assembly of the Church of Scotland-not as counsel at their bar, but as a Ruling Elder, leading their deliberations on grave questions of heresy and church discipline.

At this time, in the absence of a Parliament, the General Assembly was considered a sort of national representative body, and many of the nobility and gentry sat in it as lay members, after being ordained elders-being deputies of presbyteries, royal burghs and universities. But next to the venerable fathers of the Kirk, the great speakers were young advocates, who contrived to be sent up as elders, I am afraid, less with a view to further the objects of religion, than to gratify their own vanity, and to show how well qualified they were to manage causes before the Courts of Session and Justiciary.

Wedderburn was of a Presbyterian family, and to be qualified for the General Assembly, immediately after he was called to the bar, at the age of twenty-one, he was privately ordained an elder of the parish in which his father resided in Inverkeith- East Lothian, and for the General Assembly, which was to ing. meet in the month of May following, he was elected representative by the royal burgh of Inverkeithing.

Proceed

Scotland was at this time in a state of extraordinary ferings against ment from the philosophical writings of David Hume, and a

David

Hume and

the great shopkeepers read the newspapers in a counting-house elegantly fitted up, and the lawyers drive to the Parliament House in their coaches.

There is a bare mention of his name once or twice in the Faculty Reports, the last as counsel in Hunter v. Aitkin, 6th July, 1757. Morrison's Dictionary of Decisions, p. 3448,

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