and Clerk, in the Kings troupe, and Sir John Dalrymple's with Claverhouse.'
In the same year he says of James, then Duke of York, and Monmouth, 'We
know not which of their factions struggling in the womb of the State shall
prevail.' He regarded these political evils and dangers as beyond his power
to remedy. It was not till after he had entered Parliament in 1685 that he
made any public utterance on politics. In the last two years of James's
reign the Test Act was enforced against Nonconformist Protestants but not
against Roman Catholics. Lauder, being then in Parliament, considered it
his duty to take a part, and he made one or two very moderate speeches,
which, although expressed with studious respect to the sovereign, were
doubtless highly displeasing to the government.


OPINIONS ON ADMINISTRATION OF JUSTICE AND HIS CONTEMPORARIES.

INFLUENCE OF STUDIES ABROAD

[Sidenote: H.N. 40.]

In the matter of the administration of justice he writes with much less
reserve in his journals. The system was bad. The jurisdiction of the Privy
Council, who tried a considerable number of causes, was ill-defined. The
judges since the time of Charles I. were removable magistrates, entirely in
the dependence of the Crown. Even the ordinary Lords of Session were not
always trained lawyers--Lauder's father-in-law, for example, Sir Andrew
Ramsay, long Provost of Edinburgh, became a judge with the title of Lord
Abbotshall. There were besides four extraordinary lords who were never
lawyers, and were not bound to attend and hear causes pleaded, but they had
the right to vote. At the Revolution one of the reasons assigned for
declaring the Crown vacant was 'the changing of the nature of the judges'