canon upon him, and _justo Dei judicio_ defait him by the toune's public
interest, with which weapone he was want to do miracles and had taught them
the way[25].... This decision for its strangeness surprised all that heard
of it; for scarce even any who once heard the case doubted but it would be
found a clear wodsett, and it opened the mouths of all to cry out upon it
as a direct and dounright subversion of all our rights and properties.'

[24] Lauder was a very young man at the bar when he wrote these
strictures on Stair. They may be compared with and in part
corrected by a passage in Sir G. Mackenzie's _Memoirs_, p. 240,
which also bears on the appointment of incompetent judges.
'Lauderdale by promoting four ignorant persons, who had not been
bred as lawyers, without interruption, and in two years' time, to
be judges in it [the Session], viz., Hatton, Sir Andrew Ramsay,
Mr. Robert Preston, and Pittrichie, he rendered thereby the
Session the object of all men's contempt. And the Advocates being
disobliged by the regulations did endeavour, as far as in them
lay, to discover to the people the errors of those who had opprest
them: and they being now become numerous, and most of them being
idle, though men of excellent parts, wanting rather clients than
wit and learning, that society became the only distributor of
fame, and in effect the fittest instrument for all alterations:
for such as were eminent, did by their authority, and such as were
idle, by well contrived and witty raillery, make what impressions
they pleased upon the people. Nor did any suffer so much as the
Lord Stairs, President of the Session; who, because of his great
affection to Lauderdale, and his compliance with Hatton, suffered
severely, though formerly he had been admired for his sweet temper
and strong parts. And by him our countrymen may learn, that such
as would be esteemed excellent judges must live abstracted from