ccurate information,
not merely from his father-in-law's papers, but from Cadell, Constable's
partner, is that the losses were due partly to the absolutely
unbusinesslike conduct of the concern, and the neglect for many years to
come to a clear understanding what its profits were and what they were
not; partly to the ruinous system of eternally interchanged and renewed
bills, so that, for instance, sums which Constable nominally paid years
before were not actually liquidated at the time of the smash; but most
of all to a proceeding which seems to pass the bounds of recklessness on
one side, and to enter pretty deeply into those of fraud on the other.
This is the celebrated affair of the counter-bills, things, according to
Lockhart, representing no consideration or value received of any kind,
but executed as a sort of collateral security to Constable when he
discounted any of John Ballantyne's innumerable acceptances, and
intended for use only if the real and original bills were not met.
Still, according to Lockhart, this system was continued long after there
was any special need for it, and a mass of counter-bills, for which the
Ballantynes had never had the slightest value, and the amount of which
they had either discharged or stood accountable for already on other
documents, was in whole or part flung upon the market by Constable in
the months of struggle which preceded his fall, and ranked against
Ballantyne & Co., that is to say, Scott, when that fall came.

This account, when published in the first edition of Lockhart's _Life_,
provoked strong protests from the representatives of the Ballantynes,
and a rather acrimonious pamphlet war followed, in which Lockhart is
accused by some not merely of acrimony, but of a supercilious and
contemptuous fashion of dealing with his opponents. He made, however, no
important retractations later, and it is fair to say that not one of his
allegations has ever been disproved by documentary evidence, as
certainly ought to have been possible while all the documents were at
hand. Nor did the _Memoirs_ of Constable, published many years later,
supply what was and is missing; nor does Mr. Lang, with all his pains,
seem to have found anything decisive. The assertions opposed to
Lockhart's are that the 'counter-bill' story is not true, and that the
distresses of Ballantyne & Co., and the dangerous extent to which they
were involved in complicated bill transactions with Constable, were at
l