POLITICIAN.

Scott usually professed great ignorance of politics, and did what he
could to hold aloof from a world in which his feelings were very
easily heated, while his knowledge was apt to be very imperfect. But
now and again, and notably towards the close of his life, he got
himself mixed up in politics, and I need hardly say that it was always
on the Tory, and generally on the red-hot Tory, side. His first hasty
intervention in politics was the song I have just referred to on Lord
Melville's acquittal, during the short Whig administration of 1806. In
fact Scott's comparative abstinence from politics was due, I believe,
chiefly to the fact that during almost the whole of his literary life,
Tories and not Whigs were in power. No sooner was any reform proposed,
any abuse threatened, than Scott's eager Conservative spirit flashed
up. Proposals were made in 1806 for changes--and, as it was thought,
reforms--in the Scotch Courts of Law, and Scott immediately saw
something like national calamity in the prospect. The mild proposals
in question were discussed at a meeting of the Faculty of Advocates,
when Scott made a speech longer than he had ever before delivered, and
animated by a "flow and energy of eloquence" for which those who were
accustomed to hear his debating speeches were quite unprepared. He
walked home between two of the reformers, Mr. Jeffrey and another,
when his companions began to compliment him on his eloquence, and to
speak playfully of its subject. But Scott was in no mood for
playfulness. "No, no," he exclaimed, "'tis no laughing matter; little
by little, whatever your wishes may be, you will destroy and
undermine, until nothing of what makes Scotland Scotland shall
remain!" "And so saying," adds Mr. Lockhart, "he turned round to
conceal his agitation, but not until Mr. Jeffrey saw tears gushing
down his cheek,--resting his head, until he recovered himself, on the
wall of the Mound."[47] It was the same strong feeling for old Scotch
institutions which broke out so quaintly in the midst of his own worst
troubles in 1826, on behalf of the Scotch banking-system, when he so
eloquently defended, in the letters of _Malachi Malagrowther_, what
would now be called Home-Rule for Scotland, and indeed really defeated
the attempt of his friends the Tories, who were the innovators this
time, to encroach on those sacred institutions--the Scotch one-pound
note, and the private-note circulation of the Scotch banks.