Hugh Macmillan

“I quoted F.S. Oliver's words: `politics is the noblest career that any man can choose. Stout must be the hearts of those who take so great a risk and who dedicate themselves--souls as well as bodies--to the service of their country.'”

“Propaganda, [the White Paper] said, "is a work which is peculiarly liable to miscellaneous criticism , since most men are apt to consider themselves born propagandists and are only too willing to point out where the official department fails."”

“This country, having remained inviolate from invasion and plunder for so many centuries, is a rich storehouse of historical, literary, and legal records.”

“Security is a thing to be earned rather than bestowed. It should be the reward of adventure and effort.... So our education, if it is to inspire our youth to face life with courage and happiness, must concern itself with the ideals of duty and service rather than with securing an easy shelter from all risks.”

“[Voluntary social work] has indeed become a new profession and quite a large number of people now make their livelihood by such work. At the same time the State has expanded its social services beyond all recognition within the space of a single generation and a large part of the produce of taxation is now devoted to every form of social amelioration... I should like to see us less concerned with palliation and more concerned with providing the means whereby our people by self-help, that demoded Victorian virtue, should be able to work out their own salvation, even if in fear and trembling.”

“We found that success in each case depended largely on enlisting the services of an efficient and enthusiatic local organiser, director, or warden, and many of our grants took the form of paying the salary of such leaders. The results were seldom disappointing. The reports which we regularly received showed how responsive the people were to sympathy and practical help, and we felt amply rewarded.”

“Throughout my advocacy of the University's cause I had experienced the truth of Goethe's maxim that it is best, if you wish to influence people, to begin by assuming that they are already what you would have them to be.”

“Already in my own time the volume of business was much less than in the heyday of the Victorian age, when the developments of the industrial era stimulated the enterprise of promoters and led to the construction of our modern railways, docks, and other undertakings of public utility. That was the era which my friend Walter Elliot has so aptly called the `century of equipment'.”

“I must plead guilty to having borne a part professionally in the invasion of the Highlands by electric power schemes... An inscribed ingot of aluminium on my desk commemorates the event, but when from the window of the train as it approaches Fort William I see the attentuated stream which is all that is now left in the once glorious gorge of the Spean I confess to a twinge of conscience.”

“Nothing is more fatal to success at the Parliamentary Bar than to attempt to suppress or misrepresent any point, for if the Committees lose confidence in a counsel's fairness the Parliamentary agents will soon desert him.”

“Some of the finest addresses by counsel I have ever heard have been delivered in the Committee Rooms at Westminster... In my judgment it would be difficult to conceive a more satisfactory and impartial tribunal for the disposal of practical questions than a Select Committee of either House. The Lords Committees especially impressed me with their business-like procedure and the ability of their chairmen.”

“I found ample scope in the work of the tribunals that were open to me, and in the House of Lords, the Judicial Committee of the Privy Council, and the Parliamentary Committee Rooms. I enjoyed a large and varied practice, almost entirely in English cases and cases from the Dominions.”

“Mr. Gladstone characteristically replied that "the subject of the establishment of a national public library in Edinburgh will have every consideration from Her Majesty's Government', which signified precisely nothing, as the Faculty experienced when a few years later a renewed approach was made.”

“Thus the facilities (of the Advocates' Library), which in England were provided at the taxpayers' expense in the British Museum, were in Scotland afforded entirely at the cost of the Scottish Bar... Much the greater part of their annual income was expended in maintaining it.”

“This was ultimately secured in a large chamber in the lower part of the Parliament House, known as the Laigh Parliament Hall, the traditional torture chamber of the Scottish Privy Council.”

“In Proposals which I drew up for the formation of a Scottish Legal History Society [now the Stair Society] I said that it had long been a reproach to Scotland that no adequate history of Scots Law existed, though it would be difficult to imagine a more attractive field of study, for the legal system in Scotland was not only perhaps our most distinctive heritage, but was also of special interest because of its combination in theory and practice of the Roman Law and the Common Law.”

“No question of priority arose to embarrass me in my loyalties to the railway companies until the Parliamentary session of 1924-25... In Scotland the Dean of Faculty [of Advocates] is the deciding authority... He pointed out that the L.M.S. Company which was claiming me was not the L.M.S. Company which had retained me... So I was awarded to the L.N.E.R. and duly appeared in the Committee Rooms on their behalf.”

“A member of the Bar is not entitled to refuse his services to anyone who seeks to employ him. He has been said to be like a cabman on the rank: it is his duty to place himself at the disposal of the first person who hails him and he has no right to exercise any discrimination... This principle also has its origin in the conception of the special position of the advocate in the public administration of justice. It is essential that no citizen should be unable to procure the adequate presentation of his case in Court, however unpopular or even unworthy he may be.”

“In a speech which he made in the House of Commons in 1804 the Lord Advocate, Charles Hope, claimed to be not only public prosecutor, coroner's jury, and grand jury, which he undoubtedly was, but also Home Secretary, Privy Council, and Lord-Lieutenant! … The anomalous combination of legal and administrative duties in the person of the Lord Advocate came to an end on the passing, in 1885, of the Secretary for Scotland Act which transferred to the Secretary, now the Secretary of State, for Scotland, most of the responsibility for the administration of Scottish affairs.”

“During the long interval which elapsed before the revival and reconstitution of the Secretary-ship in 1885, `the Lord Advocate of the day was really Minister for Scotland. The technical right to control Scottish affairs in their various departments no doubt belonged to the various Ministers of the Crown; but so little was known in London about Scotland and the country was in so distrubed and backward a condition that responsibility was easily devolved upon the only man who knew or cared much about the subject.'”