626 YONGE STREET AND DUNDAS STREET. 



speech wMcli Mr. Henry Dundas contributed to the cause of the 

 sooty stranger. On this occasion he impressed me, and I believe all 

 his audience, with such feelings as were produced by some of the 

 most eminent orators of antiquity." Boswell, quite gratuitously, 

 indulges in a reference to the accent of his fellow-countryman. " Mr. 

 Dundas's Scottish accent, which," he observes, "has been so often in 

 vain obtruded as an objection to his powerful abilities in Parliament, 

 was no disadvantage to him in his own country." And again, in 

 another place, Boswell goes out of his way to allude in coarser terms 

 to the same quite natural accident of Dundas's oratory. The truth 

 was, Boswell had been trying to school his own tongue in southern ways, 

 and piqued himself on his supposed superior success in that regard. 

 "A small intermixture," he says, "of provincial peculiarities may, 

 perhaps, have an agreeable effect, as the notes of different birds concur 

 in the harmony of the grove, and please more than if they were all 

 exactly alike. I could name some gentlemen of Ireland," he con- 

 tinues, " to whom a slight proportion of the accent and recitative of 

 that country is an advantage. The same observation will apply to 

 the gentlemen of Scotland. I do not mean," he then adds, " that we 

 should speak as broad as a certain prosperous member of Parliament 

 from that country; though it has been well observed that it has been 

 of no small use to him, as it rouses the attention of the House by its 

 uncommonness, and is equal to tropes and figures in a good English 

 speaker." 



The " prosperous member of Parliament " was Dundas, who was 

 returned member for Edinburgh in 1774. He at once took a leading 

 part in the pi'oceedings of the House. " As a public speaker," we 

 are told, " he was clear, acute and argumentative, with the manner 

 of one thoroughly master of his subject, and desirous to convince the 

 understanding without the aid of the ornamental parts of oratory, 

 which he seemed in some sort to despise." He supported the adminis- 

 tration of Lord North, and voted for the prosecution of the war against 

 the American colonies. In 1775 he was appointed Lord Advocate for 

 Scotland and Keeper of the King's Signet for Scotland. The Lord 

 Advocate of Scotland, we should observe by the way, holds the highest 

 political office in Scotland, and he is always expected to have a seat 

 in Parliament, where he discharges something resembling the duties 

 of Secretaiy of State for that quarter of the kingdom. In those days, ' 

 all the patronage of the crown in Scotland was in his hands. 



