Ohituary Notices. 
xvii 
mind was impartiality, constantly directed to the exact ascertainment 
of facts, and the application of the principles of justice to the facts 
ascertained. For his judicial merit it is sufficient to refer to the 
estimate contributed by a lawyer who had long practised before him, 
and became his colleague. Lord McLaren, to the Juridical Review^ a 
publication in whose success the late Lord President showed the 
interest he felt in every effort to maintain and extend the reputation 
of Scottish Jurisprudence. 
Second only to his services to the Law, and possibly more 
interesting to the learned Society at whose request this notice is 
written, were those he rendered to University Education in Scotland. 
The accidents of party politics gave him a short experience of Parlia- 
mentary and London life, and preserved unimpaired his genuine 
Scottish patriotism. He sat for the burgh of Stamford only from 2nd 
March to 13th July 1858. He did not travel much, and his life was 
practically spent in Edinburgh and his country-seat of Glencorse in 
its immediate neighbourhood, with occasional visits to other parts 
of Scotland for sport or golf, his favourite amusements. 
But it was his and their good fortune that he carried during his 
brief Parliamentary career the Act for the Reform of the Scottish 
Universities. While largely indebted to the preparatory labours of 
other University Reformers, chiefly members of his own profession, 
amongst whom may be named Lord Moncreiff, Mr Edward Maitland 
(Lord Barcaple), Professor Lorimer, and Mr Francis Russell, in its 
final form this Act was the fruit of his practical sagacity and 
prudence. 
It was a further favour of Providence that the author of the Act 
presided over the Commission, and brought it into operation by a 
series of Ordinances, which dealt with almost every branch of Uni- 
versity Education and Administration. 
His hand may be specially traced in those relating to Finance, 
where he had to solve the problems of making the best of too 
slender endowments, and to the development of the Faculty of 
Law, in which he had to make the most of a too scanty pro- 
fessoriate, and to attach by graduation a class of students to the 
University where they had hitherto been often little more than 
casual visitors. 
While Dean of Faculty, aided by several of his brethren, and in 
