The Advocate appeared for a moment at a stick, sitting with pursed lips, and blinking his eyes upon me like an angry cat. “Mr. Balfour,” he said at last, “I tell you pointedly you go an ill way for your own interests.”
“My lord,” I said, “I am as free of the charge of considering my own interests in this matter as your lordship. As God judges me, I have but the one design, and that is to see justice executed and the innocent go clear. If in pursuit of that I come to fall under your lordship’s displeasure, I must bear it as I may.”
At this he rose from his chair, lit a second candle, and for a while gazed upon me steadily. I was surprised to see a great change of gravity fallen upon his face, and I could have almost thought he was a little pale.
“You are either very simple, or extremely the reverse, and I see that I must deal with you more confidentially,” says he. “This is a political case - ah, yes, Mr. Balfour! whether we like it or no, the case is political - and I tremble when I think what issues may depend from it. To a political case, I need scarce tell a young man of your education, we approach with very different thoughts from one which is criminal only. Salus populi suprema lex is a maxim susceptible of great abuse, but it has that force which we find elsewhere only in the laws of nature: I mean it has the force of necessity. I will open this out to you, if you will allow me, at more length. You would have me believe - “
“Under your pardon, my lord, I would have you to believe nothing but that which I can prove,” said I.
“Tut! tut; young gentleman,” says he, “be not so pragmatical, and suffer a man who might be your father (if it was nothing more) to employ his own imperfect language, and express his own poor thoughts, even when they have the misfortune not to coincide with Mr. Balfour’s. You would have me to believe Breck innocent. I would think this of little account, the more so as we cannot catch our man. But the matter of Breck’s innocence shoots beyond itself. Once admitted, it would destroy the whole presumptions of our case against another and a very different criminal; a man grown old in treason, already twice in arms against his king and already twice forgiven; a fomentor of discontent, and (whoever may have fired the shot) the unmistakable original of the deed in question. I need not tell you that I mean James Stewart.”
“And I can just say plainly that the innocence of Alan and of James is what I am here to declare in private to your lordship, and what I am prepared to establish at the trial by my testimony,” said I.
“To which I can only answer by an equal plainness, Mr. Balfour,” said he, “that (in that case) your testimony will not be called by me, and I desire you to withhold it altogether.”
“You are at the head of Justice in this country,” I cried, “and you propose to me a crime!”
“I am a man nursing with both hands the interests of this country,” he replied, “and I press on you a political necessity. Patriotism is not always moral in the formal sense. You might be glad of it, I think: it is your own protection; the facts are heavy against you; and if I am still trying to except you from a very dangerous place, it is in part of course because I am not insensible to your honesty in coming here; in part because of Pilrig’s letter; but in part, and in chief part, because I regard in this matter my political duty first and my judicial duty only second. For the same reason - I repeat it to you in the same frank words - I do not want your testimony.”
“I desire not to be thought to make a repartee, when I express only the plain sense of our position,” said I. “But if your lordship has no need of my testimony, I believe the other side would be extremely blythe to get it.”
Prestongrange arose and began to pace to and fro in the room. “You are not so young,” he said, “but what you must remember very clearly the year ‘45 and the shock that went about the country. I read in Pilrig’s letter that you are sound in Kirk and State. Who saved them in that fatal year? I do not refer to His Royal Highness and his ramrods, which were extremely useful in their day; but the country had been saved and the field won before ever Cumberland came upon Drummossie. Who saved it? I repeat; who saved the Protestant religion and the whole frame of our civil institutions? The late Lord President Culloden, for one; he played a man’s part, and small thanks he got for it - even as I, whom you see before you, straining every nerve in the same service, look for no reward beyond the conscience of my duties done. After the President, who else? You know the answer as well as I do; ’tis partly a scandal, and you glanced at it yourself, and I reproved you for it, when you first came in. It was the Duke and the great clan of Campbell. Now here is a Campbell foully murdered, and that in the King’s service. The Duke and I are Highlanders. But we are Highlanders civilised, and it is not so with the great mass of our clans and families. They have still savage virtues and defects. They are still barbarians, like these Stewarts; only the Campbells were barbarians on the right side, and the Stewarts were barbarians on the wrong. Now be you the judge. The Campbells expect vengeance. If they do not get it - if this man James escape - there will be trouble with the Campbells. That means disturbance in the Highlands, which are uneasy and very far from being disarmed: the disarming is a farce…”
“I can bear you out in that,” said I.
“Disturbance in the Highlands makes the hour of our old watchful enemy,” pursued his lordship, holding out a finger as he paced; “and I give you my word we may have a ‘45 again with the Campbells on the other side. To protect the life of this man Stewart - which is forfeit already on half-a-dozen different counts if not on this - do you propose to plunge your country in war, to jeopardise the faith of your fathers, and to expose the lives and fortunes of how many thousand innocent persons? … These are considerations that weigh with me, and that I hope will weigh no less with yourself, Mr. Balfour, as a lover of your country, good government, and religious truth.”
“You deal with me very frankly, and I thank you for it,” said I. “I will try on my side to be no less honest. I believe your policy to be sound. I believe these deep duties may lie upon your lordship; I believe you may have laid them on your conscience when you took the oath of the high office which you hold. But for me, who am just a plain man - or scarce a man yet - the plain duties must suffice. I can think but of two things, of a poor soul in the immediate and unjust danger of a shameful death, and of the cries and tears of his wife that still tingle in my head. I cannot see beyond, my lord. It’s the way that I am made. If the country has to fall, it has to fall. And I pray God, if this be wilful blindness, that He may enlighten me before too late.”
He had heard me motionless, and stood so a while longer.
“This is an unexpected obstacle,” says he, aloud, but to himself.
“And how is your lordship to dispose of me?” I asked.
“If I wished,” said he, “you know that you might sleep in gaol?”
“My lord,” said I, “I have slept in worse places.”
“Well, my boy,” said he, “there is one thing appears very plainly from our interview, that I may rely on your pledged word. Give me your honour that you will be wholly secret, not only on what has passed tonight, but in the matter of the Appin case, and I let you go free.”
“I will give it till tomorrow or any other near day that you may please to set,” said I. “I would not be thought too wily; but if I gave the promise without qualification your lordship would have attained his end.”
“I had no thought to entrap you,” said he.
“I am sure of that,” said I.
“Let me see,” he continued. “Tomorrow is the Sabbath. Come to me on Monday by eight in the morning, and give me our promise until then.”
“Freely given, my lord,” said I. “And with regard to what has fallen from yourself, I will give it for an long as it shall please God to spare your days.”
“You