Sir William Forbes called—­the same kind, honest friend as ever, with all offers of assistance,[128] etc. etc.  All anxious to serve me, and careless about their own risk of loss.  And these are the cold, hard, money-making men whose questions and control I apprehended.

Lord Chief Commissioner Adam also came to see me, and the meeting, though pleasing, was melancholy.  It is the first time we have met since the break up of his hopes in the death of his eldest son on his return from India, where he was Chief in Council and highly esteemed.[129] The Commissioner is not a very early friend of mine, for I scarce knew him till his settlement in Scotland with his present office.[130] But I have since lived much with him, and taken kindly to him as one of the most pleasant, kind-hearted, benevolent, and pleasing men I have ever known.  It is high treason among the Tories to express regard for him, or respect for the Jury Court in which he presides.  I was against that experiment as much as any one.  But it is an experiment, and the establishment (which the fools will not perceive) is the only thing which I see likely to give some prospects of ambition to our bar, which has been otherwise so much diminished.  As for the Chief Commissioner, I dare say he jobs, as all other people of consequence do, in elections, and so forth.  But he is the personal friend of the King, and the decided enemy of whatever strikes at the constitutional rights of the Monarch.  Besides, I love him for the various changes which he has endured through life, and which have been so great as to make him entitled to be regarded in one point of view as the most fortunate—­in the other, the most unfortunate—­man in the world.  He has gained and lost two fortunes by the same good luck, and the same rash confidence, which raised, and now threatens, my peculium.  And his quiet, honourable, and generous submission under circumstances more painful than mine,—­for the loss of world’s wealth was to him aggravated by the death of his youngest and darling son in the West Indies,—­furnished me at the time and now with a noble example.  So the Tories and Whigs may go be d——­d together, as names that have disturbed old Scotland, and torn asunder the most kindly feelings since the first day they were invented.  Yes, ----- them, they are spells to rouse all our angry passions, and I dare say, notwithstanding the opinion of my private and calm moments, I will open on the cry again so soon as something occurs to chafe my mood; and yet, God knows, I would fight in honourable contest with word or blow for my political opinions; but I cannot permit that strife to “mix its waters with my daily meal,” those waters of bitterness which poison all mutual love and confidence betwixt the well-disposed on either side, and prevent them, if need were, from making mutual concessions and balancing the constitution against the ultras of both parties.  The good man seems something broken by these afflictions.