Page:A biographical dictionary of eminent Scotsmen, vol 4.djvu/315

Rh is no mode of publication a minister can adopt so likely to be useful as this. It gives a most pleasing idea of a clergyman when he thus takes, as it were, a last farewell of his people, who cannot fail to peruse a work bequeathed to them under such circumstances, with peculiar interest. These lectures, we doubt not, were regarded among his parishioners more than all his other works. Of Dr Hill's character the reader has been furnished with materials for forming a judgment for himself. His precocious abilities, his talents for adapting himself to the uses of the world, his diligence in all his offices, and his powers of managing public business and popular assemblies, conspire to mark him out as a very extraordinary man. It may only be remarked that, for the most of tastes, his conduct will in general appear too much that of a courtier.

HOG, (, lord Harcarse, a judge and statesman, was born in Berwickshire about the year 1635. He was the son of William Hog of Bogend, an advocate of respectable reputation, to whom is attributed the merit of having prepared some useful legal works, which have unfortunately not been given to the public. The subject of this memoir passed as an advocate in June 1661, and continued in the enjoyment of a lucrative and successful practice, till a breach between Nisbet of Dirleton, and the powerful and vindictive Hatton, opened for him a situation on the bench on the resignation of that judge in 1677; being marked out by the government as a useful instrument, the appointment was accompanied with the honours of knighthood from Charles the Second. At this period the judges of the Scottish courts, like ministerial officers, held their situations by the frail tenure of court favour, and were the servants, not of the laws, but of the king. It was the good fortune of Harcarse to be, in the earlier part of his career, particularly favoured by the ruling powers; and on the 18th November, 1678, we accordingly find Sir John Lockhart of Castlehill summarily dismissed from the bench of the court of justiciary, and Harcarse appointed to fill his place. At this period he represented the county of Berwick in the Scottish parliament, an election which, from the journals of the house, we find to have been disputed, and finally decided in his favour. A supreme judge of the civil and criminal tribunals, and a member of the legislative body, Harcarse must have had difficult and dangerous duties to perform. The times were a labyrinth full of snares in which the most wary went astray: few of those who experienced the sunshine of royal favour, passed with credit before the public eye, and none were blameless. Among the many deeds of that bloody reign, which mankind might well wish to cover with a veil of eternal oblivion, was one daring and unsuccessful attempt, with regard to which, the conduct of Harcarse, in such an age and in such a situation, had he been known for nothing else, is worthy of being commemorated. In 1681, the privy council had called on Sir George M'Kenzie, as lord advocate, to commence a prosecution for treason and perjury against the earl of Argyle, for his celebrated explanation of his understanding of the contradictions of the test. To the eternal disgrace of that eminent man, he brought with him to the prosecution those high powers of argument and eloquence with which he had so frequently dignified many a better cause. The relevancy of the indictment was the ground on which the unfortunate earl and his counsel, Sir George Lockhart, placed their whole reliance, but they leaned on a broken reed. In a midnight conclave, held it would appear after the minds of most of the judges were sufficiently fatigued by the effect of a long day of labour, the full depth of iniquity was allowed to the crime " of interpreting the king's statutes other than the statute bears, and to the intent and effect that they were made for, and as the makers of them understood." Queensberry, who presided as justice general, having himself been obliged to accompany the oath with a qualification, remained neuter, and to oppose the insult on sense and justice,