Page:Dictionary of National Biography, Second Supplement, volume 3.djvu/732

 settle the religious question according to the wishes of the electors (35 & 36 Vict. c. 62). In 1873 his Law Agents Act set up a uniform standard of training for law agents in Scotland, and abolished exclusive privileges of practising in particular courts (36 & 37 Vict. c. 63).

At the general election of 1874, owing, it was thought, to resentment at his treatment of Henry Glassford Bell, sheriff of Lanarkshire [q.v.], over differences which had arisen between them, Young lost his election for the Wigtown district by two votes. Mark John Stewart (afterwards Sir M. J. Mactaggart Stewart) was declared successful. A scrutiny was demanded, and the election judges awarded the seat to Young, by one vote, on 29 May 1874. But he had already accepted a judgeship, and taken his seat with the title of Lord Young on the bench of the Court of Session (3 March 1874). On the return of the liberals to power in 1880 it was understood that he had offered to resign his judgeship, and become again lord advocate. John McLaren, Lord McLaren, was appointed, and Young remained on the bench. Having been a judge for thirty-one years, he retired owing to failing health in April 1905. After a short illness, caused by a fall while walking in the Temple, he died in London on 21 May 1907, and was buried in St. John's episcopal churchyard at Edinburgh.

In his old age Lord Young was almost the last survivor of a generation which had walked the floor of the Parliament House when Alison was consulting authorities for his ‘History of Europe’ in the Advocates' Library below, and when Jeffrey and Cockburn were on the bench. He had come to the bar in the days of Lord Melbourne and Sir Robert Peel, and held office under Lord Russell and Lord Palmerston. It is believed that at the time of his death he was the oldest bencher of the Middle Temple. For many years he was a prominent figure in the social life of Edinburgh. He told good stories, and was famous for witty sayings. As a judge his powers were great; but his quickness of apprehension often made him impatient both with counsel and with his colleagues. He was too fond of taking the management of a case into his own hands; and it was largely owing to this defect that he was not conspicuously successful on the bench, though he fully retained his high reputation as a lawyer.

Young, who married in 1847 Janet (d. 1901), daughter of George Graham Bell of Crurie, Dumfriesshire, had a large family, of whom four sons, all in the legal profession, and six daughters survived him. Two portraits of him, by Sir George Reid and Lutyens respectively are in the possession of his daughters, and a bust by Mrs. Wallace is in the Parliament House. 