Early every morning a van calls to take his brief bag up to the Parliament House, where his papers are trustingly displayed in his box in the public … - Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan

This country, having remained inviolate from invasion and plunder for so many centuries, is a rich storehouse of historical, literary, and legal records.

The erection of a great public building in any city almost always engenders controversy. The maxim that there can be no disputing about matters of taste seldom deters an eager host of critics, informed and uninformed, from rushing into print. But the new buildings of London University have had the good fortune to rise undisturbed by the clamours of contention and indeed with a degree of public approval which must be almost unprecedented... I have found, as a matter of experience, that the gravamen of complaints about any public scheme may generally be found to reside not in its intrinsic demerits but in the fact that the objectors were not consulted about it.

During the long interval which elapsed before the revival and reconstitution of the Secretary-ship in 1885, `the Lord Advocate of the day was really Minister for Scotland. The technical right to control Scottish affairs in their various departments no doubt belonged to the various Ministers of the Crown; but so little was known in London about Scotland and the country was in so distrubed and backward a condition that responsibility was easily devolved upon the only man who knew or cared much about the subject.'