The wide experience to be gained at the Scots Bar has its advantages. It does not enable one to become such an expert in any single department as the… - Hugh Macmillan, Baron Macmillan

In a speech which he made in the House of Commons in 1804 the Lord Advocate, Charles Hope, claimed to be not only public prosecutor, coroner's jury, and grand jury, which he undoubtedly was, but also Home Secretary, Privy Council, and Lord-Lieutenant! … The anomalous combination of legal and administrative duties in the person of the Lord Advocate came to an end on the passing, in 1885, of the Secretary for Scotland Act which transferred to the Secretary, now the Secretary of State, for Scotland, most of the responsibility for the administration of Scottish affairs.

But while in these first years the prospects of success are apt to seem remote and high hopes seem doomed to frustration, the worst thing to do is to eat one's heart out in idleness. There are many occupations which can be devised to improve one's fitness to profit by the chance when it does come.

The privilege fell to me, as chairman of the Executive Committee, to present to the King and Address which I had composed in these terms: