out undergoing the usual drudgery of the bar, he acquired a degree of celebrity and distinction, which opened to him, at a period remarkably early in his career, the highest, honours of his profession. In September 1742, when he had just entered his twenty-ninth year, he was appointed solicitor-general for Scotland. He had obtained this appointment under the Carteret administration, and therefore, in 1746, when the Pelham party gained the ascendancy, he resigned this office along with the ministry; but in the same year, (as had happened to his father under similar circumstances,) he was honoured by one of the strongest marks of admiration which his brethren at the bar could confer; having been, at the early age of thirty-three, elected dean of the faculty of advocates; which office he continued to hold until the year 1760, when he was elevated to the bench.
In the beginning of the year 1754, Mr Dundas was returned to parliament as member of the county of Edinburgh, and in the following summer he was appointed lord advocate for Scotland. During the rancorous contention of parties which at that time divided the country, it was scarcely possible to escape obloquy, and Mr Dundas shared in the odium cast upon the rest of his party by the opposition; but it may be truly affirmed of him, that in no instance did he swerve frcm his principles, or countenance a measure which he did not believe to be conducive to the general welfare of the country. He suffered much in the opinion of a numerous party in Scotland on account of his strenuous opposition to the embodying of the militia in that part of the kingdom. The alarm of invasion from France, occasioned by the small expeditions which sometimes threatened our coasts, had led to numerous meetings throughout the country to petition parliament in favour of the establishment of a militia force for the defence of Scotland. There were cogent reasons, however, why these petitions should not be acceded to. The country was still in a very unimproved condition; agriculture neglected, and manufactures in their infancy; while the in habitants were as yet but little accustomed to the trammels of patient industry. In such circumstances, to put arms into their hands had a tendency to revive that martial spirit which it was the great object of government to repress. The embodying of the militia was farther objectionable, inasmuch as the disaffected partisans of the Stuart family, although subdued were by no means reconciled to the family of Hanover; and, therefore, to arm the militia, would have been in effect so far to counteract the wise measure of disarming the Highlanders, which had proved so efficacious in tranquilizing the northern districts of the kingdom. Mr Dundas's opposition to the proposal for embodying a militia in Scotland was thus founded on grounds of obvious expediency; any risk of foreign invasion being more than counterbalanced by the still greater evil of a domestic force on which government could not implicitly rely, and which might by possibility have joined rather than opposed the invaders. The lesson taught by the rebellion in Ireland, in 1797, has since illustrated the danger of trusting arms in the hands of the turbulent and disaffected, and has fully established the wisdom of Mr Dundas's opposition to a similar measure in Scotland.
On the 14th of June, 1760, Mr Dundas was appointed lord president of the court of session, the highest judicial office in Scotland. When he received this appointment, some doubts were entertained how far, notwithstanding his acknowledged and great abilities, he possessed that power of application, and that measure of assiduity which are the first requisites for the due discharge of the duties of the high office he filled. Fond of social intercourse, and having risen to eminence as a lawyer by the almost unassisted strength of his natural talents, he had hitherto submitted with reluctance to the labour of his profession. But it speedily became evident, that one striking feature in his character
