What was the method of the despotism? It was very peculiar, and at the same time very simple and natural. Mr. Dundas, sitting in the House of Commons, first as member for the shire of Edinburgh, but from 1787 onwards as member for Edinburgh itself, was a leading power in the Pitt Administration. On joining that administration he had not resumed his old office of Lord Advocate (which was given to his friend Hay Campbell), but had been content with resuming his former post of the Treasurership of the Navy; to which were subsequently added in succession the Presidency of the Board of Control for Indian Affairs (_i.e._ the Ministry for India), the Home-Secretaryship, the Secretaryship for War, and the First Lordship of the Admiralty. It was perhaps as Minister for India that he most usefully distinguished himself in his capacity as a British statesman. But it was in his other capacity as sovereign minister for Scotland that he laboured most characteristically. Continually going and coming, shuttle-wise, between London and Edinburgh, he was known to carry all Scotland in his pocket. His colleagues, on the one hand, made Scotland entirely over to him; and he, on the other, contracted to keep Scotland quiet for them, and to give them the full use of the united Scottish influence in Parliament. His means, as regarded his countrymen, were very efficient. They consisted, apart from the mere power of his own tact and talent, in the uncontrolled use of patronage. The population of Scotland at that time did not exceed a million and a half,—a population in which, according to the ordinary calculation, there could not be more than about three hundred and fifty thousand adult males. This was a nice little compact body to keep in order, and not above one man’s strength, if he had offices enough at his disposal. But it was not even necessary to deal with all this little mass directly. There was no popular representation in Scotland. Fifteen out of the five-and-forty Scottish members of the House of Commons were members for burghs; and these were elected by the town-councils, who were themselves self-elected, and nearly permanent. Nay, the Edinburgh town-council alone returned a member directly; the other burgh-members were for “districts of burghs,” and were elected by delegates from the various town-councils included in the several districts. The county constituencies, on the other hand, who elected the thirty county members, did not exceed fifteen hundred or two thousand persons for all Scotland. Accordingly, Government, through Dundas, had only to deal directly with an upper two thousand or so, including the town-councils,—a body not too large, as Lord Cockburn says, to be held completely within Government’s hand. Gratitude for places conferred, fear of removal from place, and hope of places to be obtained for themselves and their relations or dependents, were the forces by which they _were_ held. Nobody could get a place or could hold a place except