This system is productive of so many evils, that, in many instances, a Scotch county representation is substantially no representation at all. The local interests and improvements of the counties are apt to be neglected, the county interest is easily thrown into the scale of any party or faction,--more especially if that party or faction be subservient to the administration,--and, as the county member, when ministerial, has great influence over all the government offices and patronage connected with the county, the chances are, that these will be bestowed upon persons who are either ignorant of their duties, from a want of local knowledge, or disliked by the independent proprietors upon party grounds. The old and decaying families, whose fallen fortunes force them to sell their lands, and whose pride as well as whose interest induces them to retain their superiorities, for the purpose of turning them to political account, are thus ranged in opposition to the more active and intelligent, who, by the exercise of their own talents, have acquired the means of purchasing land; and thus, independently of the old and theoretic distinctions of tories and whigs, there is perhaps more to create and render conspicuous the distinction between the liberal and the servile, in the Scotch counties, than in those either of England or of Ireland. In the royal burghs of Scotland, the separation between those who really possess the property and are interested in the welfare of the burgh, and those who are in possession of the elective franchise, is still more glaring in its absurdity, and pernicious in its effects. During the minority of James III. of Scotland, in 1469, when that prince was only seventeen years old, and when the turbulent nobles were setting the laws at defiance, and, by bands of armed ruffians in the streets, compelling the freemen of the royal burghs to choose their creatures as magistrates,--a statute was enacted, which was deemed salutary at the time, but which has since reduced the political influence of the whole burgesses of Scotland to a mere nonentity, and made the Scotch burgh representation one of the most convenient and efficient engines of corruption that ever was devised. That statute gave to the official men, seldom exceeding twenty in any burgh, and generally the mere creatures of some chief or leader, who frequently has no connexion with the burgh at all--the power of electing their successors in office,--that is, of placing the whole parliamentary franchise, the whole revenues of the burgh, every species of patronage that it can exercise, and every alteration and improvement that it would require, solely and irretrievably at the control and disposal of about twenty persons, and giving it to them and their assignees as a perpetual inheritance.