Note 30 — NOTES ON HEROIC STANZAS.

A principal evil, amongst the native Scottish judges, was a predilection for their own allies and kinsmen. A judge, who lived within the eighteenth century, justified this partiality for "kith, kin, and ally," by saying, "that, upon his conscience, he could never see any of his friends were in the wrong;" and the upright conduct of Cromwell's English judges being objected to him, he answered, "it was not wonderful, since they were a set of kinless louns who had no family connections to bias them."