Mr.Clerk spoke broad Scotch, and argued that "the _watter_ had rin that way for forty years.

Indeed naebody kenn'd how long, and why should his client now be deprived of the watter ?" etc.

The chancellor, much amused at the pronunciation of the Scottish advocate, in a rather bantering tone asked him, "Mr.Clerk, do you spell water in Scotland with two t's ?" Clerk, a little nettled at this hit at his national tongue, answered, "Na, my Lord, we dinna spell watter (making the word as short as he could) wi' twa t's, but we spell mainners (making the word as long as he could) wi' twa n's." John Clerk's vernacular version of the motto of the Celtic Club is highly characteristic of his humour and his prejudice.

He had a strong dislike to the whole Highland race, and the motto assumed by the modern Celts, "Olim marte, nunc arte," Clerk translated "Formerly robbers, now thieves." Quite equal to Swift's celebrated remark on William III.'s motto--_Recepit, non rapuit_--"that the receiver was as bad as the thief." Very dry and pithy too was Clerk's legal _opinion_ given to a claimant of the Annandale peerage, who, when pressing the employment of some obvious forgeries, was warned that if he persevered, nae doot he might be a peer, but it would be a peer o' anither _tree!_ The clever author of "Peter's Letters" gives an elaborate description of Clerk's character whilst at the bar, and speaks of him as "the plainest, the shrewdest, and the most sarcastic of men." Nor could he entirely repress these peculiarities when raised to the bench under the title of Lord Eldin.
His defence of a young friend, who was an advocate, and had incurred the displeasure of the Judges, has often been repeated.

Mr.Clerk had been called upon to offer his apologies for disrespect, or implied disrespect, in his manner of addressing the Bench.