The political separation of the island and continent of Sicily was now

complete, but none foresaw its long duration. The period immediately

succeeding the death of Charles of Anjou was one continuous struggle

between Naples and Palermo, the former striving to regain lost

supremacy, the latter to retain conquered independence. For a moment

the kingdom of the Two Sicilies, torn in twain by a great popular

movement, was on the point of reuniting; the great result obtained by

the Sicilian Vespers seemed about to be lost, and the Vespers

themselves to lose their rank of revolution, and subside into the

vulgar category of revolts and insurrections. Strange to say, the

foreign dynasty that had profited by the successful rebellion, was

itself on the eve of destroying the work of its partisans. After the

ephemeral reign of Alphonso III. King of Arragon, eldest son and

successor of Don Pedro, Don Jaime, second son of this Prince, united

upon his head the crowns of Sicily and Arragon. The will of the two

deceased kings had been to keep these crowns separate. Don Pedro

verbally, Don Alphonso by a written will, had called the Infante

Frederick, son of one and brother of the other, to reign in Sicily so

soon as Don Jaime should take possession of the hereditary sceptre of

Arragon and Catalonia. Jaime disregarded their wishes. He kept Sicily,

not for himself, but to restore it to the enemies of his family, to

his prisoner, now chief of the house of Anjou, agreeably to a secret

treaty they had entered into during the captivity of Charles II. If M.

de St Priest is correct in placing the first negotiation of this

treaty so far back as the summer of 1284, soon after the action in

which Charles lost his liberty, it is difficult to understand what

could then have been Don Jaime's motives. His father and elder brother

dead, it is more easy to explain them. We must remember that before

falling into the hands of the terrible Ruggiero de Lauria, Charles,

then Prince of Salerno, commissioned by the King of Naples to make

concessions to his subjects, had proclaimed a political reform, under

the auspices of Martin IV. After the death of this Pope, his successor

Honorius, also a declared partisan of the house of Anjou, extended

still further these political privileges, and the convention known in

the history of Naples as the Statutes of Honorius (Capitoli d'Onorio)

there long had the force of law. In view of these privileges, imposed

by papacy, and conceded by the dynasty whose despotism had driven

Sicily to revolt, the dynasty established by that revolt was compelled

to bid higher for popular approbation. The rival royalties began a

dangerous race in the path of reform. The Arragonese could not allow

the Angevine to surpass him in generosity. Don Jaime saw himself

compelled to make such concessions to the clergy and aristocracy, that

Sicily retained but the mere shadow of a monarchy. The authority

awaiting him in Arragon was certainly not more absolute; but there, at

least, he found himself in his native country and hereditary

dominions; habit, tradition, old affinities, compensated what the

supreme power lacked in strength and extent. In Sicily things were

very different. The island was altogether in an unsatisfactory state.

The chiefs of the aristocracy, the authors of the revolution, had all

rebelled in turn. It had been found necessary to put to death

Caltagirone, Alaimo de Lentini, and other leaders of the Arragonese

intrigue. The air of Sicily seemed loaded with rebellious infection.

Even Ruggiero de Lauria, and John of Procida,[9] were suspected of

disaffection. Nor did the profits of the island compensate the anxiety

it caused. Exhausted by war, Sicily yielded no revenue, but required

support in men and money. More than this, the papal anathema still

remained upon the family of Pedro of Arragon. It weighed upon Don

Jaime and upon his mother Queen Constance. Courageous though she was,

the daughter of the excommunicated Mainfroy, the widow of the

excommunicated Pedro, had difficulty to support the interdict.

Successive popes sustained the interests of the French dynasty, and

bestowed the crown of Arragon, a fief of the holy see, upon Charles of

Valois, brother of Philip le Bel. True, possession did not accompany

the gift, to which the Arragonese did not subscribe, but drove back

Philip the Bold when he tried to introduce his son into his new

kingdom, an attempt which cost him his reputation and his life. Still

Don Jaime was anxious, for various reasons, to have the donation

annulled. To this end he addressed himself to the King of Naples,

still prisoner at Barcelona, offering to give him up Sicily, and even

to aid him to reconquer it, on condition that the Pope removed the

interdict from his house, and that Charles of Valois was compelled to

renounce the title of King of Arragon. Moreover, a matrimonial

alliance, always an important tie, but especially so in the middle

ages, was to seal the friendship of the two monarchs. Don Jaime was to

marry the princess Blanche, eldest daughter of the King of Naples, and

granddaughter of the great Charles of Anjou. Boniface VIII., greatly

attached, at the commencement of his popedom, to the interests of

France, joyfully acquiesced in these arrangements.

[9] Procida died at an advanced old age, in his native province of

Salerno, reconciled with the Pope and with the King of Naples, at

enmity with Sicily, and re-established in his possessions by Charles

II.--St Priest, vol. iv. p. 172.

Every thing seemed arranged, when unexpected obstacles arose. On the

one hand, Charles of Valois, having neither dominions nor crown,

obstinately resisted the transfer of his imaginary kingdom; on the

other, the Sicilians declared they would die to a man rather than

acknowledge the sovereignty of the house of Anjou. They summoned Don

Jaime to renounce his project, and when he persisted in it, they

raised to the throne the Infante Frederick, at first with the title of

Lord of Sicily, afterwards with that of King. This prince proved

worthy of the national choice. In vain did Boniface VIII. assail him

in turn with flattery and menace; the new king of Sicily remained

faithful to his people. By a strange concurrence of circumstances, he

found himself opposed in arms to his brother Jaime of Arragon, now the

ally of his father-in-law, Charles II., who had recovered his liberty

and returned to his dominions. In spite of his own and his subjects'

valour, Frederick III. was at first nearly overcome. The house of

Anjou would have reconquered Sicily, but for the defection of the

fickle King of Arragon, who abandoned his allies and returned home,

carrying with him the contempt of all parties. After various changes

of fortune, a definitive treaty of peace was concluded between the

belligerents, under the auspices of Rome. By its conditions, Frederick

III. was to retain the crown of Sicily for his life, with the title of

King of Trinacria, invented to avoid infringement on the rights of

Charles II., who kept the title of King of Sicily, with the reversion

of the dominions for himself and his direct heirs, after the death of

Frederick, who married Eleanor, youngest daughter of Charles. The

basis of this treaty was manifestly unstable, its very letter was soon

effaced: and Frederick, disdaining the singular title of King of

Trinacria, soon resumed his rightful one. There were thus two kings of

Sicily, on this and that side the straits, and from that period dates

the term, the Two Sicilies.

During a reign of thirty-four years, Frederick III. did much for the

nation that had placed him at its head. A scholar and a legislator, he

encouraged letters, navigation, and trade, established a national

representation, and bequeathed his subjects the famous Sicilian

constitution, which was entirely destroyed only in the present

century. But the tendency of power in Sicily was to the hands of the

nobles. Frederick struggled hard to keep down the aristocracy, but his

efforts had no permanent success: at his death the barons became

omnipotent, the feudal system prevailed, and for more than a century

the annals of the island are but a confused history of the rivalries

of the Chiaromonte and the Vintimiglia, the Palizzi and the Alagona,

the Luna and the Perolla, and many others besides. The Chiaromonte,

notwithstanding their French origin,[10] were the chiefs of the

Italian or Latin party; they became absolute masters of Palermo, and

reigned over it from the summit of their castle of Steri, whose

massive masonry still exists in the heart of that city. The kings of

Sicily, to obtain their support, sought the hands of their daughters;

but at last the haughty patricians fell from their pinnacle of

greatness, and by treason or stratagem were led to the scaffold.

Distracted and weakened by discord, Sicily offered, at this time, an

easy prey to Naples, had the descendants of the first Charles been the

men to profit by the opportunity. But they were far from inheriting

the martial energy of their great ancestor, and, in spite of

circumstances frequently favourable, Sicily was never reconquered by

the race of Charles of Anjou.

[10] "It is at this time (the moment when Charles of Anjou raised the

siege of Messina) that estimable, but second-rate historians place the

pretended adventure of a French chevalier of the name of Clermont, to

whose wife, they say, Charles of Anjou had offered violence. They add,

that, after revenging himself by a similar outrage to one of the

king's daughters, this French knight fled to Sicily, where he founded

the powerful house of Chiaromonte, Counts of Modica." (St Priest, vol.

iv. p. 104.) M. de St Priest disbelieves this anecdote, which is

certainly inconsistent with the character for rigid morality and

chastity he assigns to his hero.

The concluding line of M. de St. Priest's work contains a sentiment

which will doubtless find ready echo in the hearts of his countrymen,

ever jealous of Great Britain's aggrandisement and territorial growth.

"May Sicily" he says, "never become a second Malta." The wish, whose

heartfelt sincerity cannot be doubted, points to the possibility, not

to say the probability, of the event deprecated; an event which,

however unwelcome to France, would, in many respects, be highly

advantageous to the two parties more immediately concerned. So

manifest are the benefits that it is almost impertinent to point them

out. Sicily would find efficient protection, commercial advantages, a

paternal and liberal government; England would obtain a storehouse and

granary, and an excellent position whence to observe and check French

progress in Northern Africa, should the ambition of the young

republic, or of any other government that may succeed it, render

interference necessary. At the present moment, when half Europe is

unhinged, political speculation becomes doubly difficult; but whatever

turn events take, there is little likelihood of France either

abandoning her African colony or resting contented with its present

extent. Doubtless, she will some day lay hold of Tunis, or at least

make the attempt. It is but a short sail from Tunis to Sicily. The

peace-at-all-price men, who would fain dispense with fleets and

armies, and trust to the spread of philanthropy for the protection of

Britain and its colonies, would have no fresh cause for their insipid

and querulous grumblings in the annexation of Sicily to the British

empire. It would be unnecessary to recruit an additional drummer, or

man a cock-boat the more. The island Sicilians, of more hardy frame

and courageous temper than their Continental neighbours, are, as they

have lately shown, able to defend their liberties. They would furnish

troops and mariners, who, with British discipline and direction, need

be second to none in Europe. Increased advantages should of course be

afforded to Sicilian produce imported into Great Britain. This would

cut two ways. Whilst benefiting the Sicilian, and encouraging him to

industry, it would spur the stolid and stubborn lawgivers of Spain to

moderate the absurd tariff which excludes foreign manufactures from

that country, save through illicit channels. Under British protection

and British laws, Sicily, if she cannot hope ever to resume her

ancient grandeur and prosperity, would flourish and improve to an

extent impossible during her ill-assorted union with Naples.

CRIMES AND REMARKABLE TRIALS IN SCOTLAND.

KIDNAPPING--PETER WILLIAMSON'S CASE.

Before entering on the personal history of a man whose adventures

carried him through all the strata of social life, from the feathered

savage of the Prairies to the industrious burgess in small-clothes,

let us give a few incidental notices of that crime--kidnapping, or

man-stealing,--his subjection to which was the opening scene of his

eventful career. We can, perhaps, scarcely point to a more distinct

type of feebleness in the law of any country than the frequency of

this crime. In that community where the people, marked off by any

distinction in race or appearance--where persons born in serfdom, or

of a particular line, or speaking a peculiar language--are doomed to

slavery, the laws may be unjust and barbarous in the extreme, but it

does not follow that they are feeble. The slavery exists _by_ them,

not _in spite of_ them. It is in the country where the person, free by

the law, is seized, and, in defiance of the law, held in forced

bondage, in obedience to the interest or the malevolence of

individuals, that this characteristic of feebleness is so prominently

developed. The purloiner of coin or plate can only be tracked by

external incidents; there is nothing in his connexion with the

property that in itself proclaims his crime. The horse and

cattle-stealer have to deal with less silent commodities; but even the

objects of _their_ depredations are not placed in an unnatural

position by ownership, and have no voice wherewith to proclaim their

custodier's dishonesty. But the man who holds another in possession in

a free country, is a criminal in the eye of every one who sees him

exercise his ownership; and he carries about with him a perpetual

witness and accuser, who is under the strongest inducements to be ever

vigilant and ever active. The law under which common thefts are

practised, is only that which does not see far into a millstone; but

the law under which kidnapping may be pursued with impunity, is deaf,

and blind, and, paralytic. Owing to the strong central administration

of justice in England, it does not appear that this crime was ever

very prevalent in the south. We find, indeed, in _Whitelock's

Memorials_, under the date of 9th May 1645--"An ordinance against such

who are called _spirits_, and use to steal away and take up children,

and, bereave their parents of them, and convey them away." The measure

then adopted, which will be found among the ordinances of the Long

Parliament, shows us that it had become customary to seize children

and carry them out of the country, to be employed as slaves in the

plantations, or probably to be sold to the Mediterranean pirates. The

ordinance says, "Whereas, the houses of Parliament are informed that

divers lewd persons do go up and down the city of London and

elsewhere, and in a most barbarous and wicked manner steal away many

little children, it is ordered by the Lords and Commons, in Parliament

assembled, that all officers and ministers of justice be hereby

straitly charged and required to be very diligent apprehending all

such persons as are faulty in this kind, either in stealing, selling,

buying, enveigling, purloining, conveying, or receiving children so

stolen, and to keep them in safe imprisonment till they may be brought

to severe and exemplary punishment. It is further ordered, that the

marshals of the Admiralty and the Cinque Ports do immediately make

strict and diligent search in all ships, and vessels upon the river,

and at the Downs, for all such children, according to such directions

as they have, or shall receive from the committee of the Admiralty and

Cinque Ports." The few reports we have of English cases of kidnapping

are too profusely dressed up with technicalities to permit us to see

the naked facts. Shower reports the case of Lees v. Dassigny, the 34th

of Charles II. An English common-law reporter never condescends to

know the year of the Christian era; he knows only that of the king's

reign, and if he had to mention the foundation of the Turkish empire,

he would mark it as the 28th Edward I.; while the discovery of America

would as undoubtedly be an event of the 8th Henry VII. When we turn to

our chronological tables, we find that the 34th of Charles II. means

the year 1682. How far the pleadings throw any light on the adventures

of the youth who had been kidnapped and sent abroad, the reader may

judge from a fair specimen:--"They sue an _homine replegiando_ in the

name of the young Turbett; and after an _alias_ and a _pluries_, they

get an _elongatus est per quendam Philippum Dassigny infra nominatum_.

This was to the Sheriff of London, whereas the defender never lived in

London, but at Wapping, in Middlesex," &c. The effect of the pleading,

of which this is the commencement, was, that the accused might be

bailed, "and on security to bring home the boy in six months, death

and the perils of the seas excepted, he was discharged on bail. In

Trinity term the boy came home, and being brought into court was

delivered to the father; but they never proceeded." Sir Thomas Raymond

gives us the further information, that the kidnapper was a merchant

trading to Jamaica, and that the victim "was a scholar at Merchant

Taylor's school, and a hopeful young youth."[11] An act of King

William's reign shows that the offence was still prevalent, by

imposing penalties on the masters of vessels leaving people behind in

"his Majesty's plantations or elsewhere." It appears to have been

almost solely for the foreign market that kidnapping was practised in

England. The cultivated and populous character of the country, the

power of the laws, and the perpetual vicinity of a kind of parochial

municipalities, probably rendered the forcible seizure and

imprisonment of individuals within the country too difficult and

dangerous an operation to have been frequently accomplished by force;

though the fatal facilities for confinement in lunatic asylums may

have frequently made them the living tombs of those whom the rapacity,

or the malignant passions of others, have doomed to imprisonment. Yet,

were we to take foreign novelists as true painters of English manners,

we would find in Madame Cotin's _Malvina_, that a French beauty having

secured the affections of an English duke, his powerful relations

seize her after she has become his wife, and lock her up in a turret

of their private castle, where, though the neighbouring physician and

the clergyman visit her, and all the world knows that she is

imprisoned, no one dares to interfere in her behalf; and her fate is

only balanced by that of her husband, whom the Attorney-General

transports, by a writ of _Habeas Corpus_, to the West Indies. Somewhat

similar, if our memory serves us right, are the notions of British

liberty embodied in _Walladmor_, the story got up to pass as a

Waverley novel at one of the Leipsic fairs, where, in the year 1818,

the Lord Lieutenant is found committing every person with whom he

quarrels to his private dungeons in his own castle.

[11] Raymond's _Reports_, 474.

We need no writers of romance to find instances of kidnapping in

Scotland before the Union. The vast solitudes which frequently

separated inhabited districts from each other, the feudal fortalices

scattered hither and thither, the weakness of the crown, the judicial

powers possessed by many of the barons; and we may add to this, the

spirit of clanship, which surrounded every Highland chief with an army

of retainers, as faithful to the preservation of his secrets as they

were relentless in avenging his feuds--all conspired to render it too

easy for a powerful individual to adopt such a form of outrage against

his enemy. Not that the practice was pursued in the manner of a sordid

trade, as we have found it followed in England, and as we shall find

that at a later period it was adopted among ourselves. The Scots had

no colonies to be supplied with this species of living merchandise;

and in truth the human animal has seldom been with us so valuable a

commodity in the home market, as greatly to raise the cupidity of his

neighbour.

Those who ventured on kidnapping flew at high game. A young or a

superannuated king requiring the aid of able counsellors, nay,

sometimes a monarch in the vigour of his power, would be the object of

such an attempt. Among lesser personages, statesmen offensively

powerful, dignified churchmen about to issue ecclesiastical censures,

and judges of the Court of Session prepared to give adverse decisions,

were in great request, and eagerly sought after. Alexander Gibson of

Durie, for some time a principal clerk of session, and afterwards a

judge in that court--lawyers know him as the author of a folio volume

of reports of more than average unreadability--was a special victim,

having been twice successfully spirited away. In 1604, George Meldrum,

younger of Dumbreck, was tried for several acts of this description,

of one of which Durie, then "ane of the clerks of our sovereign Lord's

Council and Session," was a victim. Among those whom the kidnapper

took to his assistance were--"John Johnston, called Swyne-foot," and

some other worthies, comprehensively described as "ane company of

common and notorious thieves, brigands, and murderers," who assembled

"with swords, hagbuts, and pistolets." Durie was residing in St

Andrews, and it appears that his enemy employed "ane fellow called

Craik, the said George Meldrum's own man," to watch his motions. He

was riding, as it would appear, on the bank of the Firth of Tay,

opposite to Dundee, accompanied by a brother barrister and his

servant, when the ambuscade "treasonably put violent hands on their

persons," and "took them captives and prisoners." Their captor "reft

fra them their purses, with certain gold and silver being therein,

extending to the quantity of three hundred merks or thereby"--an act

which the indictment reproachfully mentions as specially unworthy of

"ane landed man." Meldrum proceeded with his captive through Fifeshire

to Kinghorn, on the Forth; thence, crossing over to Leith, he marched

through Edinburgh, "passing the palace gate of Holyroodhouse"--a

circumstance to which the indictment alludes as a powerful

illustration of the audacity of the transaction. The party then

proceeded through Lothian and Tweeddale across the Border "unto

England, to George Ratcliff's house, where they detained him captive

and prisoner for the space of eight days or thereby."[12] Thus was

this high official conveyed a distance of about a hundred miles, not

only through the most populous and fertile part of the kingdom, but

through the centre of the metropolis, under the very shadow of the

throne; and that not by any of the great barons who could command an

army of followers, but by a petty country gentleman, aided by a few

Border freebooters.

[12] Pitcairn, ii. 428.

The second private captivity of Durie was accomplished on the

principle on which an elector is sometimes abstracted. It was for the

purpose of defeating his adverse vote on the bench in a cause then

before the court. Sir Walter Scott mentions the incident in the notes

to the "Border Minstrelsy;" and the reader who remembers his

picturesque and spirited narrative may perhaps be amused by seeing how

the same event appears in the sober garb of a reporter of decisions.

Forbes, in his "Journal of the Session," says--

"Some party in a considerable action before the session,

finding the Lord Durie could not be persuaded to think his

plea good, fell upon a stratagem to prevent the influence

and weight that his lordship might have to his prejudice, by

causing some strong masked men kidnap him in the Links of

Leith at his diversion on a Saturday afternoon, and

transport him to some blind and obscure room in the country,

where he was detained captive without the benefit of

daylight a matter of three months--though otherwise civilly

and well entertained--during which time his lady and

children went in mourning for him as dead. But after the

cause aforesaid was decided, the Lord Durie was carried back

by incognitoes, and dropped in the same place where he had

been taken up."[13]

[13] Forbes's _Journal of the Session_, preface, p. xviii.

During the civil wars of the seventeenth century, the victorious party

frequently found it difficult to dispose of their captives. In England

many of them were sent to the plantations; and perhaps the idea which

this practice communicated to the public, of the value of captives

transported to the colonies, may have first instigated those acts of

kidnapping against which we have found the Long Parliament protesting.

Scotland had no such means of disposing of her prisoners, whose

numbers were frequently very inconvenient. Many of them were sent

abroad to be soldiers under those continental leaders who were

considered on the same side with the victorious party at home; others

were subjected to a sort of slavery in this country; but wherever

their lot might be cast, their captivity would be very apt to be

abbreviated by some revolution in the fortunes of war. A person who

preserved accurate notes of political events as they passed under his

eye, kept the following very business-like account of the distribution

of the common soldiers taken in the battle in which Montrose was made

prisoner:--

"Tuesday, 21st May [1650].--This day the two hundred and

eighty-one common soldiers taken at Kerbester, that were in

the Canongate prison--the house ordains forty of them, being

forced from Orkney, and have wife and children, to be

dismissed. The house gives six of them, being fishers, to

the lieutenant-general; also other six fishers of them,

given by the parliament to the Marquis of Argyle; and six of

them being lusty fellows, given to Sir James Hope, to his

lead-mines. The remnant of them the house gives to the Lord

Angus and Sir Robert Murray, to recruit the French regiments

with, to be transported out of the country to France."[14]

[14] Balfour's _Brieffe Memorials of Church and State_, 18.

It may be questioned if these gifts were very valuable to their

receivers, or if the coerced labour they inferred was worth

possessing. Certainly so little valuable was the mere human being to

the community, some thirty years afterwards, that the liberal and

patriotic Fletcher of Saltoun pleaded hard for the establishment of

slavery in Scotland, not as a privilege to the aristocracy, but as a

boon to "so many thousands of our people who are, at this day, dying

for want of bread." He saw that sheep and oxen, being property, were

cared for and kept alive, and, by a process of reasoning which he

seemed to consider a very natural one, he thought that he had but to

convert his fellow beings into property, to let them be also cared

for. Yet, like all men who conceive social paradoxes, he was haunted

by the shadow, cast before, of the revulsion of common sense against

his proposal, and thus anticipated the obloquy it would incur. "I

doubt not that what I have said will meet, not only with all the

misconstruction and obloquy, but all the disdain, fury, and outcries,

of which either ignorant magistrates or proud lazy people are capable.

Would I bring back slavery into the world? Shall men of immortal

souls, and by nature equal to any, be sold as beasts? Shall they and

their posterity be for ever subjected to the most miserable of all

conditions, the inhuman barbarity of masters, who may beat, mutilate,

torture, starve, or kill, so great a number of mankind at pleasure?

Shall the far greater part of the commonwealth be slaves, not that the

rest may be free, but tyrants over them? With what face can we oppose

the tyranny of princes, and recommend such tyranny as the highest

virtue, if we make ourselves tyrants over the greatest part of

mankind? Can any man, from whom such a thing has escaped, ever offer

to speak for liberty? But they must pardon me if I tell them, that I

regard not names but things; and that the misapplication of names has

confounded every thing."[15]

[15] Balfour's _Brieffe Memorials of Church and State_, 18.

His plan of social reorganisation was, that "every man of a certain

estate in this nation should be obliged to take a proportional number

of the poor, and employ them in hedging and ditching his grounds, or

any other sort of work," while the young were to be "educated in the

knowledge of some mechanical art." Here we have one of the earliest

undoubted expositions of communism. But Fletcher called things by

their accepted names, and for Saint Simon's _industriel_ and _chef_,

we have _slave_ and _owner_; for Fourier's _Phalanges_ we have

_gangs_. Nor does the illustrious patriot flinch from describing in

their proper harsh colours the coercive means necessary for thus

keeping society in fetters. We recommend to M. Louis Blanc the passage

where he says:--"These things, when once resolved, must be executed

with great address, diligence, and severity; for that sort of people

is so desperately wicked, such enemies of all work and labour, and,

which is yet more amazing, so proud, in esteeming their own condition

above that which they will be sure to call slavery; that, unless

prevented by the utmost industry and diligence, upon the first

publication of any orders necessary for putting in execution such a

design, they will rather die with hunger in caves and dens, and murder

their young children, than appear abroad, to have them and themselves

taken into such a kind of service."

There is spirit--almost sympathy in this picture of the desperation of

savage liberty; and the enthusiasm with which the lover of his own

freedom describes the love of the poor outcasts for theirs, sounds as

if it gave the lie to the sincerity of the project. It seems to have

had no supporters. The state of "the labour market" did not make the

possession of human beings a desirable investment, and landed

gentlemen were not anxious to become the owners of their poorer

neighbours, for the general good of the community. Kidnappings and

deportations for political purposes, still continued to be

occasionally practised. One memorable instance was the far-famed story

of Lady Grange, to which we propose to dedicate a separate notice, in

virtue of our having perused some documents with which the world at

large does not seem yet to be acquainted. There is little doubt that

occasionally a person who showed a disposition to impart dangerous

Jacobite secrets was spirited away to France, to give an account of

his views and intentions, under circumstances in which he might not be

so likely to forget the obligations he had incurred to the exiled

house. Generally speaking, however, kidnapping was worthless in a

commercial sense; though Lovat, whose actions were scarcely in

conformity with any particular social rule, choosing to have in his

service a well-trained London footman, without paying him, got

possession of his person, and kept it as safe in his own custody at

Castle Dounie as if he had taken him to Algiers.

It was, however, when the Scottish trade with the plantations began to

open up, soon after the Union, that the disgraceful practice of

kidnapping and transporting children became prevalent. The power

possessed by many of the chiefs, as independent local judges, with but

a nominal responsibility to the control of the crown or the

intervention of the supreme courts, gave facilities for this traffic,

which poor human nature seems to have been incapable of resisting. The

victims were sometimes persons tried and convicted before the

hereditary tribunal; and since they _must_ be punished, it were pity

to allow an opportunity to be lost, by which the infliction might be

turned to the profit of the judge or his friends. Thus we find Lovat,

desirous to propitiate the favour of Duncan Forbes, offering his

brother a gift of "a few Strathglass rogues," clansmen of his next

neighbour and hereditary enemy, whom he had caught in his own domain,

and convicted in his own court. He had at first proposed to send them

to America; but, as they are "handsome fellows," he offers them to

Forbes, for his nephew's Dutch regiment. "I shall send them to him,"

says the accommodating chief, "without any expense in keeping of them;

for I will send immediately orders to carry them south with a guard.

There is a captain there of Arthur's regiment, who will receive them

and deliver them to Arthur; and I'll send him other two Camerons that

are in your prison--tall fellows; and five such good men will do him

more service, now that the Dutch expect a war, than thirty men next

season."[16]

[16] _Culloden Papers_, 118.

It was in reference to such practices that the engineer officer, who,

while employed in laying out the military roads through the Highlands,

preserved so many shrewd remarks on the manners of the people, added

the following to his budget:--

"When any ship in these parts is bound for the West Indies,

to be sure, a neighbouring chief, of whom none dares openly

to complain, has several thieves to send prisoners to town.

"It has been whispered their crimes were only asking their

dues, and such-like offences; and I have been well assured

they have been threatened with hanging, or at least

perpetual imprisonment, to intimidate and force them to sign

a contract for their banishment, which they seldom refused

to do, as knowing there could be no want of witnesses

against them, however innocent they were; and then they were

put on board the ship, the master paying so much a head for

them. Thus two purposes were served at once--viz.: the

getting rid of troublesome fellows, and making money of them

at the same time."[17]

[17] Burt's _Letters from the North of Scotland_, 5th Edit., i. 50.

But our more immediate concern, in the present instance, is with no

frightful feudal baron, presiding over chains and dungeons, in the

mysterious recesses of his own solitary moated tower. The offenders

exposed in Peter Williamson's history, were grave, sober

burghers--bailies and town-councillors of one of the most worshipful

and respectable corporations in the United Kingdom--men of peace,

staid in their demeanour, cautious in their walk of life--careful not

to rub their smooth, well-brushed broad-cloth against any impure

thing. Their proceedings had the fairest and most innocent appearance:

men of industry and business themselves, keepers of their bonds and

engagements, they were but somewhat rigid in exacting industry and

punctual performance of obligations from others. "Kidnapping,"

"crimping," "deforcement," "slavery," were words unknown in their

vocabulary,--they did but hire servants: it was nominally for a period

of years, it might happen to be virtually for life; it might be to

bear the burden, under a tropical sun, in the steaming swamps of the

Antillas--still it was a mere contract. They would have been

frightened by the name of a slave-ship, but they meekly acknowledged

that they freighted vessels "in the servant trade," with "cargoes of

boys."

"For them alone did seethe

A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:

Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,

That set sharp racks at work to pinch and peel."

Many years had passed over the guilty traffic, ere an accident having

disturbed the placid surface it assumed to the world, some men of

honour, courage, and high station resolved to probe its mysteries; and

discovered that the sleek burgesses, by their corporate authority, had

been able noiselessly to accomplish as wide and devastating a tyranny

as ever had been revealed by the dungeons of some mouldering baronial

tower to frighten this world against feudality.

Peter Williamson was born at Hirnley, in the parish of Aboyne,

Aberdeenshire, the clergyman of which mentions him in the statistical

account, along with the celebrated Father Innes, and Ross, the author

of "the Fortunate Shepherdess," as one of the eminent men connected

with his parish.[18]

[18] _New Statistical Account_, Aberdeen, 1054.

The district, though situated on the slopes of the higher Grampians,

has not, within the reach of history, been inhabited by Celts, and

Williamson's name speaks to his Saxon origin. He says he was, "if not

of rich, yet of reputable parents;" and they evidently belonged to a

poor and frugal, but independent class, who may still be found rearing

their humble fortunes on those somewhat sterile uplands, neither as

masters nor as servants, but each independently farming his own croft.

One of the witnesses, examined more than twenty years afterwards, said

"he knew James Williamson having a plough going in Upper Balnacraig,

to the best of the deponent's remembrance, and heard he had likewise a

plough going in Hirnley, when he lived there; and that he was in such

circumstances as to keep his children and his family, without their

being obliged to beg their bread." We take the brief history of his

seizure from Peter's own narrative.

"I was sent to live with an aunt at Aberdeen, where, at

eight years of age, playing on the quay, with others of my

companions, being of a stout, robust constitution, I was

taken notice of by two fellows belonging to a vessel in the

harbour, employed (as the trade then was) by some of the

_worthy_ merchants of the town, in that villanous and

execrable practice called _kidnapping_; that is, stealing

young children from their parents, and selling them as

slaves in the plantations abroad. Being marked out by those

monsters of iniquity as their prey, I was easily cajoled

aboard the ship by them, where I was no sooner got, than

they conducted me between the decks, to some others they had

kidnapped in the same manner. At that time I had no sense of

the fate that was destined for me, and spent the time in

childish amusements with my fellow-sufferers in the

steerage, being never suffered to go upon deck while the

vessel lay in the harbour, which was till such a time as

they had got in their loading, with a complement of unhappy

youths for carrying on their wicked commerce."[19]

[19] _Life and various Vicissitudes of Peter Williamson._

We shall take our further notices of this occurrence from a very

different source--a huge bundle of papers, chiefly printed, consisting

of the documents connected with the long train of litigation in which

Williamson was subsequently involved, owing to the publication of the

passage we have just cited. The papers consist of pleadings, accounts,

letters, and the testimonies of witnesses--a sort of mass in which it

is clear from the beginning that one cannot fail to find curious

things by boring holes through it here and there. We are not aware

that this valuable source of information about the manners of the

place and period has ever been heretofore applied to literary uses,

with the exception of some references made to it, in a curious and

very able compendium of provincial lore, called "The Book of Bon

Accord, or a guide to the city of Aberdeen;" a work which, like

"Tooke's diversions of Purley," not unknown to collectors of juvenile

circulating libraries, appears to have been christened with some

peculiar object of hiding the learning and ingenuity of its contents

under a frivolous exterior.

At the time when legal investigations were commenced, Williamson was a

man in middle life, who had gone through adventures and vicissitudes

enough for a century of ordinary human existence. The first step was

to identify the trained travelled man with the poor boy who had

mysteriously disappeared from the streets of Aberdeen; and the next to

prove the act of kidnapping. Several witnesses remembered Williamson;

he was described by them as "a rough, ragged, bumble-headed, long,

stourie clever boy, by which is meant a growthy boy;" and "a stout,

clever, rough loon, and very ill to guide, and very ragged till he got

clothes." A neighbour of the old crofter said he believed, "upwards of

four years before the battle of Culloden, it was the general report of

the country, that when the said Peter Williamson was a little boy

going with a clipped head, he was taken at Aberdeen, and carried to

Philadelphia with several other boys." He remembered conversations

with the youth's father, who complained that "he came into Aberdeen

seeking his son Peter, but they would not let him near hand him; that

his son Peter was in a barn in Aberdeen, and they would not let him

speak with him;" and, "that the merchants in Aberdeen had carried away

his son to Philadelphia, and sold him for a slave"--observing, that it

was commonly rumoured that several merchants there, whom he named,

"did deal in that way of carrying away boys;" and he concluded by

saying "he saw the father shed many salt tears on that account." The

session clerk, who had been at Peter's baptism, recognised him when he

saw him, as "the same identical Peter Williamson at whose baptism he

had been present," and confirmed the story of his father's having

attempted in vain to get access to him in the barn, characterising the

old man's lamentation as "very sore and grievous." Mr Fraser of

Findrac, a neighbouring proprietor, "knew several of James

Williamson's children, and had heard it was the practice of some of

the merchants of Aberdeen to kidnap young children, and send them to

the plantations to be sold as slaves. He heard in the country that the

said James Williamson or his wife had gone into Aberdeen, and one of

their sons called Peter Williamson had followed; and that James Smith,

saddler in Aberdeen, had picked up the said Peter; and the deponent

heard he was either put in prison, or put on board a ship, till the

ship sailed; it was the voice of the county that James Williamson and

his wife regretted, or made a clamour for the loss of their son, not

knowing what was become of him."

The investigation brought to light some other cases, and gradually

opened up the whole mystery of iniquity. One old woman, the miller's

widow, who remembered that Peter "was sent into Aberdeen, to be under

his aunts, his mother being dead, and that soon thereafter he was

missing," said that in the parish of Aboyne "they were generally

afraid to send their boys on errands to Aberdeen, for fear they should

be carried off." Some witnesses remembered having in their youth made

marvellous escapes; and Alexander Grigson, domestic at Aboyne Castle,

had a story to tell, "that about twenty years ago, he and another boy

were coming from the mill of Crathie, where they had been seeking

their meat; and near to a birch wood, near to the Kirk of Crathy,

three countrymen on horseback came up with them, but the deponent knew

none of them; and they asked him and the other boy that was along with

him, if they would go with them, and they would clothe them like

gentlemen; but the deponent being elder than the other boy, made

answer that they would not go along with them, for it struck the

deponent in the head that perhaps he and the other boy were to be

carried abroad, in respect a rumour prevailed in the country that

young boys were carried abroad at that time." The men threatened

force; and the boys, who could not fail then to have the blackest

notions of their intentions, took to their heels while the kidnappers

were tying their horses, and defied discovery in the recesses of the

old forest of Mar, which, fortunately for them, skirted the road. This

incident may have been a trick to frighten two country lads. Another,

recorded by a chairman in Edinburgh, has a more business-like

appearance. "In the year 1728 or 1729, he went to Aberdeen to see an

uncle and an aunt, who lived there; and whilst he was there he was

carried up to a house by a person whom he did not know, where he got a

dram and a piece of biscuit, and was promised a new coat and great

encouragement, if he would agree to go over to America with the other

lads that were engaged to go there; that he signified his willingness

to agree to the proposal; that upon this he was desired to go and come

back to his breakfast again; but when he told this to some of the

countrymen of his acquaintance, they told him that he was a fool, for

he would be sold to the blacks, and they would eat him; that upon this

he resolved immediately to leave the town, which he did."

It appeared that those who endeavoured to recover their children were

threatened with coercive measures; and the poor people seem to have

been impressed with the conviction, that they were in the hands of an

overwhelming power, with which it would be vain to contend. Thus one

individual, having recovered possession of his son, met the captain of

the transport vessel in the street, who bade him send back the youth,

otherwise he might expect unpleasant consequences. Therefore he

"promised and engaged to return his said son, which he accordingly

did. Depones, that if he could have hindered his son from going to

America he would have done it; and if he had known as much then as he

does now, he would have done it. Depones, that before he promised to

return his son to the said ship as above, he was himself threatened to

be put into the Tolbooth."

The line of defence adopted by the kidnappers was, that no one was

forced, in the first instance; that each boy was the object of a

distinct agreement, either with his parents or with himself; and the

subsequent coercion employed towards them, which could not be denied,

was thus interpreted to be a judicious protection by the employers of

the property they had fairly acquired. But the very evidence given by

their own emissaries--almost every sentence bearing in its bosom a

general assurance that nothing illegal was done--is quite sufficient

in the description of minute facts to support, if not confirm, the

darkest suspicions. Thus one of the crimps, desiring to excite some

feeling against the exiles, as a graceless inconsiderate class,

unworthy of sympathy, said "that such persons, whether boys or older

people, whom the deponent engaged to go to America on board the said

ship, the Planter, after they had been--some four, some five, some six

weeks clothed and maintained by him at the expense of his employers,

were endeavouring to desert and run away, and were tampered with, or

decoyed to engage or take on with other people in the town of

Aberdeen, who were, at the very same time, engaging and indenting

servants to America; and, in order to prevent their being so decoyed,

the older people so engaged by the deponent were put in prison, and

the younger people were put into the workhouse or poor's hospital."

There was, it seems, much competition in the trade; and, at the same

time, the live commodity had a propensity to remove itself from the

custody of its owners. Thus might the employment be termed a doubly

hazardous one; and a certain scrupulous citizen, who had grave doubts

about the propriety of joining the speculation, though he wished to be

a part-owner of the ship in which it was conducted, gave this account

of his hesitation: "Having been informed that servants had been

indented by Ragg and his owners to go on board of his said ship to

America, and the deponent not inclining to be concerned in that

_servant trade_, proposed to Ragg to hold a share of the ship if he

was to have no concern of that adventure of the servants, as he was an

utter stranger _to any merchandise or trade in that way_; to which

Robert Ragg said, that he could not have any concern with the ship

without having a concern in the servants, which made him break up any

farther communing with Ragg about the matter." But this witness was an

instance of the instability of good resolutions: he was strongly

pressed by friends for whom he had a high esteem; the profits and

advantages of the undertaking--but that, of course, was a secondary

matter--were largely spoken of in support of these importunities, "to

hold a share in the same way as the other owners had done, as well in

the adventure of the servants as in the ship,--to which importunities

the deponent at last yielded." Not less tell-tale is a letter by the

captain of the vessel, written in a spirit of honest indignation to

one of the parties involved in the legal proceedings.

"Dear Sir,--I am favoured with yours of the 28th September,

and am sorry you are put to trouble about one Williamson. I

do not remember any of that name that went out in the

Planter, and am certain, if he is not mentioned in _the

account of what was got for the servants' indentures_,"

[that is to say, of course, for the sale of the 'servants'

themselves,] "if even he was ever indented, he must have run

away at Aberdeen, or at Cape May, where the ship was lost:

and I am sure there was no servant in that ship but what was

legally attested before they went from Aberdeen. I cannot

tell _if any register is kept at Philadelphia of the sale of

servants_, but I imagine not."

These admissions, that the "servants" required coercion; that they

were confined in the public prison and other convenient places; and

that they were _sold_, are of course, amply confirmed by the witnesses

on the other side. A witness, William Jamieson, had a pathetic little

history of his own to tell. He lived in the village of Old Meldrum, in

the year 1740, and he had then a son John, between ten and eleven

years old. One evening his boy did not come home; and in the course of

his anxious inquiries, next day, about the missing youth, he was told

by some neighbours, "that they saw a man, whom they said was a servant

to John Burnet, late merchant in Aberdeen, who was commonly called

Bonny John, with the deponent's said son, and two other boys, much

about the same age, travelling towards Aberdeen, and that his son

would be sent to the plantations." The kind of alarm that would be

conveyed to the father's heart by such an intimation, may be

imagined; and the poor villager, surrounded by people among whom a

dread of this species of kidnapping had become a panic, would be

little relieved from his anxieties, by hearing the neighbours describe

the horrors of the slavery to which such of their offspring as

underwent the calamity of capture were subjected, and lament their

utter feebleness to resist the strong hand, fortified by law and

authority, by which the injury was perpetrated. Jamieson, however,

resolved to make an effort for his son. He went presently to Aberdeen,

and saw Burnet, who apparently transacted too large a business in the

"servant trade," to be conscious of so small an item in the account as

the villager's son, "and told him that he had several boys, but did

not know whether the deponent's son was amongst them; but said, though

he was, the deponent would not get him back, because he was engaged

with him." The "deponent"--a word which in Scotland is the technical

term for witness; we are sorry that it is necessary to use it so

often, but we cannot help it--after his interview with the great

kidnapper, wandered along the broad links or downs on the sea-shore,

"where he had been informed the boys were out getting the air." There

"he observed a great number of boys--he thinks about sixty: that they

were attended by a man who, the deponent was informed by the people of

the town, was employed for the purpose by the said John Burnet; that

this man had a horsewhip, and the deponent observed him striking the

boys therewith, when they went out of the crowd." The poor man saw his

own boy John in the little herd, and joyfully hailed him. The boy, by

a natural impulse, ran to his father, and said he would gladly follow

him home if he dared. "Immediately upon this, the person who was Mr

Burnet's overseer, came up and gave the boy a lash with his whip, and

took him by the shoulder and carried him amongst the rest, and

immediately drove them off." The father kept company with the

procession, and thus describes its progress.

"When the boys were marching up to the barn, the deponent

kept pace with the overseer, who followed immediately after

the boys, entreating of him to get liberty to speak to his

son; who answered him that he should get leave to speak to

him by-and-by, when they were come to the barn; but when

they came there the overseer locked the door, and refused

the deponent access; _that he never saw his son after this_.

That the deponent in passing through the town of Aberdeen,

after his son was so locked up from him, was told by several

tradespeople, and others to whom he had told the story of

his son, that it would be in vain for him to apply to the

magistrates to get his son liberated, because some of the

magistrates had a hand in those things, as well as the said

John Burnet; upon which the deponent went home."

A very characteristic record of these transactions still remained in

the books and accounts of the parties implicated. Among these

documents, one of the witnesses, denominated "Walter Scott, writer to

the signet," produces "the ship book," apparently the same which some

of the witnesses more descriptively call "the kidnapping book." It is

needless to say whose father it was who possessed this curious

document. The investigation occurred in 1762--nine years before the

birth of Sir Walter; and it was perhaps one of the last ideas that

would have ever occurred to his respectable parent, that it was worth

while communicating to his offspring any information from a mere

merchant's account book, which had been placed in his hands in the

usual routine of his business, and probably afterwards forgotten. Yet

what a lively history might have been woven out of its dry materials,

had it remained among the other lumber in George Square, to be

rummaged out by the lame boy! Mr Scott was the agent for the

kidnappers. It is satisfactory to observe that he appears to have been

too honest an agent for their purposes; for we find that he

transmitted to them this book by post, in order that it might be

exhibited in the course of the arbitration, to which we shall

hereafter allude; but his employers knew their own interest too well

to produce it, until they were subsequently compelled to do so.

The extracts from the books transferred to the papers before us, are

of course those only which have some reference to the case of Peter

Williamson; thus--

"Jan. 8, 1743. To a pair of stockings s. d.

to Peter Williamson 0 6

To a woollen cap to ditto 0 5

13, To five days of ditto 1 3

And a more emphatical entry--

"To the man that brought Williamson 1 6

_Listing_ appears to have been the slang, or, more properly speaking,

the business term for kidnapping, and the price of the operation

passes through a scale of sums, graduated probably to the difficulty

of the task. Thus, while Williamson was procured for 1s. 6d., there is

an entry "To a Serjeant for listing Mackie, 5s.;" while on the other

hand, there is only "1s. 4½d. to Lighton and a soldier for listing

Robert Paterson." There is one sweeping charge of a guinea, "to

Maclean, sent to the country to list servants,"--amount of business

done not stated, but it must have been considerable, as there are

occasional entries of "cash sent to the country to Maclean." Sometimes

sums are entered as paid to the parties themselves--as 5s. "to

Margaret Robertson, when listed;" yet this can scarcely have been a

voluntary operation on Margaret's part, as the immediate succeeding

item is 1s. 6d. "to the wright on board and one of the boys for

listing her." Five shillings are entered as "to two soldiers for

listing Allardyce." He must have been a difficult boy to catch, as

there is a further entry of 2s., as "cash they spent with him."

This item introduces us to a dark feature in the expenditure of the

kidnappers,--the sums that appear to have been spent by them in

vicious indulgences to their young captives, to prevent the tedium of

their imprisonment, from driving them to desperate efforts for their

escape. We have thus,--"to the boys to play at cards, 1s.;" and in

another place, "to the boys to drink, when put in the workhouse, 1s.;

to six packs of cards to them, 9d." It is almost a relief in the

perusal of these heartless business-like columns--every red line of

which has the hard outline of premeditated cruelty--to read of 1s. 6d.

being paid "to the piper for playing in the workhouse two days." But

in the neighbourhood of this, there are some entries which we dare not

copy. There is a candid explicitness about these accounts, which we

must confess that we have not sufficient virtuous courage to imitate,

by transferring to our columns some charges, of which we would yet

fain give our readers an idea. The person who kept the books no doubt

"called a spade a spade;" and, indeed, he bestowed on many other

things their ordinary vulgar nomenclature. We tremble in approaching

his most explicit declarations; we almost fear reproach in offering to

the reader an extract of an item, in which he has been very decorous,

considering the subject; but such an item! who shall explain its

meaning? Here it is--"To Colonel Horsie for his concubine, £1!"

Some entries referring to "the boys in the Tolbooth," or, more

briefly, the prisoners," remind us, were this necessary, that these

accounts related to persons kept in bondage. Other parts indicate the

comprehensive nature of the business done in "the servant trade."

Thus, on the 12th of May, there is a charge of 7s. 6d. "to three days'

board of ten servants from the Tolbooth;" and on the same day, "to

five days' board of thirty-four servants, £2, 2s. 6d." The latter

number is frequently repeated in the account, and probably represents

the stock of one considerable holder. It was estimated by the

witnesses that sixty-nine were transported in one cargo in 1743; "and

when," says a writer already alluded to, "it is considered that the

trade was carried on to an equal extent for nearly six years, it is

impossible to estimate the number of unhappy beings carried off at

less than six hundred.[20]

[20] _Book of Bon Accord_, 90.

We have endeavoured in our account of these transactions to be sternly

and rigidly prosaic,--perhaps our readers may think we have no great

merit in accomplishing such a resolution, but we also take merit for

having adhered to the facts attested with impartial accuracy. To

afford some relief to the plainness of our detail, we shall wind it

up by treating the reader to a part of the eloquent and denunciatory

exordium of Williamson's counsel, Maclaurin, brother of the great

mathematician.

"Persons of every character, sex, and age, were

kidnapped,--men, women, half-grown lads, and infants, some

of them not above six years old. The whole country was in

terror and consternation, afraid to let their children go

near Aberdeen, and trembling for fear of a kidnapping

excursion from that place. The unfortunate creatures that

had been wheedled or pressed into the service, were at first

confined in a barn or workhouse, where they had a piper to

play to them, and cards allowed them, in order to hinder

them to think, or meditate their escape; but that they soon

attempted, and one or two of them with success; upon which

the rest were shut up in the Tolbooth.

"During their confinement, the parents and other relations

of those who had been enticed or forced away, flocked to

Aberdeen in hopes of effectuating their release,--hopes

which they would never have entertained had they reflected

that the town-clerk and one of the bailies were deeply

interested to thwart them. Accordingly, no entreaties or

solicitations availed; and those who seemed too importunate

were threatened themselves with banishment, incarceration,

and other distress. It will readily occur that it is much

easier to imagine than describe the scenes which it is in

proof ensued; for nothing more piteous and moving can well

be figured than to see fathers and mothers running frantic

through the streets, crowding to the doors and windows where

their children were imprisoned, there giving them their

blessing, taking farewell of them for ever, and departing in

anguish and despair, imprecating curses upon those who were

the authors of their misery."

So much for the first step,--the catching of the prey.

We have some farther testimony to the judicious strictness with which

the worshipful merchants protected their property after it was stowed

away; but we do not hear that their "cargo of young lads," as one of

them calls it in a confidential letter, was insured. William Wilson,

one of the sailors, testified, however,--"that there were several men

in the ship besides the sailors, and also several boys and girls; that

he saw these boys and girls put on board; that they were brought to

the ship in a boat, and were guarded by a number of porters from

Aberdeen, who continued to guard them all night till the ship sailed,

going home always in the morning and returning at night; that during

the day they were guarded by the ship's crew, the one half of whom did

the duty of the ship, and the other half took care of the boys and

girls, notwithstanding whereof two of them made their escape. Some of

these boys appeared to the deponent to be about fourteen years of age,

some to be about sixteen or eighteen, and others not to exceed ten or

twelve years of age; that after the boys were put on board, the

hatches of the ship were put down and locked every night, both while

the ship continued in the harbour of Aberdeen, and afterwards when she

was at sea."

It will naturally occur to the reader, that though the magistrates and

other public officers of a corporation might combine together to

perpetrate such acts, they could not carry their authority across the

Atlantic, or compel the governors of the foreign possessions of the

crown to acknowledge the brand of slavery they had set upon their

captives. This naturally suggested itself to us from the beginning, as

throwing a doubt over the essential movements of the transaction; but

it was speedily cleared away by discoveries very creditable to the

ingenuity, if to no other quality, of these astute burgesses. Every

captive was indented in the presence of a magistrate,--the captor

himself, of course, or some other person engaged in "the servant

trade"--and that for a limited number of years. The indenture was

certified and transmitted to the place of destination. This expedient

brought each captive within the colonial code, which applied very

rigorous rules to indented emigrants,--rules which virtually placed

them in the category of slaves. These harsh regulations were justified

by the circumstance that the class generally consisted of

convicts--indenture being the form in which criminals obtained the

alternative of transportation as a mitigation of some more dreaded

punishment. When the emigrant arrived at Virginia, the ceremony by

which he was sold was an assignment of his indenture. This could, of

course, only convey a right to the labour of his body for a limited

period; but as the convict emigrants required to be under a very

potent discipline, powers were put into the hands of the planters by

which they were enabled to protract the indented period; and

Williamson himself describes with apparent accuracy,--"the children

sent off and sold, no doubt to cruel masters, whose ill treatment

obliges them often-times to elope to avoid slavery; and as there is no

probability of making their escape, as they are always taken and

brought back, and for every day they are away from their master they

serve a week, and for every week a month, and for every month a year;

besides obliged to pay all costs and charges that is advertised for

apprehending them, which will probably bring him in a slave for four

or five years longer at least."

We shall now, in the briefest shape, give an outline of Williamson's

adventures, as detailed by himself, between his removal from the

country, and his return to vex his oppressors with multiform

litigation.

The vessel stranded on a sand bank at the mouth of the Delaware, and

was for some time deserted by its crew, the cargo of boys being left

to an anticipated fate, which Williamson says he often in his

subsequent miseries wished had really overtaken them. Being afterwards

taken on shore, they were relieved by a vessel sailing to

Philadelphia, where they were sold "at about £16 per head." "What

became of my unhappy companions," says Williamson, "I never knew; but

it was my lot to be sold to one of my countrymen, whose name was Hugh

Wilson, a North Briton, for the term of seven years, who had in youth

undergone the same fate as myself.... Happy was my lot in falling into

my countryman's power, as he was, contrary to many others of his

calling, a humane, worthy, honest man. Having no children of his own,

and commiserating my unhappy condition, he took care of me until I was

fit for business." He was allowed by his indulgent master occasionally

to attend a school, where he picked up some crumbs of education; and

finally, at the age of seventeen, he became the old gentleman's heir.

After a few vagrant years he married, and settled as a substantial

planter near the forks of the Delaware. He was in a place much exposed

to the inroads of the French Indians, who, he tells us, in the spirit

of the military profession to which he was subsequently attached,

"generally appeared in small skulking parties, with yellings,

shoutings, and antic postures, instead of trumpets and drums." In one

of these inroads they burned his comfortable dwelling and substantial

steadings, and carried him off captive. All the world knows what is

conveyed in the simple statement of such a fact; and Williamson's

description of the tortures he underwent impart little additional

horror to the simple announcement of his seizure. It is possible to

discern people's nature in their own account of their actions; and not

unfrequently do we see the brave man in the description of dangers

avoided, as we do the poltroon in the exaggerated account of those

courted and overcome. Williamson's narrative conveys the irresistible

impression that he was a man of eminently firm nerve, undying hope,

and unconquerable energy--such a character as the Indian tribe would

respect, and, after a sufficient trial, desire to incorporate with

itself. Hence, while others are slowly slaughtered, Williamson is

still permitted to live, struggle, and endure. In the difference

between his own trials, terrible as they were, and the ignominious

brutalities heaped on a poor fellow captive, who met his fate with

gentleness, prayers, and weeping, we see the indication of the savage

respect paid to the unbroken spirit of the Aberdonian, whose body they

might rend inch by inch, but whose spirit remained firm and

impenetrable as his native granite. At length, after several months of

wandering, he made his escape; and the manner in which he did so was

in keeping with his resolute spirit. He planned no stratagems, and

consulted no confederates, but fled outright; and, though naked,

emaciated, and ignorant of the country, defeated his pursuers by sheer

fleetness of foot and endurance of fatigue. Profusely bleeding--without

even such a verdant show of clothing as Ulysses endowed himself with

when he met Nausica--emaciated to the last extremity, he somewhat

astonished and also alarmed a female neighbour by an unceremonious

morning call, dropping exhausted on the floor ere he could communicate

or receive intelligence. Little need had he too speedily to recover

his faculties; the first news he heard was that his broken-hearted

wife had not long survived the calamity of his capture. He seems to

have now acquired a decided taste for vagrant habits, mingled with a

spirit of vindictive animosity towards the Indians, against whom he

records several exterminating onsets with a sort of horrible relish.

He enlisted himself as a soldier. But American warfare then allowed a

far wider latitude for varied military operations than the ordinary

experience of the ranks: and sometimes he was an Indian warrior,

patiently unravelling and following up a trail; at another time we

find him commanding a detachment of colonists as one versed in the

native mode of fighting, with the rank and emoluments of a lieutenant.

In his little book he details his various military adventures with

much spirit and apparent truthfulness. We have from his pen a

description of one enterprise, which is a little romance in itself. A

lover, hearing that the home of the object of his affections has been

desolated, and his beloved carried off by a band of one of the most

formidable of the tribes of predatory Indians, in his frantic zeal

raises a party of adventurers, with whom he tracks their path. He

arrives just in time to save the damsel from the worst horrors of such

a fate, and the marauders are put to the sword. The whole narrative

has an animation and interest not unworthy of Cooper, who appears to

have been acquainted with Williamson's book, and may not improbably

have derived from it a part of his information about the military

operations of Vaudreuil and Montcalm with the Indians in the French

interest. Williamson was indeed a captive at that capitulation of

Oswego which has cast so deep a stain on the honour of this commander,

and he was soon afterwards sent to England as an exchanged prisoner.

He complains that, on his voyage, "though the French behaved with a

good deal of politeness, we were almost starved for want of

provisions." He arrived at Plymouth in November 1765, and, owing to a

severe wound in one of his hands, was discharged as incapable of

farther service.

No longer able to apply his energies to Indian warfare, he looked

around him for that employment which in his native country would best

supply its place, and found it to be--literature. He published "A

Brief Account of the War in North America, showing the principal

causes of our former miscarriages; as also the necessity and advantage

of keeping Canada, and maintaining a friendly correspondence with the

Indians." This pamphlet is dated in 1760; and we here mention it, that

we may not allow it to interrupt the narrative of the somewhat

momentous consequences of a little book which he published two years

later, with the title "French and Indian cruelty exemplified, in the

Life and various Vicissitudes of fortune of Peter Williamson:

containing a particular account of the manners, customs, and dress, of

the savages; of their scalping, burning, and other barbarities

committed on the English in North America, &c., &c." Mr Williamson was

somewhat prolix in his title pages, and we cannot inflict the whole of

this one on the reader. It was dedicated, with considerable sagacity,

to William Pitt. In the frontispiece there is a full-length portrait

of "Mr Peter Williamson, in the dress of a Delaware Indian." Much as

Catlin's book and other works have tended to make us acquainted of

late with Indian customs, the drapery of this portrait carries with it

a decided appearance of accuracy, and attention to detail. The face is

probably a likeness. Divest it of the feathered head-gear, it is that

of a hard-featured inhabitant of the north-east coast, somewhat

impregnated with an air of fierceness and excitement. Contemplate the

entire figure: it is certainly a very fair representation of the

Indian, such as we have seen him in the few importations exhibited in

this country. For several years this representation was one of the

main attractions of the booksellers' windows in Scotland; and many an

infant has the careless parent or ignorant nurse frightened into

constitutional nervousness, by the intimation that the wild man, whose

picture had been seen during the morning walks, would appear to the

infant in the dark, and visit his misdeeds with some mysterious

punishment. Besides the occupation of the literary man, Williamson

pursued that of the actor. During the day he sat behind a stall,

vending his account of his adventures--in the evening he rehearsed

them in the largest room of some popular tavern; where, like Catlin,

he made the people acquainted with the costume and habits of the

people, of whom he had acquired that acute experience which boys are

said to have obtained of the boundary marks where they have been

whipped.

In a moment of infatuation, the magistrates of Aberdeen, finding that

the interest attached to Williamson's narrative and exhibitions

subjected them to unpleasant reflections, resolved to punish him. He

had migrated northwards, creating a little public curiosity and wonder

wherever he went, until, on reaching his native city, he was brought

before the magistrates, charged with a libel on the community,

contained in that passage descriptive of his seizure on the pier of

Aberdeen, which has been already quoted. The magistrates, being at

once the prosecutors and the judges, had little difficulty in

committing him; and he was thus very roughly awakened from a dream in

which he "began to think himself happy in having endured these

misfortunes, a recital of which promised to put him in a more

prosperous situation than he had ever hoped for." The stock in hand of

his books, amounting to three hundred and fifty copies, was seized and

burned in the market-place by the common hangman, and he was committed

to prison until he should sign a recantation of the passage containing

the account of the kidnapping. The mind that bore up against the

fiercest cruelties of the savages, seems to have bowed before these

judicial terrors. In the centre of the torturing hordes, without a

civilised eye to look on him, he acquired the stern virtues of those

on whom he looked--

"Impassive, fearing but the shame of fear,

A stoic of the woods, a man without a tear."

Among his own people, beneath the shield of British justice, with a

public to whom oppression never appeals in vain he sank unmanned; and

in utter prostration of spirit he signed the recantation in the terms

in which it was desired, and marched out of prison a heartbroken and

ruined man.

But the cup of the iniquities of his oppressors was now full, and

their hour of retribution was at hand. The blow dealt against them was

not so severe as injured justice might have required, but it was dealt

with an ignominious scorn that made compensation for its want of

severity. There were at that time many men of high spirit and great

attainments in the Scottish bar. They knew that the age they belonged

to was one, in which the safety of the public liberties was intimately

allied with the independence of the bar. It was not an uncommon

practice for a few of the ablest and most popular advocates to unite

together in vindication of the victim of some formidable system of

oppression; and, fortunately for Williamson, his case attracted their

generous interest. Andrew Crosbie, the prototype of Scott's Pleydell,

threw his whole energies, and they were not small, into this cause.

The pleadings at our bar at that time were full of philosophy, general

declamation, and poetry; and we have before us some papers from

Crosbie's pen which are brilliant and pleasing specimens of this class

of forensic rhetoric. At the present day the rhetoric of the law

appeals only to the jury, and in the shape of vocal oratory. In the

days of our grandfathers it was addressed to the learned bench, and

was embodied in carefully prepared written pleadings. The intellectual

rank of the audience to be influenced, and the medium of

communication, would thus naturally invest the pleadings of these old

lawyers with a literary turn, not equalled in the corresponding

productions of this age. So we find that Crosbie bursts open the case

with these well-turned periods:--

"That liberty which the constitution of this country considers as its

favourite object, is the result of the due equipoise which our law has

established between the authority of magistrates and the rights of the

people. As the relative duties of society must be enforced by the

magistrate, and compliance with the laws exacted from the citizens by

means of his authority, all the power that is necessary for these

salutary purposes is bestowed upon him; and, in the due execution of

it, he is not only entitled to the protection of the law, but is an

object of its veneration. Yet the same principles that have thus armed

him with authority, for the benefit of society, have wisely imposed on

him a restraint from abusing it."

The result of these proceedings was, that, in 1762, the Court

unanimously awarded to Williamson damages to the extent of £100; and

it was declared that, for this sum as well as £80 of costs, the guilty

individuals should be personally liable, "and that the same shall be

no burden upon the town of Aberdeen." A corporation is a sort of ideal

object; it has no personality; it has been pronounced, by a high

authority, to have no conscience; it has just one reality about it--it

has a purse. Into this purse its members may have been accustomed,

from time to time, to dip for the deeds done by them in the

flesh--that is, in their corporeal, not their corporate capacity.

Perhaps the law, in countenancing this arrangement, considered that

the members of a corporation must be so essentially wound up in its

interests, that parting with the money of the corporation--that is,

with the money of the public--was as great a punishment for their own

individual delicts as parting with their own. Be this as it may, the

Court decreed that, on this occasion, the public of Aberdeen should

not pay for the outrage inflicted on Williamson. Now let us behold the

ingenuity with which these worshipful gentlemen baffled the Court, and

made the public pay after all. There were certain dues collected by

the magistrates, as deputies of the Lord High Admiral of the Coast. It

appears that this high official might have applied the sums so levied

to his own use, but he had ceased for some considerable time to exact

them, and, by consuetude, they had been added to the revenues of the

corporation. Now, if the Lord High Admiral had set covetous eyes on

this fund, to apply it to his own domestic purposes, the act might

have been considered one of unutterable meanness--perhaps the

corporation would have resisted it. But, on the other hand, to demand

a portion of this money, and use it for getting the members of the

corporation out of a scrape, was a highly public-spirited act. The

High Admiral assigned £180 from this fund, to pay the damages and

costs to Williamson:[21] it need not be said, that of course this

application was suggested to him by persons who had the best reason to

believe that the corporation would not resist it, and that all the

business arrangements for his operation on the fund were simplified to

his hand.

[21] Kennedy's _Annals of Aberdeen_, i. 296.

Having been so far successful, Williamson, who seems to have had an

insuperable objection to half-measures, raised an action of damages

against his kidnappers. It has been asserted, though we do not know on

what authority, that the Crown was desirous to institute criminal

proceedings against them, but that they were protected by a clause of

indemnity in some act of parliament. Williamson boldly laid his

damages at £1000. His perseverance drove his adversaries to a series

of extraordinary, and in this country, fortunately, unprecedented

measures. They persuaded Williamson that it would be for the mutual

advantage of the parties to have the matter settled by arbitration,

without the costly intervention of the Court of Session. He adopted

the advice, and the decision fell to be given by James Forbes of

Shiels, Sheriff-Substitute of Aberdeenshire, acting as oversman. We

are introduced to this gentleman's convivial character in a most

startling manner, by the statement of counsel that the Sheriff's

mother, Lady Shiels, "died about the 4th of November, and there can be

no doubt that he would get a hearty dose at her burial." It was

accordingly on that occasion that the worthy judge appears to have

commenced a series of potations, under the pressure of which he

speedily followed his parent to the grave. Williamson's affair came

through his hands in the very climax of his convivial fit; and both

parties seem to have considered it their duty to minister assiduously

to these furious cravings, which ever cried with the Cyclop

"Δος μοι ἑτι προφρων."

Williamson was not backward in contributing to the Sheriff's

conviviality. His own account of his motives was, that knowing Forbes

to be prepared to decide unfairly, he wished to keep him so hard at

his beloved pursuit of drinking, that he should have no opportunity of

exercising his other avocation of judging. Accordingly, he employed a

friend "to tenchel and drink" the Sheriff--or, as it is elsewhere

expressed, "to drink him hard;" in fact, the operation is talked of

quite in an abbreviated and technical form, as a common proceeding in

the way of business in the Sheriff Court. The drouthy crony who

performed this duty seems to have taken to it with the same

disinterested zeal, with which Kean sat up three nights drinking with

a friend under depression, for the purpose of keeping up his spirits.

The favoured individual must have felt his task coming light to his

hands, when he found the Sheriff in a tavern "busy at hot punch about

eleven o'clock forenoon." An attempt was made on him by the enemy, but

Williamson and his drinking assistant carried him off in triumph to

the "New Inn" to dinner, where, however, they were obliged to submit

to the presence of the other party, who held a hospitable competition

with them in plying the Sheriff with the liquor which he loved. Here

they all "sat close drinking, as is the phrase in that part of the

country, _helter skelter_--that is, copiously and alternately of

different liquors--till 11 o'clock at night, when Forbes, by this time

dead-drunk, was conveyed home by his two servant maids, with the

assistance of George Williamson, Gerard, and the Pursuer." This is the

counsel's history of the day, and that it is not an exaggerated one,

we may infer from an average quotation from the evidence: one of the

witnesses thus concludes his narrative:--

"Depones, that from four o'clock in the afternoon to eleven

o'clock that night, they all drunk what they call in

Aberdeenshire _Helter Skelter_, alternately of different

liquors, and plentifully, in such a way that the Sheriff in

particular was very drunk, and the deponent himself was also

drunk. That the Sheriff's two servant maids came for him

with a lantern to carry him home, and came into the room

where the company was, and staid there some time--fully a

quarter of an hour--and got some drink, but what it was he

cannot tell. That the Sheriff called for a good part of the

liquor which was drunk. That at last the deponent assisted

to carry home the Sheriff, who was not able to walk; and

either the pursuer or Mr Gerard assisted the deponent in so

doing; and the two maids went before him with a lantern, and

placed him in his easy-chair in his bedroom, and then the

Sheriff called upon his maids to give the company drink,

which the maids refused to give, and then they came away and

left him."

Next day the enemy took possession of Forbes by a _coup de main_. They

seized him in bed, half through his drunken sleep, and conveyed him to

a favourite houf, kept by a man with the historical name of Archibald

Campbell. There "tea and coffee were called for to breakfast, but as

these insipid liquors were not to Forbes's mind, a large dose of

spirits, white wine, and punch was administered to him, with cooling

draughts of porter from time to time." The kidnappers hired a whole

floor of the inn for that eventful day--it was the last on which the

reference remained valid, so that if it passed without a decision, the

question went back to the Court of Session; and the worthy

confederates gave express instructions that Williamson was not to

obtain access to their conclave, and that Forbes was to be denied to

him. That sport of fortune became naturally alarmed when he heard that

Forbes was not at home; and knowing instinctively where else he was

likely to be, searched for him "in all the taverns in town," as Seldon

tells us that the King of Spain was searched for in London when he was

outlawed. One of the waiters, in his evidence, stated that Williamson

came to the house and "inquired at the deponent if Shiels was there,

to which he answered, in obedience to the orders he had received from

collector Finlayson, that Shiels was _not_ there; that on this the

pursuer left Mr Campbell's house, and (having returned in about an

hour) he insisted with the deponent that Shiels was in the house, and

that it was to no purpose to deny him, for that he knew by the

deponent's face that he was there. But deponent still denied that

Shiels was in the house." Deponent was, unfortunately for his

professional prospects, not sufficiently brazen-faced for a waiter.

The Sheriff was soon brought "up to the mark." Cards were introduced,

and they had a roaring day of it. For the sake of appearances, at the

time when he was making up his judicial mind, the Sheriff retired to a

room alone. Here a message was conveyed to him from his sister,

intimating that he had made an appointment for that day, and the time

to keep it had arrived. "Whereupon," says a witness, "Shiels touched

his nose with his finger, and said 'Jode'--a by-word of his--'Davie,

you see from whence this comes'--that Shiels returned for answer to

his servant that he could not go, being engaged about peremptory

business." He first spoke about awarding "a trifle" to Williamson. In

the end he gave a decision entirely against his claim; and the

confederates considered this so great a triumph, that next morning,

being Sunday, they were reported to have read the "Decree Arbitral" to

a circle of impatient well-wishers on the "Plainstones" or

market-place, while the citizens were on their way to church. After

having pronounced the decree, the Sheriff, according to the testimony

of one witness, "was very merry and jocose, and engrossed a good deal

of the conversation;" and the waiter who refused Williamson admission

to him had to testify that "he conveyed him home to his own house, as

he had done many a night besides that."

There were many picturesque little incidents in the whole affair. Thus

we are told by one witness, in a very pathetic strain, of abortive

efforts made by the Sheriff to go through the public market-place from

one tavern to another. "In a little the Sheriff and the deponent came

down to go to the New Inn; and upon the Sheriff's observing that there

were too many people upon the exchange, and that he was too far gone

in liquor to cross the street, he turned in again to John Bain's, and

afterwards made another attempt of the same kind, and returned for the

same reason; and a little after two o'clock they made a third attempt,

and, observing that the exchange was thin of people, they went over to

the New Inn." Discreet Sheriff--he had achieved the Greek sage's

problem of knowing himself! But other people knew him, too; and thus

the hostess of the inn, being asked if "when Shiels was once drunk, he

did not keep in a hand--that is, he continued drunk for some days,"

answered, that "she has observed Shiels as in drink at one time and to

continue so for several days after, and that was too commonly his

case; that it is her opinion, when Shiels was in liquor, by flattering

of his vanity, he might be very easily induced to do things which he

would not otherwise do; and the deponent has had occasion to see

several instances of this sort, by which she means that she has heard

Shiels, when in liquor, promise to do things which she believes he

would not have done if sober; nor does the deponent remember or know

that ever Shiels did do any of these things when sober that he said he

would do when in liquor."

But there are two sides to all questions; and as human nature has a

tendency towards extremes, there were some people prepared to testify

to the supernatural and alarming intenseness of the Sheriff's

sobriety. It was, we believe, a townsman of this same Sheriff who,

when thrown from his horse, being asked by a sympathising lady who was

passing, if he were hurt? answered in the intenseness of his

politeness--"Oh! no, mem! quite the reverse--_quite_ the _reverse_."

So it appeared in the eyes of some of his friends that Forbes was not

merely as sober as a judge, but upon the whole a good deal more sober

than a well-constituted judge ought to be--if he had any blemish, it

was on the reverse side of intoxication. One of the several landladies

whose establishments he frequented--not the lady already quoted--was

especially eloquent on this point. "At dinner-time they only drank a

bottle of wine and half a mutchkin of punch [the witness makes no

allusion to the consumption before and after.] Mr Forbes also drank

tea in the deponent's house, and she had occasion to see Mr Forbes at

breakfast and dinner, and when he went out of her house when the

company parted after supper at night; and upon all these occasions he,

Mr Forbes, was perfectly sober, and sufficiently capable of business,

and when he went out of her house, she remembers perfectly, she turned

in to her servants and said, that she never knew Mr Forbes sit so long

in her house on so little drink; and she added, God grant that neither

Mr Forbes nor she might be fey." So awful and portentous was his

sobriety! Another witness who testified to the production of so many

items of liquor that it makes one giddy to read the list, winds up by

saying--"After drinking a few glasses, they were told that supper was

on the table in another room, to which they moved: That after supper

they drank a moderate quantity of wine, and punch, and parted sober

about eleven o'clock: That the deponent had a particular proof of Mr

Forbes's sobriety after supper, by his maintaining, with great spirit

and elocution, one side of a problematical question that occurred in

the company."

The law is extremely averse to review the decision of an arbiter. He

may be stupid and careless; he may have utterly misunderstood both the

law and the facts; but the parties have adopted the reference as a

_succedaneum_ to litigation, and they "must stand the hazard of the

die." In a few instances, however, where there has been gross

corruption, or a palpable combination against one of the parties, the

law has interfered to reverse the proceedings. The case of Peter

Williamson is one of these instances; and on the 3d of December 1768,

some years after the poor Sheriff-Substitute had bidden himself from

his disgrace by drinking himself into the grave, the Court awarded

Peter Williamson damages to the extent of £200 against the persons

who, nearly thirty years previously, had spirited him away from the

pier of Aberdeen.

The subsequent career of Peter Williamson, though not all directly our

present purpose, is so inviting that we cannot pass it over. He was

one of those men who, with no settled purpose of life, have their

brains perpetually spinning forth projects, and their hands

perpetually putting them in operation. Wherever external circumstances

placed him, there his internal nature predestined him turn the

opportunities afforded him to the best account. We have seen him

exercising the isolated energies of the self-sustaining savage in the

wilderness; we shall now see him regulating the complex wheels of

mutually dependent civilisation. One of his earliest projects was

announced, in 1762, through a letter in the _Edinburgh Courant_. The

drain of able-bodied men by the war had, he stated, prompted him to

endeavour to discover some labour-saving machine, to facilitate the

operations of the harvest; and he had at considerable expense invented

an engine which would, "in the hands of a single man, do more

execution in a field of oats in one day, and to better purpose, than

it is in the power of six shearers to do. This machine," he continues,

"is now completed, and is constructed in such a manner that, when the

corn is tolerably thick, it will cut down near a sheaf at a stroke,

and that without shaking the grain, or disordering the straw, besides

laying down the corn as regularly as the most expert shearer can do."

The machine possessed other qualifications far too numerous to be

recapitulated here; and though the inventor protested that "neither

vanity nor conceit," but the sole desire to serve the public, prompted

him to expatiate on its merits, it is not absolutely necessary, at the

present day, to join in all his anticipations of its wonderful

influence on the amelioration of mankind. We are no authority on the

abstruse practical subject of reaping-machines; but justice to our

hero renders it right to say that his invention found a place in

agricultural nomenclature, as "the basket-scythe."[22] We have

already mentioned some of his achievements in literature. He

published a pamphlet on the Militia: and, contemporaneously with the

invention of the scythe, we find him advertising, along with his

account of his adventures, that "Commissions from the country will be

punctually answered for this and all other sorts of books; as also

stationery-ware of all sorts;" and in connexion with this general

announcement of a stationery-establishment, he enlarges on another

book, apparently of his own composition, called "A General View of the

Whole World; containing the Names of the principal Countries,

Kingdoms, States, and Islands,--their length, breadth, and capital

cities, with the longitude and latitude; also the produce, revenue,

strength, and religion of each country." This encyclopedia, political,

statistical, and theological, was to be had for six shillings

sterling. From such comprehensive themes we find him descending to the

object of the following curious advertisement, dated 9th April 1772:--

"This day was published, price one shilling the pack, and

sold by Peter Williamson, printer, in the head of Forester's

Wynd, Edinburgh, the IMPENETRABLE SECRETS which is called

PROVERB-CARDS, containing excellent sentiment, and are so

composed, that they discover the thoughts of one's mind in a

very curious and extraordinary manner. The explanation of

the secret is given gratis with the pack; each set consists

of twenty cards, and ten lines upon each card."[23]

[22] A representation of it will be found in the _Scots Magazine_ for

1762, p. 404.

[23] This advertisement, with other curious newspaper-scraps regarding

Williamson, is preserved in the biographical notices of Kay's

Portraits, i. 137.

We may here, perhaps, have traced to its invention the well-known toy

called "Conversation-Cards," which has enlivened many a little

Christmas party. If this be so, the debt of youth in general, to the

poor kidnapped boy, is not small.

In 1776 he started a weekly periodical called "The Scot's Spy, or

Critical Observer," which appears to have been continued through the

following year with the title of "The New Scot's Spy." In the mean

time, he kept a tavern, over the door of which he advertised himself

as "from the other world." It appears to have been for some time in

the Parliament Square, and subsequently in the interior of the

Parliament House itself, part of the wide area of which was

partitioned into booths. Every now and then he was dropping before the

public some invention great or small. Now it was a "new invented

portable printing-press;" next, marking-ink for linen, "which stands

washing, boiling, and bleaching, and is more regular and beautiful

than any needle." But the chief monument of his energy was the

establishment of a penny post-office for the city of Edinburgh, which

he supported as a private speculation. It appears to have been soon

after the year 1780 that he commenced this undertaking, and

contemporaneously with it he published a Street Directory. One might

suppose that the post-office, the directory, and the tavern, with an

occasional invention or pamphlet, would form sufficient occupation,

not only for one head, but one family. Williamson, however, must have

_all_ his fires full of irons; and so we find that his wife and

daughter had to appear before the public as busy as himself in their

own department. On the cover of his directory it is intimated, that

"Mantua-making is carried on in all its branches as formerly," by "Mrs

Williamson and daughter;" who, lest any means of exercising their

craft should pass them, by reason either of its insignificance or its

gravity, are made to state, that they "engraft silk, cotton, thread,

and worsted stockings; make silk gloves, and every article in the

engrafting branch, in the neatest manner, and on the most reasonable

terms; likewise silk stockings washed in the most approved style; also

grave-clothes made on the shortest notice."

One would naturally imagine that all these professions of activity

must have indicated a thrifty, industrious, moral, happy home. Alas,

no! In 1789 Williamson was obliged to divorce his second wife, the

mother of several children; and the revolting details of the inquiry

show too plainly that the degraded woman pursued another profession

besides those efforts of decent industry which her husband advertised

to the world. She, on her part, charged her husband with having

acquired tipling habits, and keeping low dissipated company; while she

stated that, notwithstanding the considerable sums that passed through

his hands in the course of his various speculations, his family were

frequently subjected to great privations. The inquiries connected with

the divorce exhibit throughout, tokens of sordid squalor, which show

that Williamson was little fitted to seize the tides of fortune that

so frequently ran in his favour, or to direct his energies into any

satisfactory path of self-advancement. Active and turbulent as he had

been--dreaded, admired, nay, respected for his services as a

citizen--he had never bettered his condition, or risen above the rank

of the vagabond. His total want of early education may have unfitted

him to take advantage of his opportunities. "The reader," he says, in

one of his pamphlets, "will be here asking what school I was brought

up at? I shall only tell them, that the extent of it was upwards of

four thousand miles, and the height thereof as high as the heavens,

governed by Indians of many nations; and regular education is no way

taught among them, but handed down from one generation to another; and

their records are kept, marked with tomahawks on the outside of trees,

and can be distinguished by themselves for centuries back." It might

be a sublime school--but not a hopeful seminary for sober citizens.

Yet, among Kay's exquisitely hard etchings there is a portrait of

Peter, from which it is evident that lie must have been a very

handsome worshipful-looking man, with that well-fed self-assured

air--that corporation dignity of manner, and citizen urbanity, if one

may use the expression, which beseem the corporate officer. Nature and

the tailor seem at the moment to have united to represent in his

person a Deacon at least, if not a Bailie. He is depicted in

conversation with Abyssinian Bruce, and as saying to the haughty Lord

of Kinnaird--"There is more truth in one page of my Edinburgh

directory, than in all your five volumes 4to; so, when you talk to me,

don't imagine yourself at the source of the Nile." Poor Williamson's

eventful life came to an end on the 19th January 1769.

THE REPEALER'S WISH GRANTED.[24]--AN IRISH TALE.

IN ONE SHORT CHAPTER.

[24] As this paper was being printed, we were struck with the

coincidence between the general idea contained in it and two striking

articles in the _Times_ newspaper. We know that the writer of the

present article had not, when he wrote it, seen the articles in the

_Times_. But these views, in our opinion, cannot be too often

impressed on the attention of the reflecting portion of the Irish

people.

Nobody doubts that there was hot blood--misunderstanding--difficulty--

at the beginning. It is clear enough, also, that many arrangements

which followed were not of a soothing kind. Nor can it well be

denied;--but stop a little! The other side of the question seems to be

perpetually consigned to oblivion. Numbers of people are in ecstasies

with the year 1782. The wildest democrats of the present day revert

with pride to the glimpse of nationality exhibited by Ireland

immediately before the Union. The grand choral cry of Repealers is for

a Parliament _once more_ in Dublin. Oh, melancholy, deplorable, almost

ludicrous inconsistency! The year 1782 and Repeal! The independence of

Ireland after 1782 and Repeal! The old Irish Parliament and Repeal!

Plunket--a son of Ireland--talked of history being an old almanac.

Memorable indeed was the year 1782. BUT ITS TROPHIES WERE, THE

HANDIWORK OF THE SAXON. Bright may have been the gleam of independence

which succeeded that year. The whole movement owed character and

solidity to GREAT SAXON LEADERS. Conspicuous is the fame of those men

who protested with fiery eloquence against the treaty of the Union;

and THESE WERE ALL SAXONS. It is very strange, but very true, that the

sinews and loins of the agitation now-a-days are all begotten of Saxon

spirit and Saxon freedom. There is not a letter in the alphabet of

self-government--there is not a syllable in the code of municipal

law--there is not a sentence in the charter of political liberty--of

Ireland, which is not the lesson, the example, or the boon of the

Saxon. Every thing that Ireland now demands is an imitation of a Saxon

institution. And Ireland only demands these things, because for ages

Saxon institution have pervaded her soil, and imbued her people.

GRATTAN and CHARLEMONT are Saxon names. In all the principles for

which these remarkable men contended, no vestige of a Celtic idea can

be traced. Until the Saxon--conqueror as he was--touched the Irish

soil, there did not grow, blossom, or bear fruit any intelligible

notion of social order, or public liberty. But the gratitude of

nations is not different from the gratitude of individuals. Away with

the Saxon!

Can nothing cure the madness? Large practical wisdom in legislation,

exuberant boundless prodigality of munificence, are equally

unavailing. Away with the Saxon! But disgust may at length do what

force never could have done. Honest, sober, orderly folks in Britain

begin to cherish strange thoughts. And the wings of thoughts are words

outspoken.

Are ye ready, O Milesians! for such a dawn when it breaks?

* * * * *

There was nothing either very bright or very dull about the morning.

Yet not a single human being you met was inclined even to whistle

merrily or recklessly. And was there, then, silence over the whole

land? Very far from it, I assure you. At the harbour of every

sea-port, where a vessel of any size could come, there was a most

unmistakeable noise. Heavily, steadily, dreadfully, came down along

the rugged stones of each quay the continual tread and tramp of armed

men, who, coldly and speechlessly as statues, marched towards the

ships. But there was no other noise. The officers gave no word of

command; nor was any command needed. Unbroken as the stream of the

river, hundreds after hundreds, without any clash, or din, or tumult,

passed from the solid land on board of the floating bulwarks of Old

England, and without a shout or a sigh--without a murmur of

adieu--without the momentary radiance of a smile on a solitary

face--departed FROM IRELAND. The Saxons were going. The quick strokes

of the paddle-wheels whitened the waters;--the sail bellied bigly to

the wind. From ERIN the GREEN, the Saxons were GONE. Then rose from

earth to sky--what?

For many a day thousands of eyes had been gazing at the bustling

scene. At first, the spectacle of such crowds of all sorts of people

going leisurely away with all their kith and kin, with all their bag

and baggage, brought with it no distinct idea. The first loaded ship

which left the harbour with such a freight took its departure beneath

a shower of triumphantly derisive shouts. And so did many a vessel

afterwards. But people become tired of shouting at the same thing.

Likewise, a constant repetition of the same thing, which in certain

circumstances will destroy wonder, does in other circumstances beget

and spread wonder. The sameness of the business began to be painful.

Countless throngs of lookers-on still choked the quay: but the gibe

was rarely heard; the cheer had quite died away. It was incredible how

time lagged in its flight. Suddenly, once more, a stir ran through

these gazing tens of thousands. A feeble cry--more like a cry of pain

than of joy--rang from the discord of the innumerable lips. Every body

was gone, except the soldiers. Of the hated Saxons, all who lived by

the arts or occupations of peace, all were at length away--men, women,

and children. The soldiers remained till all their peaceful brethren

were safely on the bosom of the treacherous sea--safer than the bosom

of ungrateful Ireland. The soldiers now went themselves. It was not an

hour or a day, in which that embarkation could be completed. On it

went without interruption. And the people stood by, and saw it going

on. Why was there not the continuous roar of exultation from moment to

moment, as file after file, regiment after regiment, mass after mass

of the bloody servants of the Saxon sullenly and silently retreated?

Strange, surely, that it was not so! Strange, surely, that there was

no whisper all this time from the bystanders! Strange, surely, that

the bystanders, as the ships, ship after ship, sailed away with those

very Saxon soldiers, began to turn their regards off altogether from

the ships, and to fling unquiet doubtful glances one on the other! The

detested foreigner was gone;--and was there, therefore, more

neighbourly love among those that remained?

What! Erin Mavourneen, is not your emancipation come? Why is there no

shout? The Saxons are going. The quick strokes of the paddle-wheels

whiten the waters. Where is the pæan of the ransomed and redeemed? The

sail bellies bigly to the wind. From Erin the Green, the Saxons are

gone. Then rose from earth to sky--what?

IRELAND IS LEFT TO ITSELF--WHOLLY, ENTIRELY, ABSOLUTELY TO ITSELF. The

Repealer has his wish. The sea runs between Ireland and England--and

all that is Irish and all that is English. The cable is cut. The

Emerald Isle is adrift. No Saxon soldier pollutes her soil; but not a

Saxon shilling glistens in her purse. The British Viceroy is no more;

neither is the British Chancellor of the Exchequer any more--THERE.

Ireland has got its own parliament. ALSO IRELAND HAS GOT ITS OWN POOR.

Not a stiver of English millions now crosses St George's Channel. Not

for one death by starvation now is England or the Saxon answerable.

IRELAND HAS HER OWN EXUBERANT EXCHEQUER. IRELAND POURS ABUNDANCE INTO

THE MYRIAD MOUTHS OF HER FAMINE-STRICKEN PEOPLE. Shout, then, O

Ireland! shout!

The sail bellies bigly to the wind. From Erin the Green the Saxons are

gone. The sun of Repeal is at its noon. Then rose from earth to

sky--what?

And they looked into the faces of each other with a dull, blank

look--and from earth to sky arose the yell of wild despair, of

irretrievable confusion, and of maddening perdition.