Shortly after the affair recorded in the foregoing chapter, an event came
to pass in the burgh that had been for some time foreseen.
My old friend and adversary, Bailie M'Lucre, being now a man well
stricken in years, was one night, in going home from a gavawlling with
some of the neighbours at Mr Shuttlethrift's, the manufacturer's, (the
bailie, canny man, never liket ony thing of the sort at his own cost and
outlay,) having partaken largely of the bowl, for the manufacturer was of
a blithe humour--the bailie, as I was saying, in going home, was
overtaken by an apoplexy just at the threshold of his own door, and
although it did not kill him outright, it shoved him, as it were, almost
into the very grave; in so much that he never spoke an articulate word
during the several weeks he was permitted to doze away his latter end;
and accordingly he died, and was buried in a very creditable manner to
the community, in consideration of the long space of time he had been a
public man among us.
But what rendered the event of his death, in my opinion, the more
remarkable, was, that I considered with him the last remnant of the old
practice of managing the concerns of the town came to a period. For now
that he is dead and gone, and also all those whom I found conjunct with
him, when I came into power and office, I may venture to say, that things
in yon former times were not guided so thoroughly by the hand of a
disinterested integrity as in these latter years. On the contrary, it
seemed to be the use and wont of men in public trusts, to think they were
free to indemnify themselves in a left-handed way for the time and
trouble they bestowed in the same. But the thing was not so far wrong in
principle as in the hugger-muggering way in which it was done, and which
gave to it a guilty colour, that, by the judicious stratagem of a right
system, it would never have had. In sooth to say, through the whole
course of my public life, I met with no greater difficulties and trials
than in cleansing myself from the old habitudes of office. For I must in
verity confess, that I myself partook, in a degree, at my beginning, of
the caterpillar nature; and it was not until the light of happier days
called forth the wings of my endowment, that I became conscious of being
raised into public life for a better purpose than to prey upon the leaves
and flourishes of the commonwealth. So that, if I have seemed to speak
lightly of those doings that are now denominated corruptions, I hope it
was discerned therein that I did so rather to intimate that such things
were, than to consider them as in themselves commendable. Indeed, in
their notations, I have endeavoured, in a manner, to be governed by the
spirit of the times in which the transactions happened; for I have lived
long enough to remark, that if we judge of past events by present
motives, and do not try to enter into the spirit of the age when they
took place, and to see them with the eyes with which they were really
seen, we shall conceit many things to be of a bad and wicked character
that were not thought so harshly of by those who witnessed them, nor even
by those who, perhaps, suffered from them. While, therefore, I think it
has been of a great advantage to the public to have survived that method
of administration in which the like of Bailie M'Lucre was engendered, I
would not have it understood that I think the men who held the public
trusts in those days a whit less honest than the men of my own time. The
spirit of their own age was upon them, as that of ours is upon us, and
their ways of working the wherry entered more or less into all their
trafficking, whether for the commonality, or for their own particular
behoof and advantage.
I have been thus large and frank in my reflections anent the death of the
bailie, because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was
qualified; and, instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by-
hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began
to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer
spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his
earnings both with ease and honour. However, he got out of the world
with some respect, and the matters of which I have now to speak, are
exalted, both in method and principle, far above the personal
considerations that took something from the public virtue of his day and
generation.