Shortly after the foregoing tribulation, of which I cannot take it upon
me to say that I got so well rid as of many other vexations of a more
grievous nature, there arose a thing in the town that caused to me much
deep concern, and very serious reflection. I had been, from the
beginning, a true government man, as all loyal subjects ought in duty to
be; for I never indeed could well understand how it would advantage,
either the king or his ministers, to injure and do detriment to the
lieges; on the contrary, I always saw and thought that his majesty, and
those of his cabinet, had as great an interest in the prosperity and well-
doing of the people, as it was possible for a landlord to have in the
thriving of his tenantry. Accordingly, giving on all occasions, and at
all times and seasons, even when the policy of the kingdom was overcast
with a cloud, the king and government, in church and state, credit for
the best intentions, however humble their capacity in performance might
seem in those straits and difficulties, which, from time to time,
dumfoundered the wisest in power and authority, I was exceedingly
troubled to hear that a newspaper was to be set up in the burgh, and
that, too, by hands not altogether clean of the coom of jacobinical
democracy.
The person that first brought me an account of this, and it was in a
private confidential manner, was Mr Scudmyloof, the grammar schoolmaster,
a man of method and lear, to whom the fathers of the project had applied
for an occasional cast of his skill, in the way of Latin head-pieces, and
essays of erudition concerning the free spirit among the ancient Greeks
and Romans; but he, not liking the principle of the men concerned in the
scheme, thought that it would be a public service to the community at
large, if a stop could be put, by my help, to the opening of such an
ettering sore and king's evil as a newspaper, in our heretofore and
hitherto truly royal and loyal burgh; especially as it was given out that
the calamity, for I can call it no less, was to be conducted on liberal
principles, meaning, of course, in the most afflicting and vexatious
manner towards his majesty's ministers.
"What ye say," said I to Mr Scudmyloof when he told me the news, "is very
alarming, very much so indeed; but as there is no law yet actually and
peremptorily prohibiting the sending forth of newspapers, I doubt it will
not be in my power to interfere."
He was of the same opinion; and we both agreed it was a rank exuberance
of liberty, that the commonality should be exposed to the risk of being
inoculated with anarchy and confusion, from what he, in his learned
manner, judiciously called the predilections of amateur pretension. The
parties engaged in the project being Mr Absolom the writer--a man no
overly reverential in his opinion of the law and lords when his clients
lost their pleas, which, poor folk, was very often--and some three or
four young and inexperienced lads, that were wont to read essays, and
debate the kittle points of divinity and other hidden knowledge, in the
Cross-Keys monthly, denying the existence of the soul of man, as Dr
Sinney told me, till they were deprived of all rationality by foreign or
British spirits. In short, I was perplexed when I heard of the design,
not knowing what to do, or what might be expected from me by government
in a case of such emergency as the setting up of a newspaper so
declaredly adverse to every species of vested trust and power; for it was
easy to forsee that those immediately on the scene would be the first
opposed to the onset and brunt of the battle. Never can any public man
have a more delicate task imposed upon him, than to steer clear of
offence in such a predicament. After a full consideration of the
business, Mr Scudmyloof declared that he would retire from the field, and
stand aloof; and he rehearsed a fine passage in the Greek language on
that head, pat to the occasion, but which I did not very thoroughly
understand, being no deacon in the dead languages, as I told him at the
time.
But when the dominie had left me, I considered with myself, and having
long before then observed that our hopes, when realized, are always light
in the grain, and our fears, when come to pass, less than they seemed as
seen through the mists of time and distance, I resolved with myself to
sit still with my eyes open, watching and saying nothing; and it was well
that I deported myself so prudently; for when the first number of the
paper made its appearance, it was as poor a job as ever was "open to all
parties, and influenced by none;" and it required but two eyes to discern
that there was no need of any strong power from the lord advocate to
suppress or abolish the undertaking; for there was neither birr nor
smeddum enough in it to molest the high or to pleasure the low; so being
left to itself, and not ennobled by any prosecution, as the schemers
expected, it became as foisonless as the "London Gazette" on ordinary
occasions. Those behind the curtain, who thought to bounce out with a
grand stot and strut before the world, finding that even I used it as a
convenient vehicle to advertise my houses when need was, and which I did
by the way of a canny seduction of policy, joking civilly with Mr Absolom
anent his paper trumpet, as I called it, they were utterly vanquished by
seeing themselves of so little account in the world, and forsook the
thing altogether; by which means it was gradually transformed into a very
solid and decent supporter of the government--Mr Absolom, for his pains,
being invited to all our public dinners, of which he gave a full account,
to the great satisfaction of all who were present, but more particularly
to those who were not, especially the wives and ladies of the town, to
whom it was a great pleasure to see the names of their kith and kin in
print. And indeed, to do Mr Absolom justice, he was certainly at great
pains to set off every thing to the best advantage, and usually put
speeches to some of our names which showed that, in the way of
grammaticals, he was even able to have mended some of the parliamentary
clishmaclavers, of which the Londoners, with all their skill in the
craft, are so seldom able to lick into any shape of common sense.
Thus, by a judicious forbearance in the first instance, and a canny
wising towards the undertaking in the second, did I, in the third, help
to convert this dangerous political adversary into a very respectable
instrument of governmental influence and efficacy.