"The mills of God grind slowly, but they grind exceeding small;
Though with patience He stands waiting, with exactness grinds He
all."
FRIEDRICH VON LOGAU.
The great impulse of the French Revolution was not confined by
geographical boundaries. Flashing hope into the dark places of the
earth, far down among the poor and long oppressed, or startling the
oppressor in his guarded chambers like that mountain of fire which fell
into the sea at the sound of the apocalyptic trumpet, it agitated the
world.
The arguments of Condorcet, the battle-words of Mirabeau, the fierce zeal
of St. Just, the iron energy of Danton, the caustic wit of Camille
Desmoulins, and the sweet eloquence of Vergniaud found echoes in all
lands, and nowhere more readily than in Great Britain, the ancient foe
and rival of France. The celebrated Dr. Price, of London, and the still
more distinguished Priestley, of Birmingham, spoke out boldly in defence
of the great principles of the Revolution. A London club of reformers,
reckoning among its members such men as Sir William Jones, Earl Grey,
Samuel Whitbread, and Sir James Mackintosh, was established for the
purpose of disseminating liberal appeals and arguments throughout the
United Kingdom.
In Scotland an auxiliary society was formed, under the name of Friends of
the People. Thomas Muir, young in years, yet an elder in the Scottish
kirk, a successful advocate at the bar, talented, affable, eloquent, and
distinguished for the purity of his life and his enthusiasm in the cause
of freedom, was its principal originator. In the twelfth month of 1792 a
convention of reformers was held at Edinburgh. The government became
alarmed, and a warrant was issued for the arrest of Muir. He escaped to
France; but soon after, venturing to return to his native land, was
recognized and imprisoned. He was tried upon the charge of lending books
of republican tendency, and reading an address from Theobald Wolfe Tone
and the United Irishmen before the society of which he was a member. He
defended himself in a long and eloquent address, which concluded in the
following manly strain:--
"What, then, has been my crime? Not the lending to a relation a copy of
Thomas Paine's works,--not the giving away to another a few numbers of an
innocent and constitutional publication; but my crime is, for having
dared to be, according to the measure of my feeble abilities, a strenuous
and an active advocate for an equal representation of the people in the
House of the people,--for having dared to accomplish a measure by legal
means which was to diminish the weight of their taxes and to put an end
to the profusion of their blood. Gentlemen, from my infancy to this
moment I have devoted myself to the cause of the people. It is a good
cause: it will ultimately prevail,--it will finally triumph."
He was sentenced to transportation for fourteen years, and was removed to
the Edinburgh jail, from thence to the hulks, and lastly to the
transport-ship, containing eighty-three convicts, which conveyed him to
Botany Bay.
The next victim was Palmer, a learned and highly accomplished Unitarian
minister in Dundee. He was greatly beloved and respected as a polished
gentleman and sincere friend of the people. He was charged with
circulating a republican tract, and was sentenced to seven years'
transportation.
But the Friends of the People were not quelled by this summary punishment
of two of their devoted leaders. In the tenth month, 1793, delegates
were called together from various towns in Scotland, as well as from
Birmingham, Sheffield, and other places in England. Gerrald and Margarot
were sent up by the London society. After a brief sitting, the
convention was dispersed by the public authorities. Its sessions were
opened and closed with prayer, and the speeches of its members manifested
the pious enthusiasm of the old Cameronians and Parliament-men of the
times of Cromwell. Many of the dissenting clergy were present. William
Skirving, the most determined of the band, had been educated for the
ministry, and was a sincerely religious man. Joseph Gerrald was a young
man of brilliant talents and exemplary character. When the sheriff
entered the hall to disperse the friends of liberty, Gerrald knelt in
prayer. His remarkable words were taken down by a reporter on the spot.
There is nothing in modern history to compare with this supplication,
unless it be that of Sir Henry Vane, a kindred martyr, at the foot of the
scaffold, just before his execution. It is the prayer of universal
humanity, which God will yet hear and answer.
"O thou Governor of the universe, we rejoice that, at all times and in
all circumstances, we have liberty to approach Thy throne, and that we
are assured that no sacrifice is more acceptable to Thee than that which
is made for the relief of the oppressed. In this moment of trial and
persecution we pray that Thou wouldst be our defender, our counsellor,
and our guide. Oh, be Thou a pillar of fire to us, as Thou wast to our
fathers of old, to enlighten and direct us; and to our enemies a pillar
of cloud, and darkness, and confusion.
"Thou art Thyself the great Patron of liberty. Thy service is perfect
freedom. Prosper, we beseech Thee, every endeavor which we make to
promote Thy cause; for we consider the cause of truth, or every cause
which tends to promote the happiness of Thy creatures, as Thy cause.
"O thou merciful Father of mankind, enable us, for Thy name's sake, to
endure persecution with fortitude; and may we believe that all trials and
tribulations of life which we endure shall work together for good to them
that love Thee; and grant that the greater the evil, and the longer it
may be continued, the greater good, in Thy holy and adorable providence,
may be produced therefrom. And this we beg, not for our own merits, but
through the merits of Him who is hereafter to judge the world in
righteousness and mercy."
He ceased, and the sheriff, who had been temporarily overawed by the
extraordinary scene, enforced the warrant, and the meeting was broken up.
The delegates descended to the street in silence,--Arthur's Seat and
Salisbury Crags glooming in the distance and night,--an immense and
agitated multitude waiting around, over which tossed the flaring
flambeaux of the sheriff's train. Gerrald, who was already under arrest,
as he descended, spoke aloud, "Behold the funeral torches of Liberty!"
Skirving and several others were immediately arrested. They were tried
in the first month, 1794, and sentenced, as Muir and Palmer had
previously been, to transportation. Their conduct throughout was worthy
of their great and holy cause. Gerrald's defence was that of freedom
rather than his own. Forgetting himself, he spoke out manfully and
earnestly for the poor, the oppressed, the overtaxed, and starving
millions of his countrymen. That some idea may be formed of this noble
plea for liberty, I give an extract from the concluding paragraphs:--
"True religion, like all free governments, appeals to the understanding
for its support, and not to the sword. All systems, whether civil or
moral, can only be durable in proportion as they are founded on truth and
calculated to promote the good of mankind. This will account to us why
governments suited to the great energies of man have always outlived the
perishable things which despotism has erected. Yes, this will account to
us why the stream of Time, which is continually washing away the
dissoluble fabrics of superstitions and impostures, passes without injury
by the adamant of Christianity.
"Those who are versed in the history of their country, in the history of
the human race, must know that rigorous state prosecutions have always
preceded the era of convulsion; and this era, I fear, will be accelerated
by the folly and madness of our rulers. If the people are discontented,
the proper mode of quieting their discontent is, not by instituting
rigorous and sanguinary prosecutions, but by redressing their wrongs and
conciliating their affections. Courts of justice, indeed, may be called
in to the aid of ministerial vengeance; but if once the purity of their
proceedings is suspected, they will cease to be objects of reverence to
the nation; they will degenerate into empty and expensive pageantry, and
become the partial instruments of vexatious oppression. Whatever may
become of me, my principles will last forever. Individuals may perish;
but truth is eternal. The rude blasts of tyranny may blow from every
quarter; but freedom is that hardy plant which will survive the tempest
and strike an everlasting root into the most unfavorable soil.
"Gentlemen, I am in your hands. About my life I feel not the slightest
anxiety: if it would promote the cause, I would cheerfully make the
sacrifice; for if I perish on an occasion like the present, out of my
ashes will arise a flame to consume the tyrants and oppressors of my
country."
Years have passed, and the generation which knew the persecuted reformers
has given place to another. And now, half a century after William
Skirving, as he rose to receive his sentence, declared to his judges,
"You may condemn us as felons, but your sentence shall yet be reversed by
the people," the names of these men are once more familiar to British
lips. The sentence has been reversed; the prophecy of Skirving has
become history. On the 21st of the eighth month, 1853, the corner-stone
of a monument to the memory of the Scottish martyrs--for which
subscriptions had been received from such men as Lord Holland, the Dukes
of Bedford and Norfolk; and the Earls of Essex and Leicester--was laid
with imposing ceremonies in the beautiful burial-place of Calton Hill,
Edinburgh, by the veteran reformer and tribune of the people, Joseph
Hume, M. P. After delivering an appropriate address, the aged radical
closed the impressive scene by reading the prayer of Joseph Gerrald. At
the banquet which afterwards took place, and which was presided over by
John Dunlop, Esq., addresses were made by the president and Dr. Ritchie,
and by William Skirving, of Kirkaldy, son of the martyr. The Complete
Suffrage Association of Edinburgh, to the number of five hundred, walked
in procession to Calton Hill, and in the open air proclaimed unmolested
the very principles for which the martyrs of the past century had
suffered.
The account of this tribute to the memory of departed worth cannot fail
to awaken in generous hearts emotions of gratitude towards Him who has
thus signally vindicated His truth, showing that the triumph of the
oppressor is but for a season, and that even in this world a lie cannot
live forever. Well and truly did George Fox say in his last days,
"The truth is above all."
Will it be said, however, that this tribute comes too late; that it
cannot solace those brave hearts which, slowly broken by the long agony
of colonial servitude, are now cold in strange graves? It is, indeed, a
striking illustration of the truth that he who would benefit his fellow-
man must "walk by faith," sowing his seed in the morning, and in the
evening withholding not his hand; knowing only this, that in God's good
time the harvest shall spring up and ripen, if not for himself, yet for
others, who, as they bind the full sheaves and gather in the heavy
clusters, may perchance remember him with gratitude and set up stones of
memorial on the fields of his toil and sacrifices. We may regret that in
this stage of the spirit's life the sincere and self-denying worker is
not always permitted to partake of the fruits of his toil or receive the
honors of a benefactor. We hear his good evil spoken of, and his noblest
sacrifices counted as naught; we see him not only assailed by the wicked,
but discountenanced and shunned by the timidly good, followed on his hot
and dusty pathway by the execrations of the hounding mob and the
contemptuous pity of the worldly wise and prudent; and when at last the
horizon of Time shuts down between him and ourselves, and the places
which have known him know him no more forever, we are almost ready to say
with the regal voluptuary of old, This also is vanity and a great evil;
"for what hath a man of all his labor and of the vexation of his heart
wherein he hath labored under the sun?" But is this the end? Has God's
universe no wider limits than the circle of the blue wall which shuts in
our nestling-place? Has life's infancy only been provided for, and
beyond this poor nursery-chamber of Time is there no playground for the
soul's youth, no broad fields for its manhood? Perchance, could we but
lift the curtains of the narrow pinfold wherein we dwell, we might see
that our poor friend and brother whose fate we have thus deplored has by
no means lost the reward of his labors, but that in new fields of duty he
is cheered even by the tardy recognition of the value of his services in
the old. The continuity of life is never broken; the river flows onward
and is lost to our sight, but under its new horizon it carries the same
waters which it gathered under ours, and its unseen valleys are made glad
by the offerings which are borne down to them from the past,--flowers,
perchance, the germs of which its own waves had planted on the banks of
Time. Who shall say that the mournful and repentant love with which the
benefactors of our race are at length regarded may not be to them, in
their new condition of being, sweet and grateful as the perfume of long-
forgotten flowers, or that our harvest-hymns of rejoicing may not reach
the ears of those who in weakness and suffering scattered the seeds of
blessing?
The history of the Edinburgh reformers is no new one; it is that of all
who seek to benefit their age by rebuking its popular crimes and exposing
its cherished errors. The truths which they told were not believed, and
for that very reason were the more needed; for it is evermore the case
that the right word when first uttered is an unpopular and denied one.
Hence he who undertakes to tread the thorny pathway of reform--who,
smitten with the love of truth and justice, or indignant in view of wrong
and insolent oppression, is rashly inclined to throw himself at once into
that great conflict which the Persian seer not untruly represented as a
war between light and darkness--would do well to count the cost in the
outset. If he can live for Truth alone, and, cut off from the general
sympathy, regard her service as its "own exceeding great reward;" if he
can bear to be counted a fanatic and crazy visionary; if, in all good
nature, he is ready to receive from the very objects of his solicitude
abuse and obloquy in return for disinterested and self-sacrificing
efforts for their welfare; if, with his purest motives misunderstood and
his best actions perverted and distorted into crimes, he can still hold
on his way and patiently abide the hour when "the whirligig of Time shall
bring about its revenges;" if, on the whole, he is prepared to be looked
upon as a sort of moral outlaw or social heretic, under good society's
interdict of food and fire; and if he is well assured that he can,
through all this, preserve his cheerfulness and faith in man,--let him
gird up his loins and go forward in God's name. He is fitted for his
vocation; he has watched all night by his armor. Whatever his trial may
be, he is prepared; he may even be happily disappointed in respect to it;
flowers of unexpected refreshing may overhang the hedges of his strait
and narrow way; but it remains to be true that he who serves his
contemporaries in faithfulness and sincerity must expect no wages from
their gratitude; for, as has been well said, there is, after all, but one
way of doing the world good, and unhappily that way the world does not
like; for it consists in telling it the very thing which it does not wish
to hear.
Unhappily, in the case of the reformer, his most dangerous foes are those
of his own household. True, the world's garden has become a desert and
needs renovation; but is his own little nook weedless? Sin abounds
without; but is his own heart pure? While smiting down the giants and
dragons which beset the outward world, are there no evil guests sitting
by his own hearth-stone? Ambition, envy, self-righteousness, impatience,
dogmatism, and pride of opinion stand at his door-way ready to enter
whenever he leaves it unguarded. Then, too, there is no small danger of
failing to discriminate between a rational philanthropy, with its
adaptation of means to ends, and that spiritual knight-errantry which
undertakes the championship of every novel project of reform, scouring
the world in search of distressed schemes held in durance by common sense
and vagaries happily spellbound by ridicule. He must learn that,
although the most needful truth may be unpopular, it does not follow that
unpopularity is a proof of the truth of his doctrines or the expediency
of his measures. He must have the liberality to admit that it is barely
possible for the public on some points to be right and himself wrong, and
that the blessing invoked upon those who suffer for righteousness is not
available to such as court persecution and invite contempt; for folly has
its martyrs as well as wisdom; and he who has nothing better to show of
himself than the scars and bruises which the popular foot has left upon
him is not even sure of winning the honors of martyrdom as some
compensation for the loss of dignity and self-respect involved in the
exhibition of its pains. To the reformer, in an especial manner, comes
home the truth that whoso ruleth his own spirit is greater than he who
taketh a city. Patience, hope, charity, watchfulness unto prayer,--how
needful are all these to his success! Without them he is in danger of
ingloriously giving up his contest with error and prejudice at the first
repulse; or, with that spiteful philanthropy which we sometimes witness,
taking a sick world by the nose, like a spoiled child, and endeavoring to
force down its throat the long-rejected nostrums prepared for its relief.
What then? Shall we, in view of these things, call back young, generous
spirits just entering upon the perilous pathway? God forbid! Welcome,
thrice welcome, rather. Let them go forward, not unwarned of the dangers
nor unreminded of the pleasures which belong to the service of humanity.
Great is the consciousness of right. Sweet is the answer of a good
conscience. He who pays his whole-hearted homage to truth and duty, who
swears his lifelong fealty on their altars, and rises up a Nazarite
consecrated to their holy service, is not without his solace and
enjoyment when, to the eyes of others, he seems the most lonely and
miserable. He breathes an atmosphere which the multitude know not of;
"a serene heaven which they cannot discern rests over him, glorious in
its purity and stillness." Nor is he altogether without kindly human
sympathies. All generous and earnest hearts which are brought in contact
with his own beat evenly with it. All that is good, and truthful, and
lovely in man, whenever and wherever it truly recognizes him, must sooner
or later acknowledge his claim to love and reverence. His faith
overcomes all things. The future unrolls itself before him, with its
waving harvest-fields springing up from the seed he is scattering; and he
looks forward to the close of life with the calm confidence of one who
feels that he has not lived idle and useless, but with hopeful heart and
strong arm has labored with God and Nature for the best.
And not in vain. In the economy of God, no effort, however small, put
forth for the right cause, fails of its effect. No voice, however
feeble, lifted up for truth, ever dies amidst the confused noises of
time. Through discords of sin and sorrow, pain and wrong, it rises a
deathless melody, whose notes of wailing are hereafter to be changed to
those of triumph as they blend with the great harmony of a reconciled
universe. The language of a transatlantic reformer to his friends is
then as true as it is hopeful and cheering: "Triumph is certain. We have
espoused no losing cause. In the body we may not join our shout with the
victors; but in spirit we may even now. There is but an interval of time
between us and the success at which we aim. In all other respects the
links of the chain are complete. Identifying ourselves with immortal and
immutable principles, we share both their immortality and immutability.
The vow which unites us with truth makes futurity present with us. Our
being resolves itself into an everlasting now. It is not so correct to
say that we shall be victorious as that we are so. When we will in
unison with the supreme Mind, the characteristics of His will become, in
some sort, those of ours. What He has willed is virtually done. It may
take ages to unfold itself; but the germ of its whole history is wrapped
up in His determination. When we make His will ours, which we do when we
aim at truth, that upon which we are resolved is done, decided, born.
Life is in it. It is; and the future is but the development of its
being. Ours, therefore, is a perpetual triumph. Our deeds are, all of
them, component elements of success." (Miall's Essays; Nonconformist,
Vol. iv.)