And so I continued to watch with interest the course of the Reform Bill, and was delighted to see it, after a passage singularly stormy and precarious, at length safely moored in port. In some of the measures, too, to which it subsequently led, I greatly delighted, especially in the emancipation of our negro slaves in the colonies. Nor could I join many of my personal friends in their denunciation of that appropriation measure, as it was termed—also an effect of the altered constituency—which suppressed the Irish bishoprics. As I ventured to tell my minister, who took the other side—if a Protestant Church failed, after enjoying for three hundred years the benefits of a large endowment, and every advantage of position which the statute-book could confer, to erect herself into the Church of the many, it was high time to commence dealing with her in her true character—as the Church of the few. At home, however, within the narrow precincts of my native town, there were effects of the measure which, though comparatively trifling, I liked considerably worse than the suppression of the bishoprics. It broke up the townsfolk into two portions—the one consisting of elderly or middle-aged men, who had been in the commission of the peace ere the passing of the bill, and who now, as it erected the town into a parliamentary burgh, became our magistrates, in virtue of the support of a majority of the voters; and a younger and weaker, but clever and very active party, few of whom were yet in the commission of the peace, and who, after standing unsuccessfully for the magistracy, became the leaders of a patriotic opposition, which succeeded in rendering the seat of justice a rather uneasy one in Cromarty. The younger men were staunch Liberals, but great Moderates—the elder, sound Evangelicals, but decidedly Conservative in their leanings; and as I held ecclesiastically by the one party, and secularly by the other, I found my position, on the whole, a rather anomalous one. Both parties got involved in law-suits. When the Whig Members of Parliament for the county and burgh came the way, they might be seen going about the streets arm-in-arm with the young Whigs, which was, of course, a signal honour; and during the heat of a contested election, young Whiggism, to show itself grateful, succeeded in running off with a Conservative voter, whom it had caught in his cups, and got itself involved in a law-suit in consequence, which cost it several hundred pounds. The Conservatives, on the other hand, also got entangled in an expensive law-suit. The town had its annual fair, at which from fifty to a hundred children used to buy gingerbread, and which had held for many years at the eastern end of the town links. Through, however, some unexplained piece of strategy on the part of the young Liberals, a market-day came round, on which the gingerbread-women took their stand on a green a little above the harbour; and, of course, where the gingerbread was, there the children were gathered together; and the magistrates, astonished, visited the spot in order to ascertain, if possible, the philosophy of the change. They found the ground occupied by a talkative pedlar, who stood up strongly for the young Liberals and the new side. The magistrates straightway demanded the production of his license. The pedlar had none. And so he was apprehended, and summarily tried, on a charge of contravening the statute 55 Geo. III. cap. 71; and, being found guilty of hawking without a license, he was committed to prison. The pedlar, backed, it was understood, by the young Liberals, raised an action for wrongous imprisonment; and, on the ground that the day on which he had sold his goods was a fair or market-day, on which anybody might sell anything, the magistrates were cast in damages. I liked the law-suits very ill, and held that the young Liberals would have been more wisely employed in making money by their shops and professions—secure that the coveted honours would ultimately get into the wake of the good bank-accounts—than that they should be engaged either in scattering their own means in courts of law, or in impinging on the means of their neighbours. And ultimately I found my proper political position as a supporter in all ecclesiastical and municipal matters of my Conservative townsmen, and a supporter in almost all the national ones of the Whigs; whom, however, I always liked better, and deemed more virtuous, when they were out of office than when they were in.
On one occasion I even became political enough to stand for a councillorship. My friends, chiefly through the death of elderly voters and the rise of younger men, few of whom were Conservative, felt themselves getting weak in the place; and fearing that they could not otherwise secure a majority at the Council board, they urged me to stand for one of the vacancies, which I accordingly did, and carried my election by a swimming majority. And in duly attending the first meeting of Council, I heard an eloquent speech from a gentleman in the opposition, directed against the individuals who, as he finely expressed it, "were wielding the destinies of his native town;" and saw, as the only serious piece of business before the meeting, the Councillors clubbing pennies a-piece, in order to defray, in the utter lack of town funds, the expense of a ninepenny postage. And then, with, I fear, a very inadequate sense of the responsibilities of my new office, I stayed away from the Council board, and did nothing whatever in its behalf, with astonishing perseverance and success, for three years together. And thus began and terminated my municipal career—a career which, I must confess, failed to secure for me the thanks of my constituency; but then, on the other hand, I am not aware that the worthy people ever seriously complained. There was absolutely nothing to do in the councilship; and, unlike some of my brother office-bearers, the requisite nothing I did, quietly and considerately, and very much at my leisure, without any unnecessary display of stump-oratory, or of anything else.
CHAPTER XXIII.
"Days passed; an' now my patient steps
That maiden's walks attend;
My vows had reach'd that maiden's ear,
Ay, an' she ca'd me friend.
An' I was bless'd as bless'd can be;