I observed that the oil-lamps, by which the streets were usually lighted, were all extinguished. Something was evidently on the tapis.
I had reached the Tron church, when the appearance of a great and silent mob, marching steadily and compactly, and having aloft a man upon a ladder, made me pause, for there was something in their silence and good order that seemed very portentous of evil. They poured out of the narrow closes and steep wynds on both sides of the dark Canongate, and, as these living streams united, they rolled in one huge mass along the North Bridge towards Prince's Street.
This sight was sufficiently alarming to excite even my curiosity. Escaping the notice of the city guard by their silence and promptitude, they marched on, no sound being heard but the tramp of their feet and the subdued murmur of their voices. All at once, when half-way across that lofty bridge which spans the deep (and then grassy) ravine between the old city and the new, a red and lurid light shone over them, revealing a thousand excited and upturned faces. The man seated on the ladder had kindled a torch, and, while waving it, proceeded to harangue his followers as they bore him on. He was the same sallow-visaged and haggard-eyed orator who I had heard on the proceeding evening—the unfortunate Robert Watt—and while being carried forward by the human tide that rolled along the bridge, I again heard the same sentiments and phrases uttered by him, the staple topics of the Friends of the People, which, however meaningless now, had a terrible signification in those days when pikes were made by thousands in secret, when the guillotine stood in the Place de la Grève, and the blood of Louis XVI. was yet crusted on its platform.
"There was a time when the Scots possessed a spirit that brooked no wrong," I heard Watt exclaim; "when they were not so cold in blood that the dastard law froze them, and when people took the part of the oppressed against the foul oppressor. A respect for the law is all very well, but in the end it makes men cowards. Respect for law and social order in the face of injustice and tyranny is like an old organ-tune—a piece of twaddle. I say the people have been wronged, yea, outraged and murdered, and we must have blood for blood! The law takes care of you—but it grinds, robs, and crushes you to the dust. Will the law save a man whose throat is under the murderer's knife—or the poor tradesman who starves under the tyranny of the purseproud monopolist? I respect the law, but I say, curses blight the edict by which our fellow-citizens were this day slain. In our fathers' days, there was a law in Scotland that he who was taken redhand after a slaughter might be put to death in twenty-four hours. The provost is redhand, and but twelve hours have elapsed—the blood of our citizens is on his soul! Drag him forth, drag him forth, I say, and to the nearest lampost with him!"
A yell of applause followed this terrible suggestion.
Again and again he referred to "the God of reason—the social compact between the king and people; to the Draconian laws, which drenched in blood the idol misnamed justice; to the downfall of hereditary monarchs, hereditary orders, tyrants, and lawgivers; equality of rights, the conspiracy of kings against God and man, and the majesty of the sovereign people!"
Then he wound up by quoting some forgotten Jacobin poet, who wrote of monarchs thus:—
"Think not, ye knaves, whom meanness styles the great,
Drones of the church and harpies of the state,—
Whose sires accurst, for blood and plunder famed,
Sultans, or kings, or czars, or emperors named;
Who taught deluded worlds their claims to own,
And raised them—hell-doomed reptiles!—to a throne;
Think not I come to croak with omen'd yell,
The dire damnations of your future Hell!"
Inspired by this choice piece of poetry, the rabble he led murmured, growled, and applauded; but whenever he spoke of the events of the past day—the blood that had been shed and the lives lost at the behest of a ministerial place-man, they uttered a yell. Then rushing along Prince Street, they turned into the ample space of St. Andrew Square, which was then a silent and sequestered place, as its mansions were occupied by the wealthy alone. Now a dozen of torches, shaking like tufts of fire, shed their glow upon the excited faces of the mob, and I could perceive a few sword-blades and pikeheads glittering among them. Amid wild hurrahs, the house of the Provost Stirling was assailed; the windows were dashed to pieces, and the shutters, which had been closed and barricaded, were broken in. Two sentinels of the city guard, who were posted before the door, fled into the fields which lay north of the city; their boxes were demolished, and the iron rails would soon have been torn up to force the front entrance, which already resounded like a huge drum beneath the blows that were rained upon it by the foremost of the rabble—when, hark!
There was a flash through the darkened sky, as if a meteor had passed over it; another followed instantly, with the double report of two heavy cannon from the Argyle battery, the signal for the seamen and marines of the Hythe and Tartar, and for the cavalry again to enter the city.