The Provost

by John Galt

I thought I would have been constrained to send her to prison, the woman grew so bold and contumacious, when Mr Hickery came in, and hearing what was going forward, was evidently working himself up to take the randy’s part; but fortunately she had a suspicion that all the town-council and magistrates were in league against her, on account of the repute of her house, so that when he enquired of her where she lived, with a view, as I suspect, of interceding, she turned to him, and with a leer and a laugh, said, “Dear me, Mr Hickery, I’m sure ye hae nae need to speer that!”

The insinuation set up his birses; but she bamboozled him with her banter, and raised such a laugh against him, that he was fairly driven from the council room, and I was myself obliged to let her go, without exacting the fine.

Who would have thought that this affair was to prove to me the means of an easy riddance of Mr Hickery? But so it turned out; for whether or not there was any foundation for the traffickings with him which she pretended, he never could abide to hear the story alluded to, which, when I discerned, I took care, whenever he showed any sort of inclination to molest the council with his propugnacity, to joke him about his bonny sweetheart, “the Tappit-hen,” and he instantly sang dumb, and quietly slipped away; by which it may be seen how curiously events come to pass, since, out of the very first cause of his thwarting me in the lamps, I found, in process of time, a way of silencing him far better than any sort of truth or reason.

CHAPTER XXVIII—THE SECOND CROP OF VOLUNTEERS

I have already related, at full length, many of the particulars anent the electing of the first set of volunteers; the which, by being germinated partly under the old system of public intromission, was done with more management and slight of art than the second. This, however, I will ever maintain, was not owing to any greater spirit of corruption; but only and solely to following the ancient dexterous ways, that had been, in a manner, engrained with the very nature of every thing pertaining to the representation of government as it existed, not merely in burgh towns, but wheresoever the crown and ministers found it expedient to have their lion’s paw.

Matters were brought to a bearing differently, when, in the second edition of the late war, it was thought necessary to call on the people to resist the rampageous ambition of Bonaparte, then champing and trampling for the rich pastures of our national commonwealth. Accordingly, I kept myself aloof from all handling in the pecuniaries of the business; but I lent a friendly countenance to every feasible project that was likely to strengthen the confidence of the king in the loyalty and bravery of his people. For by this time I had learnt, that there was a wake-rife common sense abroad among the opinions of men; and that the secret of the new way of ruling the world was to follow, not to control, the evident dictates of the popular voice; and I soon had reason to felicitate myself on this prudent and seasonable discovery. For it won me great reverence among the forward young men, who started up at the call of their country; and their demeanour towards me was as tokens and arles, from the rising generation, of being continued in respect and authority by them. Some of my colleagues, who are as well not named, by making themselves over busy, got but small thank for their pains. I was even preferred to the provost, as the medium of communicating the sentiments of the volunteering lads to the lord-lieutenant; and their cause did not suffer in my hands, for his lordship had long been in the habit of considering me as one of the discreetest men in the burgh; and although he returned very civil answers to all letters, he wrote to me in the cordial erudition of an old friend—a thing which the volunteers soon discerned, and respected me accordingly.

But the soldiering zeal being spontaneous among all ranks, and breaking forth into ablaze without any pre-ordered method, some of the magistrates were disconcerted, and wist not what to do. I’ll no take it upon me to say that they were altogether guided by a desire to have a finger in the pie, either in the shape of the honours of command or the profits of contract. This, however, is certain, that they either felt or feigned a great alarm and consternation at seeing such a vast military power in civil hands, over which they had no natural control; and, as was said, independent of the crown and parliament. Another thing there could be no doubt of: in the frame of this fear they remonstrated with the government, and counselled the ministers to throw a wet blanket on the ardour of the volunteering, which, it is well known, was very readily done; for the ministers, on seeing such a pressing forward to join the banners of the kingdom, had a dread and regard to the old leaven of Jacobinism, and put a limitation on the number of the armed men that were to be allowed to rise in every place—a most ill-advised prudence, as was made manifest by what happened among us, of which I will now rehearse the particulars, and the part I had in it myself.

As soon as it was understood among the commonality that the French were determined to subdue and make a conquest of Britain, as they had done of all the rest of Europe, holding the noses of every continental king and potentate to the grindstone, there was a prodigious stir and motion in all the hearts and pulses of Scotland, and no where in a more vehement degree than in Gudetown. But, for some reason or an other which I could never dive into the bottom of, there was a slackness or backwardness on the part of government in sending instructions to the magistrates to step forward; in so much that the people grew terrified that they would be conquered, without having even an opportunity to defend, as their fathers did of old, the hallowed things of their native land; and, under the sense of this alarm, they knotted themselves together, and actually drew out proposals and resolutions of service of their own accord; by which means they kept the power of choosing their officers in their own hands, and so gave many of the big-wigs of the town a tacit intimation that they were not likely to have the command.

While things were in this process, the government had come to its senses; and some steps and measures were taken to organize volunteer corps throughout the nation. Taking heart from them, other corps were proposed on the part of the gentry, in which they were themselves to have the command; and seeing that the numbers were to be limited, they had a wish and interest to keep back the real volunteer offers, and to get their own accepted in their stead. A suspicion of this sort getting vent, an outcry of discontent thereat arose against them; and to the consternation of the magistrates, the young lads, who had at the first come so briskly forward, called a meeting of their body, and, requesting the magistrates to be present, demanded to know what steps had been taken with their offer of service; and, if transmitted to government, what answer had been received.

This was a new era in public affairs; and no little amazement and anger was expressed by some of the town-council, that any set of persons should dare to question and interfere with the magistrates. But I saw it would never do to take the bull by the horns in that manner at such a time; so I commenced with Bailie Sprose, my lord being at the time provost, and earnestly beseeched him to attend the meeting with me, and to give a mild answer to any questions that might be put; and this was the more necessary, as there was some good reason to believe, that, in point of fact, the offer of service had been kept back.