become peculiarly unpopular by obtaining a licence, when some English establishments had been suppressed under Walpole's act. It appears that Lord Trentham had, with some others, endeavoured to preserve the friendless foreigners from the fury of the mob. So un-English an act, as this harbouring and protecting of foreign vagabonds, against the just indignation of true born Britons, was very successfully displayed as an overt act in favour of Popery, Jacobitism, and French ascendency; and the skilful manner in which it was improved, in the hand-bills, and pasquinades of the Vandeput party, shows that this department of the electioneering art was not then far from its present state of maturity.[306:1]
A pretty minute investigation has not enabled me to discover what precise conduct in connexion with this affair was important enough to elicit from Hume the elaborate joke against Fraser embodied in the following papers. He was evidently a medical man, but he does not appear in the list of those who attested Mr. Murray's health, or were appointed to visit him. He certainly acted on the Vandeput side, yet his name is nowhere mentioned, in connexion with it, in a pretty large collection of documents relating to this election, which I have had an opportunity of consulting.[307:1]
Fraser was evidently, like Clephane, one of the medical officers in General St. Clair's expedition, for, in a previous letter to Colonel Abercromby, Hume mentions him as an officer in the royal regiment.[307:2] He appears to have been a thorough Jacobite, for, in another
letter, Hume speaks of him as one of the extreme persons whom his history will displease by its too great partiality to the Whigs. A very pleasing and natural description of his character is given by Hume, in a letter to Clephane, a little farther on.[308:1]
The following document was sent to Colonel Abercromby, along with the explanatory letters which immediately follow it.
To the Right Honourable the Lord Chief Justice Reason, and the Honourable the Judges Discretion, Prudence, Reserve, and Deliberation, the Petition of the Patients of Westminster, against James Fraser, Apothecary.
Most humbly showeth,
That your petitioners had put themselves and families under the direction and care of the said James Fraser, and had so continued for several years, to their great mutual benefit and emolument.
That many of your petitioners had, under his management, recovered from the most desperate and deplorable maladies, such as megrims, toothaches, cramps, stitches, vapours, crosses in love, &c. which wonderful success, after the blessing of God, they can ascribe to nothing but his consummate skill and capacity, since many of their neighbours, labouring
under the same distresses, died every day, by the mistakes of less learned apothecaries.