Other Trials soon followed. At the close of December, 1793, Mr. Skirving, Mr. Gerrald, and Mr. Margarot were tried at Edinburgh on similar charges of seditious practices, and were all sentenced to fourteen years’ transportation. The former two died soon after reaching New South Wales. Maurice Margarot, who appears to have conducted himself throughout with the most abandoned and shameless profligacy, was the only one of these convicts—his fourteen years over—who ever set foot again in Britain.
Gerrald was a man of very superior ability, and a favourite pupil of Dr. Parr’s, as is mentioned by De Quincey in his famous essay on that noted Whig pedagogue.
On the Scottish “political martyrs” Lord Cockburn, in his posthumous Examination of the Trials for Sedition in Scotland, published in 1888, which deals with the twenty-five trials of the above-named five and of thirty-two others, between 1793 and 1849, passes his deliberate verdict, that, with the exception of Muir, not one of them was guiltless. But, like ordinary criminals, they were entitled to a fair and impartial trial; and their trials were, one and all, iniquitous. Of the six judges who presided in the first fourteen (1793–94), five were dull, timid nonentities; the sixth, Lord Justice Clerk Braxfield, was, says Lord Cockburn, “a profound practical lawyer, and a powerful man; coarse and illiterate ... utterly devoid of judicial decorum, and though pure in the administration of civil justice, when he was exposed to no temptation, with no other conception of principle in any political case except that the upholding of his party was a duty attaching to his position. Over the five weak men who sat beside him, this coarse and dexterous ruffian predominated as he chose.” But Jedburgh—no, nor the Bloody Assize itself—could scarcely match one scene in Gerrald’s trial:—“‘After all,’ he was urging in his defence, ‘the most useful discoveries in philosophy, the most important changes in the moral history of man, have been innovations. The Revolution was an innovation, Christianity itself was an innovation.’ Instantly upon this, the following interruption took place:—Lord Braxfield: ‘You would have been stopped long before this, if you had not been a stranger. All that you have been saying is sedition. And now, my Lords, he is attacking Christianity.’ Lord Henderland: ‘I allow him all the benefit of his defence. But ... I cannot sit here as a judge without saying that it is a most indecent defence....’ The juries were packed as never, surely, before, or afterwards.”
With such judges, such juries, and, at least, in two cases, false witnesses, it might seem easy to anticipate the result; but the result transcends anticipation. In almost every case a light sentence would have amply met the requirements of justice; but the judges all shared Lord Swinton’s opinion that “it is impossible to punish Sedition adequately, now that torture has been abolished”. So they strove to supply the deficiency by Transportation, a punishment unwarranted by precedent.
With respect to Margarot’s trial at Edinburgh, the following is a vivid memory of Lord Cockburn’s boyhood:—
“Margarot came from the Black Bull [in Leith Street] to be tried, attended by a procession of the populace and his Convention friends, with banners and what was called a tree of liberty. This tree was in the shape of the letter M, about twenty feet high and ten wide. The honour of bearing it up by carrying the two upright poles was assigned to two eminent Conventionalists, and the little culprit walked beneath the circular placard in the centre, which proclaimed liberty and equality, &c. I was looking out of a window in the old Post-Office, which was then the northmost house on the west side of the North Bridge. I think I see the scene yet. The whole North Bridge, from the Tron Church to the Register Office, was quite empty at first; not a single creature venturing on that bit of sand, over which the waves were so soon to break from both ends. The Post-Office and the adjoining houses had been secretly filled with constables, and sailors from a frigate in the roads (I think The Hind, Capt. Cochrane), all armed with sticks and batons. No soldier appeared, it being determined that this civic insurrection should be put down by the civil force, unaided, at least, by scarlet. As soon as the tree, which led the van, emerged from Leith Street, and appeared at the north end of the bridge, Provost Elder and the Magistrates issued from some place they had retired to (I believe the Tron Church), and appeared, all robed, at the south end. The day was good. There was still not one person—I doubt if there was even a dog—on any part of the space, being the whole length of the bridge, between the two parties. But the rear of each was crammed with people, who filled up every inch as those in front moved on. The Magistrates were in a line across the street, with the Provost in the centre, the city officers behind this line, and probably a hundred loyal gentlemen in the rear of the officers. The two parties advanced steadily towards each other, and in perfect silence, till they met just about the Post-Office. The Provost stepped forward about a pace, so that he almost touched the front line of the rebels, when, advancing his cane, he commanded them to retire. This order probably would not have been obeyed; but, at any rate, it could not have been obeyed speedily, from the crowd behind. However, all this was immaterial; for, without waiting one instant to see whether they meant to retire or not, the houses vomited forth their bludgeoned contents, and in almost two minutes the tree was demolished and thrown over the bridge, the street covered with the knocked down, the accused dragged to the bar, and the insurrection was over.”
On February 20th, 1837, a meeting took place at the Crown and Anchor Tavern, Strand, for commencing a subscription to erect monuments in London and Edinburgh to the memory of the above five Reformers. Joseph Hume, M.P. was in the chair; Colonel Perronet Thompson, Mr. Dan. Whittle Harvey, and fifteen other members of Parliament were present. A lofty obelisk was erected on the Calton Hill to the memory of the “Scottish Martyrs,” but London did not sympathize with the movement.—Ed.]
JOEL BARLOW.
[Joel Barlow, born in 1756 in Connecticut, was educated as a Presbyterian minister, but afterwards turned Deist. Before this change he translated the Psalms into metre, and his version is still used in the churches of New England. He now adopted the Law, and engaged in periodicals—one, The Anarchist, which was political in its character, and exercised great influence. In 1788, after visiting England, he went to Paris, where he joined the Girondists. In 1791, he returned to England, where he published the first part of his Advice to the Privileged Orders, in which he assails the whole system of Government pursued in monarchical Europe, the Church establishments, the standing armies, the judicial organisations, and the financial systems which belong to the old governments. In February, 1792, he published a political poem, which he entitled The Conspiracy of Kings; also a Letter to the Convention advising the separation of Church and State. So great did his reputation become that he was fixed on by the London Constitutional Society to present their Address to the Convention. After various political transactions in the interest of France, and also in commercial speculations which made him a rich man, he left Paris in 1805, living on his estate in America till 1811, when he was sent as Minister Plenipotentiary to Paris. But Napoleon being on his Russian Expedition, he followed him to Wilna; but the fatiguing journey proved fatal: he died 26th December, 1812. He wrote at an early age a poem, The Vision of Columbus, which acquired great popularity, and which he afterwards enlarged as The Columbiad. Among other works he published (in 1796) a mock-heroic poem, Hasty Pudding, which is generally considered his best work.—Ed.]
THEOBALD WOLFE TONE.