Part 46

Hitherto, no sort of literary or scientific association had been formed in Scotland. For a long time bypast, almost the only learning that existed was theological, and there was but little of that. In this year, Thomas Ruddiman, who had distinguished himself in Edinburgh by editing the works of Buchanan, and composing the well-known _Rudiments of the Latin Tongue_, joined with the masters of the High School of the city in establishing there an association for improving each other in classical lore, ‘without meddling with the affairs of church or state.’ This body was afterwards joined by a young advocate, subsequently eminent as a judge and a philosophical writer under the name of Lord Kames; afterwards, Mr Archibald Murray and Mr James Cochran, advocates, and Mr George Wishart, one of the ministers of Edinburgh, with some others, became members. ‘Whether their conversations were preserved, or their dissertations published, cannot now be ascertained.’[525]

[Sidenote: DEC. 15.]

This day was commenced a newspaper in Edinburgh, the first that succeeded in thoroughly planting itself in Scotland, so as to obtain more than an ephemeral existence. It was the adventure of James M‘Ewen, bookseller in Edinburgh, and came out under [Sidenote: 1718.] the title of _The Edinburgh Evening Courant_. The paper appeared in virtue of a formal authority from the magistrates and town-council, to whom M‘Ewen was to be answerable for what he should print and publish; and, that this rule might be enforced, he was, ‘before publication, to give ane coppie of his print to [the] magistrates.’[526] The _Courant_ was announced as to contain ample accounts of foreign occurrences, and these derived, not through London prints, but directly from foreign journals. It was intended as a decidedly Whig print, in this respect differing from the _Caledonian Mercury_, which was not long after started in the Jacobite interest.

The _Courant_ was from the first successful. James M‘Ewen, writing from Edinburgh, January 17, 1719, to the Rev. Mr Wodrow, says: ‘As to our newspaper, it thrives so far as to be very well liked by all, excepting the violent Jacobites, who hate it, for no other reason but because it is a true and impartial paper. Several gentlemen who were to have had the London papers sent them, have laid them aside, because this contains the substance not only of them, but of the foreign post also.’

In looking over, as it has been my fate to do, the early volumes of the _Courant_, one cannot but groan over the long, dry ‘advices’ from nearly all parts of Europe, and the wretched meagreness of the department of home intelligence, whole months often elapsing without so much as an obituary notice, or a ship’s arrival at Leith. The reason of this unfortunate peculiarity was no other than the civic censorship under which the paper, as we see, was from the beginning placed. Even intelligence in the interest of the government was not in every instance safe. In the course of February 1723, the magistrates seized all the copies of a particular number of the paper, in which there had been an apparently simple paragraph. It regarded Mr Patrick Halden, then under trials before the judges of the Court of Session as presentee of the crown for a seat on the bench—he being a mere creature of the ministry unfit for the position. Fired at the words: ‘We do not hear of any great discoveries yet made to his prejudice,’ the judges inflicted this punishment upon the publisher, M‘Ewen, who then announced the suppression of his paper, ‘that our customers in the country may know why they cannot be served with that day’s _Courant_, as also _why we have been so sparing all along of home news_.’

It is at the same time evident that the meagreness of the [Sidenote: 1718.] home news was in part caused by mere difficulty of obtaining authentic accounts of such matters. A rumour as to the death of a person of importance at a distance would arrive. Owing to the sluggishness of posts, its verity could not readily be ascertained. Inserting it on trust, the journalist too often found, in the course of a few days, that the announcement was unfounded. Such is a fair specimen of the way in which false intelligence occasionally got into circulation; and every such case, of course, operated as a motive to caution in future. The publishers, moreover, could not afford to keep sub-editors to go about and ascertain the verity of rumours. As an illustration of the difficulties hence arising—the _Caledonian Mercury_ of March 3, 1724, contained the following paragraph: ‘We hear that my Lord Arniston, one of the ordinary Lords of Session, is dead;’ which was followed in the next number by: ‘It was by mistake in our last that my Lord Arniston was dead, occasioned by the rendezvous of coaches, &c., _hard by his lordship’s lodging_, that were to attend the funeral of a son of the Right Honourable the Earl of Galloway; wherefore his lordship’s pardon and family’s is humbly craved.’

It affords a pleasing idea of the possible continuousness of sublunary things, that the then Whig, but now Conservative _Edinburgh Evening Courant_, which began its career in 1718, and its then Tory, but since liberal rival, the _Caledonian Mercury_, which originated about two years later, are still published in Edinburgh.

The enjoyment during thirty years of ‘position’ as an establishment, combined with the progressive ideas of the age, was now working some notable changes in the spirit of the Scottish Church.

There was still, of course, a general maintenance of the old doctrines and habits; all was to appearance as it had been—places of worship attended, Sunday observed, discipline kept up; in particular outlying presbyteries, there would even be found a majority of men of the old leaven. When, however, any strenuous Dumfriesshire or Galloway pastor seemed animated by aught of the zeal of a past age, and thereby excited troubles which came under the attention of the General Assembly, he was sure to be snubbed, and, if contumacious, deposed. If a presbytery of the ancient orthodoxy, labouring under fears of backslidings and defections, ventured to reassert, in a public manner, a doctrine that was beginning to be unfashionable, the General [Sidenote: 1718.] Assembly frowned on its forwardness. At the same time, Mr John Simson, professor of divinity at Glasgow, openly taught doctrines leaning to Arminianism, and even Arianism, and the same venerable court could not, for a number of years, be brought to do more than administer a gentle admonition.

It chanced, one day, that a worthy pastor, Mr Thomas Boston, found in a house which he was visiting a tattered treatise of the bright days of the civil war, written by one Edward Fisher, and entitled _The Marrow of Modern Divinity_. Turning over its leaves, he found it asserting orthodox Puritan doctrines with a simplicity and pathos all its own, particularly one which had lately been condemned by the General Assembly—namely, that, Christ being all in all, a forsaking of sins was not necessary ‘to reinstate us in covenant with God.’ Here seemed the proper remedy for the alarming rationalism of the church, and very soon there appeared a new edition of the _Marrow_, under the care of Mr Thomas Hogg, minister of Carnock. The book immediately got into wide circulation, and produced a very decided impression on the public mind, insomuch that the General Assembly felt called upon to issue a prohibition against its being recommended or read.

Thus arose a once famous conflict generally recognised as the _Marrow Controversy_. Dissatisfied with the pronouncement of the church, twelve ministers, including Boston and Hogg, came forward with a Representation, in which they remonstrated in very free terms with the General Assembly, expressing themselves as grieved in an especial manner to find any disfavour shewn to that freedom from the covenant of works which true believers felt to be the chief branch of the precious liberty which Christ had given them, and ‘in which the eternal salvation of souls is wrapped up.’ For sending this paper, the twelve brethren were taken in hand by the Assembly’s commission, condemned, and ordered to stand a rebuke (1723); but, while submitting, for the sake of peace, they took care to utter a protest, which left no room for doubt that they remained unshaken in their opinions. The entire proceedings are far too voluminous for modern patience; but the importance of the affair is undoubted. The ‘Twelve Marrow Men’ may be said to have formed the nucleus of the dissent which was a few years after matured under the name of the Secession.[527]

[Sidenote: 1719. JAN. 29.]

About eight o’clock this morning, at a spot a little west of Aberdeen, ‘there appeared ane army, computed to be the number of 7000 men. This computation was made by a very judicious man, who had long been a soldier in Flanders, and is now a farmer at this place, who with about thirty other persons were spectators. This army was drawn up in a long line in battle-array, were seen to fall down to the ground, and start up all at once; their drums were seen to be carried on the drummers’ backs. After it remained more than two hours, a person on a white horse rode along the line, and then they all marched towards Aberdeen, where the hill called the Stocket took them out of sight. It was a clear sunshine all that morning.’

October 22d, a second vision of the same kind was seen on the same ground. ‘About two thousand men appeared with blue and white coats, clear arms glancing or shining, white ensigns were seen to slap down, as did the former, at which time a smoke appeared, as if they had fired, but no noise. A person on a white horse also rode along the line, and then they marched towards the bridge of Dee. This vision continued on the ground from three hours in the afternoon, till it was scarce light to see them. It was a clear fine afternoon, and being the same day of the great yearly fair held at Old Aberdeen, was seen by many hundreds of people going home, as well as by above thirty that were at their own houses, about half a mile distant. It’s observable that the people coming from the fair came through them, but saw nothing till they came up to the crowd that was standing gazing, who caused them to look back.’[528]

[Sidenote: NOV. 2.]

On the night of the 2d of November, the river Don was dried up from a little below Kemnay down to near Old Aberdeen. It was so dry at Inverury and Kintore, that children of five or six years of age gathered up the fish, trouts, and eels, and many people going to a fair passed over dry-shod. The water slowly returned about the middle of the day. The same phenomenon was said to have happened in the Doveran at Banff two days later.[529]

[Sidenote: 1719.]

The Commissioners on the Forfeited Estates were left in 1716 in a position of discomfiture, in consequence of the impediments presented by Scottish law and Scottish national feeling. Acts of the legislature enabled them in subsequent years to overcome some of their difficulties, and accomplish a tolerable portion of their mission. Not indeed without further impediments from the Court of Session, which, when their former decrees of sequestration were rendered void, and could no longer protect the friends of the forfeited persons in possession, gave efficacy to a new device of these friends, in the form of exceptions which declared that the forfeited persons had never been the real owners of the estates! In their report of 1720, they pathetically advert to this new difficulty, and, as an illustration of its absurdity, state a few cases, in which there had been decrees in favour of more pretended owners than one—Seaforth’s estates, for instance, were by one decree found to belong in full and absolute right to Kenneth Mackenzie of Assint, by another to William Martin of Harwood, by another to Hugh Wallace of Inglistown. For Mar’s estates, there were four of these visionary owners, and for Kenmure’s five! The exceptions were generally founded on conveyances and _dispositions_ of the lands which were alleged to have been formerly executed by the attainted persons in favour of children and others. Notwithstanding these obstructions, the commissioners were enabled, in October 1719, to sell Panmure’s estates at £60,400 sterling, Winton’s at £50,482, Kilsyth’s at £16,000, and that of Robert Craw of East Reston at £2364.

By reversals of the decrees in the House of Lords, and the help of a new act, the Commissioners were enabled, in October 1720, to sell a further lot of estates—Southesk’s for £51,549, Marischal’s for £45,333, Linlithgow’s for £18,769, Stirling of Keir’s for £16,450, Threipland of Fingask’s for £9606, Paterson of Bannockburn’s for £9671, besides two others of trifling value. The purchase was in nearly all these cases made by a speculative London company, entitled _The Governor and Company of Undertakers for raising the Thames Water in York Buildings_ (commonly called the ‘York Buildings Company’).[530] The exceptions in the cases of Keir and Bannockburn were purchases probably made by friends of the former owners. For any other persons connected [Sidenote: 1719.] with Scotland to have come forward to buy these properties on their own account, inferred such an amount of public indignation, if not violence, as made the act impossible, even if there had been any recreant Scot, Whig or Tory, capable in his heart of such conduct.

We shall have occasion, under subsequent dates, to notice certain difficulties of a different and more romantic kind which beset the Commissioners. But, meanwhile, it may be well to complete the history of their ordinary transactions.

Out of thirty estates left unsold in October 1720, they had succeeded within the ensuing three years in selling nineteen, of which the chief were Lord Burleigh’s at £12,610, Macdonald of Sleat’s at £21,000, and Mackenzie of Applecross’s at £3550, the rest being of inconsiderable amount, though raising the entire sum to £66,236. The principal estate afterwards sold was that of John Earl of Mar at £36,000.

When the Commissioners closed their accounts in March 1725, it appeared that there was a total of £411,082 sterling paid and to be paid into the Exchequer, from which, however, was to be deducted no less than £303,995 of debts sanctioned by the Commissioners, and for which they had issued or were to issue debentures, and £26,120 allowed in the form of grants from the crown. There thus remained, of money realised for public use and to pay the expenses of the Commission, the sum of £84,043, 17_s._ 5¾_d._, while properties to the yearly value of £2594 remained undisposed of, including an item so small as ‘Feu-duty of some cellars at Leith, part of the Abbacy of Aberbrothick, belonging to the late Earl of Panmure, 11_s._ 3½_d._’

Some curiosity will naturally be felt to know the aggregate expenses of the Commission,[531] and the balance of results which these left out of the eighty-four thousand pounds. There is a mixture of the ludicrous and sad in the problem, which may be expressed thus: money from the destruction (for public objects) of about fifty of the good old families of Scotland, £84,043; charges for the expense of the destruction, £82,936 = £1107! Walpole would find it hardly a decent purchase-money for a vote in the House of Commons.

[Sidenote: DEC.]

By statute passed in 1718,[532] arrangements had been made [Sidenote: 1719.] regarding the sum of £16,575, 14_s._ 0½_d._, which had been left over of the Equivalent money at the Union, after paying sundry claims out of it, and for a further debt of £230,308, 9_s._ 10_d._, due by England to Scotland since in equalisation of duties, together with a small sum of interest—the whole amounting to £248,550—also for enabling the king to constitute the bond-holders of this debt into a corporation, which, after St John’s Day, 1719, should receive £10,000 annually as interest, until the debt should be redeemed.

Now, the Bank of Scotland had been going on very quietly for some years, with its ten thousand pounds of paid-up capital, realising, as we can infer from some particulars, about a thousand a year of profit from its business. A prosperity so great could not then exist in Scotland without exciting some degree of envy, and also raising up thoughts of rivalry in a certain ardent class of minds. It began to be alleged that _the Bank_, as it was commonly called, was stinted in its means and frigid in its dealings; that it lacked enterprise; that it would be the better of an infusion of fresh blood, and so forth. It had many positive enemies, who tried to detract from its merits, and were constantly raising evil reports about it.[533] Most deadly of all, there was now this Equivalent Company, with about a quarter of a million of debentures wherewith to engage in further mercantile enterprise, so as to make their ten thousand a year a little better. The boy, with his first shilling burning a hole in his pocket, was but a type of it.

In December 1719, a proposal came from a proprietor of Equivalent stock, to the effect that that stock should be added to the £100,000 stock of the Bank, but with nine-tenths of it returned by the Bank in notes, so that only £25,000 of it should in reality remain active in the new concern. It was proposed that, of the £10,000 of annual interest upon the Equivalent, the proprietors of Bank stock should thenceforward draw two-sevenths, being the proportion of £100,000 to £250,000; and of the £600 a year allowed for management of the Equivalent, the Bank was also to be allowed a proportion. In such a way might the Bank and Equivalent be brought into a union presumed to be beneficial to both parties.

[Sidenote: 1719.]

The directors of the Bank received the proposition as an insidious attempt by a number of outsiders to get into the enjoyment of a portion of their time-bought advantages. They pointed out, in their answer, that the Equivalent stock being only in the receipt of 4 per cent. interest, while the profits of the Bank stock might be reckoned at not lower than 10, the proposal was inequitable towards the Bank. Besides, they did not want this additional stock, finding their present working capital quite sufficient. The proposer was thus repelled for the meantime; but he very quickly returned to the attack.

Under the guidance of this person, there was now formed what was called ‘The Edinburgh Society for insuring of Houses against Loss by Fire’—an arrangement of social life heretofore unknown in Scotland. But, as often happens, no sooner was this design broached than another set of people projected one of the same kind, with only this slight difference, that, instead of being a company trading for profits, it was a mutual insurance society reserving all profits for the insured. Such was the origin, in 1720, of what afterwards, under the name of ‘the Friendly Society,’[534] became a noted institution of the Scottish capital, and is still in a certain sense existing amongst us. The Edinburgh Society consequently got no insurance business.

It nevertheless kept together, under the care of a committee of secrecy, who gave out that they contemplated a still better project. For some time, they talked loudly of great, though unripe plans, by which they expected to ‘make Scotland flourish beyond what it ever did before.’ Then there arose a repetition of the old clamours about the Bank—it was too narrow, both in its capital and in its ideas; the directors were too nice about securities; the public required enlarged accommodation. At last, the Society plainly avowed that they were determined either to run down the Bank, or force a coalition with it. It was precisely one of the last century heiress-abductions, adapted to the new circumstances of the country and the advanced ideas of the age.

The opportunity seemed to be afforded by the share which Scotland took in the South-Sea scheme, large sums of specie being sent southward to purchase stock in that notable bubble. In such circumstances, it was assumed that the stock of coin in the Bank must have sunk to rather a low ebb. Having then gradually and [Sidenote: 1719.] unperceivedly gathered up the monstrous sum of £8400 in notes of the Bank, our Edinburgh Society came in upon it one morning demanding immediate payment. To their surprise, the money was at once paid, for in reality the kind of coin sent by speculators to London was different from that usually kept by the Bank, so that there had been hardly any abatement of its usual resources in coin. The Society tried to induce the cashiers of all the public establishments to follow their example, and draw out their money, but without success in any instance but that of the trustees of the Equivalent, who came very ostentatiously, and taking out their money, stored it up in the Castle. The public preserved a mortifying tranquillity under all these excitements, and the Bank remained unaffected.

The Edinburgh Society soon after sent the Bank a proposal of union, ‘for the prevention of mutual injuries, and the laying of a solid foundation for their being subservient and assisting to one another.’ It mainly consisted in an offer to purchase six hundred shares of the Bank, not as a new stock, but by surrender of shares held by the present proprietors, at £16, 13_s._ 4_d._ per share, or £10,000 in all, being apparently a premium of £6, 13_s._ 4_d._ on each £10 of the Bank’s paid-in capital. The Bank, however, as might have been expected, declined the proposal.

The passing of the famous Bubble Act soon after rendered it necessary for the Edinburgh Society to dissolve; but the Bank, nevertheless, like a rich heiress, continued to be persecuted by undesired offers of alliance. One, strange to say, came from the London Exchange Assurance Company. By this time (1722), it appears that the Bank had _twenty_ thousand pounds of its capital paid up. It was proposed on the part of the London Assurance, that they should add £20,000, and have a half of the Bank’s profits, minus only an annual sum of £2500 to the old proprietors; which the Bank considered as equivalent to a borrowing of a sum of money at a dear rate from foreigners, when, if necessary, they could advance it themselves. Suppose, said the directors, that, after the London company had paid in their £20,000, the Bank’s profits were to rise to £7000 a year—and the authors of the proposal certainly contemplated nothing so low—this sum would fall to be divided thus: _first_, £2500 to the old Bank proprietors; _second_, the remaining £4500 to be divided between the Bank and the Exchange Assurance Company—that is, £2250 to the latter, being interest at the rate of 11 per cent. upon the money it had advanced—which money would be lying [Sidenote: 1719.] the same as dead in the Bank, there being no need for it. The Bank of Scotland declined the proposal of the London Royal Exchange Assurance Company, which doubtless would not be without its denunciations of Scotch caution on the occasion.