THE FAMOUS CENOTAPH

Wanganui Chronicle, Volume LXXVI, Issue 18432, 16 March 1922, Page 7

THE FAMOUS CENOTAPH

THE MARTYRS’ MONUMENT IN ’’AULD REEKIE.” “I have devoted myself to the cause of the people. It is a god cause —-It shall ultimately prevail—it shall finally triumph.”—Speech of Thomas Muir in the High Court of Justiciary on the 30th of August, 1793. “I know that what has been done these two days will be re-judged.” —Speech of William Skirving in the Court of Justiciary on the 7th January, 1794. The quotations which appear in the headings of our article are copied from the “Martyrs’ Monument” in the Calton Burying ground. The cenotaph is-an outstanding landmark of East Edinburgh, but it is to be feared that comparatively few among the thousands who daily cross the North Bridge or scan the Calton Hill for the drop of the ball on the Nelson Column pay more than a passing glance to the obelisk which stands out in bold relief against the Observatory which forms its background. Lord Strathclyde's interesting appreciation of Lord Fullerton published the other day contains an interesting page reminiscent of the early ’forties when the Friends of Parliamentary Reform in England and Scotland proposed the erection of a monument to commemorate the radical scapegoats of 1793. The attitude of the Court half a century later shows the advancement made in respect of toleration between the epoch of the French Revolution and the era of the Disruption. A short resume as regards the cenotaph, and the names it commemorates, may be interesting in expansion of Lord Strathclyde’s passing reference. SCOTLAND AT THE TIME OF PITT The latter part of the eightenth century witnesed a strange reversal in the national sentiment, and Scotland which half a century before had been so aggressive in its loyalty to the Stuarts would not seem to have been staunchest in its devotion to the person of George 111. and to have tacitly accepted the established political conditions. One of the strongest cements of its society was the conviction of a new generation that the conditions under which they were born were part of the order of the universe, and as natural as that the earth went round the sun.

It was an age notoriously convivial, with an excellent spate of hilarity on the King’s a striking contrast to the scene depicted on the canvas of Duncan, when Prince Charlie in solemn state wended his way towards Holyrood after his shortlived triumph at Prestonpans. But the year 1789 witnesed a sharp cleavage in the existing order. "Everything,” says Cockburn in his “Memorials," “rung and was connected with the Revolution in France; not this or that thing, but everything was soaked in this one event.” This condition of public feeling was not, perhaps, owing to the fact that any appreciable proportion of the Scottish people sympathised with the revolutionary principles; it was rather due to the fact that a vague horror was present in the minds of the governing classes lest the lurid drama unfolding itself in Paris might find a repetition nearer home. It was under these conditions that “Harry the Ninth,” the uncrowned King of Scotland, found a soil congenial to his ambitions. Henry Dundas had a difficult task before him. The Dundas despotism has passed into a proverb, but his statesmanship did much to conserve the principles of law and order at a strangely critical time when, under an easier regime, a crisis too awful to contemplate might have been tho order of events in Scotland as well as in France. THE BENCH IN 1793. The Supreme Court of Scotland in 1793 was a curious compound. Sir Islay Campbell of Succoth filled the President’s chair. Lord Braxfield, despite his evil fame the most outstanding personality of the Law Courts, held office as Lord JusticeClerk; and Gardenstone, Eskgrove, Hailes, and Monboddo, with their varied whimsicalities, settled the disputes of the litgious burghers. Sir Henry Craik, in his history of the period, details a somewhat curious and sycophantish proceeding enacted in 1793 when a scene, doubtless carefully rehearsed, but barely constitutional, was enacted betweeu the Lord Provost of Edinburgh and the Judges of the High Court. The civic head appeared, attended with all the appurtenances of magisterial dignity, and addressed the Judges on the excellence of the constitution and the wickedness of those who dared to criticise it. The Lord President, in his turn, delivered a lengthy homily on the sinfulness of innovation, and the awful consesquences of sedition. This homily was duly entered in the records of the Court.

“It was probably not the means best calculated to impress a suspicious public with the strict partiality of the Judicial Bench,” is the comment of the historian, not without a touch of quiet humour! THE RADICAL REVOLT. Rumblings of the great earthquake which shook the foundations of Western civilisation at the close of the eighteenth century had been evidenced in the literature of the preceding decades, always a sure barometer of national tendencies. Rousseau had fired the sluggish mind of France, and throughout the domains of His Majesty King George 111. the preaching of Wesley, the poetry of Cowper, and the philosophy of Hume had prepared the soil for a new and more expansive growth. The society known as the “Friends of the People" was founded in 1792. It originally consisted of 50 members, and at the outset it seems to

have been conducted on strictly constitutional lines. That it was eminently /’respectable” is evident from the fact that Lord John Russell, Sheridan, and Thomas (afterwards Lord Chancellor) Erskine were to be found among its members. Lord Dauderdale, probably the only Scottish Peer of his time on the side of the people, was also identified with the movement. Branches of the society were shortly afterwards established throughout the Kingdom, but unfortunately its constitutional aspect was soon forgotten and a programme more or less revolutionary became the order of the day. RIOT IN EDINBURGH. Commercial depression was a marked feature of this particular year, and on 4th June a three days’ riot broke out in Edinburgh. Dundas was burned in effigy, and the military were called out to quell the disturbances. Agitations sprang up in Dundee alld Perth, and shouts of “liberty and equality” " resounded through the streets. In Glasgow and the West of Scotland the “Reformers” were said to be 50,000 strong. In December a general convention of the Scottish “Friends of the People” met at Edinburgh, but the more moderate among them saw the futility of attempting to cast out devils by Beelzebub, the Prince of Devils — in the words of Burke, that it was bad business “to invoke the powers of hell to rectify the disorders of the earth.” Beyond the carrying of a resolution in favour of manhood suffrage, the Edinburgh Convention does not appear to have proceeded further with any degree of unanimity. If there is one point upon which all sober reasoners from Aristole to Burke are united it is that all great political changes must be gradual and continuous, growing out of the existing order in a manner that suggests no visible danger to existing institutions. but the wild heads of the movement favoured more drastic methods. On 21st January, 1793, Louis XVI. of France was brought to the guillotine, and the Reign of Terror burst with renewed fury upon Paris. It was known that some of the Scottish delegates had,been in touch with cross-Channcl anarchy, and with the full approval of a responsible community the Government now took summary measures to deal with the offenders. THE POLITICAL “MARTYRS." The Cenotaph in the Calton Cemetery chronicles five names prominently identified with the political developments of 1793. In August of that year, Thomas Muir, who had taken a leading part at the Edinburgh Convention, was brought before the High Court on a charge of sedition. Braxfield presided at the trial, and as he held the view that "the British Constitution was the best that ever was since the creation of the world,” the outlook tor the prisoner was far from favourable.

Muir w r as the son of a landed proprietor in the West of Scotland. He had qualified as an advocate of the Scots Bar, but a healed imagination coupled with an enthusiasm for Tom Paine, had led him to embrace some rather dangerous doctrines. Instead of devoting himself to his immediate profession, he had espoused’ radical propaganda, and, indeed, held office as first vice-president of the Friends of the People Society. The blackest count in his indictment, besides the breaking of a bail and recent visits to London and Paris, has his connection with certain Irish political associations, in respect of wnich some rather grave issues were feared * The prosecution was conducted by Lord Advocate Dundas, and a constitutional jury returned a verdict of “guilty.” Muir was sentenced to transportation for a period of fourteen years He subsequently escaped from the land of the kangaroos in a foreign ship, only to be seriously wounded in a sea encounter. There are records of his death In France in 1798. The second victim of the Assizes was Thomas Fyshe Palmer, an Englishman with Cambridge traditions, who had left the establishment to minister to a congregation of Unitarians in Dundee. The charge against Palmer was that of having printed a seditious pamphlet, and although he seems to have been guiltless of the authorship, and even opposed to its circulation, he too was sentenced to a twelve-years exile at Botany Bay. Palmer’s conviction would hardly have been possible except at the Court of Braxfield, and the outrageous sentence was a profound blunder. His friend, William Skirvisg, attempted to make capital out of the trial by publishing a full account of the proceedings, when he, too, was speedily brought to the bar. Skirving's trial took place in January 1794. He was known to have acted as secretary of the Edinburgh Convention, and he followed his colleague to the Antipodes, there to uindergo a fourteen years’ sentence: as in tlje other cases, mercifully shortened by the hand of death when but a few months had passed. TRIAL LEADS TO RIOTING. The trial of Maurice Margarot took place immediately thereafter, and was attended by some rioting. The popular tide ran strong in his favour, but as he was believed to be a specially dangerous agent in tho movement for “reform,” another sentence of fourteen years' duration was the pronouncement of the Court. Two months later a corresponding term of penal servitude was passed on Joseph Gerrald, an Englishman who with his companions in misfortune, had been found guilty of revolutionary propaganda in Scotland Further arrests were made, but the prime offenders would seem to have satisfied the claims of justice for the time. That the sentences were out of all proportion to the offences goes

without saying, but the severity meted out to sedition at the close of the eightenth century was doubtless due to the fear lest French methods should follow French ideals and the shambles of Paris find their counterpart on British soil Party feeling ran high, and Walter Scott himself, then a budding advocate, was nol ashamed of having cracked the crowns of some Irishmen in the forays of ’94, when loyand its reverse came into collision at one of the Edinburgh playhouses! Liberties unknown of a 'century ago are now the established institutions of a more liberal and democrtic age. The movement with which Muir and his colleagues were identified a generation before the passing of the Reform Bill unquestionably were separated by a span of many years. Skirving’s prophecy as it stands engraved on the ’stone took half a century for its fulfilment. THE ERECTION OF THE MONUMENT The cenotaph “erected by the friends of Parliamentary Reform in England and Scotland” to commemorate the victims of the Assizes of 1793 and 1794 was raised fifty years later, and it is to the honour of the Judges of a subsequent generation that in 1844 they “re-judged” the harsh verdicts of their predecessors and sanctioned the building of the obelisk which preserves for all time the names of the pioneers in Scotland’s movement fdor political freedom. Lord Fullerton’s brilliant plea for the granting of the petition is an appeal rich in its eloquence and broad in its tolerance, and Lord Strathclyde has done well in transferring its salient passages from the Session Records of a bygone age to the more living pages of 1921. And so in a quiet backwater of city life, casting its shadow across the green mounds which mark the last resting place of not a few of Edinbugh’s most noted sons, the monument stands sentinel in perpetual witness to the beginnings cf a far-reaching movement in our national history, and constitutes a landmark which dwarfs even the shrine of Hume.