284 OLD AND NEW EDINBURGH. [Cockbum Street.
abuse, however flagrant, if in doing so there was
any risk of giving offence in high quarters ; and the
time had come when a free organ was necessary for
Scotland. It was calculated that if only 300 subscribers
were obtained the project would have a
chance of success, and Mr. Maclaren, with Mr.
house, it was deemed unwise that he should be
known as the editor of an opposition journal.
At this time the paper consisted of eight pages,
less than ha!f the size of the present page, and the
price was 1od.-6d. for the paper and 4d. of stamp
duty. From the latest news columns of l e numbei.
THE " SCOTSMAN OFFICE.
William Ritchie, were to be joint editors. The leading
arficle of the first number appeared on the 25th
of January, 1817, and was from the pen of Charles
Maclaren, who, during Mr. Ritchie's absence on
the continent, found a valuable coadjutor in Mr.
John Ramsay McCulloch, afterwards the eminent
statist and economist, who temporarily assumed
the office of responsible editor of the infant journal.
Mr. Maclaren having become a clerk in the Customfor
25th of January, some idea, says Mr. Bremner,
of the time occupied in the transmission of intelligence
in 1817 may be gleaned; the latest from
London was the zznd; from Paris, January 15th;
and from New York, December 15th.
The first advertisements were wholly of a literary
nature. In 1823 the paper was published twice
weekly at 7d., and when the stamp duty was
abolished the daily Scotsman appeared in 1 8 5 5 6
Cockburn Street.] MACLAREN
tiny sheet at first. ?To the daily and bi-weekly
editions, a weekly publication, composed of selections
from the others, was added in 1860, representing
also the venerable CaZedoninn Mercury. A
few years ago the bi-weekly paper was merged into
the daily edition, whicA most of the subscribers
had come to prefer. In all its various forms
the Scofsman has enjoyed a most gratifying run of
prosperity.?
By 1820 the paper having become firmly established,
Mr. Maclaren resumed the editorship,
and very few persons now can have an idea of the
magni6de of- the task he
had to undertake. ?Corruption
and arrogance,? says
the memoir already quoted,
? were the characteristics of
the party in power-in
power in a sense of which
in these days we know
nothing. The people of
Scotland were absolutely
without voice either in vote
or speech. Parliamentary
elections, municipal government,
the management of
public bodies-everything
was in the hands of a few
hundred persons. In Edinburgh,
for instance, the
member of Parliament was
elected and the government
of the city camed on by
thirty - two persons, and
almost all these thirty-two
took their directions from
4ND RUSSEL 285
of the proudest proofs of his mechanical sagacity is
his having clearly foreseen and boldly proclaimed the
certain success of locomotion by railways, while as
yet the whole subject was in embryo or deemed a
wild delusion. A series of his articles on this
matter appeared in the Scofsman for December,
1824 and were translated into nearly every
European language; and Smiles, in his life of
Stephenson, emphatically acknowledges Maclaren?s
keen foresight in the subject. His great conversational
and social qualities lie apart from the
history of his journal, which he continued to edit
till compelled by ill-health
UEXANDER RUSSEL.
(Fmm a Phfograjh by 7. Moffat, Edidurgk.)
the Government of the day, or its proconsul.
Public meetings were almost unknown, and a free
press may be said to have never had an existence.
Lord Cockburn, in his ? Life of Jeffrey,? says :-? I
doubt if there was a public meeting held in Edinburgh
between the year 1795 and the year 1820,?
and adds, in 1852, that ? excepting some vulgar,
stupid, and rash? newspapers which lasted only
a few days, there was ?no respectable opposition
paper, till the appearance of the Scofsman, which
for thirty-five years has done so much for the
popular cause, not merely by talent, spirit, and
consistency, but by independent moderation.??
Its tone from the first had been that of a decided
Whig, and in church matters that of a ?? voluntary.?
Apart from his ceaseless editorial labours, Mr.
Maclaren enriched the literature of his country by
many literary and scientific works, the enumeration
of which is somewhat unnecessary here ; but one
td resign in 1847. He
died in 1866, sfter having
lived in comparative retirement
at his suburban
villa in the Grange Loan, in
his eighty-fourth year, having
been born in 1782, at
Ormiston, in West Lothian.
In the management of
the paper he was ably succeeded
by Alexander Russel,
a native of Edinburgh,
who, after editing one or
two provincial journals,
became connected with the
Scotsmen in 1845, as assistant
editor. . He was a Whig
of the old Fox school, and
contributed many brilliant
articles to the Edinburgh
and Quurferb Reviews, the
?Encyclopzedia Britannica,?
and also B/ackwood?s Magazine.
As editor of the Scotsman he soon attracted
the attention of Mr. Cobden and other
leaders of the Anti-corn-law agitation, and his
pen was actively employed in furtherance of the
objects of the League ; and among the first subjects
to which he turned his attention in the S2ofsman
was the painful question of Highland destitution in
1847. A notable local conflict in which the paper
took a special interest was that of ~ 8 5 6 , on the
final retirement of Macaulay from the representation
of Edinburgh, and the return of Adam Black,
the eminent publisher ; and among many matters
to which this great Scottish journal lent all its
weight and advocacy in subsequent years, was the
great centenary of Robert Bums.
To the change in the Stamp Act we have already
referred-a change which, by the introduction of
daily papers, entailed an enormous increase of
work upon the editors ; but we are told that ? Mr.
