308 BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES.
be distributed and circulated in the town of Glasgow, Kirkintilloch, Milltown
aforesaid, and at Lennoxtown, in the said parish of Campsie, and county of
Stirling, or elsewhere, a number of seditious and inflammatory writings or
pamphlets, particularly a book or pamphlet entitled ‘ The Works of Thomas
Paine, Esq.’ etc.” He was likewise charged with having been present at a
meeting of the “ Convention of Delegates‘ of the Associated Friends of the
People,” held in Lawrie’s Room, in James’s Court, Edinburgh ; at which he read
“ an Address from the Society of United Irishmen in Dublin to the Delegates
for promoting a Reform in Parliament,” and proposed that the same should lie
on the table, or a vote of thanks, or some acknowledgment be made to those
from whom the address had been transmitted.
The witnesses brought forward established the various charges against the
prisoner, but they almost unanimously bore testimony to the constitutional mode
by which he recommended the people to proceed in their demands for a redress
of grievances. Indeed, at this distance of time, and considered apart from
that dread of every thing approaching, even in name, to a republic, which the
horrors of the French Revolution had inspired, it is not easy to discover from
the evidence the precise degree of guilt which could possibly be attached to the
prison er .
His appearance
at the bar has been variously represented. By those of opposite politics (and
there are several gentlemen yet alive-1 83’7-who witnessed his trial), he has been
described as “ a most silly creature, and a pitiful speaker.” The records of the
proceedings by no means support this assertion. Without deigning to descend
to mere legal quibbling, his conduct of the case does not seem to have been
deficient in tact, nor his appeals to the bench and to the jury devoid of eloquence
or power. ‘(This is no time for compromise,” said Muir, in his concluding
address to the jury. “ Why did the Lord Advocate not at once allow that I
stand at this bar because I have.been the strenuous supporter of parliamentary
reform 1 Had this been done, and this alone been laid to my charge, I should at
once have pled guilty-there would have been no occasion for a trial ; and their
lordships and you would have been spared the lassitude of so long an attendance.
But what sort of guilt would it have been? I have been doing that
which has been done by the first characters in the nation. I appeal to the
venerable name of Locke, and of the great oracle of the English law, Judge
Blackstone. The
Prime Minister of the country, Mr. Pitt himself-the Commander-in-Chief of
the army, the Duke of Richmond-have once been the strenuous advocates of
reform ; and yet they have been admitted into the King’s counsel. Are they
then criminal as I am 1 But it is needless, gentlemen, to carry you beyond the
walls of this house. The Lord Advocate (Robert Dundas, Esq.) himself has been
a Reformer, and sat as a delegate from one of the counties for the purpose of
extending the elective franchise.’’ The concluding words of Muir were-“ I
may be confined within the walls of a prison-I may even have to mount the
hluir had no counsel. He conducted the defence himself.
But why need I refer to writers who are now no more!