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Kay's Originals Vol. 1

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BIOGRAPHICAL SKETCHES. 407 On the ceremony being finished, three cheers were given, when the procession marched back in reverse order. The number of spectators, it is stated, could not be less than 30,000 ; and, notwithstanding such a vast concourse, the utmost order was observed. In the evening a sumptuous dinner was given in the Assembly Rooms, by the Lord Provost and Magistrates, at which upwards of three hundred noblemen and gentlemen were present. Almost immediately after this auspicious event, Lord Napier was presented with the freedom of the city by the Magistrates ; and had the degree of Doctor of Laws conferred upon him, along with the Right Hon. Henry Dundas, then Treasurer of the Navy, by the University. In 1793, when the Hopetoun Fencibles were embodied, Lord Napier was appointed Lieut.-Colonel of the corps, and continued to hold the commission until the regiment was disbanded in 1799. At the general election in 1796 he was chosen one of the Representative Peers of Scotland ; and, on subsequent occasions, was again repeatedly returned. His lordship. was appointed Lord-Lieutenant of the county of Selkirk in 1797; and, in 1802, was nominated Lord High Commissioner to the General Assembly. This office he continued annually to hold for nearly twenty years. On the loth of November 1803, Lord Napier was elected a member of the Society in Scotland for Propagating Christian Knowledge; and, on the 3d of January 1805, he was unanimously chosen President of that Society, in the room of the Earl of Leven and Melville, whose time for being in office had expired. He was also a member of the Board of Trustees for the Encouragement of Scottish Manufactures and the Fisheries. Lord Napier was not distinguished in Parliament as an orator or statesman’; but there are yet many who remember the uncompromising integrity and dignity with which he supported the representative character of his order. The following correspondence, between the Secretary of State for the Home Department and his lordship, immediately prior to the general election in 1806, affords the most honourable testimony to the independence of his conduct :- U PRIVATE. ‘‘ Whitehall, 18th October 1806. MY DEAR $oxD-Though it is not improbable that the reports of a dissolution of Parliament may have reached your lordship before this letter, I thought it might not be uninteresting to you to learn the truth of them from a more authentic source than the newspapers ; and I therefore trouble you with this, to inform you that Parliament will certainly be dissolved in the course of a few days. I hope I am not taking too great a liberty if, at the same time, I express my earnest wishes that your lordship may be found among the supporters of the friends of Government, on the occasion of the election of Representative Peers for Scotland.-I have the honour to be, with great trnth and regard, your lordship’s very obedient humble servant, SPENCER. “Edinburgh, 2lst October 1806. “LORD NAPIER, etc etc. etc.” “MY DEm LORD-I have this day had the honour of receiving your lordship’s letter of the 18th instant ; and am very sensible of your attention, and the trouble you have had the goodness to take in giving me information of the certainty of an immediate dissolution of Parliament. Having on several occasions experienced the good will of the Peers of Scotland, I feel it my duty again to offer
Volume 8 Page 566
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