thers, I have always been proud of the Scottish name, and yet I stand here esteemned by you, who are of another nation, worthy to be trusted among the warders in the watch-tower of your rights. I am deeply sensible of this great honour; but in proposing it have you considered the infirmity of man? Have you weighed the temptations wherewith I may be tempted-temptations with which mine integrity hath never yet been tried?

"Did the trust you would repose in me require but honesty in the arbitration of such plain questions as arise between man and man, then might I venture to accept it; for over the balance-sheets of trade and the schedules of reciprocities, honesty may withstand the affections of patriotism. But the questions which rouse the animosities of nations are of that kind in which I am conscious of being least able to sustain a proper part. You are persuaded by the character I have earned among you, that justice would be the guide of my judgment. But search your own hearts, and then say, if you can, that in a national quarrel you would be be satisfied with only justice. Do you believe that I am so superior to the sentiments of youth and the principles of manhood, that I would stand as an American by the American cause in a controversy between your country and my own old native land upon the point of honour? that for a stain on the stripes and stars, I could in my heart be consenting to require, with true zeal, indemnification at the expense of any British prerogative?

"It may seem to some of you that the land which contains a man's business, property, and family is his country-and I know that this is a sentiment encouraged here—but I have been educated in other opinions, and where the love of country is blended with the love of parents-a love which hath no relation to condition, but is absolute and immutable-poor or rich, the parent can neither be more nor less to the child than always his parent,--and I feel myself bound to my native land by recollections grown into feelings of the same kind as those remembrances of parental love which constitute the indissoluble cement of filial attachment.

Philosophy may reason against this: I heave heard men of much learning, of unblemished virtue, and most exemplary in the practise of all domestic duties, maintain, that when we are free to judge for ourselves, the obligations between the parent and the child cease, and become subject to the determinations of our judgment, and that this is the law of Nature :-Yes : truly it is the law of Nature among the beasts of the field and the fowls of the air which know no other law. But are we

dogs to follow mere instincts? Have we not the law of God, and a special law, commanding us to honour our parents-And for what? Are any causes assigned for which we are to render this homage?-No! but only that they are our parents. In like manner there is no specified reasons which take the form of obligation to bind us to the land of our birth. It is enough that it is our country. Nature makes up the obligation of our attachment to it, from the reminiscences of our enjoyments there, just as she forms our filial affection from the remembrance of the caresses of our parents.

"No, my friends; I cannot in honesty accept the honour you propose for me, but my gratitude to you is not the less-I cannot serve your national interests with all my heart, and I have plainly explained to you the reason; I can therefore but answer like the maiden solicited by a rich and noble suitor, all I can give, honour, esteem, the love of the mind, you already possess, but the heart's love-that love which was bred and twined within ny bosom before we ever met, cannot be given, for it belongs to one that is far away.”

Such was my speech; no doubt I said much more, for the speaking occupied a considerable space of time, but that is the substance; and it was heard with attention, and crowned with applause. I trow, after it, Mr. Bell never ventured to say I could not speak two consecutive sentences like a reasonable man. He sat awed and cowed while I spoke; and when I concluded, he had neither the power of utterance to address the meeting, nor courage to stand up. He was indeed withered and looked as debased as if he could have crawled into a hole in the ground for an asylum. But though he well deserved his punishment, and the effects of the refutation I had given to his derogatory insinuations, I could not see him slink out of the room as it were, with his tail between his legs, without a touch of remorse; and I still reproach myself with having used the scourge with more bir than was consistent with merciful charity. Truly, a victory is not always a triumph.

Many of those who heard my speech were surprised, both at its vigour and matter, for it was not expected that I would have declined. There were, however, certain countrymen of my own, as well as English and Irish, who did not approve the straightness and strictness of my doctrine; which I was grieved to learn, for flexibility in principle is a proof of brittleness in affection; still, even these professed their amazement and satisfaction at my bravery and candour; so that I may venture to

assert, that the refusal augmented the consideration in which I was held among my neighbours. Mr. Hoskins, who joined me as I was leaving the room, said nothing, but shook me heartily by the hand, a testimony of kindness and approval he had never bestowed before.

Baillie Waft and Dr. Murdoch were in a sorry plight, nothing could be farther from their fancies than that I would refuse. They were petrified; they sat looking at each other like two effigies, during the whole time I was speaking, and when the great peal of applause broke out as I concluded, they both fell back in their chairs, and gazed as if they beheld the solid world moving away from before them. Indeed it was no wonder; for although, at the outset of their canvass and striving, John Waft was moved by a sense of gratitude for the kindness I had always shown him, yet, as the prospect of my success improved, his disinterestedness gradually dwindled, for he imagined, that were I elected, I would, like a member of the Briish House of Commons, possess a power over the disposal of the remaining twelve baskets of loaves and fishes; he had even gone so far, on the morning of the meeting, to tell my eldest son that he would be content with a wee bit postie about the Government, till something better would cast up, for he could no' just hope to be made either a collector or a comptroller at the first.

As for the learned Doctor, I never heard what he proposed to himself for the reward of his services, but on the same morning he had held some discourse with Mr. Bradshaw Cockspur, concerning a plan for a college at Judiville. I'll not say that he contemplated to be the principal, or Lord Reotor of it; maybe he did--but nothing ever after was heard of it, for that night, despite of his vow of sobriety, of which a whole week remained unexpired, seeing his occupation in the election gone he went upon the rove, and was, for several days, in a state of the most divorlike inebriety; reeling about the streets, and taking hold of every one he knew by the button, and demonstrating to them in inarticulate language. It made me angry to hear, and squeamish to scent the odious jargon of his debauch.

PARTIX.

CHAPTER I.

"The midwife and myself."

I KNOW not if the courteous reader will accord in opinion with me, that the proposal to elect me into the Legislature was the greatest event in my life, but such I have always considered it, because the refusal was the result of a great mental controversy, and from that time I steadily began to knit up all my manifold concerns into the smallest possible compass. In doing this, I neither proposed idleset for myself, nor the remission of my wonted activity; on the contrary, my main object was to be free to give my mind and experience to the furtherance of my sons' fortunes, chiefly of Robert's; not for partiality, though he was the first-born, and the son of my first love, but because my family by my second wife were amply provided for by Mr. Hoskins, and because I did not intend, having assigned my interest in the salt-works to Robin on his marriage with Volumnia Cockspur, that he should partake in the division I proposed to make of my other property; moreover, though it may be regarded as a thing with which I could not properly be said to have any thing to do, he received with his wife a handsome fortune, well on to six thousand pounds sterling, which, however, her brothers with great prudence made a point of having settled on herself.

Charles was fixed in the store; and when I publicly announced my secession from business, Mr. Hoskins, in accepting him for a partner in my place, gave him a share in the Bank, which was doing wonders-coining money! My brother, on succeeding Mr. Herbert as the manager of the Bank, also succeeded to his share, and was grateful for the part I took in leading him on to such good fortune. My daughter Susannah was married to Mr. Bradshaw Cockspur in the spring follow-. VOL. II.-14

ing the election affair; an event that gave all friends on both sides great pleasure, for he is a young man of a blithe and jocund humour, none of the worse of a snaffle, however, and she is a staid, judicious creature, who manages him as if he were a very lamb. Every body who knows them says it is a pleasure to see their happiness.

As for Judiville, it is still a growing wonder; at this present writing, two years after my secession from business on my own account, the population exceeds seven thousand souls: they have six churches, and three of them have steeples, one of which is very handsome indeed; they have likewise a theatre,-for, as I have read,

"Where'er the Lord erects a house of prayer,
The Devil's sure to build a chapel near;"-

and the river is crossed by three bridges, one of them of stone, and built after a beautiful design by Braddy Cockspur, as I have come to call him since he became my son-in-law.

"But what has become of your old affliction, Baillie Waft ?" methinks I hear the courteous reader jocosely inquiring. "Well and hearty," I may reply," and none mitigated in his disposition to play at hooky-crooky with me whenever he can get an opportunity. He has however made no addition to his visible property, though it is well known he has never ceased to thrive; all he gets is hoarded in the Bank; and I suspect, though he has himself never told me so, that he means to return to Paisley, and to spend his gatherings among his old friends; otherwise, wherefore would he be so devoted to ready money. If such be his intention, it has my fullest approbation.

Here I ought to mention, that in the course of some three or four months after my oratorical exploit in the Eagle-tavern, a wonderful shower of gold fell upon the Baillie, and induced him to move from Babelmandel and pitch his tent among us at Judiville. My wife, about that time, took it into her head to grow thick in the waist, with the promise of an addition to our family; and being of a Scottish particularity, she was determined, if possible, to have at the occasion a howdie instead of an accoucheur. One day in the store, as some of my cronies were talking news at the stove, I happened, in consequence, to say that I would give something handsome for a midwife ; upon which the Baillie, who was present, started up, and taking me aside, told me his wife had been of that order of the faculty in Paisley, and was accounted very expert.