Shortly after the affair recorded in the foregoing chapter, an event came to pass in the burgh that had been for some time foreseen.
My old friend and adversary, Bailie M'Lucre, being now a man well stricken in years, was one night, in going home from a gavawlling with some of the neighbours at Mr Shuttlethrift's, the manufacturer's, (the bailie, canny man, never liket ony thing of the sort at his own cost and outlay,) having partaken largely of the bowl, for the manufacturer was of a blithe humour--the bailie, as Iwas saying, in going home, was overtaken by an apoplexy just at the threshold of his own door, and although it did not kill him outright, it shoved him, as it were, almost into the very grave; in so much that he never spoke an articulate word during the several weeks he was permitted to doze away his latter end; and accordingly he died, and was buried in a very creditable manner to the community, in consideration of the long space of time he had been a public man among us.
But what rendered the event of his death, in my opinion, the more remarkable, was, that I considered with him the last remnant of the old practice of managing the concerns of the town came to a period.
For now that he is dead and gone, and also all those whom I found conjunct with him, when I came into power and office, I may venture to say, that things in yon former times were not guided so thoroughly by the hand of a disinterested integrity as in these latter years.On the contrary, it seemed to be the use and wont of men in public trusts, to think they were free to indemnify themselves in a left-handed way for the time and trouble they bestowed in the same.But the thing was not so far wrong in principle as in the hugger-muggering way in which it was done, and which gave to it a guilty colour, that, by the judicious stratagem of a right system, it would never have had.In sooth to say, through the whole course of my public life, I met with no greater difficulties and trials than in cleansing myself from the old habitudes of office.For I must in verity confess, that I myself partook, in a degree, at my beginning, of the caterpillar nature;and it was not until the light of happier days called forth the wings of my endowment, that I became conscious of being raised into public life for a better purpose than to prey upon the leaves and flourishes of the commonwealth.So that, if I have seemed to speak lightly of those doings that are now denominated corruptions, I hope it was discerned therein that I did so rather to intimate that such things were, than to consider them as in themselves commendable.
Indeed, in their notations, I have endeavoured, in a manner, to be governed by the spirit of the times in which the transactions happened; for I have lived long enough to remark, that if we judge of past events by present motives, and do not try to enter into the spirit of the age when they took place, and to see them with the eyes with which they were really seen, we shall conceit many things to be of a bad and wicked character that were not thought so harshly of by those who witnessed them, nor even by those who, perhaps, suffered from them.While, therefore, I think it has been of a great advantage to the public to have survived that method of administration in which the like of Bailie M'Lucre was engendered, Iwould not have it understood that I think the men who held the public trusts in those days a whit less honest than the men of my own time.The spirit of their own age was upon them, as that of ours is upon us, and their ways of working the wherry entered more or less into all their trafficking, whether for the commonality, or for their own particular behoof and advantage.
I have been thus large and frank in my reflections anent the death of the bailie, because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was qualified; and, instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by-hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his earnings both with ease and honour.However, he got out of the world with some respect, and the matters of which I have now to speak, are exalted, both in method and principle, far above the personal considerations that took something from the public virtue of his day and generation.
