第66章 THE STRAMASH IN THE COUNCIL(1)

As I have said, my third provostry was undertaken in a spirit of sincerity, different in some degree from that of the two former; but strange and singular as it may seem, I really think I got less credit for the purity of my intents, than I did even in the first.

During the whole term from the election in the year 1813 to the Michaelmas following, I verily believe that no one proposal which Imade to the council was construed in a right sense; this was partly owing to the repute I had acquired for canny management, but chiefly to the perverse views and misconceptions of that Yankee thorn-in-the-side, Mr Hickery, who never desisted from setting himself against every thing that sprang from me, and as often found some show of plausibility to maintain his argumentations.And yet, for all that, he was a man held in no esteem or respect in the town; for he had wearied every body out by his everlasting contradictions.Mr Plan was likewise a source of great tribulation to me; for he was ever and anon coming forward with some new device, either for ornament or profit, as he said, to the burgh; and no small portion of my time, that might have been more advantageously employed, was wasted in the thriftless consideration of his schemes: all which, with my advanced years, begat in me a sort of distaste to the bickerings of the council chamber; so I conferred and communed with myself, anent the possibility of ruling the town without having recourse to so unwieldy a vehicle as the wheels within wheels of the factions which the Yankee reformator, and that projectile Mr Plan, as he was called by Mr Peevie, had inserted among us.

I will no equivocate that there was, in this notion, an appearance of taking more on me than the laws allowed; but then my motives were so clean to my conscience, and I was so sure of satisfying the people by the methods I intended to pursue, that there could be no moral fault in the trifle of illegality which, may be, I might have been led on to commit.However, I was fortunately spared from the experiment, by a sudden change in the council.--One day Mr Hickery and Mr Plan, who had been for years colleaguing together for their own ends, happened to differ in opinion, and the one suspecting that this difference was the fruit of some secret corruption, they taunted each other, and came to high words, and finally to an open quarrel, actually shaking their neeves across the table, and, I'll no venture to deny, maybe exchanging blows.

Such a convulsion in the sober councils of a burgh town was never heard of.It was a thing not to be endured, and so I saw at the time, and was resolved to turn it to the public advantage.

Accordingly, when the two angry men had sat back in their seats, bleached in the face with passion, and panting and out of breath, Irose up in my chair at the head of the table, and with a judicial solemnity addressed the council, saying, that what we had witnessed was a disgrace not to be tolerated in a Christian land; that unless we obtained indemnity for the past, and security for the future, Iwould resign; but in doing so I would bring the cause thereof before the Fifteen at Edinburgh, yea, even to the House of Lords at London;so I gave the offending parties notice, as well as those who, from motives of personal friendship, might be disposed to overlook the insult that had been given to the constituted authority of the king, so imperfectly represented in my person, as it would seem, by the audacious conflict and misdemeanour which had just taken place.

This was striking while the iron was hot: every one looked at my sternness with surprise, and some begged me to be seated, and to consider the matter calmly.--"Gentlemen," quo' I, "dinna mistake me.