Part 4 (1/2)
By the estimate, it was found that the repairs would cost about a thousand pounds; and by the plan, that the seats, at eighteen pence a sitter, would yield better than a hundred pounds a-year; so that there was no scruple, on the part of the town-council, in borrowing the money wanted. This was the first public debt ever contracted by the corporation, and people were very fain to get their money lodged at five per cent. on such good security; in so much, that we had a great deal more offered than we required at that time and epoch.
CHAPTER XVII--THE LAW PLEA
The repair of the kirk was undertaken by contract with William Plane, the joiner, with whom I was in terms at the time anent the bigging of a land of houses on my new steading at the town-end. A most reasonable man in all things he was, and in no concern of my own had I a better satisfaction than in the house he built for me at the conjuncture when he had the town's work in the kirk; but there was at that period among us a certain person, of the name of Nabal Smeddum, a tobacconist by calling, who, up to this season, had been regarded but as a droll and comical body at a coothy crack. He was, in stature, of the lower order of mankind, but endowed with an inclination towards corpulency, by which he had acquired some show of a belly, and his face was round, and his cheeks both red and sleeky. He was, however, in his personalities, chiefly remarkable for two queer and twinkling little eyes, and for a habitual custom of licking his lips whenever he said any thing of pith or jocosity, or thought that he had done so, which was very often the case.
In his apparel, as befitted his trade, he wore a suit of snuff-coloured cloth, and a brown round-eared wig, that curled close in to his neck.
Mr Smeddum, as I have related, was in some estimation for his comicality; but he was a dure hand at an argument, and would not see the plainest truth when it was not on his side of the debate. No occasion or cause, however, had come to pa.s.s by which this inherent cross-grainedness was stirred into action, till the affair of reseating the kirk--a measure, as I have mentioned, which gave the best satisfaction; but it happened that, on a Sat.u.r.day night, as I was going soberly home from a meeting of the magistrates in the clerk's chamber, I by chance recollected that I stood in need of having my box replenished; and accordingly, in the most innocent and harmless manner that it was possible for a man to do, I stepped into this Mr Smeddum, the tobacconist's shop, and while he was compounding my mixture from the two canisters that stood on his counter, and I was in a manner doing nothing but looking at the number of counterfeit sixpences and s.h.i.+llings that were nailed thereon as an admonishment to his customers, he said to me, ”So, provost, we're to hae a new lining to the kirk. I wonder, when ye were at it, that ye didna rather think of bigging another frae the fundament, for I'm thinking the walls are no o' a capacity of strength to outlast this seating.”
Knowing, as I did, the tough temper of the body, I can attribute my entering into an argument with him on the subject to nothing but some inconsiderate infatuation; for when I said heedlessly, the walls are very good, he threw the bra.s.s snuff-spoon with an ecstasy in to one of the canisters, and lifting his two hands into a posture of admiration,--cried, as if he had seen an unco--
”Good! surely, provost, ye hae na had an inspection; they're crackit in divers places; they're shotten out wi' infirmity in others. In short, the whole kirk, frae the coping to the fundament, is a fabric smitten wi'
a paralytic.”
”It's very extraordinar, Mr Smeddum,” was my reply, ”that n.o.body has seen a' this but yoursel'.”
”Na, if ye will deny the fact, provost,” quo' he, ”it's o' no service for me to say a word; but there has to a moral certainty been a slackness somewhere, or how has it happened that the wa's were na subjected to a right inspection before this job o' the seating?”
By this time, I had seen the great error into the which I had fallen, by entering on a confabulation with Mr Smeddum; so I said to him, ”It' no a matter for you and me to dispute about, so I'll thank you to fill my box;” the which manner of putting an end to the debate he took very ill; and after I left the shop, he laid the marrow of our discourse open to Mr Threeper the writer, who by chance went in, like mysel', to get a supply of rappee for the Sabbath. That limb of the law discerning a sediment of litigation in the case, eggit on Mr Smeddum into a persuasion that the seating of the kirk was a thing which the magistrates had no legal authority to undertake. At this critical moment, my ancient adversary and seeming friend, the dean of guild, happened to pa.s.s the door, and the bickering snuff-man seeing him, cried to him to come in. It was a very unfortunate occurrence; for Mr M'Lucre having a secret interest, as I have intimated, in the Whinstone quarry, when he heard of taking down walls and bigging them up again, he listened with greedy ears to the dubieties of Mr Threeper, and loudly, and to the heart's content of Mr Smeddum, condemned the frailty and infirmity of the kirk, as a building in general.
It would be overly tedious to mention, however, all the outs and ins of the affair; but, from less to more, a faction was begotten, and grew to head, and stirring among the inhabitants of the town, not only with regard to the putting of new seats within the old walls, but likewise as to the power of the magistrates to lay out any part of the public funds in the reparation of the kirk; and the upshot was, a contribution among certain malecontents, to enable Mr Threeper to consult on all the points.
As in all similar cases, the parties applying for legal advice were heartened into a plea by the opinion they got, and the town-council was thrown into the greatest consternation by receiving notice that the malecontents were going to extremities.
Two things I saw it was obligational on me to urge forward; the one was to go on still with the reparations, and the other to contest the law- suit, although some were for waiting in the first case till the plea was settled, and in the second to make no defence, but to give up our intention anent the new-seating. But I thought that, as we had borrowed the money for the repairs, we should proceed; and I had a vista that the contribution raised by the Smeddumites, as they were caller, would run out, being from their own pockets, whereas we fought with the public purse in our hand; and by dint of exhortation to that effect, I carried the majority to go into my plan, which in the end was most gratifying, for the kirk was in a manner made as good as new, and the contributional stock of the Smeddumites was entirely rookit by the lawyers, who would fain have them to form another, a.s.suring them that, no doubt, the legal point was in their favour. But every body knows the uncertainty of a legal opinion; and although the case was given up, for lack of a fund to carry it on, there was a living ember of discontent left in its ashes, ready to kindle into a flame on the first puff of popular dissatisfaction.
CHAPTER XVIII--THE SUPPRESSION OF THE FAIRS
The spirit by which the Smeddumites were actuated in ecclesiastical affairs, was a type and taste of the great distemper with which all the world was, more or less, at the time inflamed, and which cast the ancient state and monarchy of France into the perdition of anarchy and confusion.
I think, upon the whole, however, that our royal burgh was not afflicted to any very dangerous degree, though there was a sort of itch of it among a few of the sedentary orders, such as the weavers and shoemakers, who, by the nature of sitting long in one posture, are apt to become subject to the flatulence of theoretical opinions; but although this was my notion, yet knowing how much better the king and government were acquainted with the true condition of things than I could to a certainty be, I kept a steady eye on the proceedings of the ministers and parliament at London, taking them for an index and model for the management of the public concerns, which, by the grace of G.o.d, and the handling of my friends, I was raised up and set forward to undertake.
Seeing the great dread and anxiety that was above, as to the inordinate liberty of the mult.i.tude, and how necessary it was to bridle popularity, which was become rampant and ill to ride, kicking at all established order, and trying to throw both king and n.o.bles from the saddle, I resolved to discountenance all tumultuous meetings, and to place every reasonable impediment in the way of mult.i.tudes a.s.sembling together: indeed, I had for many years been of opinion, that fairs were become a great political evil to the regular shop-keepers, by reason of the packmen, and other travelling merchants, coming with their wares and under-selling us; so that both private interest and public principle incited me on to do all in my power to bring our fair-days into disrepute. It cannot be told what a world of thought and consideration this cost me before I lighted on the right method, nor, without a dive into the past times of antiquity, is it in the power of man to understand the difficulties of the matter.
Some of our fair-days were remnants of the papistical idolatry, and inst.i.tuted of old by the Pope and Cardinals, in order to make an income from the vice and immorality that was usually rife at the same. These, in the main points, were only market-days of a blither kind than the common. The country folks came in dressed in their best, the schools got the play, and a long rank of sweety-wives and their stands, covered with the wonted dainties of the occasion, occupied the sunny side of the High Street; while the shady side was, in like manner, taken possession of by the packmen, who, in their booths, made a marvellous display of goods of an inferior quality, with laces and ribands of all colours, hanging down in front, and twirling like pinnets in the wind. There was likewise the allurement of some compendious show of wild beasts; in short, a swatch of every thing that the art of man has devised for such occasions, to wile away the bawbee.
Besides the fairs of this sort, that may be said to be of a pious origin, there were others of a more boisterous kind, that had come of the times of trouble, when the trades paraded with war-like weapons, and the banners of their respective crafts; and in every seventh year we had a resuscitation of King Crispia.n.u.s in all his glory and regality, with the man in the coat-of-mail, of bell-metal, and the dukes, and lord mayor of London, at the which, the influx of lads and la.s.ses from the country was just prodigious, and the rioting and rampaging at night, the brulies and the dancing, was worse than Vanity Fair in the Pilgrim's Progress.
To put down, and utterly to abolish, by stress of law, or authority, any ancient pleasure of the commonality, I had learned, by this time, was not wisdom, and that the fairs were only to be effectually suppressed by losing their temptations, and so to cease to call forth any expectation of merriment among the people. Accordingly, with respect to the fairs of pious origin, I, without expounding my secret motives, persuaded the council, that, having been at so great an expense in new-paving the streets, we ought not to permit the heavy caravans of wild beasts to occupy, as formerly, the front of the Tolbooth towards the Cross; but to order them, for the future, to keep at the Greenhead. This was, in a manner, expurgating them out of the town altogether; and the consequence was, that the people, who were wont to a.s.semble in the High Street, came to be divided, part gathering at the Greenhead, round the shows, and part remaining among the stands and the booths; thus an appearance was given of the fairs being less attended than formerly, and gradually, year after year, the venerable race of sweety-wives, and chatty packmen, that were so detrimental to the shopkeepers, grew less and less numerous, until the fairs fell into insignificance.
At the parade fair, the remnant of the weapon-showing, I proceeded more roundly to work, and resolved to debar, by proclamation, all persons from appearing with arms; but the deacons of the trades spared me the trouble of issuing the same, for they dissuaded their crafts from parading.
Nothing, however, so well helped me out as the volunteers, of which I will speak by and by; for when the war began, and they were formed, n.o.body could afterwards abide to look at the fantastical and disorderly marching of the trades, in their processions and paradings; so that, in this manner, all the glory of the fairs being shorn and expunged, they have fallen into disrepute, and have suffered a natural suppression.