TWO:The number of distinguished authors on miscellaneous subjects was very great at this time. In jurisprudence and political economy there were Jeremy Bentham, whose life ended in 1832; his eminent disciples, John Stuart Mill, Dr. Bowring, and Dr. Hill Burton; Archbishop Whately, Mr. M'Culloch, Mr. Sadler, and Mr. N. W. Senior. De Quincey began his brilliant career as an author in 1822, by the publication of "The Confessions of an English Opium-Eater."But the more the mystery, the greater was the rage of the English Government. On the opening of the Session of Parliament for 1737, a Bill was brought in of a most frantic and unwise character:"To abolish the charter of the City of Edinburgh, to rase the city gates, disband the City Guard, and declare Mr. Wilson, the Provost, incapable of again holding any public office." Nothing so furious and unstatesmanlike could ever have been imagined possible in the eighteenth century. Witnesses were called to the bar of both Houses, and amongst them three Scottish judges, in their robes, were subjected to a sharp cross-examination. Nothing, however, could be elicited except some degree of carelessness on the part of the city magistrates. The Scottish nation, with its usual spirit, highly resented the menaces of this impolitic Bill. The Duke of Argyll in the Lords, and various members of the Commons, denounced it as equally insulting and unjust. They were zealously supported by many English members, especially by Wyndham and Sir John Barnard, and the Bill gradually shrank into an Act disabling Mr. Provost Wilson from holding any office in future, and fining the city two thousand pounds for the benefit of the widow of Captain Porteous; and, alluding to her original station, it was jocosely said, therefore, that all this terrible menace ended in making the fortune of an old cookmaid.
