-none so profound-none so public-spirited and independent. Then we have had minor attempts at meetings, such as on jury bill, infirmary cruelties, North Bridge buildings, Lawrie's dinner and Erskine's dinner, &c. where all these eminent counsel spoke or are spoken of praising each other and themselves, or receiving praises-abusing magistrates and ministers-lauding all whigs, and especially all learned whigs, as the only pilots who could weather the storm-declaring that the whigs (whom Lord John Russell says are few and have no power) though few, are the only persons who value the things in which the many are concerned, and that the many care not at all for that by which the many thrive for liberty and peace, but are striving to give up both to keep thirteen ministers in their places. Then we have had a few law-suits, in which eminent counsel were eminently feed, and made brilliant speeches, all for the good of the town, and not at all to get certain printers seats in the magistracy, or certain whig seats in Parliament, or certain writers made town agents, until poor Pilgarlick, who paid for all, began to think law-suits better fun for emipent counsel than for expectant bailies and gaping town chamberlains and tidewaiters. And then emipent counsel became gratuitous speakers in the good

*Two meetings on this charity, one where eminent counsel made long speeches to shew that charges were true, the truth of which they proposed to inquire into; another where the inhabitants differed from certain eminent counsel; the first alluded to,

cause of the good town, and waived présent pầyment for present applause and future honours.

Then we have had a newspaper-set agoing and kept agoing by eminent counsel and their retainers -preaching up meetings and crying down towncouncils-telling the radicals that they might by law arm when volunteers armed-and then clamorously vehement against the infatuation of those who armed and still more consistently furious at the execution of those whom its insidious arts had armed-ridiculing all the clergy but those who are whigs abusing all country gentlemen in the gross, but magnifying and praising a small minority in certain counties-giving the agriculturists some broad hints as to the origin of the rights to landed property holding out all revolutions to the eyes of the enslaved people of Britain, but especially military revolutions, as being both the speediest and the best, and particularly fitted to the consideration of our army. But above all, as the object of all its labours, and the supreme good of all its readers-as the sum and consummation of all things-sounding far and near, with trumpet and with drum, the wondrous talents the mighty exertions-the unrivalled pleadings(" all of the first order," though about a squabble with an insurance office), of the same most eminent, most learned, and most eloquent counsel.*

Query.-Do or do not most, or many of these most eminent counsel write in the said newspaper, and revise its calumnies and their own praises?

These things may help you to discover the authors of this dignified and spirited attempt to raise us on a line with other great towns.

You have the names of all these most eminent counsel as the authors of the requisition and invitation to you to meet on Saturday.

Many of you probably know the active part these eminent counsel have taken in setting this meeting on foot-in cajoling people to subscribe the requisitition, or to attend the meeting-the very condescending and frank manner in which they allowed or persuaded teamen and tinmen, tobacconists and piemen, auctioneers and linen-drapers, brewers and bakers, to share the honour of this intended "Feast of Reason," and to enrol their names among the list of 112 patriots, whose names, like those of the heroes of Marathon and Mongarten, will be handed down in the columns of Mercury and Scotsman to the latest ages-to teach their children to revere their exertions, and to follow their example. Then,

Long life to the lawyers, who are to set us free.

To be sure, the names of these learned counsel are scattered, at good and proper distance, over the list-not eclipsing and overpowering all others by a concentrated effulgence-but each adding splendour to the humbler names around them. Their names alone would have been too strong, and led you too di

Velut inter ignes

Luna minores.-One Horace.

rectly to the views (to be afterwards explained) of said eminent counsel. To have made the call for your convocation proceed from the wealthier parts of the town-from the upper ranks of society, would have been far too aristocratical, too assuming, and exclusive for the spirit and object of the measure, which is to call all and sundry-to secure the attendance of all those who, at recent police meetings, have shewn how well qualified they are to second and cheer anything on one side, and how loudly they will protect the said eminent counsel from the danger of being opposed. Besides, if certain recent allies of the party of these eminent counsel, on the South Bridge and similar quarters (misled chiefly by borough faction, and the fulsome praises of all borough reformers), have been, as is said, so worked up of late, as to be clamorous for some grand blow to exhibit their strength, and to give vent to their new-born eloquence, and have even begun to suspect, as is said, their friends the learned whigs, as being very lukewarm in really great matters, then it was necessary not only to concoct some such meeting, but to give these compeers of the said eminent counsel their due share in the honour of the plan. Hence, with noble disregard of all distinctions, all are admitted to the honour and to the right and authority of summoning the inhabitants of this great city to meet for the purpose of advising their King, and representing their fellowcitizens. Grocers, printers, cheesemongers, tailors, and cobblers, are all admitted to the exercise of this

B

authority. The descendant of the Cranstouns, the Kers, the Leslies, and the Dalhousies, with a true contempt for all ideal and unphilosophical pretensions, is content to exercise it in common with spirit-dealers and haberdashers.

But miserable as the turn-out has been of the supporters of a change, the learned whigs durst not have tried the requisition by themselves. A project to call a meeting of the inhabitants to petition the King to dismiss the ministers, issued merely by the knot of learned whigs, would at once have excited the ridicule even of their recent allies from the Grassmarket and Luckenbooths, and the contempt and laughter of all Scotland. Their assumption of all the learning and all the talents in the country, their unremitting attempts to turn everything, even to the management of charities and the kitchens of hospitals, into an instrument of party, have in truth destroyed their influence (and it is only moral" !!! -Lord J. R.) even in this vaunted stronghold of philosophical whiggery-their selfishness has been suspected, and their imperious domineering temper has been felt-and their pretensions to unbounded wisdom have been belied by the manifold scrapes in which their imprudence has landed them. Hence have they been forced to call in other aid—to take the benefit" of the most respectable citizens of Edinburgh';" (Scotsman, December 9)-and that they wished to put their best foot foremost, to take the most respectable citizens they could get, who doubts? Then whom have the got? and in what parts of