Blackwood's Edinburgh Magazine, Volume 63, No. 391, May, 1848

His plan of social reorganisation was, that "every man of a certain estate in this nation should be obliged to take a proportional number of the poor, and employ them in hedging and ditching his grounds, or any other sort of work," while the young were to be "educated in the knowledge of some mechanical art." Here we have one of the earliest undoubted expositions of communism. But Fletcher called things by their accepted names, and for Saint Simon's industriel and chef, we have slave and owner; for Fourier's Phalanges we have gangs. Nor does the illustrious patriot flinch from describing in their proper harsh colours the coercive means necessary for thus keeping society in fetters. We recommend to M. Louis Blanc the passage where he says: – "These things, when once resolved, must be executed with great address, diligence, and severity; for that sort of people is so desperately wicked, such enemies of all work and labour, and, which is yet more amazing, so proud, in esteeming their own condition above that which they will be sure to call slavery; that, unless prevented by the utmost industry and diligence, upon the first publication of any orders necessary for putting in execution such a design, they will rather die with hunger in caves and dens, and murder their young children, than appear abroad, to have them and themselves taken into such a kind of service."

There is spirit – almost sympathy in this picture of the desperation of savage liberty; and the enthusiasm with which the lover of his own freedom describes the love of the poor outcasts for theirs, sounds as if it gave the lie to the sincerity of the project. It seems to have had no supporters. The state of "the labour market" did not make the possession of human beings a desirable investment, and landed gentlemen were not anxious to become the owners of their poorer neighbours, for the general good of the community. Kidnappings and deportations for political purposes, still continued to be occasionally practised. One memorable instance was the far-famed story of Lady Grange, to which we propose to dedicate a separate notice, in virtue of our having perused some documents with which the world at large does not seem yet to be acquainted. There is little doubt that occasionally a person who showed a disposition to impart dangerous Jacobite secrets was spirited away to France, to give an account of his views and intentions, under circumstances in which he might not be so likely to forget the obligations he had incurred to the exiled house. Generally speaking, however, kidnapping was worthless in a commercial sense; though Lovat, whose actions were scarcely in conformity with any particular social rule, choosing to have in his service a well-trained London footman, without paying him, got possession of his person, and kept it as safe in his own custody at Castle Dounie as if he had taken him to Algiers.

It was, however, when the Scottish trade with the plantations began to open up, soon after the Union, that the disgraceful practice of kidnapping and transporting children became prevalent. The power possessed by many of the chiefs, as independent local judges, with but a nominal responsibility to the control of the crown or the intervention of the supreme courts, gave facilities for this traffic, which poor human nature seems to have been incapable of resisting. The victims were sometimes persons tried and convicted before the hereditary tribunal; and since they must be punished, it were pity to allow an opportunity to be lost, by which the infliction might be turned to the profit of the judge or his friends. Thus we find Lovat, desirous to propitiate the favour of Duncan Forbes, offering his brother a gift of "a few Strathglass rogues," clansmen of his next neighbour and hereditary enemy, whom he had caught in his own domain, and convicted in his own court. He had at first proposed to send them to America; but, as they are "handsome fellows," he offers them to Forbes, for his nephew's Dutch regiment. "I shall send them to him," says the accommodating chief, "without any expense in keeping of them; for I will send immediately orders to carry them south with a guard. There is a captain there of Arthur's regiment, who will receive them and deliver them to Arthur; and I'll send him other two Camerons that are in your prison – tall fellows; and five such good men will do him more service, now that the Dutch expect a war, than thirty men next season."[16 - Culloden Papers, 118.]

It was in reference to such practices that the engineer officer, who, while employed in laying out the military roads through the Highlands, preserved so many shrewd remarks on the manners of the people, added the following to his budget: —

"When any ship in these parts is bound for the West Indies, to be sure, a neighbouring chief, of whom none dares openly to complain, has several thieves to send prisoners to town.

"It has been whispered their crimes were only asking their dues, and such-like offences; and I have been well assured they have been threatened with hanging, or at least perpetual imprisonment, to intimidate and force them to sign a contract for their banishment, which they seldom refused to do, as knowing there could be no want of witnesses against them, however innocent they were; and then they were put on board the ship, the master paying so much a head for them. Thus two purposes were served at once – viz.: the getting rid of troublesome fellows, and making money of them at the same time."[17 - Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland, 5th Edit., i. 50.]

But our more immediate concern, in the present instance, is with no frightful feudal baron, presiding over chains and dungeons, in the mysterious recesses of his own solitary moated tower. The offenders exposed in Peter Williamson's history, were grave, sober burghers – bailies and town-councillors of one of the most worshipful and respectable corporations in the United Kingdom – men of peace, staid in their demeanour, cautious in their walk of life – careful not to rub their smooth, well-brushed broad-cloth against any impure thing. Their proceedings had the fairest and most innocent appearance: men of industry and business themselves, keepers of their bonds and engagements, they were but somewhat rigid in exacting industry and punctual performance of obligations from others. "Kidnapping," "crimping," "deforcement," "slavery," were words unknown in their vocabulary, – they did but hire servants: it was nominally for a period of years, it might happen to be virtually for life; it might be to bear the burden, under a tropical sun, in the steaming swamps of the Antillas – still it was a mere contract. They would have been frightened by the name of a slave-ship, but they meekly acknowledged that they freighted vessels "in the servant trade," with "cargoes of boys."

"For them alone did seethe
A thousand men in troubles wide and dark:
Half-ignorant, they turn'd an easy wheel,
That set sharp racks at work to pinch and peel."

Many years had passed over the guilty traffic, ere an accident having disturbed the placid surface it assumed to the world, some men of honour, courage, and high station resolved to probe its mysteries; and discovered that the sleek burgesses, by their corporate authority, had been able noiselessly to accomplish as wide and devastating a tyranny as ever had been revealed by the dungeons of some mouldering baronial tower to frighten this world against feudality.

Peter Williamson was born at Hirnley, in the parish of Aboyne, Aberdeenshire, the clergyman of which mentions him in the statistical account, along with the celebrated Father Innes, and Ross, the author of "the Fortunate Shepherdess," as one of the eminent men connected with his parish.[18 - New Statistical Account, Aberdeen, 1054.]

The district, though situated on the slopes of the higher Grampians, has not, within the reach of history, been inhabited by Celts, and Williamson's name speaks to his Saxon origin. He says he was, "if not of rich, yet of reputable parents;" and they evidently belonged to a poor and frugal, but independent class, who may still be found rearing their humble fortunes on those somewhat sterile uplands, neither as masters nor as servants, but each independently farming his own croft. One of the witnesses, examined more than twenty years afterwards, said "he knew James Williamson having a plough going in Upper Balnacraig, to the best of the deponent's remembrance, and heard he had likewise a plough going in Hirnley, when he lived there; and that he was in such circumstances as to keep his children and his family, without their being obliged to beg their bread." We take the brief history of his seizure from Peter's own narrative.

"I was sent to live with an aunt at Aberdeen, where, at eight years of age, playing on the quay, with others of my companions, being of a stout, robust constitution, I was taken notice of by two fellows belonging to a vessel in the harbour, employed (as the trade then was) by some of the worthy merchants of the town, in that villanous and execrable practice called kidnapping; that is, stealing young children from their parents, and selling them as slaves in the plantations abroad. Being marked out by those monsters of iniquity as their prey, I was easily cajoled aboard the ship by them, where I was no sooner got, than they conducted me between the decks, to some others they had kidnapped in the same manner. At that time I had no sense of the fate that was destined for me, and spent the time in childish amusements with my fellow-sufferers in the steerage, being never suffered to go upon deck while the vessel lay in the harbour, which was till such a time as they had got in their loading, with a complement of unhappy youths for carrying on their wicked commerce."[19 - Life and various Vicissitudes of Peter Williamson.]

We shall take our further notices of this occurrence from a very different source – a huge bundle of papers, chiefly printed, consisting of the documents connected with the long train of litigation in which Williamson was subsequently involved, owing to the publication of the passage we have just cited. The papers consist of pleadings, accounts, letters, and the testimonies of witnesses – a sort of mass in which it is clear from the beginning that one cannot fail to find curious things by boring holes through it here and there. We are not aware that this valuable source of information about the manners of the place and period has ever been heretofore applied to literary uses, with the exception of some references made to it, in a curious and very able compendium of provincial lore, called "The Book of Bon Accord, or a guide to the city of Aberdeen;" a work which, like "Tooke's diversions of Purley," not unknown to collectors of juvenile circulating libraries, appears to have been christened with some peculiar object of hiding the learning and ingenuity of its contents under a frivolous exterior.

At the time when legal investigations were commenced, Williamson was a man in middle life, who had gone through adventures and vicissitudes enough for a century of ordinary human existence. The first step was to identify the trained travelled man with the poor boy who had mysteriously disappeared from the streets of Aberdeen; and the next to prove the act of kidnapping. Several witnesses remembered Williamson; he was described by them as "a rough, ragged, bumble-headed, long, stourie clever boy, by which is meant a growthy boy;" and "a stout, clever, rough loon, and very ill to guide, and very ragged till he got clothes." A neighbour of the old crofter said he believed, "upwards of four years before the battle of Culloden, it was the general report of the country, that when the said Peter Williamson was a little boy going with a clipped head, he was taken at Aberdeen, and carried to Philadelphia with several other boys." He remembered conversations with the youth's father, who complained that "he came into Aberdeen seeking his son Peter, but they would not let him near hand him; that his son Peter was in a barn in Aberdeen, and they would not let him speak with him;" and, "that the merchants in Aberdeen had carried away his son to Philadelphia, and sold him for a slave" – observing, that it was commonly rumoured that several merchants there, whom he named, "did deal in that way of carrying away boys;" and he concluded by saying "he saw the father shed many salt tears on that account." The session clerk, who had been at Peter's baptism, recognised him when he saw him, as "the same identical Peter Williamson at whose baptism he had been present," and confirmed the story of his father's having attempted in vain to get access to him in the barn, characterising the old man's lamentation as "very sore and grievous." Mr Fraser of Findrac, a neighbouring proprietor, "knew several of James Williamson's children, and had heard it was the practice of some of the merchants of Aberdeen to kidnap young children, and send them to the plantations to be sold as slaves. He heard in the country that the said James Williamson or his wife had gone into Aberdeen, and one of their sons called Peter Williamson had followed; and that James Smith, saddler in Aberdeen, had picked up the said Peter; and the deponent heard he was either put in prison, or put on board a ship, till the ship sailed; it was the voice of the county that James Williamson and his wife regretted, or made a clamour for the loss of their son, not knowing what was become of him."

The investigation brought to light some other cases, and gradually opened up the whole mystery of iniquity. One old woman, the miller's widow, who remembered that Peter "was sent into Aberdeen, to be under his aunts, his mother being dead, and that soon thereafter he was missing," said that in the parish of Aboyne "they were generally afraid to send their boys on errands to Aberdeen, for fear they should be carried off." Some witnesses remembered having in their youth made marvellous escapes; and Alexander Grigson, domestic at Aboyne Castle, had a story to tell, "that about twenty years ago, he and another boy were coming from the mill of Crathie, where they had been seeking their meat; and near to a birch wood, near to the Kirk of Crathy, three countrymen on horseback came up with them, but the deponent knew none of them; and they asked him and the other boy that was along with him, if they would go with them, and they would clothe them like gentlemen; but the deponent being elder than the other boy, made answer that they would not go along with them, for it struck the deponent in the head that perhaps he and the other boy were to be carried abroad, in respect a rumour prevailed in the country that young boys were carried abroad at that time." The men threatened force; and the boys, who could not fail then to have the blackest notions of their intentions, took to their heels while the kidnappers were tying their horses, and defied discovery in the recesses of the old forest of Mar, which, fortunately for them, skirted the road. This incident may have been a trick to frighten two country lads. Another, recorded by a chairman in Edinburgh, has a more business-like appearance. "In the year 1728 or 1729, he went to Aberdeen to see an uncle and an aunt, who lived there; and whilst he was there he was carried up to a house by a person whom he did not know, where he got a dram and a piece of biscuit, and was promised a new coat and great encouragement, if he would agree to go over to America with the other lads that were engaged to go there; that he signified his willingness to agree to the proposal; that upon this he was desired to go and come back to his breakfast again; but when he told this to some of the countrymen of his acquaintance, they told him that he was a fool, for he would be sold to the blacks, and they would eat him; that upon this he resolved immediately to leave the town, which he did."

It appeared that those who endeavoured to recover their children were threatened with coercive measures; and the poor people seem to have been impressed with the conviction, that they were in the hands of an overwhelming power, with which it would be vain to contend. Thus one individual, having recovered possession of his son, met the captain of the transport vessel in the street, who bade him send back the youth, otherwise he might expect unpleasant consequences. Therefore he "promised and engaged to return his said son, which he accordingly did. Depones, that if he could have hindered his son from going to America he would have done it; and if he had known as much then as he does now, he would have done it. Depones, that before he promised to return his son to the said ship as above, he was himself threatened to be put into the Tolbooth."

The line of defence adopted by the kidnappers was, that no one was forced, in the first instance; that each boy was the object of a distinct agreement, either with his parents or with himself; and the subsequent coercion employed towards them, which could not be denied, was thus interpreted to be a judicious protection by the employers of the property they had fairly acquired. But the very evidence given by their own emissaries – almost every sentence bearing in its bosom a general assurance that nothing illegal was done – is quite sufficient in the description of minute facts to support, if not confirm, the darkest suspicions. Thus one of the crimps, desiring to excite some feeling against the exiles, as a graceless inconsiderate class, unworthy of sympathy, said "that such persons, whether boys or older people, whom the deponent engaged to go to America on board the said ship, the Planter, after they had been – some four, some five, some six weeks clothed and maintained by him at the expense of his employers, were endeavouring to desert and run away, and were tampered with, or decoyed to engage or take on with other people in the town of Aberdeen, who were, at the very same time, engaging and indenting servants to America; and, in order to prevent their being so decoyed, the older people so engaged by the deponent were put in prison, and the younger people were put into the workhouse or poor's hospital." There was, it seems, much competition in the trade; and, at the same time, the live commodity had a propensity to remove itself from the custody of its owners. Thus might the employment be termed a doubly hazardous one; and a certain scrupulous citizen, who had grave doubts about the propriety of joining the speculation, though he wished to be a part-owner of the ship in which it was conducted, gave this account of his hesitation: "Having been informed that servants had been indented by Ragg and his owners to go on board of his said ship to America, and the deponent not inclining to be concerned in that servant trade, proposed to Ragg to hold a share of the ship if he was to have no concern of that adventure of the servants, as he was an utter stranger to any merchandise or trade in that way; to which Robert Ragg said, that he could not have any concern with the ship without having a concern in the servants, which made him break up any farther communing with Ragg about the matter." But this witness was an instance of the instability of good resolutions: he was strongly pressed by friends for whom he had a high esteem; the profits and advantages of the undertaking – but that, of course, was a secondary matter – were largely spoken of in support of these importunities, "to hold a share in the same way as the other owners had done, as well in the adventure of the servants as in the ship, – to which importunities the deponent at last yielded." Not less tell-tale is a letter by the captain of the vessel, written in a spirit of honest indignation to one of the parties involved in the legal proceedings.

"Dear Sir, – I am favoured with yours of the 28th September, and am sorry you are put to trouble about one Williamson. I do not remember any of that name that went out in the Planter, and am certain, if he is not mentioned in the account of what was got for the servants' indentures," [that is to say, of course, for the sale of the 'servants' themselves,] "if even he was ever indented, he must have run away at Aberdeen, or at Cape May, where the ship was lost: and I am sure there was no servant in that ship but what was legally attested before they went from Aberdeen. I cannot tell if any register is kept at Philadelphia of the sale of servants, but I imagine not."

These admissions, that the "servants" required coercion; that they were confined in the public prison and other convenient places; and that they were sold, are of course, amply confirmed by the witnesses on the other side. A witness, William Jamieson, had a pathetic little history of his own to tell. He lived in the village of Old Meldrum, in the year 1740, and he had then a son John, between ten and eleven years old. One evening his boy did not come home; and in the course of his anxious inquiries, next day, about the missing youth, he was told by some neighbours, "that they saw a man, whom they said was a servant to John Burnet, late merchant in Aberdeen, who was commonly called Bonny John, with the deponent's said son, and two other boys, much about the same age, travelling towards Aberdeen, and that his son would be sent to the plantations." The kind of alarm that would be conveyed to the father's heart by such an intimation, may be imagined; and the poor villager, surrounded by people among whom a dread of this species of kidnapping had become a panic, would be little relieved from his anxieties, by hearing the neighbours describe the horrors of the slavery to which such of their offspring as underwent the calamity of capture were subjected, and lament their utter feebleness to resist the strong hand, fortified by law and authority, by which the injury was perpetrated. Jamieson, however, resolved to make an effort for his son. He went presently to Aberdeen, and saw Burnet, who apparently transacted too large a business in the "servant trade," to be conscious of so small an item in the account as the villager's son, "and told him that he had several boys, but did not know whether the deponent's son was amongst them; but said, though he was, the deponent would not get him back, because he was engaged with him." The "deponent" – a word which in Scotland is the technical term for witness; we are sorry that it is necessary to use it so often, but we cannot help it – after his interview with the great kidnapper, wandered along the broad links or downs on the sea-shore, "where he had been informed the boys were out getting the air." There "he observed a great number of boys – he thinks about sixty: that they were attended by a man who, the deponent was informed by the people of the town, was employed for the purpose by the said John Burnet; that this man had a horsewhip, and the deponent observed him striking the boys therewith, when they went out of the crowd." The poor man saw his own boy John in the little herd, and joyfully hailed him. The boy, by a natural impulse, ran to his father, and said he would gladly follow him home if he dared. "Immediately upon this, the person who was Mr Burnet's overseer, came up and gave the boy a lash with his whip, and took him by the shoulder and carried him amongst the rest, and immediately drove them off." The father kept company with the procession, and thus describes its progress.

"When the boys were marching up to the barn, the deponent kept pace with the overseer, who followed immediately after the boys, entreating of him to get liberty to speak to his son; who answered him that he should get leave to speak to him by-and-by, when they were come to the barn; but when they came there the overseer locked the door, and refused the deponent access; that he never saw his son after this. That the deponent in passing through the town of Aberdeen, after his son was so locked up from him, was told by several tradespeople, and others to whom he had told the story of his son, that it would be in vain for him to apply to the magistrates to get his son liberated, because some of the magistrates had a hand in those things, as well as the said John Burnet; upon which the deponent went home."

A very characteristic record of these transactions still remained in the books and accounts of the parties implicated. Among these documents, one of the witnesses, denominated "Walter Scott, writer to the signet," produces "the ship book," apparently the same which some of the witnesses more descriptively call "the kidnapping book." It is needless to say whose father it was who possessed this curious document. The investigation occurred in 1762 – nine years before the birth of Sir Walter; and it was perhaps one of the last ideas that would have ever occurred to his respectable parent, that it was worth while communicating to his offspring any information from a mere merchant's account book, which had been placed in his hands in the usual routine of his business, and probably afterwards forgotten. Yet what a lively history might have been woven out of its dry materials, had it remained among the other lumber in George Square, to be rummaged out by the lame boy! Mr Scott was the agent for the kidnappers. It is satisfactory to observe that he appears to have been too honest an agent for their purposes; for we find that he transmitted to them this book by post, in order that it might be exhibited in the course of the arbitration, to which we shall hereafter allude; but his employers knew their own interest too well to produce it, until they were subsequently compelled to do so.

The extracts from the books transferred to the papers before us, are of course those only which have some reference to the case of Peter Williamson; thus —

And a more emphatical entry —

Listing appears to have been the slang, or, more properly speaking, the business term for kidnapping, and the price of the operation passes through a scale of sums, graduated probably to the difficulty of the task. Thus, while Williamson was procured for 1s. 6d., there is an entry "To a Serjeant for listing Mackie, 5s.;" while on the other hand, there is only "1s. 4½d. to Lighton and a soldier for listing Robert Paterson." There is one sweeping charge of a guinea, "to Maclean, sent to the country to list servants," – amount of business done not stated, but it must have been considerable, as there are occasional entries of "cash sent to the country to Maclean." Sometimes sums are entered as paid to the parties themselves – as 5s. "to Margaret Robertson, when listed;" yet this can scarcely have been a voluntary operation on Margaret's part, as the immediate succeeding item is 1s. 6d. "to the wright on board and one of the boys for listing her." Five shillings are entered as "to two soldiers for listing Allardyce." He must have been a difficult boy to catch, as there is a further entry of 2s., as "cash they spent with him."

This item introduces us to a dark feature in the expenditure of the kidnappers, – the sums that appear to have been spent by them in vicious indulgences to their young captives, to prevent the tedium of their imprisonment, from driving them to desperate efforts for their escape. We have thus, – "to the boys to play at cards, 1s.;" and in another place, "to the boys to drink, when put in the workhouse, 1s.; to six packs of cards to them, 9d." It is almost a relief in the perusal of these heartless business-like columns – every red line of which has the hard outline of premeditated cruelty – to read of 1s. 6d. being paid "to the piper for playing in the workhouse two days." But in the neighbourhood of this, there are some entries which we dare not copy. There is a candid explicitness about these accounts, which we must confess that we have not sufficient virtuous courage to imitate, by transferring to our columns some charges, of which we would yet fain give our readers an idea. The person who kept the books no doubt "called a spade a spade;" and, indeed, he bestowed on many other things their ordinary vulgar nomenclature. We tremble in approaching his most explicit declarations; we almost fear reproach in offering to the reader an extract of an item, in which he has been very decorous, considering the subject; but such an item! who shall explain its meaning? Here it is – "To Colonel Horsie for his concubine, £1!"

Some entries referring to "the boys in the Tolbooth," or, more briefly, the prisoners," remind us, were this necessary, that these accounts related to persons kept in bondage. Other parts indicate the comprehensive nature of the business done in "the servant trade." Thus, on the 12th of May, there is a charge of 7s. 6d. "to three days' board of ten servants from the Tolbooth;" and on the same day, "to five days' board of thirty-four servants, £2, 2s. 6d." The latter number is frequently repeated in the account, and probably represents the stock of one considerable holder. It was estimated by the witnesses that sixty-nine were transported in one cargo in 1743; "and when," says a writer already alluded to, "it is considered that the trade was carried on to an equal extent for nearly six years, it is impossible to estimate the number of unhappy beings carried off at less than six hundred.[20 - Book of Bon Accord, 90.]

We have endeavoured in our account of these transactions to be sternly and rigidly prosaic, – perhaps our readers may think we have no great merit in accomplishing such a resolution, but we also take merit for having adhered to the facts attested with impartial accuracy. To afford some relief to the plainness of our detail, we shall wind it up by treating the reader to a part of the eloquent and denunciatory exordium of Williamson's counsel, Maclaurin, brother of the great mathematician.

"Persons of every character, sex, and age, were kidnapped, – men, women, half-grown lads, and infants, some of them not above six years old. The whole country was in terror and consternation, afraid to let their children go near Aberdeen, and trembling for fear of a kidnapping excursion from that place. The unfortunate creatures that had been wheedled or pressed into the service, were at first confined in a barn or workhouse, where they had a piper to play to them, and cards allowed them, in order to hinder them to think, or meditate their escape; but that they soon attempted, and one or two of them with success; upon which the rest were shut up in the Tolbooth.

"During their confinement, the parents and other relations of those who had been enticed or forced away, flocked to Aberdeen in hopes of effectuating their release, – hopes which they would never have entertained had they reflected that the town-clerk and one of the bailies were deeply interested to thwart them. Accordingly, no entreaties or solicitations availed; and those who seemed too importunate were threatened themselves with banishment, incarceration, and other distress. It will readily occur that it is much easier to imagine than describe the scenes which it is in proof ensued; for nothing more piteous and moving can well be figured than to see fathers and mothers running frantic through the streets, crowding to the doors and windows where their children were imprisoned, there giving them their blessing, taking farewell of them for ever, and departing in anguish and despair, imprecating curses upon those who were the authors of their misery."

So much for the first step, – the catching of the prey.

We have some farther testimony to the judicious strictness with which the worshipful merchants protected their property after it was stowed away; but we do not hear that their "cargo of young lads," as one of them calls it in a confidential letter, was insured. William Wilson, one of the sailors, testified, however, – "that there were several men in the ship besides the sailors, and also several boys and girls; that he saw these boys and girls put on board; that they were brought to the ship in a boat, and were guarded by a number of porters from Aberdeen, who continued to guard them all night till the ship sailed, going home always in the morning and returning at night; that during the day they were guarded by the ship's crew, the one half of whom did the duty of the ship, and the other half took care of the boys and girls, notwithstanding whereof two of them made their escape. Some of these boys appeared to the deponent to be about fourteen years of age, some to be about sixteen or eighteen, and others not to exceed ten or twelve years of age; that after the boys were put on board, the hatches of the ship were put down and locked every night, both while the ship continued in the harbour of Aberdeen, and afterwards when she was at sea."

It will naturally occur to the reader, that though the magistrates and other public officers of a corporation might combine together to perpetrate such acts, they could not carry their authority across the Atlantic, or compel the governors of the foreign possessions of the crown to acknowledge the brand of slavery they had set upon their captives. This naturally suggested itself to us from the beginning, as throwing a doubt over the essential movements of the transaction; but it was speedily cleared away by discoveries very creditable to the ingenuity, if to no other quality, of these astute burgesses. Every captive was indented in the presence of a magistrate, – the captor himself, of course, or some other person engaged in "the servant trade" – and that for a limited number of years. The indenture was certified and transmitted to the place of destination. This expedient brought each captive within the colonial code, which applied very rigorous rules to indented emigrants, – rules which virtually placed them in the category of slaves. These harsh regulations were justified by the circumstance that the class generally consisted of convicts – indenture being the form in which criminals obtained the alternative of transportation as a mitigation of some more dreaded punishment. When the emigrant arrived at Virginia, the ceremony by which he was sold was an assignment of his indenture. This could, of course, only convey a right to the labour of his body for a limited period; but as the convict emigrants required to be under a very potent discipline, powers were put into the hands of the planters by which they were enabled to protract the indented period; and Williamson himself describes with apparent accuracy, – "the children sent off and sold, no doubt to cruel masters, whose ill treatment obliges them often-times to elope to avoid slavery; and as there is no probability of making their escape, as they are always taken and brought back, and for every day they are away from their master they serve a week, and for every week a month, and for every month a year; besides obliged to pay all costs and charges that is advertised for apprehending them, which will probably bring him in a slave for four or five years longer at least."

We shall now, in the briefest shape, give an outline of Williamson's adventures, as detailed by himself, between his removal from the country, and his return to vex his oppressors with multiform litigation.

The vessel stranded on a sand bank at the mouth of the Delaware, and was for some time deserted by its crew, the cargo of boys being left to an anticipated fate, which Williamson says he often in his subsequent miseries wished had really overtaken them. Being afterwards taken on shore, they were relieved by a vessel sailing to Philadelphia, where they were sold "at about £16 per head." "What became of my unhappy companions," says Williamson, "I never knew; but it was my lot to be sold to one of my countrymen, whose name was Hugh Wilson, a North Briton, for the term of seven years, who had in youth undergone the same fate as myself… Happy was my lot in falling into my countryman's power, as he was, contrary to many others of his calling, a humane, worthy, honest man. Having no children of his own, and commiserating my unhappy condition, he took care of me until I was fit for business." He was allowed by his indulgent master occasionally to attend a school, where he picked up some crumbs of education; and finally, at the age of seventeen, he became the old gentleman's heir. After a few vagrant years he married, and settled as a substantial planter near the forks of the Delaware. He was in a place much exposed to the inroads of the French Indians, who, he tells us, in the spirit of the military profession to which he was subsequently attached, "generally appeared in small skulking parties, with yellings, shoutings, and antic postures, instead of trumpets and drums." In one of these inroads they burned his comfortable dwelling and substantial steadings, and carried him off captive. All the world knows what is conveyed in the simple statement of such a fact; and Williamson's description of the tortures he underwent impart little additional horror to the simple announcement of his seizure. It is possible to discern people's nature in their own account of their actions; and not unfrequently do we see the brave man in the description of dangers avoided, as we do the poltroon in the exaggerated account of those courted and overcome. Williamson's narrative conveys the irresistible impression that he was a man of eminently firm nerve, undying hope, and unconquerable energy – such a character as the Indian tribe would respect, and, after a sufficient trial, desire to incorporate with itself. Hence, while others are slowly slaughtered, Williamson is still permitted to live, struggle, and endure. In the difference between his own trials, terrible as they were, and the ignominious brutalities heaped on a poor fellow captive, who met his fate with gentleness, prayers, and weeping, we see the indication of the savage respect paid to the unbroken spirit of the Aberdonian, whose body they might rend inch by inch, but whose spirit remained firm and impenetrable as his native granite. At length, after several months of wandering, he made his escape; and the manner in which he did so was in keeping with his resolute spirit. He planned no stratagems, and consulted no confederates, but fled outright; and, though naked, emaciated, and ignorant of the country, defeated his pursuers by sheer fleetness of foot and endurance of fatigue. Profusely bleeding – without even such a verdant show of clothing as Ulysses endowed himself with when he met Nausica – emaciated to the last extremity, he somewhat astonished and also alarmed a female neighbour by an unceremonious morning call, dropping exhausted on the floor ere he could communicate or receive intelligence. Little need had he too speedily to recover his faculties; the first news he heard was that his broken-hearted wife had not long survived the calamity of his capture. He seems to have now acquired a decided taste for vagrant habits, mingled with a spirit of vindictive animosity towards the Indians, against whom he records several exterminating onsets with a sort of horrible relish. He enlisted himself as a soldier. But American warfare then allowed a far wider latitude for varied military operations than the ordinary experience of the ranks: and sometimes he was an Indian warrior, patiently unravelling and following up a trail; at another time we find him commanding a detachment of colonists as one versed in the native mode of fighting, with the rank and emoluments of a lieutenant. In his little book he details his various military adventures with much spirit and apparent truthfulness. We have from his pen a description of one enterprise, which is a little romance in itself. A lover, hearing that the home of the object of his affections has been desolated, and his beloved carried off by a band of one of the most formidable of the tribes of predatory Indians, in his frantic zeal raises a party of adventurers, with whom he tracks their path. He arrives just in time to save the damsel from the worst horrors of such a fate, and the marauders are put to the sword. The whole narrative has an animation and interest not unworthy of Cooper, who appears to have been acquainted with Williamson's book, and may not improbably have derived from it a part of his information about the military operations of Vaudreuil and Montcalm with the Indians in the French interest. Williamson was indeed a captive at that capitulation of Oswego which has cast so deep a stain on the honour of this commander, and he was soon afterwards sent to England as an exchanged prisoner. He complains that, on his voyage, "though the French behaved with a good deal of politeness, we were almost starved for want of provisions." He arrived at Plymouth in November 1765, and, owing to a severe wound in one of his hands, was discharged as incapable of farther service.

No longer able to apply his energies to Indian warfare, he looked around him for that employment which in his native country would best supply its place, and found it to be – literature. He published "A Brief Account of the War in North America, showing the principal causes of our former miscarriages; as also the necessity and advantage of keeping Canada, and maintaining a friendly correspondence with the Indians." This pamphlet is dated in 1760; and we here mention it, that we may not allow it to interrupt the narrative of the somewhat momentous consequences of a little book which he published two years later, with the title "French and Indian cruelty exemplified, in the Life and various Vicissitudes of fortune of Peter Williamson: containing a particular account of the manners, customs, and dress, of the savages; of their scalping, burning, and other barbarities committed on the English in North America, &c., &c." Mr Williamson was somewhat prolix in his title pages, and we cannot inflict the whole of this one on the reader. It was dedicated, with considerable sagacity, to William Pitt. In the frontispiece there is a full-length portrait of "Mr Peter Williamson, in the dress of a Delaware Indian." Much as Catlin's book and other works have tended to make us acquainted of late with Indian customs, the drapery of this portrait carries with it a decided appearance of accuracy, and attention to detail. The face is probably a likeness. Divest it of the feathered head-gear, it is that of a hard-featured inhabitant of the north-east coast, somewhat impregnated with an air of fierceness and excitement. Contemplate the entire figure: it is certainly a very fair representation of the Indian, such as we have seen him in the few importations exhibited in this country. For several years this representation was one of the main attractions of the booksellers' windows in Scotland; and many an infant has the careless parent or ignorant nurse frightened into constitutional nervousness, by the intimation that the wild man, whose picture had been seen during the morning walks, would appear to the infant in the dark, and visit his misdeeds with some mysterious punishment. Besides the occupation of the literary man, Williamson pursued that of the actor. During the day he sat behind a stall, vending his account of his adventures – in the evening he rehearsed them in the largest room of some popular tavern; where, like Catlin, he made the people acquainted with the costume and habits of the people, of whom he had acquired that acute experience which boys are said to have obtained of the boundary marks where they have been whipped.

In a moment of infatuation, the magistrates of Aberdeen, finding that the interest attached to Williamson's narrative and exhibitions subjected them to unpleasant reflections, resolved to punish him. He had migrated northwards, creating a little public curiosity and wonder wherever he went, until, on reaching his native city, he was brought before the magistrates, charged with a libel on the community, contained in that passage descriptive of his seizure on the pier of Aberdeen, which has been already quoted. The magistrates, being at once the prosecutors and the judges, had little difficulty in committing him; and he was thus very roughly awakened from a dream in which he "began to think himself happy in having endured these misfortunes, a recital of which promised to put him in a more prosperous situation than he had ever hoped for." The stock in hand of his books, amounting to three hundred and fifty copies, was seized and burned in the market-place by the common hangman, and he was committed to prison until he should sign a recantation of the passage containing the account of the kidnapping. The mind that bore up against the fiercest cruelties of the savages, seems to have bowed before these judicial terrors. In the centre of the torturing hordes, without a civilised eye to look on him, he acquired the stern virtues of those on whom he looked —

"Impassive, fearing but the shame of fear,
A stoic of the woods, a man without a tear."

Among his own people, beneath the shield of British justice, with a public to whom oppression never appeals in vain he sank unmanned; and in utter prostration of spirit he signed the recantation in the terms in which it was desired, and marched out of prison a heartbroken and ruined man.

But the cup of the iniquities of his oppressors was now full, and their hour of retribution was at hand. The blow dealt against them was not so severe as injured justice might have required, but it was dealt with an ignominious scorn that made compensation for its want of severity. There were at that time many men of high spirit and great attainments in the Scottish bar. They knew that the age they belonged to was one, in which the safety of the public liberties was intimately allied with the independence of the bar. It was not an uncommon practice for a few of the ablest and most popular advocates to unite together in vindication of the victim of some formidable system of oppression; and, fortunately for Williamson, his case attracted their generous interest. Andrew Crosbie, the prototype of Scott's Pleydell, threw his whole energies, and they were not small, into this cause. The pleadings at our bar at that time were full of philosophy, general declamation, and poetry; and we have before us some papers from Crosbie's pen which are brilliant and pleasing specimens of this class of forensic rhetoric. At the present day the rhetoric of the law appeals only to the jury, and in the shape of vocal oratory. In the days of our grandfathers it was addressed to the learned bench, and was embodied in carefully prepared written pleadings. The intellectual rank of the audience to be influenced, and the medium of communication, would thus naturally invest the pleadings of these old lawyers with a literary turn, not equalled in the corresponding productions of this age. So we find that Crosbie bursts open the case with these well-turned periods: —

"That liberty which the constitution of this country considers as its favourite object, is the result of the due equipoise which our law has established between the authority of magistrates and the rights of the people. As the relative duties of society must be enforced by the magistrate, and compliance with the laws exacted from the citizens by means of his authority, all the power that is necessary for these salutary purposes is bestowed upon him; and, in the due execution of it, he is not only entitled to the protection of the law, but is an object of its veneration. Yet the same principles that have thus armed him with authority, for the benefit of society, have wisely imposed on him a restraint from abusing it."

The result of these proceedings was, that, in 1762, the Court unanimously awarded to Williamson damages to the extent of £100; and it was declared that, for this sum as well as £80 of costs, the guilty individuals should be personally liable, "and that the same shall be no burden upon the town of Aberdeen." A corporation is a sort of ideal object; it has no personality; it has been pronounced, by a high authority, to have no conscience; it has just one reality about it – it has a purse. Into this purse its members may have been accustomed, from time to time, to dip for the deeds done by them in the flesh – that is, in their corporeal, not their corporate capacity. Perhaps the law, in countenancing this arrangement, considered that the members of a corporation must be so essentially wound up in its interests, that parting with the money of the corporation – that is, with the money of the public – was as great a punishment for their own individual delicts as parting with their own. Be this as it may, the Court decreed that, on this occasion, the public of Aberdeen should not pay for the outrage inflicted on Williamson. Now let us behold the ingenuity with which these worshipful gentlemen baffled the Court, and made the public pay after all. There were certain dues collected by the magistrates, as deputies of the Lord High Admiral of the Coast. It appears that this high official might have applied the sums so levied to his own use, but he had ceased for some considerable time to exact them, and, by consuetude, they had been added to the revenues of the corporation. Now, if the Lord High Admiral had set covetous eyes on this fund, to apply it to his own domestic purposes, the act might have been considered one of unutterable meanness – perhaps the corporation would have resisted it. But, on the other hand, to demand a portion of this money, and use it for getting the members of the corporation out of a scrape, was a highly public-spirited act. The High Admiral assigned £180 from this fund, to pay the damages and costs to Williamson:[21 - Kennedy's Annals of Aberdeen, i. 296.] it need not be said, that of course this application was suggested to him by persons who had the best reason to believe that the corporation would not resist it, and that all the business arrangements for his operation on the fund were simplified to his hand.

Having been so far successful, Williamson, who seems to have had an insuperable objection to half-measures, raised an action of damages against his kidnappers. It has been asserted, though we do not know on what authority, that the Crown was desirous to institute criminal proceedings against them, but that they were protected by a clause of indemnity in some act of parliament. Williamson boldly laid his damages at £1000. His perseverance drove his adversaries to a series of extraordinary, and in this country, fortunately, unprecedented measures. They persuaded Williamson that it would be for the mutual advantage of the parties to have the matter settled by arbitration, without the costly intervention of the Court of Session. He adopted the advice, and the decision fell to be given by James Forbes of Shiels, Sheriff-Substitute of Aberdeenshire, acting as oversman. We are introduced to this gentleman's convivial character in a most startling manner, by the statement of counsel that the Sheriff's mother, Lady Shiels, "died about the 4th of November, and there can be no doubt that he would get a hearty dose at her burial." It was accordingly on that occasion that the worthy judge appears to have commenced a series of potations, under the pressure of which he speedily followed his parent to the grave. Williamson's affair came through his hands in the very climax of his convivial fit; and both parties seem to have considered it their duty to minister assiduously to these furious cravings, which ever cried with the Cyclop "Δος μοι ἑτι προφρων."

Williamson was not backward in contributing to the Sheriff's conviviality. His own account of his motives was, that knowing Forbes to be prepared to decide unfairly, he wished to keep him so hard at his beloved pursuit of drinking, that he should have no opportunity of exercising his other avocation of judging. Accordingly, he employed a friend "to tenchel and drink" the Sheriff – or, as it is elsewhere expressed, "to drink him hard;" in fact, the operation is talked of quite in an abbreviated and technical form, as a common proceeding in the way of business in the Sheriff Court. The drouthy crony who performed this duty seems to have taken to it with the same disinterested zeal, with which Kean sat up three nights drinking with a friend under depression, for the purpose of keeping up his spirits. The favoured individual must have felt his task coming light to his hands, when he found the Sheriff in a tavern "busy at hot punch about eleven o'clock forenoon." An attempt was made on him by the enemy, but Williamson and his drinking assistant carried him off in triumph to the "New Inn" to dinner, where, however, they were obliged to submit to the presence of the other party, who held a hospitable competition with them in plying the Sheriff with the liquor which he loved. Here they all "sat close drinking, as is the phrase in that part of the country, helter skelter– that is, copiously and alternately of different liquors – till 11 o'clock at night, when Forbes, by this time dead-drunk, was conveyed home by his two servant maids, with the assistance of George Williamson, Gerard, and the Pursuer." This is the counsel's history of the day, and that it is not an exaggerated one, we may infer from an average quotation from the evidence: one of the witnesses thus concludes his narrative: —

"Depones, that from four o'clock in the afternoon to eleven o'clock that night, they all drunk what they call in Aberdeenshire Helter Skelter, alternately of different liquors, and plentifully, in such a way that the Sheriff in particular was very drunk, and the deponent himself was also drunk. That the Sheriff's two servant maids came for him with a lantern to carry him home, and came into the room where the company was, and staid there some time – fully a quarter of an hour – and got some drink, but what it was he cannot tell. That the Sheriff called for a good part of the liquor which was drunk. That at last the deponent assisted to carry home the Sheriff, who was not able to walk; and either the pursuer or Mr Gerard assisted the deponent in so doing; and the two maids went before him with a lantern, and placed him in his easy-chair in his bedroom, and then the Sheriff called upon his maids to give the company drink, which the maids refused to give, and then they came away and left him."

Next day the enemy took possession of Forbes by a coup de main. They seized him in bed, half through his drunken sleep, and conveyed him to a favourite houf, kept by a man with the historical name of Archibald Campbell. There "tea and coffee were called for to breakfast, but as these insipid liquors were not to Forbes's mind, a large dose of spirits, white wine, and punch was administered to him, with cooling draughts of porter from time to time." The kidnappers hired a whole floor of the inn for that eventful day – it was the last on which the reference remained valid, so that if it passed without a decision, the question went back to the Court of Session; and the worthy confederates gave express instructions that Williamson was not to obtain access to their conclave, and that Forbes was to be denied to him. That sport of fortune became naturally alarmed when he heard that Forbes was not at home; and knowing instinctively where else he was likely to be, searched for him "in all the taverns in town," as Seldon tells us that the King of Spain was searched for in London when he was outlawed. One of the waiters, in his evidence, stated that Williamson came to the house and "inquired at the deponent if Shiels was there, to which he answered, in obedience to the orders he had received from collector Finlayson, that Shiels was not there; that on this the pursuer left Mr Campbell's house, and (having returned in about an hour) he insisted with the deponent that Shiels was in the house, and that it was to no purpose to deny him, for that he knew by the deponent's face that he was there. But deponent still denied that Shiels was in the house." Deponent was, unfortunately for his professional prospects, not sufficiently brazen-faced for a waiter. The Sheriff was soon brought "up to the mark." Cards were introduced, and they had a roaring day of it. For the sake of appearances, at the time when he was making up his judicial mind, the Sheriff retired to a room alone. Here a message was conveyed to him from his sister, intimating that he had made an appointment for that day, and the time to keep it had arrived. "Whereupon," says a witness, "Shiels touched his nose with his finger, and said 'Jode' – a by-word of his – 'Davie, you see from whence this comes' – that Shiels returned for answer to his servant that he could not go, being engaged about peremptory business." He first spoke about awarding "a trifle" to Williamson. In the end he gave a decision entirely against his claim; and the confederates considered this so great a triumph, that next morning, being Sunday, they were reported to have read the "Decree Arbitral" to a circle of impatient well-wishers on the "Plainstones" or market-place, while the citizens were on their way to church. After having pronounced the decree, the Sheriff, according to the testimony of one witness, "was very merry and jocose, and engrossed a good deal of the conversation;" and the waiter who refused Williamson admission to him had to testify that "he conveyed him home to his own house, as he had done many a night besides that."

There were many picturesque little incidents in the whole affair. Thus we are told by one witness, in a very pathetic strain, of abortive efforts made by the Sheriff to go through the public market-place from one tavern to another. "In a little the Sheriff and the deponent came down to go to the New Inn; and upon the Sheriff's observing that there were too many people upon the exchange, and that he was too far gone in liquor to cross the street, he turned in again to John Bain's, and afterwards made another attempt of the same kind, and returned for the same reason; and a little after two o'clock they made a third attempt, and, observing that the exchange was thin of people, they went over to the New Inn." Discreet Sheriff – he had achieved the Greek sage's problem of knowing himself! But other people knew him, too; and thus the hostess of the inn, being asked if "when Shiels was once drunk, he did not keep in a hand – that is, he continued drunk for some days," answered, that "she has observed Shiels as in drink at one time and to continue so for several days after, and that was too commonly his case; that it is her opinion, when Shiels was in liquor, by flattering of his vanity, he might be very easily induced to do things which he would not otherwise do; and the deponent has had occasion to see several instances of this sort, by which she means that she has heard Shiels, when in liquor, promise to do things which she believes he would not have done if sober; nor does the deponent remember or know that ever Shiels did do any of these things when sober that he said he would do when in liquor."

But there are two sides to all questions; and as human nature has a tendency towards extremes, there were some people prepared to testify to the supernatural and alarming intenseness of the Sheriff's sobriety. It was, we believe, a townsman of this same Sheriff who, when thrown from his horse, being asked by a sympathising lady who was passing, if he were hurt? answered in the intenseness of his politeness – "Oh! no, mem! quite the reverse —quite the reverse." So it appeared in the eyes of some of his friends that Forbes was not merely as sober as a judge, but upon the whole a good deal more sober than a well-constituted judge ought to be – if he had any blemish, it was on the reverse side of intoxication. One of the several landladies whose establishments he frequented – not the lady already quoted – was especially eloquent on this point. "At dinner-time they only drank a bottle of wine and half a mutchkin of punch [the witness makes no allusion to the consumption before and after.] Mr Forbes also drank tea in the deponent's house, and she had occasion to see Mr Forbes at breakfast and dinner, and when he went out of her house when the company parted after supper at night; and upon all these occasions he, Mr Forbes, was perfectly sober, and sufficiently capable of business, and when he went out of her house, she remembers perfectly, she turned in to her servants and said, that she never knew Mr Forbes sit so long in her house on so little drink; and she added, God grant that neither Mr Forbes nor she might be fey." So awful and portentous was his sobriety! Another witness who testified to the production of so many items of liquor that it makes one giddy to read the list, winds up by saying – "After drinking a few glasses, they were told that supper was on the table in another room, to which they moved: That after supper they drank a moderate quantity of wine, and punch, and parted sober about eleven o'clock: That the deponent had a particular proof of Mr Forbes's sobriety after supper, by his maintaining, with great spirit and elocution, one side of a problematical question that occurred in the company."

The law is extremely averse to review the decision of an arbiter. He may be stupid and careless; he may have utterly misunderstood both the law and the facts; but the parties have adopted the reference as a succedaneum to litigation, and they "must stand the hazard of the die." In a few instances, however, where there has been gross corruption, or a palpable combination against one of the parties, the law has interfered to reverse the proceedings. The case of Peter Williamson is one of these instances; and on the 3d of December 1768, some years after the poor Sheriff-Substitute had bidden himself from his disgrace by drinking himself into the grave, the Court awarded Peter Williamson damages to the extent of £200 against the persons who, nearly thirty years previously, had spirited him away from the pier of Aberdeen.