Edinburgh, the capital of Scotland, was spectacularly situated on a series of parallel igneous ridges and hollows two miles from the southern shore of the Firth of Forth, and was dominated by its castle, to the south and east of which the labyrinthine mediaeval town was clustered.
almost everything in the city was under the control of the town council; not merely what was properly magisterial, but most things conducive to the public economy ... It met in a low, dark, blackguard-looking room, entering from a covered passage which connected the north-west corner of the Parliament Square with the Lawnmarket ... Within this Pandemonium sat the town council, omnipotent, corrupt, impenetrable. Nothing was beyond its grasp; no variety of opinion disturbed its unanimity, for the pleasure of Dundas was the sole rule for every one of them.
Cockburn Mems. 82, 86-88.
The potential for corruption was great, and there was some; but it was a combination of lavish expenditure, unfounded optimism, financial incompetence and a measure of ill luck which brought Edinburgh to bankruptcy, with debts of £402,000, in 1833.
In 1817, an irregularity in the election to the council of James Denholm, a hatter and Melville’s ‘political agent or whipper-in’, prompted some of the burgesses, whose mouthpiece was Deacon Alexander Lawrie, to apply to the court of session to have the entire election voided, in the hope of securing a poll election by the citizens. The court found in their favour, but the council brought nullifying counter-actions. At the 1818 general election Lawrie and Deacon Anderson complained that the proceedings were void, and at the July 1819 by-election necessitated by Dundas’s appointment as keeper of sasines Lawrie refused to support him and, with two other deacons, voted for James Mansfield of Midmar.
Petitions on a variety of issues were sent to the 1820 Parliament from Edinburgh and Leith. In May 1820 Edinburgh chamber of commerce and Company of Merchants and the merchants and ship owners of Leith petitioned the Commons for the removal of restrictions on trade; but in July some Leith merchants and ship owners petitioned for protection against foreign timber imports.
In September 1820 the women of Edinburgh and the wrights and masons of Mary’s Chapel sent addresses of support to Queen Caroline.
The Fox dinner has begun to produce its natural fruits. The citizens are determined to get up a petition for reform of the representation and if we (I mean the Whig lawyers) won’t assist them to do it well, they say they shall do it ill themselves, but done it shall be. It is so annoying, in a country not used to open political meetings, to appear like the [Henry] Hunt* of the place ... Moncrieff and I have offered to do anything, provided the cause be taken up generally by our personal friends, but not otherwise. There is to be a meeting at Jeffrey’s today where the willingness of the whole to act is to be settled ... I have no doubt ... that it will be put into a train to succeed. I wish you would tell us ... whether, for effect on the Commons, it would be better to get the petition signed merely by from three to five thousand householders, or by 15 or 17,000 persons, or to get two petitions ... The latter would probably give offence to those who were excluded from the more respectable signatures.
Cockburn published an explanatory pamphlet, Considerations submitted to the Householders of Edinburgh, and the Whigs decided to confine the meeting and petition to resident householders of £5 or more.
The far greater proportion of the property, the rank, the talent, the education and the morality of Edinburgh was excluded from any share in the election ... The inhabitants did not even know the day of election. The business was done in a close, dismal room, and terminated in a snug and select dinner party.
Dundas retorted that the petitioners sought to ‘infringe upon the chartered rights of the electors’. Hume calculated that the 7,000 signatures included most of the adult male householders of £5 or more, but opponents of reform said that genuinely strong feelings on the issue would have produced 40,000. On 26 Feb. 1824 Abercromby sought leave to introduce a bill to extend the Edinburgh parliamentary franchise to resident £5 householders. Dundas stayed silent, and the motion was only beaten by 99-75.
In 1822 there was ‘a ferment’ over the city’s police. By the existing Act ward police commissioners were elected by inhabitants paying at least £10 rent, and the power of appointing and dismissing the superintendent was vested in the functionaries, namely the president of the court of session, the lord provost and the sheriff. The commissioners charged the incumbent superintendent with fraud, but the functionaries refused to dismiss him. The council tried to carry through Parliament a bill to raise the ward electors’ qualification to £20 and to group the wards in such a way as to enable the richer ones to swamp the poorer. The popular outcry against this was encouraged by the Whigs, and Cockburn issued A Letter to the Inhabitants on the case. Dundas introduced the bill on 11 Feb. It was referred to a committee where, thanks largely to Abercromby, it was so modified as to give the popular side a victory, which made Cockburn reflect that ‘if we had ... a representation here’ Abercromby ‘would be returned for the city by acclamation’.
Dundas was beginning to look vulnerable, and Melville took steps to bolster his interest. In April 1825 the lord provost, Alexander Henderson, agreed, presumably at Melville’s behest, to ‘propose for his successor’ at Michaelmas Trotter, in order to ‘effectually secure the present political feeling towards the existing friends of long standing in the city’.
As the representation ... is a most important branch of this, and from its increasing business, magnitude and importance will require much activity, perseverance and influence in its Member, I am most anxious to know your ... views ... I imagine it is the wish of ... [William Dundas] to continue ... though I have had no direct communication with him on the subject ... Considerable doubts have gone abroad as to the probability of that event, and various names have been put in circulation. Whether this may arise from the line of policy which seems to have been adopted, particularly of late, by ... [Henderson] or from any other cause ... [you are] much better enabled to judge than I am, but ... it makes me doubly on my guard as to my council arrangements, taking it for granted that the lord provost will ... give me a principal lead in making them.
NLS mss 2, f. 71.
On 3 June Melville was astounded by ‘an extraordinary communication’ made to him in a London street by Marjoribanks, who professed ‘the greatest regard for me individually’, but avowed ‘great hostility’ to Dundas on account of his active support of the water bill and stated his intention of standing at the next election. Marjoribanks notified Dundas of this by letter the following day, when Melville wrote to Trotter:
Sir John ... is very ill qualified to be the representative of ... Edinburgh ... I have no reason to believe that ... [Dundas] has any wish ... not to come forward again ... On the contrary he has distinctly stated to me that it is his intention to offer himself. I hope it is unnecessary for me to state that the representation of ... Edinburgh is a matter which I never have ... considered in the light of a family concern. My sole wish and object is that the city should be respectably and efficiently represented ... [and not by] a person whose political principles are objectionable, more especially that he should not be connected with that knot of politicians usually designated as ‘Edinburgh Whigs’, who stand much higher in the estimation of themselves than of the public at large.
NLS mss 2, f. 75; NAS GD51/1/198/16/42, 43.
Trotter replied that he believed Marjoribanks had ‘had this step in view for many a day’, that his ‘reason for opposing’ Dundas was ‘a mere pretext’ and that he would almost certainly ‘find the ground too well occupied’:
I shall act with decision and with as much promptness as prudence warrants. You should immediately write to the lord provost, and I shall judge by his feelings when I see him in the morning whether to say I have heard direct from ... [you]. Mr. Dundas should ... write to ... every member of the council and inform the provost he has done so ... No stone will be left unturned by ... [Marjoribanks].
NLS mss 2, f. 79.
Henderson summoned a council meeting, 6 June, to endorse the Leith docks loan proposal, which he assured Melville had come ‘at a very seasonable time in order to bind the council to your interest’. He revealed Marjoribanks’s ‘rash’ bid for the seat and secured a preliminary expression of hostility to it from a majority of the council. After conversations on the following two days with Trotter, who ‘strenuously enforced the necessity of steadily adhering to the line of conduct which he agreed with me’, to support Trotter’s claim to the provostship in order to prevent ‘the first stroke in the game of Sir John Marjoribanks taking effect’, he called ‘together quietly the magistrates and some of the council’ to consolidate support for Dundas. This was enhanced by the ploy of sending Dundas’s nephew, Robert Dundas of Arniston, to canvass individual members of the council; and on 11 June Trotter told Melville that ‘our political horizon here ... seems pretty unclouded’.
On 22 May 1826 Trotter laid before the council William Dundas’s letter offering to stand again at the impending general election, praised his conduct as Member, stressed ‘the many important services rendered to the city by the Melville family’ and proposed his endorsement as candidate. Paterson denounced Dundas and called for delay, as did his associate Deacon Thomas Sawers, who accused Dundas of having treated the council with contempt in a speech at a previous council election dinner. After a long debate, in which at least five bailies argued that they were ‘pledged’ to support Dundas, Bailie John Smith and Paterson persuaded the council merely to inform him that his offer had been ‘most favourably received’, while Trotter, who was satisfied with this outcome, carried by acclamation a vote of thanks for his past services.
He came into the room shaking and trembling and clearly ashamed of himself. The general tenor of the interview was that he felt most highly flattered with the offer; that, however, he was pledged to uncle William, and that the seat was in his hands (the provost’s), as there was a clear majority in his favour; that he meant to call a meeting of ‘the chairs’ that day to consult them; that he had not mentioned it to me or to [John] Hope [the solicitor-general for Scotland] or had not written to you; that he thought the best thing for our interests was to give no decided answer, as in that case the enemy would start somebody else. I answered that of course he was pledged, and that I did not believe in the alleged majority, and that if he really looked to our interest, or indeed to his own, he should meet all such proposals with a decided refusal.
Robert Dundas and Melville’s election agent analyzed the council and concluded that there were ‘20 for us, and 11 against us, and two out of town’. He identified Sawer and Paterson as the ‘focus of discord’, reckoned that six other deacons, including the ‘conceited radical’ William Purvis and the Whig John Clark, were overtly hostile, three ‘not to be depended upon’ and three ‘right’, and named only Robert Wright and Peter Forbes as definite foes among the bailies, with two doubtful.
fallen into disrepute with a considerable portion of his constituents ... not ... owing to any difference of political principle ... but to alleged disrespectful treatment of the members of the council ... Who would have imagined that the restless spirit of this innovating age would have forced its way into the council ... and occasioned any uncertainty in the regular movements of this political machine, at a time, too, when there can be no political difference between the parties? ... The members ... are beginning to waver in their political allegiance.
Caledonian Mercury, 8 June 1826.
At the election, 12 June 1826, Trotter proposed Dundas. Paterson and Deacon Alexander Murray wanted him to be brought into the chamber for interrogation, but did not insist in the face of majority resistance. Paterson attacked him as a reactionary sinecurist, but did not propose a challenger. Deacon David Hay, a Whig, seconded Dundas and praised his efforts to promote the bills and loan of 1825, as did Henderson. All present except Paterson voted for Dundas, who, returning thanks, boasted of his initiatives on the improvement of the New College and Register House and his active opposition to interference with the Scottish banking system.
The merchants and trades of Edinburgh and Leith petitioned Parliament for further relaxation of the corn laws in 1827, as did Leith ship owners for relief from their problems.
In December 1826 Robert Dundas of Arniston told Melville that he had ‘good reason’ to believe that Arbuthnot would agree, in return for a patronage favour or two, to succeed Trotter as lord provost next Michaelmas:
I do not mean to press upon you the absolute, the imperious necessity of having the town council purged ... [of] the men who are at present the leaders in it nor to advert to the fact that imbecility and violence have marked every one of their measures of late, because of this I should think you are well aware ... No further delay must be allowed in either definitively arranging with Sir William or (in the event of his decided refusal) in looking out for someone else ... The very [East India Company] writership which I regret to hear the provost has got would induce Arbuthnot to lend his hand ... to bring back the town council to the state in which they ought to be, instead of a set of wild and vacillating idiots, alternately the tools and the laughing stock of the Whig fanatics of Edinburgh.
NAS GD51/5/150.
In January 1827, however, the lord advocate Sir William Rae* discovered that Arbuthnot was extremely reluctant to take the office and that Trotter was playing a deceitful game, using one Waugh, a bookseller, as a cat’s-paw. Rae told Melville, 25 Jan., that when he had rebuked Trotter for going behind Melville’s back,
He talked very big as to his right as chief magistrate to pursue his own line of conduct; took credit for supporting your interests after the treatment he said he had received from ... [William] Dundas last summer; denied all right on my part to interfere; and evidently insinuated that I was ... acting from my own views and not following yours. Knowing that bullying succeeds with ... [Trotter], I soon dismounted him from his high horse, and we parted on excellent terms.
Trotter was brought to heel, and at Michaelmas 1827 he was replaced by Walter Brown.
The citizens of Edinburgh, contemplating the extinction of the word Melville, and the prospect of some Whig influence, are in ecstasies. Peter Brown said, rubbing his hands, t’other day, ‘Odd sir, ou’l do fine noo. An’ Maister Eebercromby will be Member for the city! But a’ wud grudge to see him represent the toon council’.
Cockburn Letters, 156.
On a visit to Edinburgh the following month Murray ‘had the satisfaction of finding all persons of liberal opinions united in thinking that the present administration ought to be zealously supported’.
In August 1830 Allan chaired a public meeting, requisitioned by about 100 men, including, it was said, a score of Tories, to congratulate the French on their recent revolution; Jeffrey and Cockburn were the principal speakers.
The change of government has multiplied our reforming friends so rapidly, that I have found it very difficult to prevent them breaking out themselves, and taking the thing into their own hands. In order ... to keep all right, we have yielded to the necessity of having a meeting ... We might hold a dozen of them, all full, but the great thing is to avoid radicalism ... Our Member’s statement spreads like wildfire.
Allan refused the reform committee’s requisition for a public meeting, signed by 182, with Jeffrey at the head, on the ground that the Grey ministry was to take up reform, but it was fixed by advertisement for 4 Dec. An admission fee of 1s. was charged to keep out undesirables, and the committee decided that Jeffrey and Cockburn (who commented that ‘Toryism seems dead in this place’), should not attend, having been appointed respectively lord advocate and solicitor-general. James Gibson Craig of Riccarton, a solicitor, took the chair, and the principal speakers were Murray, Black, Maclaggan and Sir John Dalrymple† of Oxenfoord. Craig ‘instantly put down’ a proposal to include the secret ballot in the petition’s demands; Cockburn reckoned that the affair had ‘gone off admirably’.
By early April 1831 it seemed clear to Cockburn that William Dundas, who had paired against the bill, would not stand at the next election, and on the 5th Allan told the council as much. He laid Dundas’s formal confirmation of this before the council on 13 Apr. In his room Robert Adam Dundas offered as an opponent of the ministerial scheme.
The streets are covered with blackguards of all descriptions, and not less than 3,000 passed within the last half hour, dragging a hackney coach, with half-a-dozen of the lowest rabble sitting in the top, hallooing and shouting ... What a contrast, all the respectability, wealth and intelligence of Edinburgh engaged on the streets as constables or yeomen to preserve the town from outrage, and the lowest rabble actively engaged to perpetrate the enormity, and yet we are told, the latter express the public feeling.
The streets were eventually cleared by dragoons and infantry. The Whig leaders strove to keep the situation within bounds, and the general feeling was that things could have been far worse.
Corn merchants and factors of Leith petitioned the Commons to prohibit the use of molasses in brewing and distilling, 17 Aug. 1831.
considered by its getters-up as an assembly of Gods. By those who were excluded, it is railed at as a packed hole-and-corner affair. The truth is that it was neither, but a very well managed, commonplace meeting; fatal to the old system, by what it admitted; and by far the most conclusive of the decay of Toryism of anything that has lately happened here; for it demonstrated that even Toryism, with its utmost efforts, and in Edinburgh, could not produce one half of the middle ranks, nor half of half, or anything, of the lower.
Cockburn Jnl. i. 26; Cockburn Letters, 356, 357.
In the first week of March 1832 Cockburn told Kennedy that ‘we have just detected a scheme of the Tories here to get up what they call a public meeting to petition against the creation’ of peers to carry reform, but nothing came of this ‘insane’ plan.
The Scottish reform legislation gave Edinburgh two Members and a registered electorate of 6,048. At the general election of 1832 Jeffrey and Abercromby were returned well ahead of the Conservative banker Forbes Blair.
in the council
Qualified electors: 33
Population: 112235 (1821); 136294 (1831)