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PROSTRATION OF
TRADE-MOVEMENT IN THE TOWN FOR BURGH REFORM--THE FIRST ELECTION UNDER THE
NEW MUNICIPAL SYSTEM-THE SEVEN TRADES: " LAST SCENE OF ALL," SALE OF THEIR
GOODS AND CHATTELS-NEW POLICE ACT-AGITATION FOR A NEW MARKET-LAPSE OF THE
ALE-DUTY, AND ABOLITION OF THE PETTY CUSTOMS-RETROSPECT OF THE PRECEDING
SIXTY YEARS.
As may easily be supposed,
the trade of the town was injured for years by this visitation. The
Highland occupation occasioned directly and indirectly a loss of at least
E5,000; but probably four times that amount would not cover the
expenditure and loss arising from the cholera. Yet, appalling and
exhaustive though the epidemic was, it did good in one respect, by
originating a great sanitary movement, having for its main objects street
sewerage and improved water supply: the former was partially obtained; for
the latter the town had unfortunately to wait nearly twenty years. It was
very near securing the boon. One of the town clerks, Mr. James Broom, a
gentleman of great talent, energy, and public spirit, whose memory is held
dear in Dumfries, was one of its principal advocates. Provost Corson, Mr.
James Swan, and other members of the Town Council, were anxious for it,
but somehow or other the efforts put forth by them failed; and a scheme
prepared by Mr. Jardine, civil engineer, in 1833, [Town Council Minutes.]
for introducing the water of Nunland springs, from the neighbouring
Galloway hills, figured on paper, but went no farther. It may be a mere
fancy on our part, that the desire for municipal freedom was also
stimulated by the disease; but we incline to the opinion that the
inhabitants became more anxious to acquire the right of self-government,
from a belief that they would thereby be able so to improve the town, as
to render it less likely to be ravaged by epidemics in future.
Certain it is that they exhibited much zeal in the matter; and that their
rulers, self-elected though they were, manifested a praiseworthy desire to
get rid of the old close system. On the 5th of April, 1833, the Council
discussed the Burgh Reform Bill, that had been brought into Parliament by
the Lord Advocate. It was generally approved of; and the Provost was
commissioned to attend a special meeting of the Convention of Royal
Burghs, for the purpose of expressing the Council's views on the subject.
These were extremely Liberal-Radical almost, as shown by the instructions
given to Mr. Corson. On the motion of Mr. Allan Anderson, seconded by Mr.
David M'Gill, the commissioner was enjoined to move, "That in regard to
the qualification clause for voting for Council and magistrates, the whole
shall be vested in the resident householders of a certain rent; and the
right proposed to be conferred on freemen, and guilders or burgesses,
merely as such, shall not form a part of the bill." [Town Council Minutes]
This blow at monopoly was followed by another heavier one at
class-privilege - Mr. William Nicholson (afterwards provost) moving that
the commissioner be also instructed to propose, "That in regard to this
Burgh, and burghs of a similar right and population, the rent qualifying a
voter be five pounds"-a motion which, like the first one, was unanimously
agreed to.
Whilst the Council called
on the legislative Hercules to help the municipal waggon out of the mire,
they set their own shoulders manfully to the wheel. Without waiting for
Parliamentary action, they, on the 12th of the same month, at the instance
of the Provost, resolved with one accord to lay open the privileges of the
town to all and sundry. [Ibid.] Since the days of Robert Bruce, if not
before, no one could begin business as a merchant or as a tradesman in the
town, without first being made a burgess or freeman, at considerable
expense. If the applicant was the son or son-in-law of a burgess or
freeman, he was required to pay a smaller "composition" sum; but in other
cases the "fine," as it was called, was often a serious affair, amounting
latterly to £13 6s. 8d.-a heavy tax on young shopkeepers and craftsmen,
and hindering many altogether from commencing business in the Burgh. A few
days afterwards, at a crowded meeting of the inhabitants, a vote of thanks
to the Council was passed, and petitions to Parliament were adopted,
praying for the abolition of burgh incorporations in Scotland; the
petitioners setting forth that these had outlived their time; "that the
prosperity of towns where no such incorporations exist, and the decay of
towns where they do exist, sufficiently prove that they are equally
unprofitable to their members as to the public; and that from its local
circumstances this truth has been specially exemplified in the case of the
town of Dumfries." The chief speech on the occasion was made by the deacon
of the shoemakers, "Orator Wilson," a fluent tribune of the people, who
did good service in the agitation for Reform. He proclaimed himself to be
a Radical politician, eager to lay the symbolic axe at the root of all
abuses. He held up to ridicule the idea of people, before they could open
shop in the Burgh, having to pay down £13 6s. 8d. for a paltry piece of
"sheepskin;" and he asked how they could petition Parliament to give up
the East India monopoly if the Seven Trades' monopoly was maintained
unbroken. But the Trades themselves would be as honest as they were brave,
and co-operate with the Council in breaking down the exclusive system. As
for the magistrates and Council of Dumfries, " they will live in the
hearts of their townsmen for the noble concession they have made, and fame
will carry their names and actions to distant posterity. Their fame,"
continued the speaker, rising with his subject-"their fame, I say, will be
as lasting as the pyramids of Egypt. Time will never shake it, and
imperishable laurels will deck their brow." [Dumfries Courier. ]
Some little laughter
mingled with the applause which greeted this peroration; but the soaring
eloquence of the worthy deacon did not go a bit too high for the majority
of his hearers. It was a time of vast expectations, as well as of much
excitement; and big words-what the Americans term "bunkum," or "tall talk"
- were much in vogue.
The Scotch Burgh Reform
Bill received the royal assent in September, 1833, and took effect on the
first Tuesday of the following November. Greatly to the disappointment of
the Dumfries Town Council and community, the qualification for voters was
fixed at double the figure they had proposed. Instead of a five-pound
rent, one of ten pounds was adopted. The new mode of election was,
however, such a vast improvement on the delegate system, that it was
warmly welcomed in the Burgh; and the proceedings on the 6th of November,
when it was put in force, excited great interest. Numerous candidates were
started, in all the four wards into which the town had been divided by a
royal commission. We append the names of the gentlemen who received the
honour of being the first councillors of the Burgh chosen by popular
suffrage. First ward: Robert Murray, writer, 72 votes; Thomas Hairstens,
tanner, 57; Captain M'Dowall, 47; Thomas Milligan, plumber, deacon of the
smiths, 45; George Dunbar, cabinet-maker, deacon of the squaremen, 45;
Samuel Blaind, jun., draper, 38. Second ward: William Gordon, writer, 72;
John Barker, banker, 71; Robert Thomson, merchant, 71; James Walker, wine
merchant, 53; James Dinwiddie, painter, 50; John Anderson, bookseller, 49;
Thomas Lonsdale, ironmonger, 32. Third ward: Robert M`Harg, merchant, 68;
Robert Scott, hosier, 57; William Nicholson, chair-maker, 46; Joseph Beck,
coach-builder, 42; Christopher Smyth, writer, 40; George Kerr,
cabinet-maker, 35. Fourth ward: Robert Kemp, writer, 56; Thomas Harkness,
writer, 47; Thomas Kennedy, seedsman, 46; Alexander Lookup, skinner, 45;
Benjamin Oney, clothier, 41; Robert Kerr, tanner, 40. As the burgess fine,
though condemned, was still exacted, Captain M`Dowall declined on
principle to qualify for his seat by paying it. A new election for the
vacancy was therefore ordered, which resulted in the return of Mr. George
Montgomery, draper. The Council being now quite made up, elected Mr.
Murray, writer, a gentleman of great ability and moral worth, as the first
Reform Provost of Dumfries; Messrs. Kemp, M'Harg, and Harkness were
elected bailies; Mr. Walker was appointed dean of guild; and Mr. Barker
treasurer and chamberlain. A banquet in the Commercial Hotel appropriately
crowned the inauguration of the new municipal system in the Burgh. [Town
Council Minutes, and local newspapers.]
By an Act of Parliament
passed in 1846, the chief of the exclusive privileges possessed by the
Dumfries Trades, and all similar incorporations, were abolished ; and long
before that year the Seven Trades had become virtually defunct-a fragment
of the body remaining, but all its original spirit gone. The few remaining
members continued to hold the property of the Trades, till, in March,
1852, they adopted a unanimous resolution to sell the movable portion of
it, except the Silver Gun, which was handed over to the Town Council for
preservation. Against this resolution, so far as the convener's gold chain
was affected, Mr. Adam Rankine, as a subscriber for the badge, applied for
an interdict. The case thus raised excited much interest. The
sheriff-substitute, Mr. Trotter, decided it in favour of the pursuer:
Sheriff Napier, on appeal, reversed the decision; and his interlocutor, on
being advocated, was sustained by the Lord Ordinary Rutherford.
Accordingly, the chain and the other articles were disposed of by public
auction, in the Trades' Hall, on the 8th of April, 1854. Altogether, a
melancholy sight it must have been-one that is rather depressing to
reflect upon, though it was but the natural sequence of the wise reform
that had been effected. Think of these historical relics being knocked
down like vulgar chattels! Even the venerable quarto Bible which the
syndic of the craftsmen used at church, passed into other hands, and that
for the paltry sum of seventeen shillings. The little silver seal with
which the documents of the brotherhood had been stamped for nearly two
centuries, was, for a sorry equivalent of ten shillings, deprived of its
official caste, so to speak, in spite of its lion, fierce, crowned, and
rampant, and its motto, " God save the King and the Craft!" A sword once
owned, according to tradition, by the Red Comyn, and seemingly old enough
to have been worn by him on the day of his fatal rencontre with Bruce,
brought .0 3s. The great Grainger punch-bowl, first brimmed with rum toddy
in 1806, under the merry conditions we have previously related, and which
so often afterwards replenished glasses that were drained in drinking the
toast it bears, "Success to the Incorporations!" lapsed into the moderate
seclusion of private life for £2; [The punch-bowl is now in the possession
of Mr. David Duubar, Dumfries.] the accompanying silver divider being
separated from it, and sold for fifteen shillings. The wonderful
snuff-mull presented by Captain M'Dowall, brought to an unexpected pinch,
drew £3 3s. For the ebony staff of office, now that the convener's
occupation was gone, £2 18s. was realized; and the gold chain of that once
powerful, but now impotent, chief of the Trades, became metaphorically dim
on this mournful day, though it fell into the hands of a worthy townsman,
Mr. Samuel Milligan, merchant, for the sum of £35.
The proceeds of the entire
sale amounted only to £54 2s. 6d.; and it is certainly to be regretted
that the principal effects were not purchased for preservation, instead of
being scattered to the four winds. In course of time, the Trades' Hall,
and the pews in St. Michael's Church belonging to the Incorporations, were
also disposed of; ["It was a curious circumstance," says Mr. John Anderson
in his manuscript account of Dumfries, "that Selkirk was the name of the
deacon of the trade who led the van in the sale of the Kirk seats."] Mr.
Francis Nicholson, merchant, becoming the purchaser of the Hall, in 1847,
for £650, but £630 had previously been borrowed on the building.
One of the first fruits of
the Reformed Parliament was a General Police Act for such burghs as chose
to avail themselves of it. The chief provisions of the measure were
adopted at a public meeting held in Dumfries on the 17th of January, 1834;
and in accordance with it, a rate of one shilling in the pound was
imposed, divided as follows:-Paving, independent of road money, Id. per
pound, £75; watching, 3d. per pound, £225; lighting, 3½d. per pound, £262
10s.; cleansing) Id. per pound, £75; miscellaneous, ½d. per pound, £37
10s. ; interest and sinking fund, 3d. per pound, £225: total, £900. In
allocating these sums, it was assumed that the rental assessable would be
£18,000.
The mode of supporting the
poor of the Burgh and Parish by church-door collections, and the
alms-giving of the benevolent, had long been looked upon as
unsatisfactory; and so greatly had they been increased in number by the
cholera visitation, that the adoption of some new plan was felt to be
imperative. An endeavour to raise funds by a voluntary assessment having
been tried without success, a resolution was adopted by the Town Council
and police commissioners, in May, to impose a legal rate, for the relief
of the poor. From the statistics on which they proceeded, we learn that
the valued rent of the Burgh was set down at £18,772 8s.; of the Burgh
roods, £4,450 13s.; and of the landward part of the Parish, £7,441 15s.:
in all, £30,664 16s. So fearfully, however, had the epidemic scourge of
1832 depopulated the town, and injured its trade, that a deduction of £670
10s. had to be made from the valuation, for shops and houses that were
standing unlet. The rate was fixed at a maximum of one shilling in the
pound, leviable half-yearly: the computation being that, with the rural
part of the Parish concurring, the first assessment of six pence would
yield 1767; which, if carefully husbanded, would, it was believed, suffice
for more than six months, and reduce the second instalment to four pence
or less.
During this summer (1834) a
movement was commenced for obtaining improved market accommodation. From a
distant, if not immemorial period, the country damsels from the
neighbouring district exposed their butter, eggs, and poultry for sale on
a part of High Street adjoining the Mid-Steeple. There they stood every
Wednesday, alike in winter as in summer, exposed to the elements, with no
shelter or adequate accommodation for their wares, and-however ungallant
the phrase may seem - forming a serious obstruction to the traffic of the
principal thoroughfare. For their convenience, as well as that of their
burghal customers, a proposal was mooted for flitting the fair rural
merchants to the building in the east of the town that had been assigned
to the corporation of fleshers, in 1768, for the sale of meat, and which
had latterly been almost deserted by them for shops in the Vennel and in
Maxwelltown, where no dues were exacted. Whilst this scheme was warmly
advocated by some members of the Council, others opposed it, chiefly on
the plea that the site was far from being a central one. The inhabitants
were also greatly divided in opinion on the subject the pros and cons were
keenly debated; and it was only when the objectors were unable to point
out a better place obtainable at a moderate expense, that their opposition
was withdrawn, and the scheme finally adopted. Its chief promoters were:
the Provost, Mr. Kemp, elected on the death of Provost Murray, after only
six months of service; Bailies Harkness, M'Harg, and Dinwiddie; and
Councillors Smythe, Beck, and Oney. The building, which belonged to the
town, was adapted to its new destination at an expense of less than £500 -
the builder's contract being £406 10s It was duly opened for the sale of
rural produce in 1835 ; and though rather remote from the centre of the
Burgh, the New Markets are a decided acquisition. One of the local
newspapers, the Times, fairly traced their establishment to the operation
of Municipal Reform, and proposed that a name should be given to them
commemorative of the fact-a suggestion, however, which was not acted upon.
In further accordance with the reforming spirit of the day, the ale-duty,
worth £60 to £70 annually, was allowed to lapse; and the Council, on the
motion of Mr. William Gordon, seconded by Bailie Harkness, resolved, by a
majority of twelve to six, to abolish a lot of vexatious little dues
called the Trone and ThreePort Customs, levied at the entrances of the
town, on butter, eggs, cheese, and such like articles, and on grain
transmitted through the Burgh, and which averaged about £45 a year. [Town
Council Minutes.]
At the date of 1780 we gave
such a review of past events as might have been taken by an aged
Dumfriesian. Now that nearly two other generations have come and gone, a
similar retrospect may be given; and who so fit to furnish it as the
senior town clerk, Mr. Francis Shortt of Courance" a venerable gentleman,"
says M`Diarmid, writing in 1832, "who retains all his faculties, and a
vast fund of local information; at the advanced age of seventy-eight." We
cannot now obtain his reminiscences in a literal sense, but we can fancy
some of the many changes which he saw during his protracted pilgrimage of
more than eighty years. We can suppose this intelligent octogenarian
entertaining his more youthful contemporaries with his recollections of
how the factious Pyets and Crows ruffled each other's plumage in the
famous magisterial contest of 1759; of what mutinous mobs he had witnessed
such as the meal riots in 1796, and, a generation afterwards, the popular
hydra-headed Nemesis that dogged the heels of the murderer Hare, and the
popular tempests which preceded, the birth and cradled the infancy of
Reform; of the high Conservatism cherished when Robert Burns, poet and
Radical, burst like a meteor on the town, and the ultra Liberalism that
came afterwards, and would have made him a demi-god had he not long before
prematurely passed away; of how the bard looked when he was gauging
barrels, or handling his arms as a loyal volunteer, or electrifying a
social party with his conversational eloquence, or "crooning" some
newly-born lyric that was to live for ever-or how, sadly changed, his
haggard visage and wasted frame told full surely, in the spring of 1796,
that Dumfries was about to lose its most illustrious son-the world, "the
greatest poet that ever sprang from the bosom of the people." The aged
town clerk would be able to tell, too, of the building of the New Bridge,
the Theatre, the County prison, the Courthouse, the Academy, the Assembly
Rooms, the New Markets, of the entire new town lying north-east of Friars'
Vennel, and of such alterations in the shop-architecture of the old town
as amounted to a revolution. Of days of darkness and adversity he would
also be competent to speak: how a valuable part of the landed inheritance
of the town had to be sacrificed to keep its head above the waters of
bankruptcy; and how, when the haven of prosperity was reached, a horrible
tempest, in the shape of pestilence, overtook and devastated and well-nigh
wrecked the devoted Burgh. Great as were the historical incidents and
material mutations he had seen in his boyhood and prime, the moral
revolution effected during his later years was greater and more important.
The Dumfries of his childhood had changed before his eyes externally,
socially, and politically: it still retained many of its ancient
characteristics-the old Old Bridge, the venerable Mid-Steeple, Friars'
Vennel (little altered since Burns used to pass down it on his way to
Ryedale or Lincluden College), the closes (more's the pity!) of the same
pattern as at the date of King James's visit; and the town was still
watered by the classic Nith, still overlooked by the "bonnie hills of
Galloway," but nevertheless much expanded and modernized. The relics of
the Greyfriars' Monastery, of the Castle, and of the New Wark - all of
which the old man had gazed upon-had disappeared, with numerous other
memorials of mediaeval times, and so also had the manners, customs, ideas,
and modes of government with which he was long familiar. In the days of
his early manhood, the close, irresponsible system seemed to be also still
in its prime; and to talk of Parliamentary or Municipal Reform, savoured
of treason: now, in his old age, Reform is popular, fashionable, and has
already shown its power by sending to the right-about all self-elected or
clique-appointed burgh rulers or senatorial representatives.
Of such important incidents
and striking changes, occurring within the limits of a life-time, such a
faithful witness and "honest chronicler" as we have named could have
given, and, we have been assured, often did give, a graphic narrative to
his friends. Would that some Boswell had committed the spoken record to
paper, or that the local journalists had by other ways and means made
their annals more comprehensive and minute. Had this latter course been
generally pursued, our labour throughout a portion of this work would have
been greatly lessened, and the results been rendered more satisfactory. It
is but right, however, to add, that, thanks to the newspapers of the town,
minute details of the great Reform agitation, and of the dread visit of
the epidemic, have been preserved; and by drawing largely on their
columns, we have been enabled to give a copious, and, we trust, an
acceptable history of both.
We now, at the close of the
old municipal system, stop the general narrative for a little, in order to
complete what we have to say respecting the religious denominations,
trade, literature, and distinguished men of the Burgh. |
