public life for a better purpose than to prey upon the leaves
and flourishes of the commonwealth. So that, if I have seemed to speak
lightly of those doings that are now denominated corruptions, I hope it
was discerned therein that I did so rather to intimate that such things
were, than to consider them as in themselves commendable. Indeed, in
their notations, I have endeavoured, in a manner, to be governed by the
spirit of the times in which the transactions happened; for I have lived
long enough to remark, that if we judge of past events by present
motives, and do not try to enter into the spirit of the age when they
took place, and to see them with the eyes with which they were really
seen, we shall conceit many things to be of a bad and wicked character
that were not thought so harshly of by those who witnessed them, nor even
by those who, perhaps, suffered from them. While, therefore, I think it
has been of a great advantage to the public to have survived that method
of administration in which the like of Bailie M'Lucre was engendered, I
would not have it understood that I think the men who held the public
trusts in those days a whit less honest than the men of my own time. The
spirit of their own age was upon them, as that of ours is upon us, and
their ways of working the wherry entered more or less into all their
trafficking, whether for the commonality, or for their own particular
behoof and advantage.

I have been thus large and frank in my reflections anent the death of the
bailie, because, poor man, he had outlived the times for which he was
qualified; and, instead of the merriment and jocularity that his wily by-
hand ways used to cause among his neighbours, the rising generation began
to pick and dab at him, in such a manner, that, had he been much longer
spared, it is to be feared he would not have been allowed to enjoy his
earnings both with ease and honour. However, he got out of the world
with some respect, and the matters of which I have now to speak, are
exalted, both in method and principle, far above the personal
considerations that took something from the public virtue of his day and
generation.

CHAPTER XXIV--THE WINDY YULE

It was in the course of the winter, after the decease of Bailie M'Lucre,
that the great loss of lives took place, which every body agreed was one
of the most calamitous things that had for many a year befallen the town.

Three or four vessels were coming with