A Dundee weaver stood his ground before the judge. A piece of handwriting was set before him; he professed not to know it. An opinion was demanded; he replied that no man could compel him to say more than he knew. Thomas Fyshe Palmer, a Unitarian minister, had consented to publish the address of the Friends of Liberty; George Mealmaker was now called upon to explain how that paper had assumed its form. At the Perth trial, in September 1793, it fell to the court to determine what he had written, caused to be printed, or distributed, and thereafter to decide whether the text constituted a seditious practice. The Crown alleged several distinct parts; the recollections of the society’s members did not agree as to whose hand had set down the opening lines.
The address was directed to the people of Great Britain. It depicted their liberties as endangered by tyranny, charged the House of Commons with being “composed of placemen and pensioners,” and demanded universal suffrage alongside frequent renewals of parliamentary representation. It connected the war with grievous taxes and the decay of trade, then urged the citizenry to assemble in defense of their rights. This summons to action furnished the prosecution with the foundation of its charge of sedition.
The address did not disguise its adversaries. It reproached the Ministry and Parliament for having plunged the nation into a ruinous war, invoking bankruptcies, households cast into destitution, and the shedding of blood. Its authors professed little astonishment at the rejection of their petition; far from yielding, they discovered therein an added reason to press for reform. It was thus no isolated phrase severed from a speech that the prosecution laid before the jurors, but a public appeal whose entire impulse it sought to incriminate.
In Palmer’s eyes, to claim a more equal representation was a duty owed to his fellow men. In the eyes of the prosecution, to diffuse such an appeal was to imperil the public peace. In the courtroom, this dispute encountered an eminently material difficulty: who had written the address? Who had amended it? Who had resolved to commit it to print?
Mealmaker, formerly treasurer and president of the society, explained that he had himself brought an initial portion of the manuscript to the committee. The paper had been laid upon the table and read by Palmer, whom he and others had invited. The text was not complete. At the extraordinary meeting, the members had debated and then voted several alterations, which were to be transcribed afresh prior to printing. Mealmaker knew not who had delivered that draft, nor who had penned the additions; he had not been present at the writing of the amendments between the two meetings. Pressed as to the author, he at last declared: “I thought it was Mr. Palmer, but I was not sure.” He remembered no minutes of those gatherings, nor had he seen the pages said to have been torn from the register. He believed the revised manuscript had been entrusted to Palmer and James Ellis, or to one of them, that it might be printed; he could not vouch that the copy produced at trial answered word for word to that of the meeting.
The judge sought to press beyond these reservations. Did Mealmaker recognize, in the document presented to him, the copy from the extraordinary meeting? He did not. Did he know whose hand the script resembled? He declined to commit himself. Lord Eskgrove reminded him that he was bound to declare what he believed. The witness set what he knew against what he was urged to conjecture; then, questioned regarding the alterations in the manuscript, he acknowledged having written some of them himself. Yet he had written nothing between the two assemblies. This detail shifted the ground of the difficulty: several hands had left their trace upon an address for which the Crown sought to establish individual guilt.
The inquiries touched not only upon the quill. Had the society paid for the printing? Mealmaker stated he had seen a receipt and an order of payment drawn in Palmer’s favor; he believed that order had been discharged. Had he received a printed copy from the prisoner’s own hands? He recalled doing so, though he hesitated as to whether he had asked for it. As to the place of printing, he had heard mention of Edinburgh, without being able to bear direct witness thereto. These answers furnished the prosecution with tangible particulars regarding the circulation and expense of the paper, even where the identity of its author eluded them.
Stewart, a member of the Friends of Liberty, recalled having met Palmer in Methodist Close, alongside Mealmaker and David Wood. Palmer was not yet a member; the men invited him to join them, though no formal meeting was held that evening. Later, Stewart saw a draft before the committee. He believed Mealmaker had written it. At a subsequent weekly meeting, Palmer had favored publication in the newspapers; Stewart did not recall that Palmer had been desired to write the address. The Crown produced authenticated copies, letters from Palmer dated the 3rd, 9th, and 20th of July, as well as a draft from Alexander Morrin addressed to Palmer. It alleged the dispatch of about one hundred copies to William Skirving in Edinburgh, and some twenty to James Smiton at Newburgh. Other copies had been delivered to the Dundee booksellers Edward Leslie and Robert Miller. Palmer himself had refused to sign the declaration taken before Harry Davidson, the sheriff-substitute. The printed sheets and correspondence corroborated the charge of distribution; they did not resolve the question of whose hand had drafted each portion of the text.
At two o’clock on the thirteenth of September, the jury returned a unanimous verdict. They found the address seditious, calculated to inflame the minds of the people, and pronounced Palmer guilty of having participated in its composition, of having caused copies to be printed, and of having procured its distribution. This answer reached further than Mealmaker’s wavering recollection regarding the hand that had traced the first lines; it embraced the totality of the acts alleged.
Following the verdict, Palmer craved leave to speak. He declared he had consecrated his life to the propagation of religious and moral truths, and had found himself incapable of remaining a passive spectator to political debates. He discerned in parliamentary reform an instrument to promote the happiness of millions. He acknowledged having joined the “low weavers and mechanics,” as they had been termed, and having consented to publish their address in vindication of a more equal representation. He stated he had already paid for his devotion through obloquy, reproach, and the ruin of his fortune. He trusted that even this new trial would serve the cause of human felicity, adding that, were he summoned to undergo a like ordeal again, he would endeavor to sustain it with fortitude and cheerfulness.
Lord Eskgrove replied that the sentence must serve as an example, enabling him to reform the errors that had brought him before the bar. The clerk then read the judgment: seven years’ transportation beyond the seas, to such place as the King, by the advice of his Privy Council, should appoint. Should Palmer return without lawful cause before the expiration of that term and be discovered in Great Britain, he would be subject to the pain of death. The order remitted him from the bar to the tolbooth of Perth, where the magistrates were to detain him until an occasion for his conveyance should arise. Palmer had spoken of the happiness of millions; the clerk had just determined, for seven years, the realm where he himself would no longer have the right to dwell. Borrow’s chapter closes upon this order of confinement. It does not yet recount the voyage: for the convict, banishment began with a vigil behind the walls of Perth.