ld her that there were a great many steps from
the entrance of the profession and the very high rank which she purposed,
many of which he should be happy to congratulate her son on attaining.
The conference proceeded, the obstacles to success at the bar were
weighed against the certainty of domestic calamities if he remained in
his present profession, and they parted, both of opinion, that in the
direction of the bar, Thomas Erskine was most likely to leave behind his
present embarrassment and reach prosperity. It remained, however, to
procure the consent of her son; that was not easy: he had no predilection
for the bar, and was attached to the army, and his regiment, to the
officers of which his sprightly and amiable manners had endeared him, and
in which he was soliciting promotion and expecting it. At last, however,
his conditional consent was drawn from him. He agreed to let his mother
dispose of him as she wished, if he should be unsuccessful in his
application for the vacant captaincy in the Royals. This was far from
satisfying his mother, but he was peremptory, and she could not induce
him to more positive terms; thus, if Erskine could have gained the rank
of captain in the Royals, the destination of which was, then, an American
colony, by which he might have gained the privilege of being scalped by
the savages, or perishing in the swamps or forests of North America, the
country would never have known that splendid eloquence, which is its
boast and its pride; Tooke, Thelwall, Hardy, and the rest of those
unfortunate men who were held so long under the terror of death, would
probably have been hanged, and the country oppressed by a gloomy
precedent of constructive treason, under which no man who has raised
himself in opposition to a corrupt and sinister government could have
been safe; one is inclined to shudder, like a man whom a shot has missed
only by the breadth of a hair, in contemplating how near so much danger
was incurred, and so much benefit lost. But it is not on the magnitude,
but continuity of the chain, that great results depend; on examining the
past, we shall find that as small a link struck out at one point or other
of succession, would have disappointed the most important events of
history. Happily for Erskine and his country, his claims from the merit
of his services were eluded, and though he was more urgent in his
applications, since the alternative was to be the bar, he was refused
promoti