haivers. Are
we not descended, father and son, from Robert Bruce and Sir William
Wallace, having the bright blood of freemen in our veins, and the
Pentland Hills, as well as our own dear homes and firesides, to fight
for? The rascal that would not give cut-and-thrust for his country as
long as he had a breath to draw, or a leg to stand on, should be tied
neck and heels, without benefit of clergy, and thrown over Leith pier, to
swim for his life like a mangy dog!

Hard doubtless it is--and I freely confess it--to be called by sound of
bugle, or tuck of drum, from the counter and the shopboard--men, that
have been born and bred to peaceful callings, to mount the red-jacket,
soap the hair, buckle on the buff-belt, load with ball-cartridge, and
screw bayonets; but it's no use talking. We were ever the free British;
and before we would say to Frenchmen that we were their humble servants,
we would either twist the very noses off their faces, or perish in the
glorious struggle.

It was aye the opinion of the Political folk, the Whigs, the Black-nebs,
the Radicals, the Papists, and the Friends of the People, together with
the rest of the clan-jamphrey, that it was a done battle, and that
Buonaparte would lick us back and side. All this was in the heart and
heat of the great war, when we were struggling, like drowning men, for
our very life and existence, and when our colours--the true British
flag--were nailed to the mast-head. One would have thought these rips
were a set of prophets, they were all so busy prophesying, and never
anything good. They kent (believe them) that we were to be smote hip and
thigh; and that to oppose the vile Corsican was like men with
strait-jackets out of Bedlam. They could see nothing brewing around them
but death, and disaster, and desolation, and pillage, and national
bankruptcy--our brave Highlanders, with their heads shot off, lying on
the bloody field of battle, all slaughtered to a man; our sailors,
handcuffed and shackled, musing in a French prison on the bypast days of
Camperdown, and of Lord Rodney breaking through the line; with all their
fleets sunk to the bottom of the salt sea, after being raked fore and aft
with chain-shot; and our timber, sugar, tea and treacle merchants, all
fleeing for safety and succour down to lodgings in the Abbey Strand, with
a yellow stocking on the ae leg and a black one on the other, like a
wheen mountebanks. Little could they foresee, with their spe