had the
pleasure to know that my interloping adversary was disappointed; the
which was a sort of compensation.

CHAPTER XLI--BENEFITS OF NEUTRALITY

The general election in 1812 was a source of trouble and uneasiness to
me; both because our district of burghs was to be contested, and because
the contest was not between men of opposite principles, but of the same
side. To neither of them had I any particular leaning; on the contrary,
I would have preferred the old member, whom I had, on different
occasions, found an accessible and tractable instrument, in the way of
getting small favours with the government and India company, for friends
that never failed to consider them as such things should be. But what
could I do? Providence had placed me in the van of the battle, and I
needs must fight; so thought every body, and so for a time I thought
myself. Weighing, however, the matter one night soberly in my mind, and
seeing that whichever of the two candidates was chosen, I, by my adherent
loyalty to the cause for which they were both declared, the contest
between them being a rivalry of purse and personality, would have as much
to say with the one as with the other, came to the conclusion that it was
my prudentest course not to intermeddle at all in the election.
Accordingly, as soon as it was proper to make a declaration of my
sentiments, I made this known, and it caused a great wonderment in the
town; nobody could imagine it possible that I was sincere, many thinking
there was something aneath it, which would kithe in time to the surprise
of the public. However, the peutering went on, and I took no part. The
two candidates were as civil and as liberal, the one after the other, to
Mrs Pawkie and my daughters, as any gentlemen of a parliamentary
understanding could be. Indeed, I verily believe, that although I had
been really chosen delegate, as it was at one time intended I should be,
I could not have hoped for half the profit that came in from the dubiety
which my declaration of neutrality caused; for as often as I assured the
one candidate that I did not intend even to be present at the choosing of
the delegate, some rich present was sure to be sent to my wife, of which
the other no sooner heard than he was upsides with him. It was just a
sport to think of me protesting my neutrality, and to see how little I
was believed. For still the friends of the two candidates, like the
figures of the four quarters