its meetings. On 28th
October he stated that nearly all the Scottish clubs had revived.
Dunlop, Lord Provost of Glasgow, also declared that discontent made
progress every day; that the soldiery were corrupted, and that there was
an urgent need of barracks.[300] Indignation also ran high at London.
Evan Nepean wrote to Robert Dundas: "There is a devil of a stir here
about Muir and Palmer." Braxfield's address to the jury was thus
parodied in the "Morning Chronicle" of 4th March 1794:

I am bound by the law, while I sit in this place,
To say in plain terms what I think of this case.
My opinion is this, and you're bound to pursue it,
The defendants are guilty, and I'll make them rue it.

Nevertheless, as another Convention had met at Edinburgh, Robert Dundas
wrote to his uncle on 2nd November 1793 strongly deprecating any
mitigation of the sentences. It was therefore in vain that the Earl of
Lauderdale, Grey, and Sheridan interviewed the Home Secretary and
pointed out that the offence of "leasing-making," or verbal sedition,
was punishable in Scots law only with banishment, not with forcible
detention at the Antipodes.[301] Henry Dundas informed his nephew on
16th November that he would refer the whole question back to the Court
of Justiciary, and if it defended the verdict "scientifically" and in
full detail, he would "carry the sentence into execution and meet the
clamour in Parliament without any kind of dismay."[302] Braxfield and
his colleagues defended their conduct in an exhaustive treatise on
"leasing-making," which the curious may read in the Home Office
Archives.

What was the attitude of Pitt towards these events? Ultimately he was
responsible for these unjust and vindictive sentences; and it is a poor
excuse to urge that he gave Dundas a free hand in Scottish affairs.
Still, it is unquestionable that the initiative lay with the two
Dundases. If any Englishman exerted influence on the sentences it was
the Lord Chancellor, Loughborough.[303] He treated with contempt the
motion of Earl Stanhope on 31st January 1794 for an examination into the
case of Muir, when the Earl found himself in the position which he so
much coveted--a minority of one. On the cases of Muir and Palmer coming
before the Commons (10th March), Pitt upheld the Scottish Court of
Justiciary in what was perhaps the worst speech of his whole career. He
defended even the careful selection of jurymen hostile to Muir on the
curious