whereon he was to have been executed pursuant to the sentence, and, in a very riotous manner, seized and disarmed the city-guard, and possessed themselves of the town-gates, to prevent the admission of troops quartered in the suburbs.  They then rushed to the Tolbooth prison; the doors of which not yielding to the force of their hammers, they consumed by fire, and then brought forth Porteous by violence, and hung him on a dyer’s post, or frame, in the Grass-market, nigh the spot where the unfortunate people were killed.

The magistrates, attended with several of the burgesses, attempted to quell the riot and disperse the mob, but were pelted with stones, and threatened to be fired upon if they did not retire.

This insult of the sovereign authority was too flagrant to be overlooked.  Proclamations, with rewards of two hundred pounds sterling, were issued for apprehending the rioters, and, when the Parliament met, vigorous measures were taken in the affair.  The Lord Provost was ordered up to London in custody; the magistrates summoned to answer the indictment, and a bill was introduced into the House of Commons “to disable Alexander Wilson, Esq., the principal magistrate during the riots, from ever after holding any office of magistracy in Edinburgh or Great Britain; to subject him to imprisonment for a year; to abolish the town guard, and to take away the gates of the nether Bowport of the city.”  Oglethorpe objected to the first reading of the bill, and it encountered his vigorous opposition.  He engaged in a warm defence of the magistrates, and of the guard, declaring that there was no dereliction of duty on the part of the magistrates and of the guard, but they were overpowered by numbers, and thrown into actual jeopardy by the desperation of the mob.  Hence the penalties of the bill would be the punishment of misfortune, not of crime.

In consequence of the stand which he thus took, and the interest made by others in the House of Commons, the bill was altered in its most essential circumstances, and, instead of the rigorous inflictions, “mercy rejoiced against judgment,” and the city was fined the sum of two thousand pounds, to be applied to the relief and support of the widow of Porteous.[1]

[Footnote 1:  See Appendix VIII.]

A petition was made to Parliament “to extend the benefit of a late act for naturalizing foreigners in North America, to the Moravian Brethren and other foreign Protestants who made a scruple of taking an oath, or performing military service.”  General Oglethorpe, in the spring of 1737, presented the petition to the House of Commons, with an ample speech, and was supported by many members.  The opinion of the Board of Trade was required on this head.  The Proprietor of Pennsylvania promoted the affair among the members of Parliament, and especially with the Secretary of State, the Duke of Newcastle, by his good testimonies of the brethren in Pennsylvania.  The matter of the bill was properly discussed, formed into an act, and, having passed, with the greatest satisfaction, through both houses, received in June, 1747, the Royal assent.[1]