In short, I was perplexed when I heard of the design, not knowing what to do, or what might be expected from me by government in a case of such emergency as the setting up of a newspaper so declaredly adverse to every species of vested trust and power; for it was easy to forsee that those immediately on the scene would be the first opposed to the onset and brunt of the battle.Never can any public man have a more delicate task imposed upon him, than to steer clear of offence in such a predicament.After a full consideration of the business, Mr Scudmyloof declared that he would retire from the field, and stand aloof; and he rehearsed a fine passage in the Greek language on that head, pat to the occasion, but which I did not very thoroughly understand, being no deacon in the dead languages, as I told him at the time.
But when the dominie had left me, I considered with myself, and having long before then observed that our hopes, when realized, are always light in the grain, and our fears, when come to pass, less than they seemed as seen through the mists of time and distance, Iresolved with myself to sit still with my eyes open, watching and saying nothing; and it was well that I deported myself so prudently;for when the first number of the paper made its appearance, it was as poor a job as ever was "open to all parties, and influenced by none;" and it required but two eyes to discern that there was no need of any strong power from the lord advocate to suppress or abolish the undertaking; for there was neither birr nor smeddum enough in it to molest the high or to pleasure the low; so being left to itself, and not ennobled by any prosecution, as the schemers expected, it became as foisonless as the "London Gazette" on ordinary occasions.Those behind the curtain, who thought to bounce out with a grand stot and strut before the world, finding that even I used it as a convenient vehicle to advertise my houses when need was, and which I did by the way of a canny seduction of policy, joking civilly with Mr Absolom anent his paper trumpet, as I called it, they were utterly vanquished by seeing themselves of so little account in the world, and forsook the thing altogether; by which means it was gradually transformed into a very solid and decent supporter of the government--Mr Absolom, for his pains, being invited to all our public dinners, of which he gave a full account, to the great satisfaction of all who were present, but more particularly to those who were not, especially the wives and ladies of the town, to whom it was a great pleasure to see the names of their kith and kin in print.And indeed, to do Mr Absolom justice, he was certainly at great pains to set off every thing to the best advantage, and usually put speeches to some of our names which showed that, in the way of grammaticals, he was even able to have mended some of the parliamentary clishmaclavers, of which the Londoners, with all their skill in the craft, are so seldom able to lick into any shape of common sense.
Thus, by a judicious forbearance in the first instance, and a canny wising towards the undertaking in the second, did I, in the third, help to convert this dangerous political adversary into a very respectable instrument of governmental influence and efficacy.
