Thomas Muir

Thomas Muir (25 August 1765 – 26 January 1799) was a Scottish political reformer, and the most notable victim of political repression in the years after the French Revolution. The son of James Muir, a hop merchant, Muir was educated at Glasgow Grammar School before attending the University of Glasgow. There, he studied first divinity and then sociology, attending many of the classes of the radical thinker, John Millar (1735-1801). He went on to train as an advocate in Edinburgh, adopting "of Huntershill" from the name of the small estate that his father had purchased in what is now Bishopbriggs.

As one of the leaders of the Scottish Reform movement, he became the first and most celebrated of the ‘Scottish Martyrs’.

The first of the "Scottish Martyrs"

The best and noblest privileges in hell,

For souls like ours is, boldly to rebel;

To rear the standard of revolt, and try

The happy fruit of lov’d democracy.

The sacred right of insurrection there,

May drive old Satan from his regal chair;

And the same honest means may raise, per chance,

A France in Hell, that rais’d a Hell in France.

As an advocate, Muir gained a reputation for defending the poor and disadvantaged and became a critic of the legal system which he felt was skewed in favour of the rich. When the Friends of the People Society was established to promote political reform, Muir became vice president of the Glasgow Associated Friends of the Constitution and of the People. The first Convention of the Scottish Friends of the People opened in Edinburgh on 11 December 1792, attended by delegates representing 150 societies throughout Scotland. At the convention, Muir urged the Edinburgh Convention to 'openly, actively and urgently' will Parliamentary reform. On the last day of the Convention, a Petition to Parliament was read and approved; but it was suggested that the Convention arm itself so as to be able to help magistrates put down riots that might occur in support of reform. At an emotional final session, delegates swore the French oath, 'To live free or die'.

The government panicked, and on 2 January 1793 arrested Muir for sedition. Released on bail, Muir promply fled to France where he joined Thomas Paine, supposedly in an attempt to curb the violence of the revolutionaries there and to stop the execution of Louis XVI. When he failed to appear for his trial in February and was declared an outlaw, his bail was forfeited, and he was struck off the faculty of Advocates. He had planned to emigrate to the United States, but before doing so made a clandestine visit to his parents, when he was recognised and arrested.

Trial

His trial took place before Lord Braxfield at the end of August 1793, on the charge that had ‘feloniously and seditiously stirred up the inhabitants against a lawful king and a good Constitution’. Muir chose to defend himself, insisting that ‘as he considered the information of the People to be the chief thing requisite to accomplish [equal representation], he uniformally [sic] advised them to read every publication, upon either side, which the important question of Parliamentary Reform had occasioned’. The trial gave Muir an opportunity to amplify what he described as his ‘feeble voice’ over Scotland and the world: a transcription of his defence was published and achieved huge circulation, and was greeted by applause from the public galleries at his trial. The trial however was presided over by five Tory judges and heard by a jury of committed anti-jacobins, members of the Loyalist ‘Goldsmith's Hall Association’. In summing up, Lord Henderland remarked that the public's applause demonstrated that ‘the spirit of sedition had not as yet subsided’. Lord Broxfield dismissed Muir's arguments for reform declaring "Government in this country is made up of the landed interest, which alone has a right to be represented; as for the rabble, who have nothing but personal property, what hold has the nation of them? what security for the payment of their taxes? They may pack up all their property on their backs, and leave the country in the twinkling of an eye." Muir was found guilty of sedition and given the harsh sentence of fourteen years’ transportation.

The sentence provoked widespread outrage, and Robert Burns was moved to write the song 'Scots Wha Hae' in protest, which was immediately banned as seditious. Lord Cockburn in his account of his trial declared "This is one of the cases the memory whereof never perisheth. History cannot let its injustice alone"

Escape

The transportees (which included Thomas Fysshe Palmer) arrived in Botany Bay, Sydney, in October 1794 on HM Transport ship Surprize. However, the Americans (who had recently won their independent from Britain) despatched a ship The Otter to rescue him. Muir was rescued and landed on Vancouver Island, where he transferred to a Spanish vessel bound for Baja California, hoping to make his way via Mexico City to Havana and on to Philadelphia. However, in Havana he was arrested by the authorities as a British subject, and in March 1796 he was sent to stand trial in Spain on board the frigate Ninfa. On the trip back to Europe, the Ninfa was attacked by the Royal Navy, and Muir lost his left eye and cheek while fighting for his Spanish captors (he wore a wore a piratical black eye-patch thereafter). On arriving in Spain he was "rep[atriated to France. He arrived in Bordeaux in November, 1797 and from there he moved on to Paris to join Paine, with whom he would continue to agitate for parliamentary reform. At this time the radical activity in Scotland had moved on from the hands of the Friends of the People to that of the United Scotsmen, who planned to establish a provisional Scottish government with Muir as president.

However, Muir never fully recovered from his injuries, and he died at Chantilly on 26 January 1799. He was the first foreigner to be given citizenship of France.