Thomas Muir

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"