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Updated: May 13, 2025
One may doubt whether the "Ancient Mariner" would have been written, had Coleridge travelled with Gerrald and Sinclair along the "dark lane" that led to Botany Bay. Nature can work strange miracles with the instinct of self-preservation, and even for poets she has a care. The prudence which teaches one man to be a Whig, will make of another a Utopian. "Where Liberty is, there is my country."
Joseph Gerrald, another member of the same group gave the same fine example of courage, surrendered to his bail, and was sent for fifteen years to Botany Bay. The ferment was more than an intellectual stirring. It brought with it a moral elevation and a great courage that did not shrink from venturing life and fortune for a disinterested end.
On the 21st of the eighth month, 1853, the corner-stone of a monument to the memory of the Scottish martyrs for which subscriptions had been received from such men as Lord Holland, the Dukes of Bedford and Norfolk; and the Earls of Essex and Leicester was laid with imposing ceremonies in the beautiful burial-place of Calton Hill, Edinburgh, by the veteran reformer and tribune of the people, Joseph Hume, M. P. After delivering an appropriate address, the aged radical closed the impressive scene by reading the prayer of Joseph Gerrald.
Holcroft, as we have seen, was tried for high treason, and Joseph Gerrald, who was sent to Botany Bay, was a friend for whom he felt both admiration and affection. If the fate of these men was a haunting pain to their friends, their high courage and idealistic faith was a noble stimulus.
On the 21st of the eighth month, 1853, the corner-stone of a monument to the memory of the Scottish martyrs for which subscriptions had been received from such men as Lord Holland, the Dukes of Bedford and Norfolk; and the Earls of Essex and Leicester was laid with imposing ceremonies in the beautiful burial-place of Calton Hill, Edinburgh, by the veteran reformer and tribune of the people, Joseph Hume, M. P. After delivering an appropriate address, the aged radical closed the impressive scene by reading the prayer of Joseph Gerrald.
Joseph Gerrald was a young man of brilliant talents and exemplary character. When the sheriff entered the hall to disperse the friends of liberty, Gerrald knelt in prayer. His remarkable words were taken down by a reporter on the spot.
The delegates descended to the street in silence, Arthur's Seat and Salisbury Crags glooming in the distance and night, an immense and agitated multitude waiting around, over which tossed the flaring flambeaux of the sheriff's train. Gerrald, who was already under arrest, as he descended, spoke aloud, "Behold the funeral torches of Liberty!" Skirving and several others were immediately arrested.
"Human Perfectibility" had its martyrs, and the words of Gerrald as he stood in the dock awaiting the sentence that was to send him to his death among thieves and forgers, deserve a respectful record: "Moral light is as irresistible by the mind as physical by the eye. All attempts to impede its progress are vain.
"By the Guru! if the slaves of Lena Singh and the English dare to lay a finger on me !" he cried. "Foolish young man, will you keep me from my own troops? I am the Rajah Partab Singh." Gerrald stepped back with a bow. "Maharaj-ji, you are free to depart. I had not thought that the man whom I welcomed to my tent designed to pick a quarrel with me.
In the tenth month, 1793, delegates were called together from various towns in Scotland, as well as from Birmingham, Sheffield, and other places in England. Gerrald and Margarot were sent up by the London society. After a brief sitting, the convention was dispersed by the public authorities.
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