The Waverley novels, by Sir Walter Scott, complete in 12 vol., printed from the latest English ed., embracing the author's last corrections, prefaces & notes.

THE HEART OF MID-LOTHIAN. 519
have the melancholy credit of appearing to make this sacrifice out of my
own free good-will. You, as you have declined my concurrence, must take
the whole upon yourself. Go, then, to the Duke of Argyle, and when other
arguments fail you, tell him you have it in your power to bring to condign
punishment the most active conspirator in the Porteous mob. He will hear
you on this topic, should he be deaf to every other. Make your own terms,
for they will be at your own making. You know where I am to be found;
and you may be assured I will not give you the dark side of the hill, as at
Muschat's Cairn; I have no thoughts of stirring from the house I was born
in; like the hare, I shall be worried in the seat I started from. I repeat
it-make your own terms. I need not remind you to ask your sister's life,
for that you. will do of course; but make terms of advantage for yourselfask wealth and reward-office and income for Butler-ask any thing-you
will get any thing-and all for delivering to the hands of the executioner a
man most deserving of his office; -one who, though young in years, is old
in wickedness, and whose most earnest desire is, after the storms of an unquiet life, to sleep and be at rest." ~...
This extraordinary letter was subscribed with the initials G. S..
Jeanie read it over once or twice with great attention, which the slow
pace of the horse, as he stalked through a deep lane, enabled her to do
with facility.
When she had perused this billet, her first employment was to tear it
into as small pieces as possible, and disperse these pieces in the air by a
few at a time, so that a document containing so perilous a secret might not
fall into any other person's hand.
The question how far, in point of extremity, she was entitled to save her
sister's life by sacrificing that of a person who, though guilty towards the
state, had done her no injury, formed the next earnest and most painful
subject of consideration. In one sense, indeed, it seemed as if denouncing
the guilt of Staunton, the cause of her sister's errors and misfortunes,
would have been an act of just, and even providential retribution. But
Jeanie, in the strict and severe tone of morality in which she was educated, had to consider not only the general aspect of a proposed action,
but its justness and fitness in relation to' the actor, before she could be,
according'to her own phrase, free to enter upon it. What right had she -to
make a barter between the lives of Staunton and of Effie, and to sacrifice
the one for the safety of the other? His guilt-that guilt for which he
was amenable to the laws -was a crime against the public indeed, but it
was not against her.,
Neither did it seem to her that his share in the death of Porteous, though
her mind revolted at the idea of using violence to any one, was in the relation of a common murder, against the perpetrator of which every one is
called to aid the public magistrate. That violent action was blended with
many circumstances, which, in the eyes of those in Jeanie's rank of life,
if they did not altogether deprive it of the character of guilt, softened, at
least, its most atrocious features. The anxiety of the government to obtain
conviction of some of the offenders, had but served to increase the public
feeling which connected the action, though violent and irregular, with the
idea of ancient national independence. The rigorous measures adopted or
proposed against the city of Edinburgh, the ancient metropolis of Scotland-the extremely unpopular and injudicious measure of compelling the
Scottish clergy, contrary to their principles and sense of duty, to promulgate from the pulpit the reward offered for the discovery of the perpetrators
of this slaughter, had produced on the public mind the opposite consequences from what were intended; and Jeanie felt conscious, that whoever
should lodge information concerning that event, and for whatsoever purpose it might be done, it would be considered as an act of treason against
the independence of Scotland. With the fanaticism of the Scottish presby-:e