that the town should have paid for it. "But," said Mr Keelivine,
the town-clerk, "I think you may do better; and this calamity, if
properly handled to the Government, may make your fortune," I
reflected on the hint; and accordingly, the next day, I went over to
the regulating captain of the pressgang, and represented to him the
great damage and detriment which I had suffered, requesting him to
represent to government that it was all owing to the part I had
taken in his behalf. To this, for a time, he made some scruple of
objection; but at last he drew up, in my presence, a letter to the
lords of the admiralty, telling what he had done, and how he and his
men had been ill-used, and that the house of the chief-magistrate of
the town had been in a manner destroyed by the rioters.

By the same post I wrote off myself to the lord advocate, and
likewise to the secretary of state, in London; commanding, very
properly, the prudent and circumspect manner in which the officer
had come to apprize me of his duty, and giving as faithful an
account as I well could of the riot; concluding with a simple
notification of what had been done to my house, and the outcry that
might be raised in the town were any part of the town's funds to be
used in the repairs.

Both the lord advocate and Mr Secretary of State wrote me back by
retour of post, thanking me for my zeal in the public service; and I
was informed that, as it might not be expedient to agitate in the
town the payment of the damage which my house had received, the
lords of the treasury would indemnify me for the same; and this was
done in a manner which showed the blessings we enjoy under our most
venerable constitution; for I was not only thereby enabled, by what
I got, to repair the windows, but to build up a vacant steading; the