Page:History of Australia, Rusden 1897.djvu/236

 MAURICK MAT war, decKninjj; to give tjiipplies to tiie eneiides of his country. They were personally treated with courtesy. Palmer, however, became ill, and died in June 1802 at Guam. Though not Scotch, and though a false witness, Margarot was the onl}' so-called ** Scotch martyi*" who returned to j England, False alike to friend and foe, by turns an ohsequiouK flatterer and low intriguer, ever buBj and never honest, he wanted but more ability or a fitting cx^casion tct have been the Barere of his party. When his MS. papers were seized in 1804 they were found to contain such entries as these : — '* Gerald broke open a letter directed to me; he took out of it a ten-pound note, for which he never | acconiited." In a published letter which Margarot sent to England he said of Gerald — *'He has tied from my habita- tion and the fraternal reception I gave him, to join others who may, perhaps, m return for those good thiugs he has brought with him, encourage his failings, and feed his vanity with insidious praise. He will soon feel. the destructive effects." Is it a retributive justice upon Gerald's memory, that for having allowed himself to be associated with Margarot as a delegate from the London Corresponding Society to the British Convention in Edinburgh, their names are nowlinked together on the monument on Calton Hill? Though all the other Scotch martyrs shrank from Margarot in Sydney, they are herded with him iu the inscription from which it might have I)een hoped that his name would have been excluded by all sensible people in 1844. It is consoling to reflect that Macaulay refused to join in making a i demigod of a rascal, and would take no part in laying | the foundation of the Calton Hill monument. Margarot reviled his fellow prisoners as " dealers in land and in lunnan flesh," as "inmates and intimates" with then gaolers; he called Mr. Ellis ** Palmer's man," and left on record many accusations against Palmer which it is [unnecessary to repeat, but which are manifestly false. His communications to governors may be mentioned. He forwarded a grandiloquent petition (Oct. 1795} impugn- ing the validity of his sentence on constitutional grounds, already dit^cussed and rejected in the House of Commons.