Note 429 — DECEMBER
Reading edition
A Party Newspaper started by the Tories in Edinburgh at the beginning of 1821. It was suppressed in the month of August, but during the interval contrived to give great offence to the Whig leaders by its personality. Lockhart says of it that "a more pitiable mass of blunders and imbecility was never heaped together than the whole of this affair exhibited;" and Scott, who was one of its founders, along with the Lord Advocate and other official persons, wrote to Erskine, "I am terribly malcontent about the Beacon. I was dragged into the bond against all reasons I could make, and now they have allowed me no vote regarding standing or flying. Entre nous, our friends went into the thing like fools, and came out very like cowards." The wretched libels it contained cost Sir A. Boswell his life, and for a moment endangered that of Scott.—See Life, vol. vi. pp. 426-429, and Cockburn's Memorials, p. 312.