Page:Englishmen in the French Revolution.djvu/117

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OUTLAWS AND CONSPIRATORS.
97

son, Petty, became his partner, and lived till 1854. A fifth brother, Samuel, settled in Jamaica. As for Benjamin, he was a Conservative in American politics; he doctored his neighbours gratuitously, was honoured and respected, and died a year after his wife, in 1835, bequeathing parts of a fine library to Harvard University and Bowdoin College. Of all the English exiles in Paris he seems to have had the peacefullest old age, but not recalling his French experiences with pleasure, was not accustomed to speak of them. "The happiest man I ever saw," says one who knew him well.

Thomas Muir, a Scotch advocate, had the prospect of a prosecution for treason when he went to France in 1793, for he had been one of the leaders of the Edinburgh Convention, which, except that its sittings were opened with prayer, imitated the forms of the Paris Assembly. He boldly returned, however, denied that he had fled from prosecution, and conducted his own defence. He was sentenced to fourteen years' transportation, but escaped from Botany Bay in an American vessel in February 1796, and made his way to Paris, where he died three years afterwards.

Sampson Perry's departure for France was confessedly a flight from a press prosecution. He had been fined £100 for alleging in his scurrilous Argus that the ministers had published false news for stock-jobbing purposes. In face of a conviction for