but before it appeared his comparatively youthful coadjutor was no more.[1]
In August, 1835, Motherwell was summoned to London, to appear before a committee of the House of Commons which had been appointed to take evidence as to the constitution and practices of the Orange Society with a view to its suppression. He had unluckily allowed himself to be enrolled as a member of that association, and was one of the district secretaries for the West of Scotland. There is no incident in his history which it more perplexes me to account for than this. He had no connexion with Ireland, direct or indirect, nor had he ever been in that island in his life, and few men, in my opinion, were less qualifed by previous habits of study to appreciate the value of the mixed questions of civil and ecclesiastical polity which that body professed to discuss: yet he entered with characteristic warmth into its schemes, and became one of the agents employed in the extension of its principles. To his mind Orangeism would seem to have presented itself under the guise of a wholesome influence of general applicability which it was desirable to perpetuate, instead of
- ↑ It should have been mentioned in its proper place that in the year 1832 Motherwell supplied a preface of some length to Henderson's volume of Scottish Proverbs. Andrew Henderson was a portrait painter of considerable celebrity in Glasgow and an intimate friend of the Poet. He was a man of abrupt manners, but of great honesty of nature, and capable of both steadfast and warm attachments. He pre-deceased Motherwell by about six months.
