202 MEMOIR OF JOHN WILSON. 



to be won without a desperate struggle, to the history of which a 

 few pages must now he devoted. 



In April, 1820, the chair of Moral Philosophy in the University 

 of Edinburgh became vacant by the lamented death of Dr. Thomas 

 Brown. The contest which ensued has had few parallels even in 

 the history of that University, whilst the patronage lay with the 

 Town Council, whose members had to be canvassed personally like 

 the voters in a rotten borough. My father announced himself as a 

 candidate in the course of the month, and so did Sir William 

 Hamilton. Other distinguished men were mentioned as possible 

 competitors, such as Sir James Mackintosh and Mr. Malthus ; but 

 it soon became apparent that between these two alone the struggle 

 was to lie. Then came the tug of war. The rivals were intimate 

 personal friends, and between them, happily, no unpleasant word or 

 thought arose during the time that their respective friends were 

 fighting for and against them, like Greek and Trojan. Both had 

 been brilliant Oxonians ; but the one was known to have devoted 

 himself to philosophy, with a singleness of aim and a specialty of 

 power, that seemed to his friends, and certainly not without reason, 

 to throw the pretensions of his rival utterly into the shade. Happily 

 for him, too, he had, as became a philosopher, abstained from any 

 interference in public questions, either openly or in secret; and his 

 retired and studious life afforded no possible mark for censure or 

 insinuation even to the most malicious enemy. The other, though 

 reckoned by men well fitted to judge, as a person singularly gifted 

 with philosophic as well as poetic faculty, was better known in the 

 outer world as a daring and brilliant litterateur / one of a band of 

 writers who had excited much admiration, but also much righteous 

 censure, and personally as a somewhat eccentric young man of very 

 athletic and jovial tendencies. How these qualities affected his 

 position as a candidate will speedily appear ; but all other distinc- 

 tions were lost sight of in the one great fact of political creed. Sir 

 "William was a Whig : Wilson was a Tory. The matter all lay in 

 that. Wilson, too, was not only a Tory, but a Tory of the most 

 unpardonable description ; he was one of the leading hands, if not 

 the editor, of that scandalous publication, JSlackwoocVs Magazine, a 

 man therefore who needed no further testimonial of being at least 

 an assassin and a reprobate. He, forsooth, a Professor of Moral 

 Philosophy, a successor of Dugald Stewart! The thing was mon- 



