. On several
occasions he succeeded in baffling the pursuit and researches of the king's
officers; but he became so much the object of their suspicions and watchful
attention, that at length he was totally ruined by repeated seizures. The man
became desperate. He considered himself as robbed and plundered; and took it
into his head that he had a right to make reprisals, as he could find
opportunity. Where the heart is prepared for evil, opportunity is seldom long
wanting. This Wilson learned that the Collector of the Customs at Kirkcaldy had
come to Pittenweem, in the course of his official round of duty, with a
considerable sum of public money in his custody. As the amount was greatly
within the value of the goods which had been seized from him, Wilson felt no
scruple of conscience in resolving to reimburse himself for his losses, at the
expense of the Collector and the revenue. He associated with himself one
Robertson, and two other idle young men, whom, having been concerned in the same
illicit trade, he persuaded to view the transaction in the same justifiable
light in which he himself considered it. They watched the motions of the
Collector; they broke forcibly into the house where he lodged, - Wilson, with
two of his associates, entering the Collector's apartment, while Robertson, the
fourth, kept watch at the door with a drawn cutlass in his hand. The officer of
the customs, conceiving his life in danger, escaped out of his bedroom window,
and fled in his shirt, so that the plunderers, with much ease, possessed
themselves of about two hundred pounds of public money. The robbery was
committed in a very audacious manner, for several persons were passing in the
street at the time. But Robertson, representing the noise they heard as a
dispute or fray betwixt the Collector and the people of the house, the worthy
citizens of Pittenweem felt themselves no way called on to interfere in behalf
of the obnoxious revenue officer; so, satisfying themselves with this very
superficial account of the matter, like the Levite in the parable, they passed
on the opposite side of the way. An alarm was at length given, military were
called in, the depredators were pursued, the booty recovered, and Wilson and
Robertson tried and condemned to death, chiefly on the evidence of an
accomplice.
    Many thought that, in consideration of the men's erroneous opinion of the
nature of the action they had committed, justice might have been satisfied with
a less forfeiture than that of two lives. On the other hand, from the audacity
of the fact, a severe
