_
Captain John Porteous, a name memorable in the traditions of Edinburgh,
as well as in the records of criminal jurisprudence, was the son of a
citizen of Edinburgh, who endeavoured to breed him up to his own
mechanical trade of a tailor. The youth, however, had a wild and
irreclaimable propensity to dissipation, which finally sent him to serve
in the corps long maintained in the service of the States of Holland, and
called the Scotch Dutch. Here he learned military discipline; and,
returning afterwards, in the course of an idle and wandering life, to his
native city, his services were required by the magistrates of Edinburgh
in the disturbed year 1715, for disciplining their City Guard, in which
he shortly afterwards received a captain's commission. It was only by his
military skill and an alert and resolute character as an officer of
police, that he merited this promotion, for he is said to have been a man
of profligate habits, an unnatural son, and a brutal husband. He was,
however, useful in his station, and his harsh and fierce habits rendered
him formidable to rioters or disturbers of the public peace.
The corps in which he held his command is, or perhaps we should rather
say _was,_ a body of about one hundred and twenty soldiers divided into
three companies, and regularly armed, clothed, and embodied.
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