THOMAS MUIR
Muir was advocating extending the vote to male, non-land owners. He was convicted, sent to the Botany Bay prison colony in Australia, escaped to France, and his cause did later triumph.
Muir was tried and convicted for sedition for his speech, and at his trial in August 1793 he repeated the quotation claiming that it was not seditious. He was advocating extending the vote to male, non-land owners. See Robert MacQueen Braxfield.
Thomas Muir, often known as Thomas Muir the Younger of Huntershill, was a Scottish political reformer and lawyer. Muir graduated from Edinburgh University and was admitted to the Faculty of Advocates in 1787, aged 22. Muir was a leader of the Society of the Friends of the People. He was the most important of the group of two Scotsmen and three Englishmen The Political Martyrs monument, Edinburgh (the others being Thomas Fyshe Palmer, William Skirving, Maurice Margarot and Joseph Gerrald). In 1793 after a show trial in Edinburgh for advocating democratic parliamentary reforms and votes for all men, they were sentenced to transportation to Botany Bay Australia for sedition.
