By R.W. Morrell

STANZAS, Written on reading in an American newspaper an account of the death of Thomas Paine, author of Common Sense, Rights of Man, etc. By Alexander Rodger (1784 – 1846). 

Tom Paine is dead – Satan, be on thy guard; 

Remember, he’s thy most inveterate foe; 

Get thy strong Pandemonian gates well barr’d, 

Nor let him enter thy dark realms below. 

Else if thou do, prepare to meet thy fate

Nor longer vainly boast of being king

But quit thy throne – throw off thy robes of State

Thy crown and sceptre from thee quickly fling. 

For if his levelling doctrines once get ground, 

Thy sooty subjects will in fact rebel, 

Pull down thy throne, spread Deism around, 

Chop off thy head, and make a FRANCE of Hell.

Alexander Rodger was born at the village of East-Calder, Midlothian, on July 16, 1784, his father was a farmer but later moved to Edinburgh where the family broke up. Following this “Sandy” went to live in Glasgow where he was apprenticed as a weaver. 

Rodger became associated with working-class radical politics, writing political squibs for a journal called The Spirit of the Union. Shortly after joining the staff of the journal the editor was charged with sedition, found guilty, and sentenced to transportation for life. “Sandy”, also went to prison, being convicted of “revolutionary practices”. The unfortunate editor was Gilbert McLeod. 

Rodger led an active political life after release, though he had to leave his journalism and return to his trade of weaving, ‘ however, he obtained the post of inspector of printed cloth in a local works. Later he tried his hand at pawnbroking and eventually back to journalism as reader and assistant reporter of local news for the Glasgow Chronicle. He followed this with a post on the Liberator and then the Reformers Gazette. He died on September 26, 1846. 

Rodger often recalled, with some amusement, the time when his home was searched for seditious publications.”Sandy” handed the Sheriff’s Officer, who was making the search, the family Bible as a treasonable work and referred him to the chapter on Kings in 1st Samuel.