As things turned out, silence would have been the better part for Burns, but he had no gift for silence. In the same year moreover in which Burns secured his Port Division the effects of the upheaval in France were stirring both Burns and Scotland. The cries of Liberty and Equality and Fraternity were echoed in the North and enlisted as in England a motley collection of supporters who ranged from poetic idealists, like Burns and Wordsworth, through professional agitators like Thomas Paine and Horne Tooke to unprincipled rabble. Burns’s first public gesture of sympathy with the French Revolution came as a by-product of the most exciting episode in his career as an Excise officer. In the early spring of 1792 a smuggling schooner named the _Rosamond_ was caught in the Solway. The ship was heavily armed and thanks to the active co-operation of the coastwise folks, who staved in all their rowboats to keep the Excise officers from using them, she landed her cargo. The _Rosamond_, however, remained aground on the tidal flats and when an armed force of dragoons and Excise officers--Burns among them--waded out to attack her the crew fled after scuttling the ship. Salvaged and towed into the Nith the _Rosamond_ with all her gear was confiscated and sold at auction. Her armament included four carronades which Burns bought for £4 and dispatched as a gift to the French Convention. Such at least is the traditional story, and every detail of it, except the actual dispatch of the carronades, is corroborated by documents found among the Abbotsford papers. The tradition continues that the guns never reached France, being seized by the customs officials at Dover; but here again confirmation is lacking. Legally there was nothing wrong in Burns’s action. France and England were still officially at peace, though their relations were steadily growing tenser. Nevertheless, from the practical viewpoint of a government employee with a dependent family it was a gesture of almost criminal recklessness. The government has never yet existed which looked benevolently upon manifestations of revolutionary sympathies among its servants, and before many months had passed Burns had good reason to be frightened.