 History of England, CHAPTER XIII. The violence of revolutions is generally proportioned to the degree of the maladministration which has produced them. It is therefore not strange that the Government of Scotland, having been during many years far more oppressive and corrupt than the Government of England, should have fallen with a far heavier ruin. The movement against the last king of the House of Stuart was in England conservative and Scotland destructive. The English complained not of the law but of the violation of the law. They rose up against the First Magistrate merely in order to assert the supremacy of the law. They were, for the most part, strongly attached to the Church established by law. Even in applying that extraordinary remedy to which an extraordinary emergency compelled them to have recourse, they deviated as little as possible from the ordinary methods prescribed by the law. The convention which met at Westminster, though summoned by irregular rits, was constituted on the exact model of a regular parliament. No man was invited to the upper house whose right to sit there was not clear. The knights and burgesses were chosen by those electors who would have been entitled to choose the members of a House of Commons called under the Great Seal. The franchises of the forty-chilling freeholder, of the householder paying Scott and Lott, of the burgaged tenant, of every liveryman of London, of the master of arts of Oxford, were respected. The sense of the constituent bodies was taken with as little violence on the part of mobs, with as little trickery on the part of returning officers as at any general election of that age. When at length the estates met, their deliberations were carried on with perfect freedom and in strict accordance with ancient forms. There was indeed, after the first flight of James, an alarming anarchy in London and in some parts of the country. But that anarchy nowhere lasted longer than forty-eight hours. From the day on which William reached St. James's, not even the most unpopular agents of the fallen government, not even the ministers of the Roman Catholic Church, had anything to fear from the fury of the populace. In Scotland the course of events was very different. The law itself was a grievance, and James had perhaps incurred more unpopularity by enforcing it than by violating it. The church established by law was the most odious institution in the realm. The tribunals had pronounced some sentences so phlogicious, the Parliament had passed some acts so oppressive, that, unless those sentences and those acts were treated as nullities, it would be impossible to bring together a convention commanding the public respect and expressing the public opinion. It was hardly to be expected, for example, that the Whigs, in this day of their power, would endure to see their hereditary leader, the son of a martyr, the grandson of a martyr, excluded from the Parliament house in which nine of his ancestors had stayed at Earls of Argyle, and excluded by a judgment on which the whole kingdom cried shame. Still less was it to be expected that they would suffer the election of members for counties and towns to be conducted according to the provisions of the existing law. For under the existing law no elector could vote without swearing that he renounced the Covenant, and that he acknowledged the royal supremacy in matters ecclesiastical. Such an oath no rigid Presbyterian could take. If such an oath had been exacted, the constituent bodies would have been merely small knots of preletists. The business of devising securities against oppression would have been left to the oppressors, and the great party which had been most active in affecting the revolution would, in an assembly sprung from the revolution, have had not a single representative. William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws of Scotland that scrupulous respect which he had wisely and righteously paid to the laws of England. It was absolutely necessary that he should determine by his own authority how that convention which was to meet at Edinburgh should be chosen, and that he should assume the power of annulling some judgments and some statutes. He accordingly summoned to the Parliament House several lords who had been deprived of their honors by sentences which the general voice loudly condemned as unjust, and he took on himself to dispense with the act which deprived Presbyterians of the elective franchise. The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shires and bergs fell on Whig candidates. The defeated party complained loudly of foul play, of the rudeness of the populace, and of the partiality of the presiding magistrates, and these complaints were in many cases well founded. It is not under such rulers as Lauderdale and Dundee that nations learn justice and moderation. Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling so long and so severely compressed exploded with violence. The heads in the hands of the martyred Whigs were taken down from the gates of Edinburgh, carried in procession by great multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid in the earth with solemn respect. It would have been well if the public enthusiasm had manifested itself in no less praiseworthy form. Unhappily, throughout a large part of Scotland, the clergy of the established church were, to use the phrase then common, rabbled. The morning of Christmas Day was fixed for the commencement of these outrages, for nothing disgusted the rigid Covenanter more than the reverence paid by the preletist to the ancient holidays of the church. That such reverence may be carried to an absurd extreme is true. But a philosopher may perhaps be inclined to think the opposite extreme not less absurd, and may ask why religion should reject the aid of associations which exist in every nation sufficiently civilized to have a calendar, and which are found by experience to have a powerful and often a salutary effect. The Puritan, who was, in general, but too ready to follow precedents and analogies drawn from the history and the jurisprudence of the Jews, might have found in the Old Testament quite as clear warrant for keeping festivals in honour of great events as for assassinating bishops and refusing quarter to captives. He certainly did not learn from his master, Calvin, to hold such festivals in abhorrence, for it was in consequence of the strenuous exertions of Calvin that Christmas was, after an interval of some years, again observed by the citizens of Geneva. But there had arisen in Scotland Calvinists who were to Calvin what Calvin was to laud. To these austere fanatics a holiday was an object of positive disgust and hatred. They long continued in their solemn manifestos to reckon it among the sins which would one day bring down some fearful judgment on the land that the court of session took a vacation in the last week of December. On Christmas Day, therefore, the Covenanters held arm musters by concert in many parts of the western shires. Each band marched to the nearest manse and sacked the cellar and larder of the minister, which at that season were probably better stock than usual. The priest of Bale was reviled and insulted, sometimes beaten, sometimes ducked. His furniture was thrown out of the windows, his wife and children turned out of doors in the snow. He was then carried to the market place, and exposed during some time as a malifactor. His gown was torn to shreds over his head, and if he had a prayer-book in his pocket it was burned, and he was dismissed with the charge, never as he valued his life, to officiate in the parish again. The work of reformation, having been thus completed, the reformers locked up the church and departed with the keys. In justice to these men it must be owned that they had suffered such oppression as may excuse though it cannot justify their violence, and that, though they were rude even to brutality, they do not appear to have been guilty of any intentional injury to life or limb. The disorder spread fast. In Ayrshire, Clydesdale, Nithisdale, Anondale, every parish was visited by these turbulent zealots. About two hundred curates, so the Episcopal parish priests were called, were expelled. The graver covenanters, while they applauded the fervor of their riotous brethren, were apprehensive that proceedings so irregular might give scandal, and learned with a special concern, that here and there an achon had disgraced the good cause by stooping to plunder the Canaanites whom he ought only to have smitten. A general meeting of ministers and elders was called for the purpose of preventing such discreditable excesses. In this meeting it was determined that, for the future, the ejection of the established clergy should be performed in a more ceremonious manner. A form of notice was drawn up and served on every curate in the western lowlands who had not yet been rabbled. This notice was simply a threatening letter, commanding him to quit his parish peaceably, on pain of being turned out by force. The Scottish bishops in Great Dismay sent the Dean of Glasgow to plead the cause of their persecuted church at Westminster. The outrageous committed by the covenanters were in the highest degree offensive to William, who had in the south of the island protected even Benedictines and Franciscans from insult and spoliation. But though he had, at the request of a large number of the noblemen and gentleman of Scotland, taken on himself provisionally the executive administration of that kingdom, the means of maintaining order there were not at his command. He had not a single regiment north of the Tweed, or indeed within many miles of that river. It was vain to hope that mere words would quiet a nation which had not in any age been very amenable to control, and which was now agitated by hopes and resentments, such as great revolutions, following great depressions, naturally and gender. A proclamation was, however, put forth, directing that all people should lay down their arms, and that, till the convention should have settled the government, the clergy of the established church should be suffered to reside on their cures without molestation. But this proclamation, not being supported by troops, was very little regarded. On the very day after it was published at Glasgow, the venerable cathedral of that city, almost the only fine church of the Middle Ages which stands uninjured in Scotland, was attacked by a crowd of Presbyterians from the meeting-houses, with whom were mingled many of their fiercer brethren from the hills. It was a Sunday, but to rabble a congregation of proletists was held to be a work of necessity in mercy. The worshipers were dispersed, beaten and pelted with snowballs. It was indeed asserted that some wounds were inflicted with much more formidable weapons. End of CHAPTER XIII, PART II Edinburgh, the seat of government, was in a state of anarchy. The castle which commanded the whole city was still held for James by the Duke of Gordon. The common people were generally Whigs. The College of Justice, a great forensic society composed of judges, advocates, writers to the signet and solicitors, was the stronghold of Torreism, for a rigid test had during some years excluded Presbyterians from all the departments of the legal profession. The lawyers, some hundreds in number, formed themselves into a battalion of infantry and for a time effectually kept down the multitude. They paid, however, so much respect to Williams' authority as to disband themselves when his proclamation was published. But the example of obedience which they had set was not imitated. Scarcely had they laid down their weapons when Coven enters from the West, who had done all that was to be done in the way of pelting and hustling the curates of their own neighbourhood, came dropping into Edinburgh, by tens and twenties, for the purpose of protecting, or if need should be, of overawing the convention. Glasgow alone sent four hundred of these men. It could hardly be doubted that they were directed by some leader of great weight. They showed themselves little in any public place, but it was known that every cellar was filled with them, and it might well be apprehended that, at the first signal, they would pour forth from their caverns and appear armed round the Parliament House. It might have been expected that every patriotic and enlightened Scotchman would have earnestly desired to see the agitation appeased, and some government established which might be able to protect property and to enforce the law. An imperfect settlement which could be speedily made might well appear to such a man preferable to a perfect settlement which must be the work of time. Just at this moment, however, a party, strong both in numbers and inabilities, raised a new and most important question which seemed not unlikely to prolong the interregnum till the autumn. This party maintained that the estates ought not immediately to declare William and Mary, king and queen, but to propose to England a treaty of union and to keep the throne vacant till such a treaty could be concluded on terms advantageous to Scotland. It may seem strange that a large portion of a people whose patriotism exhibited often in a heroic and sometimes in a comic form has long been proverbial should have been willing, nay impatient, to surrender an independence which had been, through many ages, dearly prized and manfully defended. The truth is that the stubborn spirit which the arms of the Plantagenets and Tudors had been unable to subdue had begun to yield to a very different kind of force. Custom houses and tariffs were rapidly doing what the carnage of Falkirk and Halladon, of Flodden and of Pinky, had failed to do. Scotland had some experience of the effects of a union. She had, near forty years before, been united to England on such terms as England, flushed with conquest, chose to dictate. That union was inseparably associated in the minds of the vanquished people with defeat and humiliation, and yet even that union, cruelly as it had wounded the pride of the Scots, had promoted their prosperity. Cromwell, with wisdom and liberality rare in his age, had established the most complete freedom of trade between the dominant and the subject country. While he governed, no prohibition, no duty impeded the transit of commodities from any part of the island to any other. His navigation laws imposed no restraint on the trade of Scotland. A scotch vessel was at liberty to carry a scotch cargo to Barbados, and to bring the sugars of Barbados into the port of London. The rule of the protector, therefore, had been propitious to the industry and to the physical well-being of the Scottish people. Hating him and cursing him, they could not help thriving under him, and often during the administration of their legitimate princes, looked back with regret to the golden days of the usurper. The restoration came, and changed everything. The Scots regained their independence, and soon began to find that independence had its discomfort as well as its dignity. The English Parliament treated them as aliens and as rivals. A new navigation act put them on almost the same footing with the Dutch. High duties, and in some cases, prohibitory duties, were imposed on the products of Scottish industry. It is not wonderful that a nation eminently industrious, shrewd and enterprising, a nation which, having been long kept back by a sterile soil and a severe climate, was just beginning to prosper in spite of these disadvantages, and which found its progress suddenly stopped, should think itself cruelly treated. Yet there was no help. Retaliation was impossible. The sovereign, even if he had the wish, had not the power to bear himself evenly between his large and his small kingdom, between the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue of a million and a half, and the kingdom from which he drew an annual revenue of little more than sixty thousand pounds. He dared neither to refuse his assent to any English law injurious to the trade of Scotland, nor to give his assent to any scotch law injurious to the trade of England. The complaints of the scotch, however, were so loud that Charles, in 1667, appointed commissioners to arrange the terms of a commercial treaty between the two British kingdoms. The conferences were soon broken off, and all that passed while they continued proved that there was only one way in which Scotland could obtain a share of the commercial prosperity which England at that time enjoyed. The scotch must become one people with the English. The parliament which had hitherto sat at Edinburgh must be incorporated with the parliament which sat at Westminster. The sacrifice could not but be painfully felt by a brave and haughty people who had, during 12 generations, regarded the southern domination with deadly aversion, and whose hearts still swelled at the thought of the death of Wallace and the triumphs of Bruce. There were doubtless many punctilious patriots who would have strenuously opposed a union, even if they could have foreseen that the effect of a union would be to make Glasgow a greater city than Amsterdam, and to cover the dreary Lothians with harvests and woods, neat farmhouses, and stately mansions. But there was also a large class which was not disposed to throw away great and substantial advantages in order to preserve mere names and ceremonies, and the influence of this class was such that, in the year 1670, the scotch parliament made direct overtures to England. The King undertook the office of mediator, and negotiators were named on both sides, but nothing was concluded. The question, having slept during 18 years, was suddenly revived by the revolution, different classes, impelled by different motives, concurred on this point, with merchants eager to share in the advantages of the West Indian trade, were joined active and aspiring politicians who wished to exhibit their abilities in a more conspicuous theatre than the Scottish Parliament House, and to collect riches from a more copious source than the Scottish Treasury. The cry for union was swelled by the voices of some artful Jacobites who merely wished to cause discord and delay, and who hoped to attain this end by mixing up with the difficult question which it was the special business of the Convention to settle, another question more difficult still. It is probable that some who disliked the ascetic habits and rigid discipline of the Presbyterians wished for a union as the only mode of maintaining prelacy in the northern part of the island. In a united parliament the English members must greatly preponderate, and in England the bishops were held in high honour by the great majority of the population. The Episcopal Church of Scotland, it was plain, rested on a narrow basis and would fall before the first attack. The Episcopal Church of Great Britain might have a foundation broad and solid enough to withstand all assaults. Whether in 1689 it would have been possible to affect a civil union without a religious union may well be doubted, but there can be no doubt that a religious union would have been one of the greatest calamities that could have befall on either kingdom. The union accomplished in 1707 has indeed been a great blessing both to England and to Scotland, but it has been a blessing because, in constituting one state, it left two churches. The political interest of the contracting parties was the same, but the ecclesiastical dispute between them was one which admitted of no compromise. They could therefore preserve harmony only by agreeing to differ. Had there been an amalgamation of the hierarchies there never would have been an amalgamation of the nations. Successive Mitchell's would have fired at successive sharps. Five generations of clever houses would have butchered five generations of Cameroons. Those marvellous improvements which have changed the face of Scotland would never have been affected. Plains now rich with harvests would have remained barren moors. Waterfalls which now turn the wheels of immense factories would have resounded in a wilderness. New Lanark would still have been a sheepwalk and grannock a fishing hamlet. What little strength Scotland could under such a system have possessed must, in an estimate of the resources of Great Britain, have been not added but deducted. So encumbered our country never could have held either in peace or in war a place in the first rank of nations. We are unfortunately not without the means of judging of the effect which may be produced on the moral and physical state of a people by establishing in the exclusive enjoyment of riches and dignity a church loved and reverenced only by the few and regarded by the many with religious and national aversion. One such church is quite burden enough for the energies of one empire. But these things which to us who have been taught by a bitter experience seemed clear were by no means clear in 1689, even to very tolerant and enlightened politicians. In truth the English low churchmen were if possible more anxious than the English high churchmen to preserve episcopacy in Scotland. It is a remarkable fact that Burnett who was always accused of wishing to establish the Calvinistic discipline in the south of the island incurred great unpopularity among his own countrymen by his efforts to uphold prelacy in the north. He was doubtless in error but his error is to be attributed to a cause which does him no discredit. His favorite object, an object unattainable indeed yet such as might well fascinate a large intellect and a benevolent heart has long been an honorable treaty between the Anglican church and the nonconformists. He thought it most unfortunate that one opportunity of concluding such a treaty should have been lost at the time of the restoration. It seemed to him that another opportunity was afforded by the revolution. He and his friends were eagerly pushing forward Nottingham's comprehension bill and were flattering themselves with vain hopes of success. But they felt that there could hardly be a comprehension in one of the two British kingdoms unless there were also a comprehension in the other. Concession must be purchased by concession. If the Presbyterian pertinaciously refused to listen to any terms of compromise where he was strong, it would be almost impossible to obtain for him liberal terms of compromise where he was weak. Bishops must therefore be allowed to keep their seas in Scotland in order that divines not ordained by bishops might be allowed to hold rectories and canonaries in England. Thus the cause of the Episcopalians in the north and the cause of the Presbyterians in the south were bound up together in a manner which might well perplex even a skillful statesman. It was happy for our country that the momentous question which excited so many strong passions and which presented itself in so many different points of view was to be decided by such a man as William. He listened to Episcopalians, to Latitudinarians, to Presbyterians, to the Dean of Glasgow who pleaded for the apostolic succession to Burnett who represented the danger of alienating the Anglican clergy, to Carstairs who hated prelacy with the hatred of a man whose thumbs were deeply marked by the screws of preletists. Surrounded by these eager advocates William remained calm and impartial. He was indeed eminently qualified by his situation as well as by his personal qualities to be the umpire in that great contention. He was the king of a prelatical kingdom. He was the prime minister of a Presbyterian republic. His unwillingness to offend the Anglican church of which he was the head and his unwillingness to offend the reformed churches of the continent which regarded him as a champion divinely sent to protect them against the French tyranny, balanced each other, and kept him from leaning unduly to either side. His conscience was perfectly neutral for it was his deliberate opinion that no form of ecclesiastical polity was of divine institution. He dissented equally from the School of Loud and from the School of Cameron, from the men who held that there could not be a Christian church without bishops, and from the men who held that there could not be a Christian church without synods. Which form of government should be adopted was in his judgment a question of mere expediency. He would probably have preferred a temper between the two rival systems, a hierarchy in which the chief spiritual functionaries should have been something more than moderators and something less than prelites. But he was far too wise a man to think of settling such a matter according to his own personal tastes. He determined therefore that if there was on both sides a disposition to compromise, he would act as mediator. But if it should prove that the public mind of England and the public mind of Scotland had taken the plie strongly in opposite directions, he would not attempt to force either nation into conformity with the opinion of the other. He would suffer each to have its own church, and would content himself with restraining both churches from persecuting nonconformists, and from encroaching on the functions of the civil magistrate. The language which he held to those Scottish Episcopalians who complained to him of their sufferings and implored his protection was well weighed and well guarded, but clear and ingenuous. He wished, he said, to preserve, if possible, the institution to which they were so much attached, and to grant at the same time entire liberty of conscience to that party which could not be reconciled to any deviation from the Presbyterian model. But the bishops must take care that they did not, by their own rashness and obstinacy, put it out of his power to be of any use to them. They must also distinctly understand that he was resolved not to force on Scotland by the sword a form of ecclesiastical government which she detested. If, therefore, it should be found that prelacy could be maintained only by arms, he should yield to the general sentiment, and should merely do his best to obtain for the Episcopalian minority permission to worship God in freedom and safety. End of Chapter 13, Part 2, read by Kara Schellenberg on January 7th, 2008, in San Diego, California. History of England, Chapter 13, Part 3. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of England from the Assession of James II by Thomas Bavington Macaulay, Chapter 13, Part 3. It is not likely that, even if the Scottish bishops had, as William recommended, done all that meekness and prudence could do to conciliate their countrymen, Episcopacy could, under any modification, have been maintained. It was indeed asserted by writers of that generation and has been repeated by writers of our generation that the Presbyterians were not, before the Revolution, the majority of the people in Scotland. But in this assertion there is an obvious fallacy. The effective strength of sex is not to be ascertained merely by counting heads. An established church, a dominant church, a church which has the exclusive possession of civil honors and emoluments will always rank among its nominal members, multitudes who have no religion at all, multitudes who, though not destitute of religion, attend little to theological disputes and have no scruple about conforming to the mode of worship which happens to be established, and multitudes who have scruples about conforming but whose scruples have yielded to worldly motives. On the other hand, every member of an oppressed church is a man who has a very decided preference for that church, a person who, in the time of Diocletian, joined in celebrating the Christian mysteries, might reasonably be supposed to be a firm believer in Christ. But it would be a very great mistake to imagine that one single Pontiff or augur in the Roman Senate was a firm believer in Jupiter. In Mary's reign, everybody who attended the secret meetings of the Protestants was a real Protestant, but hundreds of thousands went to Mass who, as appeared before she had been dead a month, were not real Roman Catholics. If, under Kings of the House of Steward, when a Presbyterian was excluded from political power and from the learned professions, was daily annoyed by informers, by tyrannical magistrates, by Lysentius Dragoons, and was in danger of being hanged if he heard a sermon in the open air, the population of Scotland was not very unequally divided between Episcopalians and Presbyterians. The rational inference is that more than nineteen-twentieths of those Scotchmen whose conscious was interested in the matter were Presbyterians, and not one Scotchman in twenty was decidedly and on conviction an Episcopalian. Against such odds the bishops had but little chance, and whatever chance they had made haste to throw away, some of them because they sincerely believed that their allegiance was still due to James, others probably because they apprehended that William would not have the power, even if he had the will to serve them, and that nothing but a counter revolution in the state could avert a revolution in the church. As the new King of Scotland could not be at Edinburgh during the sitting of the Scottish Convention, a letter from him to the estates was prepared with great skill. In this document he professed warm attachment to the Protestant religion but gave no opinion touching those questions about which Protestants were divided. He had observed, he said, with great satisfaction that many of the Scottish nobility and gentry with whom he had conferred in London were inclined to a union of the two British kingdoms. He was sensible how much such a union would conduce to happiness of both, and he would do all in his power in his power towards the accomplishing of so good a work. It was necessary that he should allow a large discretion to his confidential agents at Edinburgh. The private instruction with which he furnished those persons could not be minute, but were highly judicious. He charged them to ascertain to the best of their power the real sense of the convention, and to be guided by it. They must remember that the first object was to settle the government. To that object every other object even the union might have to be postponed. A treaty between two independent legislatures, distant from each other several days journey, must necessarily be a work of time, and the throne could not safely remain vacant while the negotiations were pending. It was therefore important that his Majesty's agents should be on their guard against the arts of persons who, under pretense of promoting the union, might really be contriving only to prolong the interregnum. If the convention should be bent on establishing the Presbyterian form of church government, William desired that his friends would do all in their power to prevent the triumphant sect from retaliating what had suffered. The person by whose advice William appears to have been at this time chiefly guided as to scotch politics was a scotchman of great abilities and attainments. Sir James Dalrymple of Stair, the founder of a family eminently distinguished at the bar, on the bench, in the Senate, in diplomacy, in arms, and in letters, but distinguished also by misfortunes and misdeeds which have furnished poets and novelists with material for the darkest and most heart-rending tales. Already Sir James had been in mourning for more than one strange and terrible death. One of his sons had died by poison. One of his daughters had poignarded her bridegroom on the wedding night. One of his grandsons had in boyish sport been slain by another. And some of the superstitious vulgar believed that calamities so portentious were the consequences of some connection between the unhappy race and the powers of darkness. Sir James had a rye neck, and he was reproached with this misfortune as if it had been a crime, and was told that it marked him out as a man doomed to the gallows. His wife, a woman of great ability, art and spirit, was popularly named the Witch of Endor. It was gravely whom she hated, and that she had been seen in the likeness of a cat seated on the cloth of state by the side of the Lord High Commissioner. The man, however, over whose roof so many curses appeared to hang, did not, as far as we can now judge, fall short of that very low standard of morality which was generally attained by politicians of his age and nation. In force of mind and extent of knowledge he was superior to them all. In his youth he had borne arms, he had then been a professor of philosophy, he had then studied law, and had become by general acknowledgement the greatest jurist that his country had produced. In the days of the protectorate he had been a judge. After the restoration he had made his peace with the royal family, had sat in the privy council, and had presided with unrivaled ability in the court of session. He had doubtless borne a share in many unjustifiable acts, but there were limits which he never passed. He had a wonderful power of giving to any proposition which it suited him to maintain, a plausible aspect of legality, and even of justice, and this power he frequently abused. But he was not, like many of those among whom he lived, impudently and unscriptulously servile. Shame or conscience generally restrained him from committing any bad action for which his rare ingenuity could not frame a specious defense, and he was seldom in his place at the council board when anything outrageously unjust or cruel was to be done. His moderation at length gave offence to the court. He was deprived of his high office and found himself in so disagreeable a situation that he retired to Holland. There he employed himself in correcting the great work on jurisprudence which has preserved his memory fresh down to our own time. In his banishment he tried to gain the favour of his fellow exiles, who naturally regarded him with suspicion. He protested, and perhaps with truth, that his hands were pure from the blood of the persecuted covenitors. He made a high profession of religion, prayed much, and observed weekly days of fasting and humiliation. He even consented, after much hesitation, to assist with his advice and his credit the unfortunate enterprise of Argyle. When that enterprise had failed a prosecution was instituted at Edinburgh against Dalrymple, and his estates would doubtless have been confiscated, had they not been saved by an artifice which subsequently became common among the politicians of Scotland. His eldest son and heir apparent, John, took the side of the government, supported the dispensing power, declared against the test, and accepted the place of Lord Advocate, when Sir George McKenzie, after holding out through ten years of foul drudgery, at length showed signs of flagging. The services of the younger Dalrymple were rewarded by a remission of the forfeiture which the offences of the elder had incurred. Those services, indeed, were not to be despised. For Sir John, though inferior to his father in depth and extent of legal learning, was no common man. His knowledge was great and various, his parts were quick, and his eloquence was singularly ready and graceful. To sanctity he made no pretensions. Indeed, Episcopalians and Presbyterians agreed in regarding him as a little better than Anathias. During some months Sir John at Edinburgh affected to condemn the disloyalty of his unhappy parents, Sir James, and Sir James at Leiden told his Puritan friends how deeply he lamented the wicked compliances of his unhappy child, Sir John. The revolution came and brought a large increase of wealth and honors to the House of Stare. The son promptly changed sides and cooperated ably and zealously with the father. Sir James established himself in London for the purpose of giving advice to William on Scotch affairs. Sir John's post was in the Parliament House at Edinburgh. He was not likely to find any equal among the debaters there, and was prepared to exert all his powers against the dynasty which he had lately served. By the large party which was zealous for the Calvinistic Church government, John Dalrymple was regarded with incurable distrust and dislike. It was therefore necessary that another agent should be employed to manage that party. Such an agent was George Melville, Lord Melville, a nobleman connected by affinity with the unfortunate Monmouth, and with that Leslie who had unsuccessfully commanded the Scotch army against Cromwell at Dunbar. Melville had always been accounted a wig and a Presbyterian. Those who speak of him most favourably have not ventured to ascribe to him eminent intellectual endowments or exalted public spirit. But he appears from his letters to have been by no means deficient in that homely prudence the want of which has often been fatal to men of brighter genius and of pure virtue. That prudence had restrained him from going very far in opposition to the tyranny of the stewards, but he had listened while his friends talked about resistance, and therefore, when the Rye House plot was discovered, thought it expedient to retire to the Continent. In his absence he was accused of treason and was convicted on evidence which would not have satisfied any impartial tribunal. He was condemned to death, his honors and lands were declared forfeit, his arms were torn with contumely out of the Herald's book, and his domain swelled the estate of the cruel and rapacious Perth. The fugitive, meanwhile, with characteristic weariness, lived quietly on the Continent, and discounted the unhappy projects of his kinsmen Monmouth, but cordially approved of the enterprise of the Prince of Orange. Illness had prevented Melville from sailing with the Dutch expedition, but he arrived in London a few hours after the new sovereigns had been proclaimed there. William instantly sent him down to Edinburgh in the hope it should seem that the Presbyterians would be disposed to listen to moderate councils proceeding from a man who was attached to their cause, and who had suffered for it. Melville's second son, David, who had inherited through his mother the title of Earl of Levin, and who had acquired some military experience in the service of the elector of Brandenburg, had the honor of being the bearer of a letter from the new King of Scotland to the Scottish Convention. James had entrusted the conduct of his affairs in Scotland to John Graham, Viscount Dundee, Colin Lindsay, Earl of Balcorus. Dundee had commanded a body of Scottish troops which had marched into England to oppose the Dutch, but he had found, in the inglorious campaign which had been fatal to the dynasty of Stuart, no opportunity of displaying the courage and military skill which those who most detest his merciless nature allow him to have possessed. He lay with his forces not far from Watford, when he was informed that James had fled from Whitehall, and that Feversham had ordered all a royal army to disband. The Scottish regiments were thus left without pay or provision in the midst of a foreign and indeed a hostile nation. Dundee, it is said, wept with grief and rage. Soon, however, more cheering intelligence arrived from various quarters. William wrote a few lines to say that, if the Scots would remain quiet he would pledge his honor for their safety, and some hours later it was known that James had returned to his capital. Dundee repaired instantly to London. There he met his friend Balcorus, who had just arrived from Edinburgh. Balcorus, a man distinguished by his handsome person and by his accomplishments, had, in his youth, affected the character of a patriot, but had deserted the popular cause, had accepted a seat in the privy council, had become a tool of Perth and Melford, and had been one of the commissioners who were appointed to execute the office of treasurer when Queensbury was disgraced for refusing to betray the interests of the Protestant religion. Dundee and Balcorus went together to Whitehall and had the honor of accompanying James in his last walk, up and down the Mall. He told them that he intended to put his affairs in Scotland under their management. You, my Lord Balcorus, must undertake the civil business, and you, my Lord Dundee, shall have a commission for me to command the troops. The two noblemen vowed that they would prove themselves deserving of his confidence, and disclaimed all thought of making their peace with the Prince of Orange. On the day following James left Whitehall forever, and the Prince of Orange arrived at St. James's. Both Dundee and Balcorus swelled the crowd which thronged to greet the deliverer, and were not ungraciously received. Both were well known to him. Dundee had served under him on the Continent, and the first wife of Balcorus had been a lady of the House of Orange, and had worn, on her wedding day, a superb pair of emerald earrings, the gift of her cousin the Prince. The Scottish wigs, then assembled in great numbers at Westminster, earnestly pressed William to prescribe by name four or five men who had, during the evil times, borne a conspicuous part in the proceedings of the Privy Council at Edinburgh. Dundee and Balcorus were particularly mentioned. But the Prince had determined that, as far as his power extended, all the past should be covered with a general amnesty, and absolutely refused to make any declarations which would drive to despair even the most guilty of his uncle's servants. Balcorus went repeatedly to St. James's, had several audiences of William, professed deep respect for his highness, and owed that King James had committed great errors, but would not promise to concur in a vote of deposition. William gave no sign of displeasure but said at parting, Take care, my lord, that you keep within the law, for if you break it you must expect to be left to it. Dundee seems to have been less ingenious. He employed the mediation of Burnett, opened a negotiation with St. James's, declared himself willing to acquiesce in the new order of things, obtained from William a promise of protection, and promised him return to live peaceably. Such credit was given to his professions that he was suffered to travel down to Scotland under the escort of a troop of cavalry. Without such an escort, the man of blood, whose name was never mentioned but with a shudder at the hearth of any Presbyterian family, would at that conjuncture have had but a perilous journey through Berwickshire and the Lothians. February was drawing to a close when Dundee and Balcorus reached Edinburgh. They had some hope that they might be at the head of a majority in the Convention. They therefore exerted themselves vigorously to consolidate and animate their party. They assured the rigid royalists, who had a scruple about sitting in an assembly convoked by a usurper, that the rightful king particularly wished no friend of hereditary monarchy to be absent. More than one waiverer was kept steady by being assured in confident terms that a speedy restoration was inevitable. Gordon had determined to surrender the castle and had begun to remove his furniture, but Dundee and Balcorus prevailed on him to hold out some time longer. They informed him that they had received from St. Germain's full powers to adjourn the Convention to Stirling, and that if things went ill at Edinburgh those powers would be used. CHAPTER XIII. At length the 14th of March, the day fixed for the meeting of the estates, arrived, and the Parliament House was crowded. Nine prelates were in their places. When Argyle presented himself, a single lord protested against the admission of a person whom a legal sentence passed in due form and still unreversed had deprived of the honours of the peerage. If this objection was overruled by the general sense of the assembly, when Melville appeared no voice was raised against his admission. The Bishop of Edinburgh officiated his chaplain and made it one of his petitions that God would help and restore King James. It soon appeared that the general feeling of the Convention was by no means in harmony with this prayer. The first matter to be decided was the choice of a President. The Duke of Hamilton was supported by the Whigs, the Marcus of Athel by the Jacobites. Neither candidate possessed and neither deserved the entire confidence of his supporters. Hamilton had been a privy counsellor of James, had borne apart in many unjustifiable acts, and had offered but a very cautious and languid opposition to the most daring attacks on the laws and religion of Scotland. Not till the Dutch guards were at Whitehall had he ventured to speak out. Then he had joined the victorious party and had assured the Whigs that he had pretended to be their enemy only in order that he might, without incurring suspicion, act as their friend. Athel was still less to be trusted. His abilities were mean, his temper false, pusillanimous, and cruel. In the late reign he had gained a dishonourable notoriety by the barbarous actions of which he had been guilty in Argelshire. He had turned with a turn of fortune, and had paid servile court to the Prince of Orange, but had been coldly received and had now, from mere mortification, come back to the party which he had deserted. Neither of the rival nobleman had chosen to stake the dignities and lands of his house on the issue of the contention between the rival kings. The eldest son of Hamilton had declared for James, and the eldest son of Athel for William, so that, in any event, both Coronets and both Estates were safe. But in Scotland the fashionable notions touching political morality were lax, and the aristocratical sentiment was strong. The Whigs were therefore willing to forget that Hamilton had lately sate in the Council of James. The Jacobites were equally willing to forget that Athel had lately fond on William. In political inconsistency those two great lords were far indeed from standing by themselves, but in dignity and power they had scarcely an equal in the assembly. Their dissent was eminently illustrious. Their influence was immense. One of them could raise the Western Lowlands, the other could bring into the field an army of northern mountaineers. Round these chiefs, therefore, the hostile factions gathered. The votes were counted, and it appeared that Hamilton had a majority of forty. The consequence was that about twenty of the defeated party instantly passed over to the victors. At Westminster such a defection would have been thought strange, but it seems to have caused little surprise at Edinburgh. It is a remarkable circumstance that the same country should have produced in the same age the most wonderful specimens of both extremes of human nature. No class of men mentioned in history has ever adhered to a principle with more inflexible pertinacity than was found among the Scotch Puritans. Fine and imprisonment, the sheers and the branding iron, the boot, the thumbscrew and the gallows could not extort from the stubborn Covenanter one evasive word on which it was possible to put a sense inconsistent with his theological system. Even in things indifferent he would hear of no compromise, and he was but too ready to consider all who recommended prudence and charity as traitors to the cause of truth. On the other hand the Scotchmen of that generation who made a figure in the Parliament House and in the Council Chamber were the most dishonest and unblushing time-servers that the world has ever seen. The English marveled alike at both classes. There were indeed many stout-hearted nonconformists in the South, but scarcely any who in obstinacy, pugnacity and hardy-hood could bear a comparison with the men of the School of Cameron. There were many naivish politicians in the South, but few so utterly destitute of morality, and still fewer so utterly destitute of shame as the men of the School of Lauderdale. Perhaps it is natural that the most callous and impudent vice should be found in the near-neighborhood of unreasonable and impracticable virtue. Where enthusiasts are ready to destroy or to be destroyed for trifles magnified into importance by a squeamish conscience it is not strange that the very name of conscience should become a byword of contempt to cool and shrewd men of business. The majority, reinforced by the crowd of deserters from the minority, proceeded to name a committee of elections. Fifteen persons were chosen and it soon appeared that twelve of these were not disposed to examine severely and to the regularity of any proceeding of which the result had been to send up a wig to the Parliament House. The Duke of Hamilton is said to have been disgusted by the gross partiality of his own followers, and to have exerted himself, but with little success, to restrain their violence. Before the estates proceeded to deliberate on the business for which they had met, they thought it necessary to provide for their own security. They could not be perfectly at ease while the roof under which they sat was commanded by the batteries of the castle. A reputation was therefore sent to inform Gordon that the convention required him to evacuate the fortress within twenty-four hours and that if he complied, his past conduct should not be remembered against him. He asked a night for consideration. During that night his wavering mind was confirmed by the exhortations of Dundee and Balcarus. On the morrow he sent an answer drawn in respectful but evasive terms. He was very far, he declared, from meditating harm to the city of Edinburgh. Least of all could he harbour any thought of molesting an august assembly which he regarded with profound reverence. He would willingly give bond for his good behaviour to the amount of twenty thousand pounds sterling. But he was in communication with the government now established in England. He was in hourly expectation of important despatches from that government, and till they arrived he should not feel himself justified in residing his command. These excuses were not admitted. Heralds and Trumpeters were sent to summon the castle in form and to denounce the penalties of high treason against those who should continue to occupy that fortress in defiance of the authority of the estates. Guards were at the same time posted to intercept all communication between the garrison and the city. Two days had been spent in these preludes, and it was expected that on the third morning the great contest would begin. Meanwhile the population of Edinburgh was in an excited state. It had been discovered that Dundee had paid visits to the castle, and it was believed that his exhortations had induced the garrison to hold out. His old soldiers were known to be gathering round him, and it might well be apprehended that he would make some desperate attempt. He, on the other hand, had been informed that the western covenanters who filled the cellars of the city had vowed vengeance on him, and in truth, when we consider that their temper was singularly savage and implacable, that they had been taught to regard the slaying of a persecutor as a duty, that no examples furnished by Holy Ritt had been more frequently held up to their admiration than Ahud, stabbing Eglin, and Samuel, hewing Agag, limb from limb, that they had never heard any achievement in the history of their own country more warmly praised by their favorite teachers than the butchery of Cardinal Beton and of Archbishop Sharp. We may well wonder that a man who had shed the blood of the saints like water should have been able to walk the high street in safety during a single day. The enemy whom Dundee had most reason to fear was a youth of distinguished courage and abilities named William Cleland. Cleland had, when little more than sixteen years old, borne arms in that insurrection which had been put down at Botwell Bridge. He had since disgusted some virulent fanatics by his humanity and moderation. But with the great body of Presbyterians his name stood high, for with the strict morality and ardent zeal of a Puritan he united some accomplishments of which few Puritans could boast. His manners were polished and his literary and scientific attainments respectable. He was a linguist, mathematician, and a poet. It is true that his hymns, odes, ballads, and hudabrastic satires are a very little intrinsic value. But when it is considered that he was a mere boy when most of them were written it must be admitted that they show considerable vigor of mind. He was now at Edinburgh. His influence among the West country wigs assembled there was great. He hated Dundee with deadly hatred, and was believed to be meditating some act of violence. On the fifteenth of March Dundee received information that some of the covenanters had bound themselves together to slay him and Sir George McKinsey, whose eloquence and learning, long prostituted to the service of tyranny, had made him more odious to the Presbyterians than any other man of the gown. Dundee applied to Hamilton for protection, and Hamilton advised him to bring the matter under the consideration of the convention at the next sitting. Before that sitting a person named Crane arrived from France, with a letter addressed by the fugitive king to the estates. The letter was sealed. The bearer, strange to say, was not furnished with a copy for the information of the heads of the Jacobite party, nor did he bring any message, written or verbal, to either of James' agents. Balcaras and Dundee were mortified by finding that so little confidence was reposed in them, and were harassed by painful doubts touching the contents of the document on which so much depended. They were willing, however, to hope for the best. King James could not, situated as he was, be so ill-advised as to act in direct opposition to the counsel and entreaties of his friends. His letter, when opened, must be found to contain such gracious assurances as would animate the royalists and conciliate the moderate wigs. His adherents, therefore, determined that it should be produced. When the convention reassembled on the morning of Saturday the 16th of March, it was proposed that measure should be taken for the personal security of the members. It was alleged that the life of Dundee had been threatened, that two men of sinister appearance had been watching the house where he lodged, and had been heard to say that they would use the dog as he had used them. McKinsey complained that he too was in danger, and, with his usual copiousness and force of language, demanded the protection of the estates. But the matter was likely treated by the majority, and the convention passed on to other business. It was then announced that Crane was at the door of the Parliament House. He was admitted. The paper of which he was in charge was laid on the table. Hamilton remarked that there was, in the hands of the Earl of Levin, a communication from the Prince by whose authority the estates had been convoked. That communication seemed to be entitled to precedence. The convention was of the same opinion, and the well-wayed and prudent letter of William was read. It was then moved that the letter of James should be opened. The wigs objected that it might possibly contain a mandate dissolving the convention. They therefore proposed that, before the seal was broken, the estates should resolve to continue sitting, notwithstanding any such mandate. The Jacobites, who knew no more than the wigs what was in the letter, and were impatient to have it read, eagerly assented. A vote was passed by which the members bound themselves to consider an order which should command them to separate as a nullity, and to remain assembled till they should have accomplished the work of securing the liberty and religion of Scotland. This vote was signed by almost all the lords and gentlemen who were present. Seven out of nine bishops subscribed it. The names of Dundee and Balcarus, written by their own hands, may still be seen on the original roll. Balcarus afterwards excused what, on his principles, was, beyond all dispute, a flagrant act of treason, by saying that he and his friends had, from zeal for their master's interest, concurred in a declaration of rebellion against their master's authority, that they had anticipated the most salutary effects from the letter, and that, if they had not made some concession to the majority, the letter would not have been opened. In a few minutes the hopes of Balcarus were grievously disappointed. The letter from which so much had been hoped and feared was read with all the honours which Scottish parliaments were in the habit of paying to royal communications. But every word carried despair to the hearts of the Jacobites. It was plain that adversity had taught James neither wisdom nor mercy. All was obstinacy, cruelty, insolence. A pardon was promised to those traitors who should return their allegiance within a fortnight. Against all others unsparing vengeance was denounced. Not only was no sorrow expressed for past offenses, but the letter was itself a new offense, for it was written and counter-signed by the apostate Melfort, who was, by the statutes of the realm incapable of holding the office of secretary, and who was not less abhorred by the Protestant Tories than by the Whigs. The hall was in a tumult. The enemies of James were loud and vehement. His friends, angry with him and ashamed of him, saw that it was vain to think of continuing the struggle in the convention. Every vote which had been doubtful when his letter wasn't sealed was now irrecoverably lost. The sitting closed in great agitation. It was Saturday afternoon. There was to be no other meeting till Monday morning. The Jacobite leaders held the consultation and came to the conclusion that it was necessary to take a decided step. Dundee and Balcarus must use the powers with which they had been trusted. The minority must forthwith leave Edinburgh and assemble at Sterling. Athol assented and undertook to bring a great body of his Klansmen from the Highlands to protect the deliberations of the royalist convention. Everything was arranged for the secession, but in a few hours the tardiness of one man and the haste of another ruined the whole plan. The Monday came. The Jacobite lords and gentlemen were actually taking horse for Sterling when Athol asked for a delay of twenty-four hours. He had no personal reason to be in haste. By staying he ran no risk of being assassinated. By going he incurred the risks inseparable from civil war. The members of his party unwilling to separate from him consented to the postponement which he requested, and repaired once more to the Parliament House. Dundee alone refused to stay a moment longer. His life was in danger. The convention had refused to protect him. He would not remain to be a mark for the pistols and daggers of murderers. Balcarus expostulated to no purpose. By departing alone, he said, you will give the alarm and break up the whole scheme. But Dundee was obstinate. Brave as he undoubtedly was, he seems like any other brave men to have been less proof against the danger of assassination than against any other form of danger. He knew what the hatred of the Covenanters was. He knew how well he had earned their hatred, and he was haunted by that consciousness of an expiable guilt, and by that dread of a terrible retribution which the ancient polytheists personified under the awful name of the Furies. His old troopers, the Satan's and Beelzebub's who had shared his crimes, and who now shared his perils, were ready to be the companions of his flight. Meanwhile, the convention had assembled. Mackenzie was on his legs and was pathetically lamenting the hard condition of the estates at once commanded by the guns of a fortress and menaced by a fanatical rabble when he was interrupted by some sentinels who came running from the posts near the castle. They had seen Dundee at the head of fifty horse on the sterling road. That road ran close under the huge rock on which the citadel is built. Gordon had appeared on the ramparts, and had made a sign that he had something to say. Dundee had climbed high enough to hear and to be heard, and was then actually conferring with the Duke. Up to that moment the hatred with which the Presbyterian members of the Assembly regarded the merciless persecutor of their brethren in the Faith had been restrained by the decorous forms of parliamentary deliberation. But now the explosion was terrible. Hamilton himself, who by the acknowledgment of his opponents had hitherto performed the duties of President with gravity and impartiality, was the loudest and fiercest man in the hall. "'It is high time,' he cried, "'that we should look to ourselves. The enemies of our religion and of our civil freedom are mustering all around us, and we may well suspect that they have accomplices, even here. Lock the doors. Lay the keys on the table. Let nobody go out but those lords and gentlemen whom we shall appoint to call the citizens to arms. There are some good men from the West in Edinburgh, men for whom I can answer.' The Assembly raised a general cry of assent. Several members of the majority boasted that they too had brought with them trusty retainers who would turn out at a moment's notice against Claverhouse and his dragoons. All that Hamilton proposed was instantly done. The Jacobites, silent and unresisting, became prisoners. Levin went forth and ordered the drums to beat. The covenanters of Lanarkshire and Ayrshire promptly obeyed the signal. The force thus assembled and indeed no very military appearance, but was amply sufficient to overall the adherence of the House of Stuart. From Dundee nothing was to be hoped or feared. He had already scrambled down the Castle Hill, rejoined his troopers, and galloped westward. Hamilton now ordered the doors to be opened. The suspected members were at liberty to depart. Humbled and broken-spirited, yet glad that they had come off so well, they stole forth through the crowd of stern fanatics which filled the High Street. All thought of secession was at an end. On the following day it was resolved that the kingdom should be put into a posture of defence. The preamble of this resolution contained a severe reflection on the perfidy of the traitor who, within a few hours after he had, by an engagement subscribed with his own hand, bound himself not to quit his post in the convention, had set the example of desertion and given the signal of civil war. All Protestants, from sixteen to sixty, were ordered to hold themselves in readiness to assemble in arms at the first summons, and, that none might pretend ignorance, it was directed that the edict should be proclaimed at all the market crosses throughout the realm. The estates then proceeded to send a letter of thanks to William. To this letter were attached the signatures of many noblemen and gentlemen who were in the interest of the banished king. The bishops, however, unanimously refused to subscribe their names. It had long been the custom of the parliaments of Scotland to entrust the preparation of acts to a select number of members who were designated as the lords of the Articles. In conformity with this usage, the business of framing a plan for the settling of the government was now confided to a committee of twenty-four. Of the twenty-four, eight were peers, eight representatives of counties, and eight representatives of towns. The majority of the committee were wigs, and not a single prelate had a seat. The spirit of the Jacobites, broken by a succession of disasters, was about this time, for a moment revived by the arrival of the Duke of Queensbury from London. His rank was high and his influence was great. His character, by comparison with the characters of those who surrounded him, was fair. When Popory was in the Ascendant, he had been true to the cause of the Protestant Church, and, since Wiggism had been in the Ascendant, he had been true to the cause of hereditary monarchy. Some thought that, if he had been earlier in his place, he might have been able to render important service to the House of Steward. Even now the stimulants which he applied to his torpid and feeble party produced some faint symptoms of returning animation. Means were found of communicating with Gordon, and he was honestly solicited to fire on the city. The Jacobites hoped that, as soon as the cannonballs had beaten down a few chimneys, the estates would adjourn to Glasgow. Time would thus be gained, and the royalists might be able to execute their old project of meeting in a separate convention. Gordon, however, positively refused to take on himself so grave a responsibility on no better warrant than the request of a small cabal. By this time the estates had a guard on which they could rely more firmly than on the undisciplined and turbulent covenanters of the West. A squadron of English men of war from the Thames had arrived in the Firth of Forth. On board were the three Scottish regiments which had accompanied William from Holland. He had, with great judgment, selected them to protect the assembly which was to settle the government of their country, and that no cause of jealousy might be given to a people exquisitely sensitive on points of national honour. He had purged the ranks of all Dutch soldiers and had thus reduced the number of men to about eleven hundred. This little force was commanded by Andrew McKay, a Highlander of noble descent, who had served long on the continent and who was distinguished by courage of the truest temper and by a piety such as his seldom found in soldiers of fortune. The convention passed a resolution appointing McKay General of their forces. When the question was put on this resolution, the Archbishop of Glasgow, unwilling doubtless to be a party to such an usurpation of powers which belonged to the King alone, begged that the prelates might be excused from voting. Devines, he said, had nothing to do with military arrangements. The Fathers of the Church, answered a member very keenly, have been lately favoured with a new light. I myself have seen military orders signed by the most revered person who has suddenly become so scrupulous. There was indeed one difference. Those orders were for derguning Protestants, and the resolution before us is meant to protect us from papists. End of Chapter 13, Part 4. History of England, Chapter 13, Part 5. This is a LibriVox recording. All LibriVox recordings are in the public domain. For more information or to volunteer, please visit LibriVox.org. The History of England, from the Assession of James II, by Thomas Spabbington Macaulay, Chapter 13, Part 5. The arrival of MacKay's troops and the determination of Gordon to remain inactive quelled the spirit of the Jacobites. They had indeed one chance left. They might possibly, by joining with those wigs who were bent on a union with England, have postponed during a considerable time the settlement of the government. A negotiation was actually opened with this view, but was speedily broken off. For it soon appeared that the party which was for James was really hostile to the union, and that the party which was for the union was really hostile to James. As these two parties had no object in common, the only effect of a coalition between them must have been that one of them would have become the tool of the other. The question of the union, therefore, was not raised. Some Jacobites retired to their country seats. Others, though they remained at Edinburgh, ceased to show themselves in the Parliament House. Many passed over to the winning side, and, when at length the resolutions prepared by the twenty-four were submitted to the convention, it appeared that the party which, on the first day of the session, had rallied around Athel, had dwindled away to nothing. The resolutions had been framed, as far as possible, in conformity with the example recently set at Westminster. In one important point, however, it was absolutely necessary that the copy should deviate from the original. The estates of England had brought two charges against James, his misgovernment and his flight, and had, by using the soft word, abdication, evaded, with some sacrifice of verbal precision, the question whether subjects may lawfully depose a bad prince. That question the estates of Scotland could not evade. They could not pretend that James had deserted his post, for he had never, since he came to the throne, resided in Scotland. During many years that kingdom had been ruled by sovereigns who dwelt in another land. The whole machinery of the administration had been constructed on the supposition that the king would be absent, and was therefore not necessarily deranged by that flight which had, in the south of the island, dissolved all government, and suspended the ordinary course of justice. It was only by letter that the king could, when he was at Whitehall, communicate with the council and the parliament at Edinburgh, and by letter he could communicate with them when he was at St. Germain's or at Dublin. The twenty-four were therefore forced to propose to the estates a resolution distinctly declaring that James the seventh had, by his misconduct, forfeited the crown. Many writers have inferred from the language of this resolution that sound political principles had made a greater progress in Scotland than in England. But the whole history of the two countries from the restoration to the union proves this inference to be erroneous. The Scottish estates used plain language, simply because it was impossible for them, situated as they were, to use evasive language. The person who bore the chief part in framing the resolution, and in defending it, was Sir John Dowrymple, who had recently held the High Office of Lord Advocate, and had been an accomplice in some of the misdeeds which he now arraigned with great force of reasoning and eloquence. He was strenuously supported by Sir James Montgomery, member for Ayrshire, a man of considerable abilities but of loose principles, turbulent temper, insatiable cupidity, and implacable malevolence. The Archbishop of Glasgow and Sir George McKenzie spoke on the other side, but the only effect of their oratory was to deprive their party of the advantage of being able to allege that the estates were under duress and that the liberty of speech had been denied to the defenders of hereditary monarchy. When the question was put, Athol, Queensbury, and some of their friends withdrew. Only five members voted against the resolution, which pronounced that James had forfeited his right to the allegiance of his subjects. When it was moved that the Crown of Scotland should be settled as the Crown of England had been settled, Athol and Queensbury reappeared in the hall. They had doubted, they said, whether they could justifiably declare the throne vacant. But since it had been declared vacant, they felt no doubt that William and Mary were the persons who ought to fill it. The convention then went forth in procession to the High Street. Several great nobles, attended by the Lord Provost of the capital and by the heralds, ascended the Octagon Tower from which rose the city cross, surmounted by the Unicorn of Scotland. Hamilton read the vote of the convention, and a king-at-arms proclaimed the new sovereigns with a sound of trumpet. On the same day the estates issued an order that the parochial clergy should, on pain of deprivation, publish from their pulpits the proclamation which had just been read at the city cross, and should pray for King William and Queen Mary. Still the interregnum was not at an end. Though the new sovereigns had been proclaimed, they had not yet been put into possession of the royal authority by a formal tender and a formal acceptance. At Edinburgh, as at Westminster, it was thought necessary that the instrument which settled the government should clearly define and solemnly assert those privileges of the people which the stewards had illegally infringed. A claim of right was therefore drawn up by the twenty-four and adopted by the convention. To this claim, which purported to be merely declaratory of the law as it stood, was added a supplementary paper containing a list of grievances which could be remedied only by new laws. One most important article which we should naturally expect to find at the head of such a list, the convention, with great practical prudence, put in defiance of notorious facts and of unanswerable arguments, placed in the claim of right. Nobody could deny that prelacy was established by active parliament. The power exercised by the bishops might be pernicious, unscriptural, anti-Christian, but illegal it certainly was not, and to pronounce it illegal was to outrage common sense. The Whig leaders, however, were much more desirous to get rid of episcopacy than to prove themselves consummate publicists and logicians. If they made the abolition of episcopacy an article of the contract by which William was to hold the crown, they attained their end, though doubtless in a manner open to much criticism. If, on the other hand, they contented themselves with resolving that episcopacy was a noxious institution which at some future time the legislature would do well to abolish, they might find that their resolution, though unobjectionable in form, was barren of consequences. They knew that William, by no means, sympathized with their disliked bishops, and that, even had he been much more zealous for the Calvinistic model than he was, the relation in which he stood to the Anglican church would make it difficult and dangerous for him to declare himself hostile to a fundamental part of the constitution of that church. If he should become king of Scotland without being fettered by any pledge on this subject, it might well be apprehended that he would hesitate about passing an act which would be regarded with abhorrence by a large body of his subjects in the south of the island. It was therefore most desirable that the question should be settled while the throne was still vacant. In this opinion many politicians concurred, who had no dislike to rochets and meters, but who wished that William might have a quiet and prosperous reign. The Scottish people, so these men reasoned, hated Episcopacy. The English loved it. To leave William any voice in the matter was to put him under the necessity of deeply wounding the strongest feelings of one of the nations which he governed. It was therefore plainly for his own interest that the question, which he could not settle in any manner without incurring a fearful amount of obliquy, should be settled for him by others who were exposed to no such danger. He was not yet sovereign of Scotland. While the interregnum lasted, the supreme power belonged to the estates, and for what the estates might do the preletist of his southern kingdom could not hold him responsible. The elder Dalrymple wrote strongly from London to this effect, and there can be little doubt that he expressed the sentiments of his master. William would have sincerely rejoiced if the Scots could have been reconciled to a modified Episcopacy. But since that could not be, it was manifestly desirable that they should themselves, while there was yet no king over them, pronounce the irrevocable doom of the institution which they abhorred. The convention, therefore, with little debate, as it should seem, inserted in the claim of right a cause declaring that prelacy was an insupportable burden to the kingdom, that it had been long odious to the body of the people, and that it ought to be abolished. Nothing in the proceedings at Edinburgh astonished an Englishman more than the manner in which the estates dealt with the practice of torture. In England torture had always been illegal. In the most servile times the judges had unanimously pronounced it so. Those rulers who had occasionally resorted to it had, as far as was possible, used it in secret, had never pretended that they had acted in conformity with either statute law or common law, and had excused themselves by saying that the extraordinary peril to which the state was exposed had forced them to take on themselves the responsibility of employing extraordinary means of defence. It had, therefore, never been thought necessary by any English parliament to pass any act or resolution touching this matter. The torture was not mentioned in the petition of right, or in any of the statutes framed by the long parliament. No member of the convention of 1689 dreamed of proposing that the instrument, which called the Prince and Princess of Orange to the throne, should contain a declaration against using of racks and thumb-screws for the purpose of forcing prisoners to accuse themselves. Such a declaration would have been justly regarded as weakening rather than strengthening a rule which, as far back as the days of the Plantagenets, had been proudly declared by the most illustrious sages of Westminster Hall to be a distinguishing feature of the English Jewish prudence. In the Scottish claim of right, the use of torture without evidence, or in any ordinary cases, was declared to be contrary to law. The use of torture, therefore, where there was strong evidence and where the crime was extraordinary, was, by the plainest implication, declared to be according to law, nor did the estates mention the use of torture among the grievances which required a legislative remedy. In truth they could not condemn the use of torture without condemning themselves. It had chanced that, while they were employed in settling the government, the eloquent and learned Lord President Lockhart had been foully murdered in a public street through which he was returning from church on a Sunday. The murderer was seized and proved to be a wretch who, having treated his wife barbarously and turned her out of doors, had been compelled by a decree of the Court of Session to provide for her. A savage hatred of the judges by whom she had been protected had taken possession of his mind and had goaded him to a horrible crime and a horrible fate. It was natural that an assassination attended by so many circumstances of aggravation should move the indignation of the members of the Convention. Yet they should have considered the gravity of the conjecture and the importance of their own mission. They, unfortunately, in the heat of passion, directed the magistrates of Edinburgh to strike the prisoner in the boots and named a committee to superintend the operation. But for this unhappy event it is probable that the law of Scotland concerning torture would have been immediately assimilated to the law of England. Having settled the claim of right, the Convention proceeded to revise the coronation oath. When this had been done three members were appointed to carry the instrument of government to London. Argyle, though not in strictness of law appear, was chosen to represent the peers. Sir James Montgomery represented the commissioners of Shires and Sir John Dalrymple the commissioners of towns. The estates then adjourned for a few weeks, having first passed a vote which empowered Hamilton to take such measures as might be necessary for the preservation of the public peace till the end of the interregnum. The ceremony of the inauguration was distinguished from ordinary pageants by some highly interesting circumstances. On the eleventh of May the three commissioners came to the Council Chamber at Whitehall and thence attended by almost all the scotchmen of note who were then in London proceeded to the banqueting house. There William and Mary appeared seated under a canopy. A splendid circle of English nobles and statesmen stood round the throne but the sort of state as committed to a scotch lord and the oath of office was administered after the scotch fashion. Argyle recited the words slowly. The royal pair, holding up their hands towards heaven, repeated after him till they came to the last clause. There William paused. That clause contained a promise that he would root out all heretics and enemies of the true worship of God, and it was notorious that, in the opinion of many scotchmen, not only all Roman Catholics but all Protestant Episcopalians, all Independents, all Baptists and Quakers, all Lutherans, nay, all British Presbyterians who did not hold themselves bound by the solemn league and covenant were enemies of the true worship of God. The king had apprised the commissioners that he could not take this part of the oath without a distinct and public explanation, and they had been authorized by the convention to give such an explanation as would satisfy him. I will not, he now said, lay myself under any obligation to be a persecutor. Neither the words of this oath, said one of the commissioners, nor the laws of Scotland, lay any such obligation on your majesty. In that sense, then, I swear, said William, and desire you all, my lords and gentlemen, to witness that I do so. Even his detractors have generally admitted that on this great occasion he acted with uprightness, dignity, and wisdom. As king of Scotland he soon found himself embarrassed at every step by all the difficulties which had embarrassed him as king of England, and by other difficulties which in England were happily unknown. In the north of the island no class was more dissatisfied with the revolution than the class which owed most to the revolution. The manner in which the convention had decided the question of ecclesiastical polity had not been more offensive to the bishops themselves than to those fiery covenanters who had long, in defiance of sword and carbine, boot and gibbet, worshiped their maker after their own fashion in caverns and on mountaintops. Was there ever, these zealots exclaimed, such a halting between two opinions, such a compromise between the Lord and Baal? The estates ought to have said that Episcopacy was an abomination in God's sight, and that in obedience to his word and from fear of his righteous judgment they were determined to deal with this great national sin and scandal after the fashion of those saintly rulers who of old cut down the groves and demolished the altars of Chemus and Astarte. Unhappily Scotland was ruled not by pious Josiahs but by careless Scaloise. The anti-Christian hierarchy was to be abolished, not because it was an insult to heaven, but because it was felt as a burden on earth, not because it was hateful to the great head of the church, but because it was hateful to the people. Was public opinion, then, the test of right and wrong in religion? Was not the order which Christ had established in his own house to be held equally sacred in all countries and through all ages? And was there no reason for following that order in Scotland except a reason which might be urged with equal force for maintaining prelacy in England, Hungary, and Spain, and Mohammedism in Turkey? Why, too, was nothing said of those covenants which the nation had so generally subscribed and so generally violated? Why was it not distinctly affirmed that the premises set down in those roles were still binding, and would to the end of time be binding on the kingdom? Were these truths to be suppressed from regard for the feelings and interests of a prince who was all things to all men, an ally of the idolatrous Spaniard and of the Lutheran Bane, a Presbyterian at the Hague, and a prelitist at Whitehall? He, like Jelen in ancient times, had doubtless so far done well that he had been the scourge of the idolatrous house of Ahab. But he, like Jelen, had not taken heed to walk in the Divine Law with his whole heart, but had tolerated and practised impieties differing only in degree from those which he had declared himself the enemy. It would have better become godly senators to remonstrate with him on the sin which he was committing by conforming to the Anglican ritual, and by maintaining the Anglican church government than to flatter him by using a phraseology which seemed to indicate that they were as deeply tainted with Erastianism as himself. Many of those who held this language refused to do any act which could be construed into a recognition of the new sovereigns, and would rather have been fired upon by files of musketeers, or tied to stakes within low watermark, than have uttered a prayer that God would bless William and Mary. Yet the king had less to fear from the pernicious adherents of these men to their absurd principles than from the ambition and avarice of another set of men who had no principles at all. It was necessary that he should immediately name ministers to conduct the government of Scotland, and, name who he might, he could not fail to disappoint and irritate a multitude of expectants. Scotland was one of the least wealthy countries in Europe, yet no country in Europe contained a greater number of clever and selfish politicians. The places in the gift of the crown were not enough to satisfy one twentieth part of the place hunters, every one of whom thought that his own services had been preeminent, and that whoever might be passed by he ought to be remembered. William did his best to satisfy these innumerable and insatiable claimants by putting many offices into commission. There were, however, a few great posts which it was impossible to divide. Hamilton was declared Lord High Commissioner in the hope that immense pecuniary allowances, a residence in Holyrood Palace, and a pomp and dignity little less than regal would content him. The Earl of Crawford was appointed President of the Parliament, and it was supposed that this appointment would conciliate the rigid Presbyterians, for Crawford was what they called a Professor. His letters and speeches are, to use his own phraseology, exceedingly savoury. Alone, or almost alone, among the prominent politicians of that time, he retained the style which had been fashionable in the preceding generation. He had a text of the Old Testament ready for every occasion. He filled his dispatches with allusions to Ishmael and Hagar, Hannah and Eli, Elijah, Nehemiah, and Zarababal, and adorned his oratory with quotations from Ezra and Haggai. It is a circumstance strikingly characteristic of the man, and of the school in which he had been trained, that in all the mass of his writing which has come down to us, there is not a single word indicating that he had ever in his life heard of the New Testament. Even in our own time some persons of a peculiar taste have been so much delighted by the rich unction of his eloquence that they have confidently pronounced him a saint. To those whose habit it is to judge of a man rather by his actions than by his words, Crawford will appear to have been a selfish, cruel politician who was not at all the dupe of his own cant, and whose zeal against Episcopal government was not a little wedded by his desire to obtain a grant of Episcopal domains. In excuse for his greediness it ought to be said that he was the poorest noble of a poor nobility, and that before the revolution he was sometimes at a loss for a meal and a suit of clothes.