was, on the part of the conspirators, an odious murder, excited the highest indignation of the Government. It was considered as connected with the intrigues and designs of the Jacobites. The magistrates were loudly blamed, though there is now not the slightest doubt that they were perfectly innocent, and a bill was immediately brought into Parliament, containing severe and degrading penalties against the city of Edinburgh. The Lord Advocate manfully withstood the passion of the moment, and concluded one of his speeches in the following words : "Shall, then, the metropolis of Scotland, the residence of such an illustrious race of kings, who made it their greatest glory to dignify this noble city, be stript of her most valuable privileges, her guards, and gates, for the sake of some unknown offenders; and a Scotchman calmly behold the havoc? I glory, my Lords, to withstand so rigorous a procedure, and judge it my greatest honour to stand up in defence of my native country, when it is exposed to loss and infamy." His exertions tended greatly to get the severity originally intended mitigated in the bill which was passed. We have given to this circumstance more attention than it may seem to merit, merely that we may record a fact respecting it, which has very recently come to our knowledge, and which proves that not only were the magistrates and city innocent of the gross outrage committed, but it had no connection whatever with the intrigues and designs of the Jacobites. Very early in the year 1815, a man of the lowest class died in the extremity of old age in a village on the south-east coast of Fife. Immediately before his death, he called his family around him, and said, that he now considered himself at liberty to tell them a secret, which he had faithfully kept from the year 1736. "I was one," said the hoary-headed sinner," of sixteen active young men, who, bound by the most solemn oaths, passed over to Edinburgh, executed Captain Porteous, and returned without without leaving a trace by which one of us could be detected." There is every reason to believe that these wretched conspirators were Puritanical fanatics, educated in that school of villainy and violence, of which the history is preserved and prized in the Cloud of Witnesses. It is melancholy to reflect, that the aged assassin, to whom we refer, remained utterly insensible of his guilt, and considered the bloody transaction in which he had been engaged as a creditable thing. We heard the anecdote related about six weeks after the old man's death, by a gentleman of the same county, of great intelligence and of undoubted veracity, and we have since verified his report by a reference to other other respectable individuals resident in the same neighbourhood. Sir Hew Dalrymple, of North Berwick, having presided over the Court of Session for near 40 years, died in 1737, in extreme old age. The Lord Advocate had been long looked on as his successor; and (as Lord Hardwicke states in his letter) the voice of the country called him to fill the vacant chair. He was appointed Lord President by letter, dated the 21st of June 1737, and, by his conduct in his high station, he amply verified the public judginent. No man, we believe it is the universal sentiment, ever sat in that seat to whom his country owes more; but we cannot enter into any particular details, however interesting and important, of his judicial capacity and conduct. To the qualities which best become the judicial character, the President added those of a liberal, enlightened, and patriotic statesman. Attached, from principle, to the Protestant succession and establishment, he yet felt compassion for those who yielded to the claims of the exiled race. To his influence, authority, and unrequited exertion, is chiefly due the comparatively easy overthrow of the last attempt. Had his views been immediately followed, and his mildness fully exercised, with the necessary exceptions which justice claimed, the feelings and the regrets of jacobitism would have been effectually destroyed much sooner than they were. But to this subject we shall soon refer more particularly. The President was not only a lawyer and a statesman among the very first of his age, and without an equal before or since in his own country, but a serious Christian and a sound divine. His works were published after his death in two volumes, 8vo. They consist of "Thoughts on Religion, natural and revealed;"" Reflections on the Sources of Incredulity, in regard to Religion," and "a Letter to a Bishop, concerning some important Discoveries in Philosophy and Religion," in which he moderately supports the Hutchinsonian interpretation of Scripture. Warburton, in a letter to Hurd, says, "I cannot omit recommending to you the late Lord President Forbes's little posthumous work on Incredulity; it is a little jewel. I knew and venerated the man: oue of the greatest which ever Scotland bred, both as a judge, a patriot, and a Christian." He is said to have read the Bible in Hebrew eight times over; and when intent upon study, he secluded himself for whole days entirely from society. We find a very just and interesting delineation of his character and acquirements in all the departments which occupied his attention in Lord Woodhouselee's Life of Lord Kaims, which is inserted in the Introduction to these Culloden papers, and which we could wish to transfer to our own pages pages if we had room. The President died at Edinburgh of a gradual decay, on the 10th of December 1747. "He was buried in the Grey Friar's church-yard, near his brother; his funeral being attended with all the pomp usual to persons of his elevated rank, but more remarkable for the deep af fliction of every class of people, (among whom his death was reckoned a national misfortune) than all the trappings and outward show of sorrow and magnificence could make it." In 1752, a statue was erected in what is called the outer Parliament-house, in Edinburgh, to this great man's memory, at an expence of 3000l. sterling, by the Faculty of Advocates, executed by Roubilliac, with the following just and striking inscription; Duncano Forbes de Culloden, suprema in Civilibus curiæ Presidi, judici integerrimo, civi optino, priscæ virtatis viro, Facultas Juridica libens posuit, anno postobitam quinto, C. N. 1750. A good history of the rebellion in the year 1745, of its causes, its course, and its consequences, is yet wanting. That by Mr. John Home is a complete abortion. Some valuable materials are furnished by the collection now before us; much might be procured from other sources. Something might yet be gleaned from a few remaining contemporaries, and something more from the evidence of those who were, in their early days, acquainted with the principal agents, or with their immediate connections. The subject did, for a time, occupy the attention of a gentleman every way qualified for the task; and we regret to find that it has been renounced. We can now hear the truth, the whole truth, without passion, and judge of the facts and spirit of those times, with perfect impartiality. The house of Brunswick has now no rival in the affections of the people, and no enemies except among the wretched partizans of a faise philosophy, and the desperate abettors of a spurious liberty, aiming at licentiousness, and leading to despotism. The long, steady, and romantic attachment preserved for the exiled house of Stuart, in Scotland, is a very remarkable fact. When we contrast it with the treatment which the princes of that house experienced from the time of Mary, to their final expulsion from the throne, and the consequences shew how dangerous and disas trous, even in the best circumstances, is a change of dynasty. The ultimate consequences, by the blessing of Providence, have been good and beneficent. It is important, however, to reflect, that such consequences are beyond human controul-that revolution is always a dangerous, even when it is a necessary remedy; and that even our bloodless Revolution, the easiest on so great a scale, and in such circumstances ever accomplished, was fol lowed lowed by many painful struggles, injurious to the country at the time, and ruinous to numerous individuals of great respectability and honour. The contemptible herd of periodical politicians who now assume and disgrace the designation of Whigs, are the enemies of all legitimate government, and circulate their envenomed poison with as much libellous malignity as they dare, even against the house of Brunswick, and particularly against him, who now, in fact, sways the sceptre, and whose regency. has been distinguished by a blaze of glory unequalled in any period of our history. Revolution is their pastime, and the tranquillity of nations their abhorrence. They glory in the disgrace of the house of Stuart, as they gloried in the long degradation' of the house of Bourbon. It is obvious, however, that while they subject the house of Stuart to frequent and malignant dissection, their object is to inculcate and enforce the permanent right of cashiering kings, and to render the rights of sovereigns subservient to the caprice of the vilest of the people. On the principles of these pretended champions of liberty we might even defend the efforts of the partisans of the house of Stuart: they were dissatisfied. "If the people are dissatisfied, they have reason to be so; and, therefore, they have a right to resist, of which the exercise is a mere question of prudence." No government, however excellent, could subsist with such principles generally diffused, for no government can please and gratify all those who are subject to it. Revolution and resist ance may sometimes be necessary; they are, however, never to be laid down as principles of ordinary action. The expulsion of the house of Stuart, and the accession of the house of Hanover, give no countenance to this dangerous and detestable conceit. The house of Hanover is our legitimate dynasty, and now without a rival. Under this dynasty the nation has attained the highest summit of happiness and glory; while the transition, though accomplished in the easiest and most legitimate manner, was yet accompanied or followed by circumstances, which shew, that revolution is always a painful remedy, never to be resorted to lightly, nor contemplated previously, as a legitimate means of redressing what faction may deem even real evils. Still the question is undetermined what was the cause, or what were the causes, of the long attachment which prevailed in Scotland to the exiled family of Stuart? Our quarterly brethren of the north, who are acute metaphysicians, capable of surmounting, or at least of cutting up every difficulty, tell us," it is abundantly clear, that the great majority were directed by principles just as selfish, and by views just as personal, as ever guided men the most prudent of their political proceedings," and there .fore fore they convert the whole, deprived of all its "ideal* 1* gallantray, into plain ordinary political selfishness or ambition." The Scotch system of metaphysics is famous for finding out simple and single principles of action. With a little positive presumption, in which our brethren referred to are never deficient, they clear their way with ease and rapidity through many difficulties, and if they are not always very accurate and seldom very profound, they are, at least, very witty, very wise in their own conceit, and, therefore, very entertaining. The question is one into which we may now enquire with perfect impartiality; and in which our conclusions, whatever conclusions the evidence within our reach may warrant us to make, can neither give offence to the government, nor excite alarm in any liberal minded statesman. This enquiry we cannot make at this time; but a few reflections will shew the rashness of our critical brethren in presuming to form their ultimate judgment from the mere documents in the volume before us, valuable as these are. It is now an unquestionable fact, that William the Third long looked forward to sway the British sceptre; that the folly and violence of James the Second, enabled him to accomplish his object much more easily than he could have hoped; and that his ultimate object was known to comparatively few even in England. It was cautiously concealed for some time, even after he landed; and the final arrangement was matter of some difficulty; for the Whigs of those days were unacquainted with the modern methods of cutting up difficulties by the roots. They wished to preserve themselves and their posterity from Popery and despotism; but they wished also to preserve the constitution, and, so far as was possible, a reverence for hereditary right. That the project of disinheriting James was not at first generally known many facts and circumstances prove. Many plans were pro posed and canvassed; a regency was seriously talked of. William would either be king or nothing. The danger both to church and state was pressing; William's aid was indispensable, and was at length adopted on his own terms, under the lenient fiction of abdication. There is now before us an original letter, addressed to the archbishops and bishops of Scotland (in answer to a letter from them) signed James R. and countersigned Melfort, "given at our Court at Whitehall, the 15th day of November, 1688, &c. :" in which we find the following assertion "We are glad to see that you are far from being of the number of those Spirituall Lords whom the Prince of Orange pretends to * Edin. Rev. No. 51. p. 133. + See Burnett's History of his own Times, folio edit. 1724, p. 811. |