BO 379 inta Lus fair of Glencoe. it was in the sequel productive of onsequences. During the session a sition was made into the affair of and heavy censures passed on the prinactors in that dismal tragedy. The fourth resolution of the report from the commissioners of pre-cognition declared, "that secretary Stair's letters were no ways warranted by, but quite exceeded, the king's instructions; since the said letters, without any insinuation of any method to be taken that might well separate the Glencoe men fcom the rest, did, in place of prescribing a vindication of public justice, order them to be cut off and rooted out in earnest and to purpose, and that suddenly and secretly; which in effect was a barbarous murder.". It is remarkable that Dalrymple, even subsequent to the massacre, did not discover any symptoms of remorse or compassion. On the contrary, his letters and dispatches exhibit astonishing proofs of undiminished rancor and obduracy. March 5, 1692, he writes to colonel Hill-" To take the oath after the day was past did import nothing at all. All that I regret is, that any of the sort got away, and there is a necessity to prosecute them to the uttermost." Again, April 30, from the Hague-" When you do right you need fear nobody. All that can be said is, that in the execution it was neither so full nor so fair as it might have been." 1695. The result of the present elaborate and solemn BOOK II. legislative enquiry was, "that there was nothing in the king's instructions to warrant the committing the said slaughter, even as to the thing itself, and far less as to the manner of it; and that the secretary's letters were no-ways warranted by the king's instructions, which they greatly exceeded." The parliament addressed the king to institute prosecutions against Dalrymple, Hamilton, Duncanson, and Campbell-Levingstone and Hill having votes passed in their favor: but the three latter delinquents being military men acting under military orders, it must have been very difficult to convict them of illegality in their procedure. And it is in vain to deny that the king owed such essential obligations to Dalrymple, by far the most culpable of the number, as to countenance the suspicion that the secretary was upon this occasion too partially screened from public and positive punishment, though he never recovered any share of the royal favor. It is also possible that the king, perceiving the quiet which from that period prevailed in the highlands, had, with the characteristic indifference of a soldier, harboured the opinion that the military execution of Glencoe, abstracted from the abominable concomitant circumstances of barbarity, was a measure founded in political and retributive justice. But the historic investigation of this business terminates in 1695. BOOK II. obscurity; and it would be highly unwarrantable to suffer conjectures to usurp and supply the place of facts. The disastrous event of Glencoe, to dismiss the subject with a few concluding remarks, has ever been regarded as the chief blot in the reign of king William; and by the enemies of that monarch, is still dwelt upon with malignant pleasure, and magnified as if it were a second St. Bartholomew. Yet was the disposition of the king the most adverse in the world to cruelty; and the order signed by him must have originated in quite, opposite motives. Three years had elapsed since the abdication of king James. Every part of the kingdom had long ago submitted to the existing government, some of the highland clans excepted, who, in spite of repeated defeats in the field, and the utter hopelessness of the cause they maintained, still continued their depredations upon the peaceable and loyal inhabitants of the lowlands. Proclamation after proclamation had been issued against them without effect, and every offer of pardon or submission rejected and contemned. The clan of Glencoe had distinguished itself beyond all others by its implacable animosity to the new government, its rapacity, its insolence, and inhumanity. The season of mercy could not endure for ever; the proclamation of pardon recently published was expressly declared to be the last; and if they still persisted in a daring and obstinate defiance of the laws, it might be ad judged necessary, upon the most rational and equitable principles, to make one signal example of severity, and even of terror, in order to secure the permanent peace and tranquillity of the country. But it is morally and historically certain that the ideas of the king extended not beyond that military execution which had been publicly denounced in the late royal proclamation, and which the laws of every nation will in certain circumstances justify. A nocturnal massacre in cold blood, while reposing in full confidence upon the faith of government at their several homes, in their own secluded and peaceful valley, was a catastrophe which could never enter into his imagination*. * "The king," says the contemporary historian Oldmixon, vol. ii. p. 77, “knew nothing of the matter, farther than that military execution was determined against all those highlanders who still stood out in rebellion against his government; which was the case of Glencoe and his men as it lay before his majesty." It is farther to be remarked, that the oath taken by M'Donald had been industriously suppressed by the intervention of Stair, president of the court of justiciary, and father to Dalrymple the secretary; and the certificate of it erased from the lists presented to the privy council. So that the knowledge. of this act of submission was in all probability never suffered to reach the king; who was most artfully and cruelly imposed upon in this transaction, and made the unconscious instrument of the bloody and remorseless revenge of Breadalbane. Vide Laing's History of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 221. BOOK IL 1695. 1695. BOOK IL In the course of the parliamentary investigation of this business, the earl of Breadalbane, who had been committed as a prisoner to the castle of Edinburgh, was brought to the bar of the house to answer to a charge of high treason, it being proved upon him, that, in treating with the highand chiefs, he had professed his adherence to the interest of king James, &c. But he alleged that he had secret orders from king William to say any thing that would give him credit with them.— That he had acted with the permission, at least, of the king cannot be doubted; and a remote day being fixed for his trial, in the interim the parliament was prorogued, and a pardon granted him. Of this nobleman it was said, "that he was as subtile as a serpent, and as slippery as an eel; that he had no attachment of any kind but to his own interest that he was not only Jacobite and Williamite by turns, but both at once; and that he played this double part with so much success in the highland treaty, that he received the thanks of king James for having preserved his people whom he could not succour, and was rewarded by king William for having reconciled to his govern ment those desperadoes whom he found it so difficult to subdue*." State of Ireland. The first session of a new parliament was held this year (1695) in Ireland, by lord Capel, now *RALPH, vol. ii. |