William Carstares [pp. 581-603]

WILLIAM CARSTARES.
tion, completely ignores the existence of Carstares, in his his tory. Yet both were Scotchmen. Nothing but jealousy car,
explain it. In narrating his interview with the Prince after the
landing at Torbay, in England, at which Carstares was present,
Barnet does not refer to him at all; neither does he menltion the
religious service conducted by Carstares on the shore at the
head of the troops. There is no parallel to this instance of piti able weakness and spite but the studied exclusion of the name
of Hugh Miller, the celebrated editor of the Edinburgh WVitie..ss,
from the history of the "Ten Years' Conflict," by r r. Robeit
Buchanan, the last living representative of Disruption contro versy.
The position of affairs in Great Britain, but especially in
Scotland, had become intolerable in the last years of the Stiu arts. It was strange to see an ancient and civilized kingdom
like Scotland passing back into barbarism and anarchy,
swarming with beggars and desolated by famine, and thousands
escaping for shelter to a new world in the West. The despotism of the Stuarts had driven the Cameronians —now completely separated in religious communion and political management
from the great mass of Presbyterians-to declare war against
the guilty dynasty. In England, art and force had subdued the
people; but in Scotland, while Russell and Sydney, and other
enlightened patriots, were plotting against Charles II., because
his right was forfeited as king, the Cameronians kept waving on
the hill-sides of Scotland the banners which, when descried in
Holland, convinced William that the spirit of freedom and revolution was not extinct. If such cruelties as the Stuarts exercised against the Presbyterians of Scotland were exercised today in any part of Great Britain, a week would not elapse till a
declaration as determined as that of the Cameronians would be
issued and signed by a million hands. Whenever rulers
loose the bonds of civil society, by forgetting all the attributes of humanity, revolution becomes at once defensible, and
upon no other principle is it possible to maintain that civil government can last for a single hour. Yet there are men, like William E. Aytoun and Mark Napier, who execrate and blacken the
memory of theCovenanters, while they hold up to honor the
horde of executioners, like Dalzell and Claverhouse, who became the supple tools of Stuart tyranny. Such conduct is at,
outrage on the first principles of moral justice.
592
[Oct.