This event put an end to all thoughts of civil war. The gathering which had been planned for the summer never took place. Lochiel, even if he had been willing, was not able to sustain any longer the falling cause. He had been laid on his bed by a mishap which would alone suffice to show how little could be effected by a confederacy of the petty kings of the mountains. At a consultation of the Jacobite leaders, a gentleman from the Lowlands spoke with severity of those sycophants who had changed their religion to curry favour with King James. Glengarry was one of those people who think it dignified to suppose that every body is always insulting them. He took it into his head that some allusion to himself was meant. "I am as good a Protestant as you." he cried, and added a word not to be patiently borne by a man of spirit. In a moment both swords were out. Lochiel thrust himself between the combatants, and, while forcing them asunder, received a wound which was at first believed to be mortal.760So effectually had the spirit of the disaffected clans been cowed that Mackay marched unresisted from Perth into Lochaber, fixed his head quarters at Inverlochy, and proceeded to execute his favourite design of erecting at that place a fortress which might overawe the mutinous Camerons and Macdonalds. In a few days the walls were raised; the ditches were sunk; the pallisades were fixed; demiculverins from a ship of war were ranged along the parapets, and the general departed, leaving an officer named Hill in command of a sufficient garrison. Within the defences there was no want of oatmeal, red herrings, and beef; and there was rather a superabundance of brandy. The new stronghold, which, hastily and rudely as it had been constructed, seemed doubtless to the people of the neighbourhood the most stupendous work that power and science united had ever produced, was named Fort William in honour of the King.761By this time the Scottish Parliament had reassembled at Edinburgh. William had found it no easy matter to decide what course should be taken with that capricious and unruly body. The English Commons had sometimes put him out of temper. Yet they had granted him millions, and had never asked from him such concessions as had been imperiously demanded by the Scottish legislature, which could give him little and had given him nothing. The English statesmen with whom he had to deal did not generally stand or serve to stand high in his esteem. Yet few of them were so utterly false and shameless as the leading Scottish politicians. Hamilton was, in morality and honour, rather above than below his fellows; and even Hamilton was fickle, false and greedy. "I wish to heaven," William was once provoked into exclaiming, "that Scotland were a thousand miles off, and that the Duke of Hamilton were King of it. Then I should be rid of them both."After much deliberation William determined to send Melville down to Edinburgh as Lord High Commissioner. Melville was not a great statesman; he was not a great orator; he did not look or move like the representative of royalty; his character was not of more than standard purity; and the standard of purity among Scottish senators was not high; but he was by no means deficient in prudence or temper; and he succeeded, on the whole, better than a man of much higher qualities might have done.
During the first days of the Session, the friends of the government desponded, and the chiefs of the opposition were sanguine. Montgomery's head, though by no means a weak one, had been turned by the triumphs of the preceding year. He believed that his intrigues and his rhetoric had completely subjugated the Estates. It seemed to him impossible that, having exercised a boundless empire in the Parliament House when the Jacobites were absent, he should be defeated when they were present, and ready to support whatever he proposed. He had not indeed found it easy to prevail on them to attend: for they could not take their seats without taking the oaths. A few of them had some slight scruple of conscience about foreswearing themselves; and many, who did not know what a scruple of conscience meant, were apprehensive that they might offend the rightful King by vowing fealty to the actual King. Some Lords, however, who were supposed to be in the confidence of James, asserted that, to their knowledge, he wished his friends to perjure themselves; and this assertion induced most of the Jacobites, with Balcarras at their head, to be guilty of perfidy aggravated by impiety.762It soon appeared, however, that Montgomery's faction, even with this reinforcement, was no longer a majority of the legislature.
For every supporter that he had gained he had lost two. He had committed an error which has more than once, in British history, been fatal to great parliamentary leaders. He had imagined that, as soon as he chose to coalesce with those to whom he had recently been opposed, all his followers would imitate his example. He soon found that it was much easier to inflame animosities than to appease them. The great body Of Whigs and Presbyterians shrank from the fellowship of the Jacobites. Some waverers were purchased by the government; nor was the purchase expensive, for a sum which would hardly be missed in the English Treasury was immense in the estimation of the needy barons of the North.763 Thus the scale was turned; and, in the Scottish Parliaments of that age, the turn of the scale was every thing;the tendency of majorities was always to increase, the tendency of minorities to diminish.
