■WILLIAM AND MAKY,

247

business of devising securities against oppression would have ™ap.been left to the oppressors; and the great party which had been Icsyimost active in effecting the Revolution would, in an assemblysprung from the Revolution, have had-not a single representa-tive. *

William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws ofScotland that scrupulous respect which he had wisely andrighteously paid to the laws of England. It was absolutelynecessary that he should determine by his own authority howthat Convention which was to meet at Edinburgh should bechosen, and that he should assume the power of annulling somejudgments and some statutes. He accordingly summoned tothe parliament house several Lords who had been deprivedof their honours by sentences which the general voice loudlycondemned as unjust; and he took on himself to dispense withthe Act which deprived Presbyterians of the elective franchise.

The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shiresand burghs fell on Whig candidates. The defeated party com- co.iven-plained loudly of foul play, of the rudeness of the populace,and of the partiality of the presiding magistrates; and thesecomplaints were in many cases well founded. It is not undersuch rulers as Lauderdale and Dundee that nations learn justiceand moderation.**

Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling, so nabMinglong and so severely compressed, exploded with violence. EpiscopalThe heads and the hands of the martyred Whigs were taken clerBJ ‘down from the gates of Edinburgh, carried in procession bygreat multitudes to the cemeteries, and laid in the earth withsolemn respect.*** It would have been well if the public

* Balcarras’s Memoirs; Short History of the Revolution in Scotland in aletter from a Scotch gentleman in Amsterdam to his friend inLondon, 1712.

** Balcarras’s Memoirs; Life of James, ii. 341.

*** A Memorial for His Highness the Prince of Orange in relation to theAffairs of Scotland, by two Persons of Quality, 16S9,