possible opportunity of shooting down and massacring any of the
straggling soldiery: the clergy were attacked and driven from their
houses; so that, throughout a considerable portion of Scotland, there
was no security either for property or for life. It is now the fashion
to praise and magnify the Covenanters as the most innocent and
persecuted of men; but those who are so ready with their sympathy,
rarely take the pains to satisfy themselves, by reference to the annals
of the time, of the true character of those men whom they blindly
venerate as martyrs. They forget, in their zeal for religious freedom,
that even the purest and holiest of causes may be sullied and disgraced
by the deeds of its upholders, and that a wild and frantic profession of
faith is not always a test of genuine piety. It is not in the slightest
degree necessary to discuss whether the royal prerogative was at that
time arbitrarily used, or whether the religious freedom of the nation
was unduly curtailed. Both points may be, and indeed are, admitted,--for
it is impossible to vindicate the policy of the measures adopted by the
two last monarchs of the house of Stuart; but neither admission will
clear the Covenanters from the stain of deliberate cruelty.

After the battle of Philiphaugh, the royalist prisoners were butchered
in cold blood, under the superintendence of a clerical emissary, who
stood by rubbing his hands, and exclaiming--"The wark gangs bonnily on!"
Were I to transcribe from the pamphlets before me the list of the
murders which were perpetrated by the country people on the soldiery,
officers, and gentlemen of loyal principles, during the reign of Charles
II., I believe that no candid person would be surprised at the severe
retaliation which was made. It must be remembered that the country was
then under military law, and that the strongest orders had been issued
by the Government to the officers in command of the troops, to use every
means in their power for the effectual repression of the disturbances.