powerful of them commenced the diet by saying,--"We have been summoned
hither, M'Aulay, to consult of weighty matters concerning the King's
affairs, and those of the state; and we crave to know by whom they are
to be explained to us?"

M'Aulay, whose strength did not lie in oratory, intimated his wish
that Lord Menteith should open the business of the council. With great
modesty, and at the same time with spirit, that young lord said, "he
wished what he was about to propose had come from some person of better
known and more established character. Since, however, it lay with him
to be spokesman, he had to state to the Chiefs assembled, that those who
wished to throw off the base yoke which fanaticism had endeavoured to
wreath round their necks, had not a moment to lose. 'The Covenanters,'"
he said, "after having twice made war upon their sovereign, and having
extorted from him every request, reasonable or unreasonable, which
they thought proper to demand--after their Chiefs had been loaded with
dignities and favours--after having publicly declared, when his Majesty,
after a gracious visit to the land of his nativity, was upon his
return to England, that he returned a contented king from a contented
people,--after all this, and without even the pretext for a national
grievance, the same men have, upon doubts and suspicions, equally
dishonourable to the King, and groundless in themselves, detached a
strong army to assist his rebels in England, in a quarrel with which
Scotland had no more to do than she has with the wars in Germany. It was
well," he said, "that the eagerness with which this treasonable purpose
was pursued, had blinded the junta who now usurped the government of
Scotland to the risk which they were about to incur. The army which they
had dispatched to England under old Leven comprehended their veteran
soldiers, the strength of those armies which had been levied in Scotland
during the two former wars--"