with the proceedings of the Whig ministry, and the Scots nation looked on the Union as an oppression of the most grievous kind. To an adventurous Prince a fairer opportunity could not have been given for asserting his pretensions; but the Chevalier de St George possessed no spirit of enterprise, for although his standard was raised in Scotland, to which almost all the Highland chiefs crowded, yet the incapacity of the Earl of Marr to direct the campaign, and his own irresolution, ruined his interests, and involved in it that of many families of high rank and honour. Notwithstanding the failure of this enterprise, Prince Charles Edward was induced to make an attempt in 1745, which was attended with circumstances that give it rather the appearance of romance than true history. With a handful of hardy mountaineers he not only discomfited two armies of the government, but made himself master of all Scotland, marched into the heart of England, and struck terror into the capital; and when, from the overwhelming force that surrounded him, he was obliged to retreat, he did so without loss, in the middle of winter, inflicting a severe chastisement on the advanced guard of his pursuers. When we reflect on these actions, we are compelled to admire the courage, the military ta lent, the patience, and the fortitude of the leader, -the honour, the gallant daring, and the unsubdued spirit of the army which accompanied him. And when at last his fortunes and his hopes were dissipated by a single battle, and he was seeking refuge in dens and caverns from his eager pursuers, with a great price set on his head, exposed to every hardship, no Highlander was found base enough to betray him, but with the most disinterested fidelity, relieved his wants, even at the hazard of their own destruction. A history of these periods, therefore, embraces very interesting topics, and although the Editor is aware of his incompetence for the task, yet he has been at no small pains to collect facts from every source within his reach, to render the Work as correct and circumstantial as possible. The time has happily gone by when to pity the misfortunes of the Stuart family was looked on as disaffection, and the operation of the best feelings of the heart construed into disloyalty. The liberality of the present age disdains such trammels, and rising above narrow prejudices, does not withhold its praise from the brave men who sacrificed their lives and fortunes to their principles, however mistaken they may now be considered. TRANSACTIONS IN SCOTLAND, During the years 1715-16. འ་་ཧ་་་་་་་་ SOME time before the close of the last session of the first Tory Parliament (which determined on the 16th July, 1713), a motion was made, and a bill brought into the House of Lords, by some of our Scottish Jacobite members, for dissolving the Union, by this means to ingratiate themselves with the people, who complained of the burdensome taxes they are thereby made liable to pay, and on purpose to procure the favour of such as had right to vote in the next election, for their being elected members of the following Parliament, wherein they doubted not to perfect their scheme for a Plan of the Tories to cut off the Protestant Succession. NEW RESTORATION. That this artifice might be the more successful on the part of the Jacobites, they branded the Whig members as the only cause why that motion did not then take, and assured their Jacobite friends here, that they would certainly carry it through if they were members of the next Parliament, as attested by their letters, wherein they desired that they might make use of this argument in order to procure them vates. But that this was only a calumny on the Whig members, on purpose to render them contemptible, will appear from the following account of the mat、 ter of fact, transcribed from a voucher that can with safety be depended on. "In a meeting of the whole Scots Lords and Commons, then at London, they came unanimously to this measure; that they would push the dissolution of the Union to the utmost; and till this was obtained, in the most sofemn manner they engaged to one another, (as one man, without distinction) to oppose whatever party should set themselves up against them, in every vote, whatever should be the nature of it; and that they should try the state of our nation, first in the House of Lords, by moving for leave to bring in a bill for dissolving the Union, which was done, and a day appointed for it. Our English friends told them they inclined to put no hardship on Scotland, and if the Scots would but give them reasonable satisfac tion for the security of the Protestant succession, |