atters" which they contained. The 'De Jure Regni' was
again prohibited in Scotland, in 1664, even in manuscript; and in 1683,
the whole of Buchanan's political works had the honour of being burned by
the University of Oxford, in company with those of Milton, Languet, and
others, as "pernicious books, and damnable doctrines, destructive to the
sacred persons of Princes, their state and government, and of all human
society." And thus the seed which Buchanan had sown, and Milton had
watered--for the allegation that Milton borrowed from Buchanan is
probably true, and equally honourable to both--lay trampled into the
earth, and seemingly lifeless, till it tillered out, and blossomed, and
bore fruit to a good purpose, in the Revolution of 1688.

To Buchanan's clear head and stout heart, Scotland owes, as England owes
likewise, much of her modern liberty. But Scotland's debt to him, it
seems to me, is even greater on the count of morality, public and
private. What the morality of the Scotch upper classes was like, in
Buchanan's early days, is too notorious; and there remains proof
enough--in the writings, for instance, of Sir David Lindsay--that the
morality of the populace which looked up to the nobles as its example and
its guide, was not a whit better. As anarchy increased, immorality was
likely to increase likewise; and Scotland was in serious danger of
falling into such a state as that into which Poland fell, to its ruin,
within a hundred and fifty years after; in which the savagery of
feudalism, without its order or its chivalry, would be varnished over by
a thin coating of French "civilisation," and, as in the case of Bothwell,
the vices of the court of Paris should be added to those of the Northern
freebooter. To deliver Scotland from that ruin, it was needed that she
should be united into one people, strong, not in mere political, but in
moral ideas; strong by the clear sense of right and wrong, by the belief
in the government and the judgments of a living God. And the tone which
Buchanan, like Knox, adopted concerning the great crimes of their day,
helped notably that national salvation. It gathered together, organised,
strengthened, the scattered and wavering elements of public morality. It
assured the hearts of all men who loved the right and hated the wrong;
and taught a whole nation to call acts by their just names, whoever might
be the doers of them. It appealed to the common conscience of men. It
proc