were
carefully avoided, the debts of the crown would be cleared off: there
would be funds available for the support of a large military force; and
that force would soon break the refractory spirit of the nation.

At this crisis an act of insane bigotry suddenly changed the whole
face of public affairs. Had the King been wise, he would have pursued a
cautious and soothing policy towards Scotland till he was master in the
South. For Scotland was of all his kingdoms that in which there was the
greatest risk that a spark might produce a flame, and that a flame might
become a conflagration. Constitutional opposition, indeed, such as he
had encountered at Westminster, he had not to apprehend at Edinburgh.
The Parliament of his northern kingdom was a very different body from
that which bore the same name in England. It was ill constituted: it was
little considered; and it had never imposed any serious restraint on
any of his predecessors. The three Estates sate in one house. The
commissioners of the burghs were considered merely as retainers of the
great nobles. No act could be introduced till it had been approved by
the Lords of Articles, a committee which was really, though not in
form, nominated by the crown. But, though the Scottish Parliament was
obsequious, the Scottish people had always been singularly turbulent and
ungovernable. They had butchered their first James in his bedchamber:
they had repeatedly arrayed themselves in arms against James the
Second; they had slain James the Third on the field of battle: their
disobedience had broken the heart of James the Fifth: they had deposed
and imprisoned Mary: they had led her son captive; and their temper was
still as intractable as ever. Their habits were rude and martial. All
along the southern border, and all along the line between the highlands
and the lowlands, raged an incessant predatory war. In every part of the
country men were accustomed to redress their wrongs by the strong hand.
Whatever loyalty the nation had anciently felt to the Stuarts had cooled
during their long absence. The supreme influence over the public mind
was divided between two classes of malecontents, the lords of the soil
and the preachers; lords animated by the same spirit which had often
impelled the old Douglasses to withstand the royal house, and preachers
who had inherited the republican opinions and the unconquerable spirit
of Knox. Both the national and religious feelings of the populatio