kingdoms deprived
James of any hopes of success, if he trusted merely to the force of his
own state, and had no recourse to foreign powers for assistance: that
the objections attending the introduction of succors from a more potent
monarch, appeared so evident from all the transactions of history, that
they could not escape a person of the king's extensive knowledge; but
there were in the present case several peculiar circumstances, which
ought forever to deter him from having recourse to so dangerous an
expedient: that the French monarch, the ancient ally of Scotland, might
willingly use the assistance of that kingdom against England, but would
be displeased to see the union of these two kingdoms in the person of
James; a union which would ever after exclude him from practising that
policy, formerly so useful to the French, and so pernicious to the
Scottish nation: that Henry, besides, infested with faction and domestic
war, was not in a condition of supporting distant allies, much less
would he expose himself to any hazard or expense, in order to aggrandize
a near kinsman of the house of Guise, the most determined enemies of his
repose and authority: that the extensive power and exorbitant ambition
of the Spanish monarch rendered him a still more dangerous ally to
Scotland; and as he evidently aspired to a universal monarchy in the
west, and had in particular advanced some claims to England as if he
were descended from the house of Lancaster, he was at the same time the
common enemy of all princes who wished to maintain their independence,
and the immediate rival and competitor of the king of Scots: that the
queen by her own naval power and her alliance with the Hollanders, would
probably intercept all succors which might be sent to James from abroad,
and be enabled to decide the controversy in this island, with the
superior forces of her own kingdom, opposed to those of Scotland: that
if the king revived his mother's pretensions to the crown of England, he
must also embrace her religion, by which alone they could be justified;
and must thereby undergo the infamy of abandoning those principles
in which he had been strictly educated; and to which he had hitherto
religiously adhered: that as he would, by such an apostasy, totally
alienate all the Protestants in Scotland and England, he could never
gain the confidence of the Catholics, who would still entertain
reasonable doubts of his sincerity: that by advancing a presen