irtue, he would have thrown up his
commission, would have braved the displeasure of colonel, general, and
Secretary of State, would have incurred the heaviest penalty which
a Court Martial could inflict, rather than have performed the part
assigned to him; and this is perfectly true; but the question is not
whether he acted like a virtuous man, but whether he did that for which
he could, without infringing a rule essential to the discipline of camps
and to the security of nations, be hanged as a murderer. In this case,
disobedience was assuredly a moral duty; but it does not follow that
obedience was a legal crime.

It seems therefore that the guilt of Glenlyon and his fellows was not
within the scope of the penal law. The only punishment which could
properly be inflicted on them was that which made Cain cry out that
it was greater than he could bear; to be vagabonds on the face of the
earth, and to carry wherever they went a mark from which even bad men
should turn away sick with horror.

It was not so with the Master of Stair. He had been solemnly pronounced,
both by the Commission of Precognition and by the Estates of the Realm
in full Parliament, to be the original author of the massacre. That it
was not advisable to make examples of his tools was the strongest reason
for making an example of him. Every argument which can be urged against
punishing the soldier who executes the unjust and inhuman orders of his
superior is an argument for punishing with the utmost rigour of the law
the superior who gives unjust and inhuman orders. Where there can be no
responsibility below, there should be double responsibility above. What
the Parliament of Scotland ought with one voice to have demanded was,
not that a poor illiterate serjeant, who was hardly more accountable
than his own halbert for the bloody work which he had done, should be
hanged in the Grassmarket, but that the real murderer, the most politic,
the most eloquent, the most powerful, of Scottish statesmen, should be
brought to a public trial, and should, if found guilty, die the death of
a felon. Nothing less than such a sacrifice could expiate such a crime.
Unhappily the Estates, by extenuating the guilt of the chief offender,
and, at the same time, demanding that his humble agents should be
treated with a severity beyond the law, made the stain which the
massacre had left on the honour of the nation broader and deeper than
before.

Nor is it possible to acquit