the King of a great breach of duty. It
is, indeed, highly probable that, till he received the report of
his Commissioners, he had been very imperfectly informed as to the
circumstances of the slaughter. We can hardly suppose that he was much
in the habit of reading Jacobite pamphlets; and, if he did read them,
he would have found in them such a quantity of absurd and rancorous
invective against himself that he would have been very little inclined
to credit any imputation which they might throw on his servants. He
would have seen himself accused, in one tract, of being a concealed
Papist, in another of having poisoned Jeffreys in the Tower, in a third
of having contrived to have Talmash taken off at Brest. He would have
seen it asserted that, in Ireland, he once ordered fifty of his wounded
English soldiers to be burned alive. He would have seen that the
unalterable affection which he felt from his boyhood to his death for
three or four of the bravest and most trusty friends that ever prince
had the happiness to possess was made a ground for imputing to him
abominations as foul as those which are buried under the waters of the
Dead Sea. He might therefore naturally be slow to believe frightful
imputations thrown by writers whom he knew to be habitual liars on a
statesman whose abilities he valued highly, and to whose exertions he
had, on some great occasions, owed much. But he could not, after he
had read the documents transmitted to him from Edinburgh by Tweedale,
entertain the slightest doubt of the guilt of the Master of Stair. To
visit that guilt with exemplary punishment was the sacred duty of a
Sovereign who had sworn, with his hand lifted up towards heaven, that he
would, in his kingdom of Scotland, repress, in all estates and degrees,
all oppression, and would do justice, without acceptance of persons,
as he hoped for mercy from the Father of all mercies. William contented
himself with dismissing the Master from office. For this great fault, a
fault amounting to a crime, Burnet tried to frame, not a defence, but an
excuse. He would have us believe that the King, alarmed by finding how
many persons had borne a part in the slaughter of Glencoe, thought
it better to grant a general amnesty than to punish one massacre by
another. But this representation is the very reverse of the truth.
Numerous instruments had doubtless been employed in the work of death;
but they had all received their impulse, directly or indirectl