cs with the utmost
possible rigour, had proceeded to carry out their mission by inviting a
host of half, if not quite, savage Highlanders to assist them in
quelling the people. This host, numbering, with 2000 regulars and
militia, about 10,000 men, eagerly accepted the invitation, and was let
loose on the south and western districts of Scotland about the beginning
of the year, and for some time ravaged and pillaged the land as if it
had been an enemy's country. They were thanked by the King for so
readily agreeing to assist in reducing the Covenanters to obedience to
"Us and Our laws," and were told to take up free quarters among the
disaffected, to disarm such persons as they should suspect, to carry
with them instruments of torture wherewith to subdue the refractory, and
in short to act very much in accordance with the promptings of their own
desires. Evidently the mission suited these men admirably, for they
treated all parties as disaffected, with great impartiality, and
plundered, tortured, and insulted to such an extent that after about
three months of unresisted depredation, the shame of the thing became so
obvious that Government was compelled to send them home again. They had
accomplished nothing in the way of bringing the Covenanters to reason;
but they had desolated a fair region of Scotland, spilt much innocent
blood, ruined many families, and returned to their native hills heavily
laden with booty of every kind like a victorious army. It is said that
the losses caused by them in the county of Ayr alone amounted to over
11,000 pounds sterling.

The failure of this horde did not in the least check the proceedings of
Sharp or Lauderdale or their like-minded colleagues. They kept the
regular troops and militia moving about the land, enforcing their
idiotical and wicked laws at the point of the sword. We say idiotical
advisedly, for what could give stronger evidence of mental incapacity
than the attempt to enforce a bond upon all landed proprietors, obliging
themselves and their wives, children, and servants, as well as all their
tenants and cottars, with their wives, children, and servants, to
abstain from conventicles, and not to receive, assist, or even speak to,
any forfeited persons, intercommuned ministers, or vagrant preachers,
but to use their utmost endeavours to apprehend all such? Those who
took this bond were to receive an assurance that the troops should not
be quartered on their lands--a ma