Parliament, members to vote for the condemnation of the prisoner. This statement may be false; but, however that may be, Mr. Hallam must, we think, admit, that it will ever form a serious drawback from William's reputation, that he did not resist, instead of abetting, the virulence of parliamentary faction upon this occasion.

The massacre of Glenco reflects still darker discredit upon the memory of William III. This atrocity has been succinctly and correctly described by Macpherson :

An action of unexampled barbarity disgraced, in Scotland, the government of William, in the commencement of the year 1692. In the preceding August, in consequence of the pacification with the Highlanders, a proclamation of indemnity had been issued to such insurgents as should take the oaths to the king and queen on or before the last day of December. The chiefs of the few tribes who had been in arms for James complied, soon after, with the proclamation, except Macdonald, of Glenco; and even he failed in submitting within the limited time more from accident than design. In the end of December he came to Colonel Hill, who commanded the garrison in Fort William, to take the oaths of allegiance to the government. Hill having furnished Macdonald with a letter to Sir Colin Campbell, sheriff of the county of Argyle, directed him to repair immediately to Inverary, to make his submission in a legal manner before that magistrate. The way to Inverary lay across almost impassable mountains. The season was extremely rigorous, and the whole country covered with a deep So eager, however, was Macdonald to take the oaths before the limited time should expire, that though the road lay within half a mile of his own house, he would not stop to visit his family. After various obstructions, he arrived at Inverary. The time was elapsed. The sheriff hesitated to receive his submission; but Macdonald prevailed over his scruples with importunities, and even with tears.

snow.

Sir John Dalrymple, afterwards Earl of Stair, a man of profligate principles, attended King William, as secretary of state for Scotland, He took advantage of Macdonald's neglecting to take the oaths within the time prescribed. He procured from the king a warrant of military execution against him and his whole tribe. As a mark of his own eagerness, or to save Dalrymple, William signed the warrant, both above and below, with his own hand. The secretary, in letters expressive of a brutal ferocity of mind, urged the military officers who commanded in the Highlands, to execute their orders with the utmost rigour. Campbell, of Glenlyon, a captain in the Earl of Argyle's regiment, and two subalterns, were ordered, with one hundred and twenty men, to repair to Glenco on the 1st of February. Campbell being uncle to young Macdonald's wife, was received by the father with friendship and hospitality. The men were treated in the houses of his tenants with free quarters and kind entertainment. Till the 13th of February the troops lived in good humour and familiarity with the

VOL, XXXVII. NO. LXXIII.

S

the people. The officers on the very night of the massacre passed the evening, and played at cards, in Macdonald's house. In the night, Lieutenant Lindsay, with a party of soldiers, called in a friendly manner at his door. He was instantly admitted. Macdonald, as he was rising from his bed to receive his guest, was shot dead behind his back with two bullets. His wife had already put on her clothes, but she was stripped naked by the soldiers, who tore the rings off her fingers with their teeth.

The slaughter now became general. To prevent the pity of the soldiers to their hosts, their quarters had been changed the night before. Neither age nor infirmity was spared. Some women, in defending their children, were killed. Boys imploring mercy were shot by officers on whose knees they hung. In one place, nine persons, as they sat enjoying themselves at table, were shot dead by the soldiers. The assassins are even said to have made a sport of death. At Inveriggen, in Campbell's own quarters, nine men were first bound by the soldiers, then shot at intervals, one by one. Near forty persons were massacred by the troops. Several, who fled to the mountains, perished by famine and the inclemency of the season. Those who escaped owed their lives to a tempestuous night. Lieutenant-Colonel Hamilton, who had the charge of the execution from Dalrymple, was on his march with four hundred men, to occupy all the passes which led from the valley of Glenco. He was obliged to stop by the severity of the weather, which proved the safety of the unfortunate tribe. He entered the valley the next day. He laid all the houses in ashes, and carried away all the cattle and spoil, which were divided among the officers and soldiers.'

All Europe, as well as Britain, was shocked at the particulars of this impolitic, as well as inhuman and barbarous, massacre. The rigour of the warrant, the circumstances of its execution, the mask of friendship under which an unsuspecting and unarmed people were butchered by soldiers, could scarcely be exaggerated by the enemies of William, or extenuated by his friends. Various excuses have been offered for the king's conduct on this memorable occasion. It is alleged that he was deceived and betrayed by his minister but to this it is a sufficient reply, that he trusted, employed, and rewarded that minister afterwards. It has also been contended, that from his slow habits of transacting business he had signed the warrant among other papers without inquiry: but in answer to this it must be stated, that the warrant for the massacre of Glenco, instead of being signed by the king, and countersigned in the usual form by his minister, was both signed and countersigned by William himself. This appears to furnish conclusive evidence that he deliberately took upon himself the responsibility of an action which his minister, from prudence, or some other. cause, declined officially to sanction. The clamour excited by

this atrocity was so loud, that the king and his friends became alarmed. With the view of breaking its force, William was, therefore, advised to appoint commissioners to inquire into the particulars. The inquiry answered the purpose of its projectors by occasioning delay; the intensity of public feeling gradually relaxed; and when at length the report of the commissioners confirmed, in every particular, the dreadful story detailed by Macpherson, great care was taken to throw the blame upon Dalrymple and the inferior actors in the tragedy. The king, however, had now recovered from the alarm into which he had been thrown by the first burst of British feeling; the report of the commissioners was quietly suppressed; Dalrymple was rewarded with new proofs of his master's favour; and the most prominent and active among the military executioners of the unarmed and defenceless inhabitants of that unhappy glen were not only protected, but promoted.

Every candid reader will, we think, admit that the prejudices which have hitherto existed, and which we venture to predict will ever continue to exist in this country against king William's memory, do not spring from the calumnies with which his political opponents are alleged to have sullied the stream of history,' but from those innate principles which impel every Englishman to despise ungenerous duplicity, and abhor cruelty.

But we must conclude. To pursue this Constitutional History through all its misrepresentations, and the whole sophistry of its special pleading, would require a work of equal bulk. Enough has been done to exhibit its design and character; ex pede;—Mr. Hallam is no Hercules, and the foot is a cloven one.

It is not necessary for us to dwell upon the hostility to the principle of hereditary succession, which is, on every occasion, displayed by this historian; nor to adduce further proofs of the ill-will with which he regards the ecclesiastical part of our constitution; and which he manifests with so much animosity, and so little prudence, that he must have calculated very largely upon the malevolence and the ignorance of his readers. Nor need we bring forward more examples of the disposition which seems to delight in detracting from the Good and the Great; nor of opinions which tend to the subversion of all legitimate authority, and which in their consequences would place all government upon Hobbes's foundation, leaving it no other support than military force. The disagreeable temper of the book would alone subtract much from the pleasure to be derived from the general ability which it displays, and the even tenour of its plain, strong, perspicuous style. Well, indeed, would it be if the spirit were as English as the language: well, even, if want of generosity, want of candour, and want of feeling

260

Hallam's Constitutional History of England.

were its worst faults. But in no English writer who makes the slightest pretensions to morality and religion, have we seen the abominable doctrine so openly maintained, that the end justifies the means, and that conspiracy, treason, and rebellion, are to be treated as questions of expediency, laudable if they succeed, and only imprudent if they are undertaken without a sufficient likelihood of success !. ; Unto thee,

Let thine own times like an old story be,'

is the advice which Donne gives to him who would derive wisdom from the course of passing events. A writer of contemporary history could take no better motto. Mr. Hallam has proceeded upon a system precisely the reverse of this; and carried into the history of the past, not merely the maxims of his own age, as infallible laws by which all former actions are to be tried, but the spirit and the feeling of the party to which he has attached himself, its acrimony and its arrogance, its injustice and its ill-temper.

ART. VIII.1. Personal Narrative of Travels in the United States and Canada, in 1826, illustrated by plates, with Remarks on the Present State of the American Navy. By Lieutenant the Honourable Fred. Fitzgerald de Roos, Royal Navy. London. 1827. 8vo.

2. North America and the United States as they are. London. 8vo. 1827.

THE Honourable Frederick Fitzgerald de Roos is evidently a

very young man, and, of course, but little experienced as a writer; yet we are willing to hail his modest volume as a pledge for something of a higher cast when next he sends to press the result of any of his peregrinations. Some of our fastidious brethren, we understand, have been rather hard upon him for publishing a book at all, from such slender materials as, they say, could by possibility be collected in the course of a month's tour, of which month a whole week was passed on the sea; but if the book itself be good, and found to convey facts not known before, or to correct what was but imperfectly known, we ought, in common courtesy, to look at the shortness of time in no other light than as a proof of the activity and industry of the traveller—more particularly as we are not aware that any of his statements have been refuted.

In the super-abundance of English travellers through the United States, such as the Fowlers, the Fearons, and the Fauxes,

whose

*

whose observations and statements, though meant to be complimentary, leave an impression which is anything but favourable to the general aspect of the country itself, or to its inhabitants, we are still in want of a clear, expanded, and intelligent view of this great and growing republic from the pen of a gentleman -of one capable of examining into the character of men and things, with an enlightened and unprejudiced mind. We had hoped that this hiatus would be filled up by some one of the four gentlemen of rank and admitted talent, who some two years ago crossed the Atlantic, and traversed the greater part of the United States, for the express purpose, as we have understood, of satisfying themselves on the spot, as to the manners and character of the people; their civil, religious, and moral institutions; the state and resources of the country; the internal improvements by canals and roads; the state of the navy; the national feeling towards this country, which has generally been considered as any thing but friendly; and, in short, on all such matters as could interest the moralist, the philosopher, the political economist, and the statesman.

The want which we have been lamenting is certainly not supplied by Mr. de Roos; but we have the best-founded hope that it soon will be by that intelligent and scientific naval officer, shrewd observer, and very pleasing writer, Captain Basil Hall, who, we understand, proceeded some time ago into the United States, for the purpose, as the black man said of Captain Tuckey,' to take walk, and make book ;'—and a good book, we do not hesitate to say, he will make on his return. We have only to wish that the flattering reception, which it is said he has everywhere met with in that country, and the extraordinary manner in which he has been féted, may not have had an influence (and what amiable man is unlikely to be influenced by kind attentions?) in causing our agreeable captain to see things couleur de rose. In the meantime, we shall endeavour to supply a few sketches of detached subjects, relating chiefly to points on which neither Mr. de Roos nor the anonymous gentleman who professes to delineate North America and the United States as they are,' have afforded us much information.

With regard to the author of the latter work, we collect, from his peculiar idiom, and certain hints which he has dropped, that he is one of those Germans whose ancestors emigrated, in great numbers, from the Palatinate in 1710, and frequently in large bodies subsequent to that period; who, in

*The Honourable Mr. Stanley, the Honourable Mr. Wortley, Mr. Denison, and Mr. Labouchere.

fact,