God has turned them inside out, and has made it manifest and when their heart is hanging upon this braw, I will not give a gray groat for them and their profession both. "The devil has the ministers and professors of Scotland, now in a sive, and O as he sifts, and O as he riddles, and O as he rattles, and O the chaff he gets; And I fear there be more chaff nor there be good corn, and that will be found among us or all be done: but the soul-confirmed man leaves ever the devil at two more, and he has ay the matter gadged, and leaves ay the devil in the lee side,-Sirs O work in the day of the cross.' The more moderate presbyterian ministers saw with pain and resentment the lower part of their congregation, who had least to lose by taking desperate courses, withdrawn from their flocks, by their more zealous pretenders to purity of doctrine, while they themselves were held up to ridicule, old jog trot professors and chaff-winnowed out and flung away by Satan. They charged the Cameronian preachers with leading the deluded multitude to slaughter at Bothwell, by prophesying a certainty of victory, and dissuading them from accepting the amnesty offered by Monmouth. 'All could not avail,' says Mr. Law, himself a presbyterian minister, 'with M'Cargill, Kidd, Douglas, and other witless men amongst them, to hearken to any proposals of peace. Among others that Douglas, sitting on his horse, and preaching to the confused multitude, told them that they would come to terms with them, and like a drone was always droning on these terms with them: "they would give us a half Christ, but we will have a whole Christ," and such like impertinent speeches as these, good enough to feed those that are served with wind and not with the sincere milk of the word of God.' Law also censures these irritated and extravagant enthusiasts, not only for intending to overthrow the government, but as binding themselves to kill all that would not accede to their opinion, and he gives several instances of such cruelty being exercised by them, not only upon straggling soldiers whom they shot by the way or surprized in their quarters, but upon those who, having once joined them, had fallen away from their principles. Being asked why they committed these cruelties in cold blood, they answered, they were obliged to do it by their sacred bond. Upon these occasions they practised great cruelties, mangling the bodies of their victims that each man might have his share of the guilt. In these cases the Cameronians imagined themselves the direct and inspired executioners of the vengeance of heaven. Nor did they lack the usual incentives of enthusiasm. Peden and others among them set up a claim to the gift of prophecy, though they seldom foretold any thing to the purpose. They detected witches, had bodily encounters with the enemy of mankind in his own shape, or could discover him as, lurking in the disguise of a raven, he inspired the. the rhetoric of a Quaker's meeting. In some cases, celestial guardians kept guard over their field-meetings. At a conventicle held on the Lomond-hills, the Rev. Mr. Blacader was credibly assured, under the hands of four honest men, that at the time the meeting was disturbed by the soldiers, some women who had remained at home, clearly perceived as the form of a tall man, majestic-like, stand in the air in stately posture with the one leg, as it were, advanced before the other, standing above the people all the time of the soldiers shooting.' Unluckily this great vision of the Guarded Mount did not conclude as might have been expected. The divine sentinel left his post too soon, and the troopers fell upon the rear of the audience, plundered and stripped many, and made eighteen pri soners. But we have no delight to dwell either upon the atrocities or absurdities of a people whose ignorance and fanaticism were rendered frantic by persecution. It is enough for our present purpose to observe that the present Church of Scotland, which comprizes so much sound doctrine and learning, and has produced so many distinguished characters, is the legitimate representative of the indulged clergy of the days of Charles II. settled however upon a comprehensive basis. That after the revolution, it should have succeeded episcopacy as the national religion, was natural and regular, because it possessed all the sense, learning, and moderation fit for such a change, and because among its followers were to be found the only men of property and influence who acknowledged presbytery. But the Cameronians continued long as a separate sect, though their preachers were bigoted and ignorant, and their hearers were gleaned out of the lower ranks of the peasantry. Their principle, so far as it was intelligible, asserted that paramount species of presbyterian church-government which was established in the year 1648, and they continued to regard the established church as erastian and time-serving, because they prudently remained silent upon certain abstract and delicate topics, where there might be some collision between the absolute liberty asserted by the church and the civil government of the state. The Cameronians, on the contrary, disowned all kings and government whatsoever, which should not take the Solemn League and Covenant; and long retained hopes of re-establishing that great national engagement, a bait which was held out to them by all those who wished to disturb the government during the reign of William and Anne, as is evident from the Memoirs of Ker of Kersland, and the Negotiations of Colonel Hooke with the jacobites and disaffected of the year. A party so wild in their principles, so vague and inconsistent in their views, could not subsist long under a free and unlimited toleration. They continued to hold their preachings on the hills, VOL. XVI. NO. XXXII. H H but but they lost much of their zeal when they were no longer liable to be disturbed by dragoons, sheriffs, and lieutenants of Militia.— The old fable of the Traveller's Cloak was in time verified, and the fierce sanguinary zealots of the days of Claverhouse sunk into such quiet and peaceable enthusiasts as Howie of Lochgoin, or Old Mortality himself. It is, therefore, upon a race of sectaries who have long ceased to exist, that Mr. Jedediah Cleishbotham has charged all that is odious, and almost all that is ridiculous, in his fictitious narrative; and we can no more suppose any moderate presbyterian involved in the satire, than we should imagine that the character of Hampden stood committed by a little raillery on the person of Ludovic Claxton, the Muggletonian. If, however, there remain any of those sectaries who, confining the beams of the Gospel to the Goshen of their own obscure synagogue, and with James Mitchell, the intended assassin, giving their sweeping testimony against prelacy and popery, The Whole Duty of Man and bordles, promiscuous dancing and the Common Prayer-book, and all the other enormities and backslidings of the time, may perhaps be offended at this idle tale, we are afraid they will receive their answer in the tone of the revellers to Malvolio, who, it will be remembered, was something a kind of Puritan: Doest thou think because thou art virtuous, there shall be no more cakes and ale?— Aye, by Saint Anne, and ginger will be hot in the mouth too.' We intended here to conclude this long article, when a strong report reached us of certain transatlantic confessions, which, if genuine, (though of this we know nothing,) assign a different author to these volumes, than the party suspected by our Scottish correspondents. Yet a critic may be excused seizing upon the nearest suspicious person, on the principle happily expressed by Claverhouse, in a letter to the Earl of Linlithgow. He had been, it seems, in search of a gifted weaver, who used to hold forth at conventicles: 'I sent to seek the webster, (weaver) they brought in his brother for him though he maybe cannot preach like his brother, I doubt not but he is as well principled as he, wherefore I thought it would be no great fault to give him the trouble to go jail with the rest.' : ART. IX.-1. An Appeal to the British Nation on the Treatment experienced by Napoleon Buonaparte in the Island of St. Helena. By M. Santini, Porter of the Emperor's Closet. 2. Official Memoir dictated by Napoleon, being a Letter from Count de Montholon to Sir Hudson Lowe. Fourth Edition, with a Preface. 8vo. pp. 79. London, 1817, 3. A Tour through the Island of St. Helena, &c. with some particulars respecting the Arrival and Detention of Napoleon Buo naparte. naparte. By Captain John Barnes, Town Major, and Civil and Military Surveyor in the Hon. Company's Services on the Island. 12mo. pp. 239. London. 1817. 4. Manuscrit venu de St. Hélène d'une manière inconnue. Troisième Edition. Svo. pp. 151. London. 1817. WE have perused Santini's publication and Montholon's Let ter with considerable satisfaction. Whatever proves the discontent of Buonaparte and his satellites is to us an additional pledge for the peace of the world. The ill humour of one man is the security of millions; and when Buonaparte complains of the treatment he receives, we are satisfied that it is only because he finds his means and opportunities of doing mischief essentially restricted. We wonder, indeed, that he should be so far deceived by the flattery of his followers or his own vanity as to imagine that his complaints would find any sympathy in this part of the world. He should have remembered the epitaph on his predecessor Robespierre, Passant, ne plaigne pas son sort, We do not believe that there is one man in Europe who feels the slightest personal regard for the ex-Emperor: individually he is odious to all parties, at least in France. Talleyrand deposed him, Fouché betrayed him, De Staël and Constant libelled him, Lanjuinais and the moderate republicans feared him, Lainé and the constitutional monarchists hated him; all his Marshals abandoned him; even his own creatures deserted him; Bertrand himself offered to transfer his allegiance to the King; and, what we believe affected Buonaparte more than all the rest, his very cook refused to follow him to St. Helena. But personally despised or hated as he may be, he is not on that account innoxious. He is the representative of the Revolution-the lineal descendant and heir of all the Neckers and Rolands, the Marats and Robespierres, the Tom Paynes and Anarcharsis Cloots, the Talliens and Barrères, the Henriots and the Hoches. All that survives of jacobinism in Europe looks up to him as its child and champion.' The turbulent and disaffected of all nations,— never in any times an inconsiderable number, but after such convulsions as Europe has lately suffered, a very dangerous party,—all turn towards him-he is And however all the various classes and shades of turbulence may differ amongst themselves, and however soon their differences might burst out into mutual violence, yet-for a season, and to overturn their common enemies, good order, legitimacy and religion—they HH 2 would would cordially and unanimously unite under the tri-coloured banner of Buonaparte; the authors of the Political Register and the Nain Jaune would coalesce, and Spafields and the Fauxbourg St. Antoine would renew the alliance which existed twenty years ago between Copenhagen-house and the Jacobin Club. These are the causes which now give importance to Buonaparte; and when we see that he himself still dreams of being an emperor, and endeavours, by all the means with which intrigue or accident can supply him, to keep alive the criminal expectations to which we have alluded, we feel it to be our duty to expose the danger of his pretensions, the magnitude of the object he has in view,, and the fraud and falsehood which he employs to attain it. We think we shall be able to satisfy our readers that, instead of any relaxation of the already too loose custody in which Buonaparte is held, some further restrictions should be imposed. Does any man alive think that the ordinary parole of a prisoner of war would restrain Buonaparte, or that for him there can be any tie of honour or gratitude? He never possessed these qualities himself, aud always discountenanced them in others. The chosen of his heart were men of the most infamous character; and Lefebre Desnouettes, we all know, was overwhelmed with his favour and associated to his intimate society, for no other reason than that he had broken his parole of honour to this country. When Buonaparte was first deposed at Fontainebleau in 1814, we rather desired than hoped that he might be brought to justice. The alliances and treaties which he had made from time to time with the Emperors of Russia and Austria appeared to justify a certain degree of deviation from the strict rule of retribution which might have been applied to an usurper-but while his life was spared, his power should have been put to death. Stripped of the titles and rank to which he had waded through seas of blood, he should have considered himself fortunate in being permitted to expiate in a close and safe, if not rigorous, confinement, the injuries he had inflicted on the world. Such an arrangement would have met, at that moment, we believe, universal concurrence; and we are confident that no public act of these latter days ever filled Europe with so much astonishment and disgust as that joint production of weakness and vanity, the treaty of Fontainebleau; which continued to Buonaparte not only a titular but a territorial sovereignty; which revived and encouraged the revolutionary spirit then about to expire under the arms of allied Europe, and to which nothing but this lamentable treaty could have given the vivacity and force in which we now see and feel it. Instead, however, of a close imprisonment, such as he (wisely for his bad purposes) had inflicted upon others, he received, by |
