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Protestantism in Scotland - James Aitken Wylie

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We know not whether the wildest revolutionist<br />

ever committed greater excesses, or showed<br />

himself under the spirit of a more delirious<br />

madness, than the men who now unhappily<br />

governed <strong>Scotland</strong>. We behold them scorn<strong>in</strong>g all<br />

truth and equity, mak<strong>in</strong>g void all oaths and<br />

promises, tear<strong>in</strong>g down all the fences of the State<br />

and leav<strong>in</strong>g the throne no claim to obedience and<br />

respect save that which the sword and the gallows<br />

can enforce. Although they had plotted to br<strong>in</strong>g all<br />

authority <strong>in</strong>to contempt, to vilify all law, and<br />

destroy society itself, they could not have adopted<br />

fitter methods. In a neighbor<strong>in</strong>g country, liable to<br />

be visited with periodic revolutionary tempests, we<br />

have seen noth<strong>in</strong>g wilder than the scenes now<br />

be<strong>in</strong>g transacted, and about to be transacted, <strong>in</strong><br />

<strong>Scotland</strong>. In France the tempest rises from below; it<br />

ascends from the Communistic abyss to assail the<br />

seats of power and the tribunals of justice: <strong>in</strong> the<br />

<strong>in</strong>stance we are now contemplat<strong>in</strong>g the storm<br />

descended upon the country from the throne: it was<br />

the closet of the monarch that sent forth the<br />

devastators of order.<br />

377

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