er a soldier was to be permitted
to insult English gentlemen, and, if they murmured, to cut their
throats? It was moved in the Court of King's Bench that Kirke should
either be brought to immediate trial or admitted to bail. Shower, as
counsel for Seymour, opposed the motion. But Seymour was not content to
leave the case in Shower's hands. In defiance of all decency, he went to
Westminster Hall, demanded a hearing, and pronounced a harangue against
standing armies. "Here," he said, "is a man who lives on money taken out
of our pockets. The plea set up for taxing us in order to support him
is that his sword protects us, and enables us to live in peace and
security. And is he to be suffered to use that sword to destroy us?"
Kirke was tried and found guilty of manslaughter. In his case, as in the
case of Spencer Cowper, an attempt was made to obtain a writ of appeal.
The attempt failed; and Seymour was disappointed of his revenge; but he
was not left without consolation. If he had lost a son, he had found,
what he seems to have prized quite as much, a fertile theme for
invective.

The King, on his return from the Continent, found his subjects in
no bland humour. All Scotland, exasperated by the fate of the first
expedition to Darien, and anxiously waiting for news of the second,
called loudly for a Parliament. Several of the Scottish peers carried to
Kensington an address which was subscribed by thirty-six of their body,
and which earnestly pressed William to convoke the Estates at Edinburgh,
and to redress the wrongs which had been done to the colony of New
Caledonia. A petition to the same effect was widely circulated among
the commonalty of his Northern kingdom, and received, if report could
be trusted, not less than thirty thousand signatures. Discontent was far
from being as violent in England as in Scotland. Yet in England there
was discontent enough to make even a resolute prince uneasy. The time
drew near at which the Houses must reassemble; and how were the Commons
to be managed? Montague, enraged, mortified, and intimidated by the
baiting of the last session, was fully determined not again to appear
in the character of chief minister of finance. The secure and luxurious
retreat which he had, some months ago, prepared for himself was awaiting
him. He took the Auditorship, and resigned his other places. Smith
became Chancellor of the Exchequer. A new commission of Treasury issued;
and the first name was that of Tan