the good that might
have been effected. He offended the Prince, who repressed indeed his
secret indignation, but whose pride, fostered by circumstances, could
ill brook the assumption of his General.[35]

It was not until the Prince reached Edinburgh that a regular Council was
formed; consisting of the Duke of Perth, Lord George Murray, Lord Elcho,
Secretary Murray, Sir Thomas Sheridan, and Mr. Sullivan, the Highland
chiefs, and afterwards of all the colonels in the army. But, among the
advisers of the Prince, an "ill-timed emulation," as Mr. Maxwell calls
it, now crept in, and bred great dissension and animosities. "The
dissensions," he states, "began at Edinburgh:" according to Sir Walter
Scott, they had an earlier origin, and originated at Perth.

They were aggravated, as in the Council at Perth in the time of Lord
Mar, by the base passions of an individual. Detesting the weak and
crooked policy of Mar and viewing from his calm position as an inferior
actor, with a fiendish pleasure, the embarrassments and mistakes of him
whom he hated, stood the Master of Sinclair. Blinded by a selfish
jealousy of power over the mind of him whom he afterwards betrayed to
the ruin which he was working, and "aiming at nothing less than the sole
direction and management of everything, the Secretary Murray sacrificed
to this evil passion, this thirst for ascendancy, all the hopes of
prosperity to Charles Edward--all present peace to the harassed and
perplexed young man whom his counsels had brought to Scotland. It was
he," strongly, and perhaps bitterly, writes Mr. Maxwell, "that had
engaged the Prince to make this attempt upon so slight a foundation, and
the wonderful success that had hitherto attended it was placed to his
account."

By some the sincerity of Murray's loyalty and good-faith were even
credited. The Duke of Perth, among a few others, judged of Murray's
heart by his own, went readily into all his schemes, and confirmed the
Prince in the opinion which he had imbibed of his favourite. After Kelly
had left the Prince, Murray contrived to gain over Sullivan and Sir
Thomas Sheridan, and by that means effectually governed Charles Edward.
The fearless, lofty, honest character of Lord George Murray alone
offered an obstacle to the efforts of the Secretary to obtain, for his
own purposes, an entire controul; he cherished towards the General that
aversion which a mean and servile nature ever feels to one whose
dealings are free