flagitious, the Parliament had passed some acts so
oppressive, that, unless those sentences and those Acts were treated
as nullities, it would be impossible to bring together a Convention
commanding the public respect and expressing the public opinion. It was
hardly to be expected, for example, that the Whigs, in this day of their
power, would endure to see their hereditary leader, the son of a martyr,
the grandson of a martyr, excluded from the Parliament House in which
nine of his ancestors had sate as Earls of Argyle, and excluded by a
judgment on which the whole kingdom cried shame. Still less was it to be
expected that they would suffer the election of members for counties and
towns to be conducted according to the provisions of the existing law.
For under the existing law no elector could vote without swearing that
he renounced the Covenant, and that he acknowledged the Royal supremacy
in matters ecclesiastical, [261] Such an oath no rigid Presbyterian
could take. If such an oath had been exacted, the constituent bodies
would have been merely small knots of prelatists: the business of
devising securities against oppression would have been left to the
oppressors; and the great party which had been most active in effecting
the Revolution would, in an assembly sprung from the Revolution, have
had not a single representative, [262]

William saw that he must not think of paying to the laws of Scotland
that scrupulous respect which he had wisely and righteously paid to the
laws of England. It was absolutely necessary that he should determine
by his own authority how that Convention which was to meet at Edinburgh
should be chosen, and that he should assume the power of annulling some
judgments and some statutes. He accordingly summoned to the parliament
house several Lords who had been deprived of their honours by sentences
which the general voice loudly condemned as unjust; and he took on
himself to dispense with the Act which deprived Presbyterians of the
elective franchise.

The consequence was that the choice of almost all the shires and burghs
fell on Whig candidates. The defeated party complained loudly of foul
play, of the rudeness of the populace, and of the partiality of the
presiding magistrates; and these complaints were in many cases well
founded. It is not under such rulers as Lauderdale and Dundee that
nations learn justice and moderation, [263]

Nor was it only at the elections that the popular feeling,