among whom the Earl of
Annandale and Lord Ross were the most conspicuous, formed themselves
into a society called the Club, appointed a clerk, and met daily at a
tavern to concert plans of opposition. Round this nucleus soon gathered
a great body of greedy and angry politicians, [313] With these dishonest
malecontents, whose object was merely to annoy the government and to get
places, were leagued other malecontents, who, in the course of a long
resistance to tyranny, had become so perverse and irritable that
they were unable to live contentedly even under the mildest and most
constitutional government. Such a man was Sir Patrick Hume. He had
returned from exile, as litigious, as impracticable; as morbidly jealous
of all superior authority, and as fond of haranguing, as he had been
four years before, and was as much bent on making a merely nominal
sovereign of William as he had formerly been bent on making a merely
nominal general of Argyle, [314] A man far superior morally and
intellectually to Hume, Fletcher of Saltoun, belonged to the same party.
Though not a member of the Convention, he was a most active member of
the Club, [315] He hated monarchy: he hated democracy: his favourite
project was to make Scotland an oligarchical republic. The King, if
there must be a King, was to be a mere pageant. The lowest class of the
people were to be bondsmen. The whole power, legislative and executive,
was to be in the hands of the Parliament. In other words, the country
was to be absolutely governed by a hereditary aristocracy, the most
needy, the most haughty, and the most quarrelsome in Europe. Under such
a polity there could have been neither freedom nor tranquillity. Trade,
industry, science, would have languished; and Scotland would have been
a smaller Poland, with a puppet sovereign, a turbulent diet, and an
enslaved people. With unsuccessful candidates for office, and with
honest but wrongheaded republicans, were mingled politicians whose
course was determined merely by fear. Many sycophants, who were
conscious that they had, in the evil time, done what deserved
punishment, were desirous to make their peace with the powerful and
vindictive Club, and were glad to be permitted to atone for their
servility to James by their opposition to William. [316] The great body
of Jacobites meanwhile stood aloof, saw with delight the enemies of the
House of Stuart divided against one another, and indulged the hope that
the confusion w