Montgomery had organized
was irresistibly strong. Though made up of many conflicting elements,
Republicans, Whigs, Tories, zealous Presbyterians, bigoted Prelatists,
it acted for a time as one man, and drew to itself a multitude of those
mean and timid politicians who naturally gravitate towards the stronger
party. The friends of the government were few and disunited. Hamilton
brought but half a heart to the discharge of his duties. He had always
been unstable; and he was now discontented. He held indeed the highest
place to which a subject could aspire. But he imagined that he had only
the show of power while others enjoyed the substance, and was not sorry
to see those of whom he was jealous thwarted and annoyed. He did not
absolutely betray the prince whom he represented: but he sometimes
tampered with the chiefs of the Club, and sometimes did sly in turns to
those who were joined with him in the service of the Crown.

His instructions directed him to give the royal assent to laws for the
mitigating or removing of numerous grievances, and particularly to a law
restricting the power and reforming the constitution of the Committee of
Articles, and to a law establishing the Presbyterian Church Government,
[351] But it mattered not what his instructions were. The chiefs of the
Club were bent on finding a cause of quarrel. The propositions of
the Government touching the Lords of the Articles were contemptuously
rejected. Hamilton wrote to London for fresh directions; and soon a
second plan, which left little more than the name of the once despotic
Committee, was sent back. But the second plan, though such as would
have contented judicious and temperate reformers, shared the fate of the
first. Meanwhile the chiefs of the Club laid on the table a law which
interdicted the King from ever employing in any public office any person
who had ever borne any part in any proceeding inconsistent with the
Claim of Right, or who had ever obstructed or retarded any good design
of the Estates. This law, uniting, within a very short compass, almost
all the faults which a law can have, was well known to be aimed at the
new Lord President of the Court of Session, and at his son the new Lord
Advocate. Their prosperity and power made them objects of envy to every
disappointed candidate for office. That they were new men, the first of
their race who had risen to distinction, and that nevertheless they had,
by the mere force of ability, become a