ttle of
Killiecrankie, that army ceased to exist. It ceased to exist, as the
army of Montrose had, more than forty years earlier, ceased to exist,
not in consequence of any great blow from without, but by a natural
dissolution, the effect of internal malformation. All the fruits of
victory were gathered by the vanquished. The Castle of Blair, which had
been the immediate object of the contest, opened its gates to Mackay;
and a chain of military posts, extending northward as far as Inverness,
protected the cultivators of the plains against the predatory inroads of
the mountaineers.

During the autumn the government was much more annoyed by the Whigs of
the low country, than by the Jacobites of the hills. The Club, which
had, in the late session of Parliament, attempted to turn the kingdom
into an oligarchical republic, and which had induced the Estates to
refuse supplies and to stop the administration of justice, continued
to sit during the recess, and harassed the ministers of the Crown by
systematic agitation. The organization of this body, contemptible as
it may appear to the generation which has seen the Roman Catholic
Association and the League against the Corn Laws, was then thought
marvellous and formidable. The leaders of the confederacy boasted that
they would force the King to do them right. They got up petitions and
addresses, tried to inflame the populace by means of the press and the
pulpit, employed emissaries among the soldiers, and talked of bringing
up a large body of Covenanters from the west to overawe the Privy
Council. In spite of every artifice, however, the ferment of the public
mind gradually subsided. The Government, after some hesitation, ventured
to open the Courts of justice which the Estates had closed. The Lords of
Session appointed by the King took their seats; and Sir James Dalrymple
presided. The Club attempted to induce the advocates to absent
themselves from the bar, and entertained some hope that the mob would
pull the judges from the bench. But it speedily became clear that there
was much more likely to be a scarcity of fees than of lawyers to take
them: the common people of Edinburgh were well pleased to see again a
tribunal associated in their imagination with the dignity and prosperity
of their city; and by many signs it appeared that the false and greedy
faction which had commanded a majority of the legislature did not
command a majority of the nation, [380]

CHAPTER XIV