l parties, but peculiarly attached to Argyle, undertook to
land with only twelve men, and did so in spite of a fire from the coast.
A slight skirmish followed. The militia fell back. Cochrane entered
Greenock and procured a supply of meal, but found no disposition to
insurrection among the people.

In fact, the state of public feeling in Scotland was not such as the
exiles, misled by the infatuation common in all ages to exiles, had
supposed it to be. The government was, indeed, hateful and hated. But
the malecontents were divided into parties which were almost as hostile
to one another as to their rulers; nor was any of those parties eager to
join the invaders. Many thought that the insurrection had no chance
of success. The spirit of many had been effectually broken by long and
cruel oppression. There was, indeed, a class of enthusiasts who were
little in the habit of calculating chances, and whom oppression had not
tamed but maddened. But these men saw little difference between Argyle
and James. Their wrath had been heated to such a temperature that what
everybody else would have called boiling zeal seemed to them Laodicean
lukewarmness. The Earl's past life had been stained by what they
regarded as the vilest apostasy. The very Highlanders whom he now
summoned to extirpate Prelacy he had a few years before summoned to
defend it. And were slaves who knew nothing and cared nothing about
religion, who were ready to fight for synodical government, for
Episcopacy, for Popery, just as Mac Callum More might be pleased to
command, fit allies for the people of God? The manifesto, indecent
and intolerant as was its tone, was, in the view of these fanatics, a
cowardly and worldly performance. A settlement such as Argyle would have
made, such as was afterwards made by a mightier and happier deliverer,
seemed to them not worth a struggle. They wanted not only freedom of
conscience for themselves, but absolute dominion over the consciences of
others; not only the Presbyterian doctrine, polity, and worship, but the
Covenant in its utmost rigour. Nothing would content them but that
every end for which civil society exists should be sacrificed to the
ascendency of a theological system. One who believed no form of
church government to be worth a breach of Christian charity, and who
recommended comprehension and toleration, was in their phrase, halting
between Jehovah and Baal. One who condemned such acts as the murder of
Cardinal Bea