he public, which attracted much compassion, and gave to the judicial
proceedings against him an appearance of cold-blooded revenge on the
part of government; and the following argument of a zealous Jacobite in
his favour, was received as conclusive by Dr. Johnson and other persons
who might pretend to impartiality. Dr. Cameron had never borne arms,
although engaged in the Rebellion, but used his medical skill for the
service, indifferently, of the wounded of both parties. His return to
Scotland was ascribed exclusively to family affairs. His behaviour at
the bar was decent, firm, and respectful. His wife threw herself, on
three different occasions, before George II and the members of his
family, was rudely repulsed from their presence, and at length placed,
it was said, in the same prison with her husband, and confined with
unmanly severity.

Dr. Cameron was finally executed with all the severities of the law of
treason; and his death remains in popular estimation a dark blot upon
the memory of George II, being almost publicly imputed to a mean and
personal hatred of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the sufferer's heroic
brother.

Yet the fact was that whether the execution of Archibald Cameron was
political or otherwise, it might certainly have been justified, had
the king's ministers so pleased, upon reasons of a public nature. The
unfortunate sufferer had not come to the Highlands solely upon his
private affairs, as was the general belief; but it was not judged
prudent by the English ministry to let it be generally known that
he came to inquire about a considerable sum of money which had been
remitted from France to the friends of the exiled family. He had also a
commission to hold intercourse with the well-known M'Pherson of Cluny,
chief of the clan Vourich, whom the Chevalier had left behind at his
departure from Scotland in 1746, and who remained during ten years of
proscription and danger, skulking from place to place in the Highlands,
and maintaining an uninterrupted correspondence between Charles and his
friends. That Dr. Cameron should have held a commission to assist this
chief in raking together the dispersed embers of disaffection, is in
itself sufficiently natural, and, considering his political principles,
in no respect dishonourable to his memory. But neither ought it to be
imputed to George II that he suffered the laws to be enforced against
a person taken in the act of breaking them. When he lost his hazard