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on of them."[240] He declared that he would "cut off" in a moment any of his tenants who refused to join the cause, and expressed his conviction that as sure as the sun shined his "master would prevail." This was in the latter part of the summer: on the twenty-first of September the battle of Preston Pans raised the hopes of the Jacobites to the highest pitch, and Alexander Macleod was sent to the Highland chieftains to stimulate their loyalty and to secure their rising. Upon his visiting Castle Downie he found Lovat greatly elated by the recent victory, which he declared was not to be paralleled. He now began to assemble his men, and to prepare in earnest for that part which he had long intended to adopt; "but," observes Sir Walter Scott, "with that machiavelism inherent in his nature, he resolved that his own personal interest in the insurrection should be as little evident as possible, and determined that his son, whose safety he was bound, by the laws of God and man, to prefer to his own, should be his stalking-horse, and in case of need his scape-goat."[241] Lord President Forbes, who had been addressing himself to the Highland chieftains, exhorting the well-affected to bestir themselves, and entreating those who were devoted to the Pretender not to involve themselves and their families in ruin, expostulated by letter with Lord Lovat upon the course which his son was now openly pursuing, pointing out how greatly it would reflect upon the father, whose co-operation or countenance he supposed to be impossible. The letters written on this subject by Forbes are admirable, and show a deep interest not only in the security of his country, but also in the fate of the young man, who afterwards redeemed his involuntary errors by a career of the highest respectability. "You have now so far pulled off the mask," writes the President, "that we can see the mark you aimed at." "You sent away your son, and the best part of your clan," he adds, after a remonstrance full of good sense and candour, "to join the Pretender, with as little concern as if no danger had attended such a step. And I am sorry to tell you, my Lord, that I could sooner undertake to plead the cause of any one of those unhappy gentlemen who are actually in arms against his Majesty; and I could say more in defence of their conduct, than I could in defence of your Lordship's."[242] Can any instance of moral degradation be adduced more complete than this?
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