loquence
of the Conventicles. But his hardness, if not tempered with mercy, was
at least guided by more justice than was common among his colleagues. He
both advocated and practised the policy of distinguishing between the
multitude and their ringleaders. The just punishment of one of the
latter might save, he said, many of the former;[68] and his entreaty for
the prisoners whom he found under sentence of death at Dundee proves
that his actions were dictated by no vulgar thirst for blood. When
judged by the general manners of the age, the circumstances of the time
and his position, I do not believe him to have been cruel by nature or
careless of human life. The standard of military morals in vogue two
hundred years ago cannot be weighed by that in vogue to-day. The
humanity of one generation is not the humanity of the next. Wellington
was certainly not a cruel man, and he certainly was a most strict
disciplinarian. Yet it is well known that many things were done during
the Peninsular campaign which no general now would dare to pass
unpunished, which no soldier now would even dare to do; and it is quite
possible that eighty years hence our descendants will read with horror
of the deeds done by their grandsires among the rocky passes of
Afghanistan or on the burning sands of Egypt. I do not claim for
Claverhouse that he was gentle, merciful, or humane beyond his time,
though I believe him to have had as large a share of those qualities as
any of his contemporaries would have displayed in similar circumstances.
But I do claim for him that his faults were the faults not of the man
but of his age; and I maintain that his age cannot in such matters be
tried by the standard of this.

FOOTNOTES:

[49] I have been much indebted in this chapter to an anonymous pamphlet
entitled "A Note to the Pictorial History of Scotland, on Claverhouse,"
apparently printed at Maidstone; but when, or on whose authority, I have
been unable to discover. It was sent to me by an equally nameless
benefactor.

[50] Napier, iii. Appendix 3, and his "Case for the Crown": Blackwood's
Magazine, December 1863. On the other side see Barton, vii. 255:
Macmillan's Magazine, December 1862; and a pamphlet by the Rev.
Archibald Stewart, "History Vindicated in the case of the Wigtown
Martyrs," 2nd ed. 1869.

[51] According to "The Cloud of Witnesses," first published in 1714, the
epitaph ran as follows:

"Murdered for owning Christ supreme
Head of