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But the utmost spite of all the leading malecontents were concentrated on one object, the great magistrate who still held the highest civil post in the realm, and who was evidently determined to hold it in defiance of them. It was not so easy to get rid of him as it had been to drive his colleagues from office. His abilities the most intolerant Tories were forced grudgingly to acknowledge.

He would find that, in trying to quiet one set of malecontents, he had created another. As surely as he yielded to the clamour raised at Dublin for a repeal of the Act of Settlement, he would, from the day on which he returned to Westminster, be assailed by as loud and pertinacious a clamour for a repeal of that repeal.

Sir Robert Clayton, the mayor, appointed one who was not acceptable to the popular party: the common hall rejected him; and Bethel and Cornish, two Independents and republicans, and of consequence deeply engaged with the malecontents, were chosen by a majority of voices.

So many were challenged that there was some difficulty in making up the number of twelve; and among the twelve was one on whom the malecontents thought that they could depend. Nor were they altogether mistaken; for this man held out against his eleven companions all night and half the next day; and he would probably have starved them into submission had not Mrs.

In the Park the malecontents wore their biggest looks, and talked sedition in their loudest tones. The most conspicuous among these swaggerers was Sir John Fenwick, who had, in the late reign, been high in favour and in military command, and was now an indefatigable agitator and conspirator. In his exultation he forgot the courtesy which man owes to woman.

He fell sick at Windsor; and had two or three fits of a fever, so violent as made his life be thought in danger. The malecontents, it was feared, would proceed to extremities, and immediately kindle a civil war in the kingdom. * Temple, vol. i. p. 335. Temple, vol. i p. 449. * Dissertation on Parties, letter vii. Vol i. p. 342.

The evil of having regular soldiers, and the evil of not having them, Somers set forth and compared in a little treatise, which was once widely renowned as the Balancing Letter, and which was admitted, even by the malecontents, to be an able and plausible composition.

The circumstances which give a peculiar character to the slaughter of Glencoe, the breach of faith, the breach of hospitality, the twelve days of feigned friendship and conviviality, of morning calls, of social meals, of healthdrinking, of cardplaying, were not mentioned by the Edinburgh correspondent of the Paris Gazette; and we may therefore confidently infer that those circumstances were as yet unknown even to inquisitive and busy malecontents residing in the Scottish capital within a hundred miles of the spot where the deed had been done.

It seemed probable, that his nephew's party might gain force from the increase of the malecontents: an accession of power which that prince acquired a little after, tended to render his pretensions still more dangerous.

Some of them even alledged that he was privy to the designs of the malecontents; and gave them too much countenance and indulgence. But every principle of honour, duty and interest forbade such a connivance, and the upright and respectable character he maintained, rendered such suspicions groundless and unmerited.