communication. The discourtesy probably tended to cool the zeal of Argyll in behalf of the government, and in any case he did not think it urgent to precipitate matters, especially as, although the Pretender had at last reached the camp at Perth, the highlanders were already beginning to desert their leader. The arrival of General Cadogan with six thousand Dutch auxiliaries removed, however, all further excuse for delay, and on 21 Jan. he began his march northwards. To render it more difficult the enemy had desolated all the villages between them and Perth. Provisions for twelve days had, therefore, to be carried along with them, in addition to which the country was enveloped in a deep coating of snow, which had to be cleared by gangs of labourers as they proceeded. On the approach of Argyll the Pretender abandoned Perth, throwing his artillery into the Tay, which he crossed on the ice. The dispersion of the insurgents had, in fact, already begun, and the pursuit of Argyll was scarcely necessary to persuade the leaders of the movement to evacuate the country with all possible speed. Though still accompanied by a large body of troops who began to make preparations for defending Montrose, the Chevalier, Mar, and the principal leaders suddenly embarked at Montrose for France, leaving the troops under the command of General Gordon, who with about a thousand men reached Aberdeen, whence they dispersed in various directions. Argyll shortly afterwards proceeded to Edinburgh, where he was entertained at a public banquet. On arriving in London he was also graciously received by the king, but although he spoke in parliament in defence of the Septennial Act, he was in June 1716 suddenly, without any known cause, deprived of all his offices. The event caused much dissatisfaction in Scotland, and led Lockhart of Carnwath, as he records in his ‘Memoirs,’ to make an effort to win him over to the Jacobite cause. Notwithstanding the sanguine hopes of Lockhart, there is no evidence that Argyll gave him any substantial encouragement, and his efforts were discontinued as soon as Argyll was again (6 Feb. 1718-19) restored to favour and made lordsteward of the household. Soon after this the great services of Argyll during the rebellion were tardily recognised by his being advanced to the dignity of Duke of Greenwich. His subsequent political career was so strikingly and glaringly inconsistent as to suggest that, so far at least as England was concerned, it was regulated solely by his relation to the parties in power. The one merit he however possessed, as admitted even by his political opponents, that ‘what he aimed and designed, he owned and promoted above board, being altogether free of the least share of dissimulation, and his word so sacred that one might assuredly depend on it’ (Lockhart Papers, ii. 10). Pride and passion, rather than cold ambition, were the motives by which he was chiefly controlled, and he never could set himself persistently to the pursuit of one purpose. He therefore never won a position commensurate with his seeming abilities, or with the great oratorical gifts which he wielded with such disastrous effect against those who had wounded directly or indirectly his self-esteem. Regarding the extraordinary power of his oratory, we have the testimony of Pope in well-known lines, of Thomson and other poets, and the verdict seems to have been unanimous. At the same time much of this effect was momentary, and in the opinion of Glover was traceable to his ‘happy and imposing manner,’ where ‘a certain dignity and vivacity, joined to a most captivating air of openness and sincerity, generally gave his arguments a weight which in themselves they frequently wanted’ (Glover, Memoirs, p. 9). Lockhart writes in similar terms: ‘He was not, strictly speaking, a man of understanding and judgment; for all his natural endowments were sullied with too much impetuosity, passion, and positiveness; and his sense rather lay in a sudden flash of wit than in a solid conception and reflection’ (Lockhart Papers, ii. 10). Chiefly owing to faults of temper, he played in politics a part not only comparatively subordinate, but glaringly mean and contemptible. Although he had moved the dissolution of the Union on account of the proposal to impose the malt-tax on Scotland, he in 1725, in order to oust the Squadrone, party from power in Scotland, came under obligations, along with his brother Lord Islay, to carry it through. In the debate on the Mutiny Bill in February 1717-18, he argued that ‘a standing army in the time of peace was ever fatal either to the prince or the nation;’ but in 1733 he made a vigorous speech against any reduction of the army, asserting that ‘a standing army never had in any country the chief hand in destroying the liberties.’ His course was equally eccentric in regard to the Peerage Bills, in connection with which he in 1721 entered into communication with Lockhart of Carnwath and the Jacobites. His defence of the city of Edinburgh in 1737, in connection with the affair of the Porteous mob, did much to strengthen his reputation in Scotland as an independent patriot, although his conduct was no doubt in a great degree regulated by personal dissatisfaction with the government. When the nation in 1738 was excited
