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Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.
Stuart, possessed of power to perpetrate with impunity crimes such as the murder[1] of Alexander Ruthven and his brother the Earl of Gowrie, of whom it has been said:—
"Unhappy boys! to perish by such a fate, and to leave behind them, though perishing so young, a blackened memory![2]quia nee fato, merita nee morte peribant;
Sed miseri aute diem."
The English and Scottish nobility were in as bad a condition as the Roman nobility during the latter years of Tiberius, when that monster had retired to hide himself and his crimes amid the rocks of Caprese; and sent forth his emissaries to select his victims from the noblest houses of Rome, with power to employ force if necessary to effect their purpose.
- ↑ Sir Walter Scott, not content with turning King James's romance, called "The Gowrie Conspiracy," into history, has characterized the basest and most cowardly act of a life of cowardice and baseness, as one in which King James "showed the spirit of his ancestors" ("The Fortunes of Nigel," chapter v.). Which of his ancestors? Robert Bruce or Signior Davie?
- ↑ "Essays on Historical Truth," p. 213 (London : Longmans and Co., 1871).
