Lairds of Glenlyon

THE LAIRDS OF GLENLYON. 99
form, from the assize of William the Lion ; it takes security
against the same evils, and, with a little more minuteness,
provides by similar means for the maintenance of public
safety. The exaction of oaths and promises of fidelity,
and obedience to the law, is invariably a confession of
weakness, and affords occasion for the very things it is
intended to prevent. For the strong government, it is
sufficient to publish the law embodying its will, affixing the
punishment due for transgression ; and then it can wait
without anxious caution in perfect reliance on its own
strength, to be able, on a breach of the law being committed,
to chastise the offender immediately with the punishment
menaced. The certainty of punishment enables a strong
government to dispense with cruel or capricious rigour ; for
a small evil, which is sure to happen, is more dreaded than
a great one, from which there is a strong probability of
escape. The Scottish monarchy was always limited in its
power, constitutionally, and the fierce disposition of the
people, the power and lawlessness of the nobles, rendered
practically that power much less than what it was consti-
tutionally acknowledged to be ; yet one is astonished at
the fact, so little political progress had been made in the
course of six long centuries, that William of Orange could
not dispense with the barbarous and clumsy fencing of
authority employed by William the Lion. The causes
thickly sewn over the surface of events during that period
are numerous and complicated ; but abstracting the adven-
titious, and sinking the secondary ones, the principal causes
are not difficult to be understood. Artificial systems,
either in science or politics, unless recommended by com-
prehensive simplicity, or hallowed by the sacred association