Comments in refutation of pretensions advanced for the first time, and statements in a recent work "The Stirlings of Keir and their family papers"

WITH DRUMPELLIER'S EXPOSITION, &c. 179
the guilty person, the King would have been obliged to take cognisance of
him, to satisfy the heavy murmurs and noise of the people " — ergo, the
Laird was innocent.
This is indeed a futile plea or defence. Is it not obvious that while James such at-
tempted
III. actually was assassinated, and there were perpetrators of the crime, excuipa-
as little, in consequence, were criminal prosecutions instituted against such or aiti indeci-
indeed any; or "the King .... obliged to take cognisance of them," as urged?
There was a golden bridge thus made for the guilty as for the accused ;
whicli equally, in the discussion, favours the former as the latter. To have made
the argument tell, there should have been a specification of accused parties in
the Act, with silence observed as to Sir William Stirling, from which an excep-
tion might be construed to his advantage — -as contrasted with the others — and
the object of the Keir Performance in some degree attained. But the Act
inculpates none nominatim., and it just i-esolves into such a case as the recent
Bidl of Excommunication by the Pope of those concerned in the unnatural
attempt (as it was deemed) to deprive him of the Romagna., which has been
likened to firing a " blank cartridge." " Nobody," to quote the words of an
able cotemporary print,* which equally apply in the present instance, " is
there named, and therefore nobody need care. The document may be held as
referring to the northern Itahans generally ; but as it refers to no person in
particular, nobody will say that he is one of the persons meant, and nobody,
lay or clerical, can offer practically to apply it to any person more than
another."
And of course both being identical, the same result obtained on the one
occasion as on the other. As premised, nothing followed on the Scottish Act,
20th February 1491. The suspected royal parricides were never criminally
prosecuted. They all remained quiet and unconcerned by their native
hearths, inhaling their native air, under protection of their lares. All ! did
we say — no, it was not so : there was a solitary exception. Notwithstanding
the Act proved thus harmless and " scaithless," there was one individual who
may be said to have taken guilt to himself ; and public attention, after the
interval of more than three years and a half, being thereby recalled to the
crime, he, it would appear, as the most guilty party, if not its actual per-
petrator, dreading, as we might conclude, on his special account, more direct
procedure, the very next year absconded from Scotland. He was no '
* The Scotsman, April 2, I860.