Series 3 > Miscellany of the Scottish History Society (Fourth volume)

122 ON THE EXPEDITION TO SCOTLAND
preserver of liberty and of the kingdom, the restorer of
public peace, the thunderbolt of war—these and any others
you like to imagine were the names by which he found
himself addressed and described. Among many honours
of the kind a medal was struck, on the obverse of which
his head was elegantly moulded. The inscription round it
ran, William, Duke of Cumberland, and he was called
General Commanding the Armies of Great Britain. On
the reverse he was shown on foot in the garb of an ancient
Roman general. By his side stood Victory, crowning his
head with a laurel wreath. At his feet two Jacobites,
their arms on the ground, were kneeling and holding out
their hands imploring mercy. Others were seen defeated
and flying in swarms in the background. On one lying
hurled on the ground he was haughtily tramping with his
foot. Round it we read ‘ restitutori quietis,’ underneath
‘ Rebellibus ad Innernium devictis anno MDCCXLVI’
Thus did the chief citizens of London seek to flatter the
boy Duke, or rather, his father, George n.
But, truth to tell, the joy of a city as great as London
was diminished by the disgust of many whose position
lay between that of the nobility and the populace and
who abhorred no less the flattery of the great than the
unbridled licence of the lower orders. The less their
prejudices, the freer their criticisms. Not a few belonging
to this class declared that it was better to accept with
resignation what had happened than to wish that what
ought to have happened had come to pass. Apart from
the fact that no victory can be welcome to good citizens
when it is gained by the shedding of the blood of their
own countrymen, what has been the result of this fierce
fighting and this triumph of our arms ? What have been
the fruits of the victory ? Merely that the Stuarts have
been driven from the kingdom which is their rightful
heritage. A noble and glorious action of our nation,
impiously to draw the sword against the legitimate Prince,
to grow deliberately callous in disloyalty and to refuse to
right a wrong once it has been done, even when an honour¬
able opportunity offers and necessity itself in some measure