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clans, political factions, and open rebellions, in which the posses- 

 sion of his person was the prize of the successful party. In such a 

 scene, a young and helpless king was unavoidably trained up to 

 duplicity, which he afterwards learned to consider as the essence of 

 king-craft, and peculiarly necessary to himself in that conflict of 

 factions, in which he was doomed to spend his life, and on the 

 balance of which he depended for personal safety, and for his suc- 

 cession to the English crown. The system of intrigue, artifice and 

 dissimulation, developed by Sir James Melville, on the part of the 

 English government, and the Scotch Justices, is perhaps unpa- 

 ralleled. 



James, like other princes, was inclined to arbitrary principles ; 

 but his despotism was rather speculative and oratorical than prac- 

 tical and cruel. There is no weakness, for which he is more fre- 

 quently blamed by friends and foes than excessive lenity and fa- 

 cility of temper. In Scotland he was more the object than the 

 instrument of oppression ; and his thirst for absolute power was 

 stimulated by the outrageous turbulence of the nobles and the 

 refractory stubbornness of the clergy, whose pretensions to infalli- 

 bility and dominion over conscience, independence on civil autho- 

 rity, and a right of controlling kings, were little inferior to the do- 

 mineering spirit of Popery. The divine right of presbytery was 

 opposed to the divine right of kings : the keys often predominated 

 over the sceptre, and the church over the state. 



When he ascended the English throne, he found himself more 

 at liberty to avow his principles. He and his unfortunate son con- 

 ceived, that the privileges of the people were concessions on the part 

 of the king, or extortions from the crown, which might be resumed 

 at pleasure ; and that they were as much bound to maintain and 

 extend the prerogatives of their order, as patriots are to vindicate 



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