(24) HIS TORT of the SOCIETT. 



Account of merits, and elaborate analyfes of the chain of its arguments. 

 As an argument on evidence, no fuffrage could perhaps be more 

 decifive of its merit than that of one of the greatefl lawyers, 

 and indeed one of the ableft men that ever fat on the woolfack 

 of England, the late Lord Chancellor Hardwicke, who decla- 

 red Mr Tytler's Enquiry to be the beft concatenation of cir- 

 cumftantiate proofs brought to bear upon one point, that he had 

 ever perufed. What effe(5l that body of evidence, or the argu- 

 ments deduced from it, ought to have upon the minds of thofe 

 to whom the fubjedl becomes matter of inveftigation, I do not 

 prefume to determine. The opinion of the late Dr Henry, 

 author of The Hijlory of Great Britain on a new Plan, may per- 

 haps be thought neitlier partial nor confident ; who fays, in a 

 letter to Mr Tytler, piiblifhed in the volume of TranfaBions of 

 the Antiquarian Society of Scotland, That he would be a bold man 

 who fhould now publifh an hiftory of Queen Mary, in the 

 fame ftrain with the two hiftorians, (Mr Hume and Dr Ro- 

 bertson), whofe opinions on the fubjecft the Enquiry had exa- 

 mined and controverted. 



I CANNOT help obferving, in juftice to Mr Hume's impar- 

 tiaUty, that no poflible motive could be ailigned for the preju- 

 dice which the favourers of Queen Mary have fuppofed him 

 to entertain againft her. As a party queftion, in which view 

 Mr Tytler has placed it in his IntroduBion to the latter edi- 

 tions of his work*, Mr Hume had furely no bias to miflead 



him 



• " The charafter, accomplifliments and misfortunes of this Princefs, (fays the 

 Introduction), have been the fubjecl of much writing and controverfy among the 

 Britith hiftorians. Republican writers, equally averfe to monarchy and to the 

 Houfe of Stuart, have drawn her picture in the blackeft colours, by traducing her as 

 an accomplice with the Earl of Bothwzll in the murder of the Lord Darnley her 

 hulband. On the other hand, the writers attached to the ancient conftitution of their 

 country, and to the Family of Stuart, have regarded that unfortunate Princefs as 

 one of the moll virtuous and accomplilhed chara£ters of that age, and as a viftim to 

 the fecret confpiracies carried on by fome of the heads of the reformed party in her 

 kingdom for her deftrufljon." 



