Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/111

 Honorable Sir." If we take the proportion of letters to this "Right Honorable" phantom, as a measure of the proportion of weight which he bore in the alleged conspiracy, we find that he bore to the Earl of Gowrie the proportion of three to one, and to Alexander Ruthven, the Earl of Gowrie's brother, the proportion of three to nothing. It appears from this that the King and his ministers in 1608, had altogether abandoned the course of proceeding they had followed in 1600, which was to assert that Gowrie was too cautious to have any accomplices in his alleged designs. Finding that their former device had obtained no credit, they now tried another device to make the "story hang more handsomely together;" and from representing Gowrie as a person of the greatest caution, represent him as so incautious and rash as to put his life and fortune in the power of a drunken debauchee, by a compact which was to deprive him of his valuable estate of Dirleton. And how came it to pass that this "right honorable" phantom, who according to the Logan letters hypothesis was the head and front of the alleged conspiracy, should altogether vanish, while the royal wrath is wreaked on the house of Gowrie?