Page:Notes on the Anti-Corn Law Struggle.djvu/264

 act of treachery exercised by the one family against the other. To complete the infamy of the transaction, a sum of money was paid to the Regent Morton on this occasion, which he divided with Douglas of Lochleven.' There are other cases of cruelty, and treachery, mixed up with cant and hypocrisy, recorded by Sir Walter Scott, upon the authority of contemporary evidence of the most authentic kind, which prove that the heroes of your Reformation in Scotland may rank with the worst men of the worst times; that they may vie with Ezzelino in ferocity, with Borgia in treachery and cruelty, and with Louis the Eleventh in rapacity, in hypocrisy, and in baseness."

"But you do not include in this description John Knox and the other preachers?"

"No—I mean the laymen—and of those, not the people generally, but the laymen who called themselves of noble, or, at least, of ancient families. And, my dear Sir, when we remember that that miscreant, Louis the Eleventh, was the first who assumed the title of 'Most Christian King;' we ought to reflect that a man may obtain the appellation of a 'worthy and pious nobleman,' without possessing any very just title to it. I think that Virgil's hero, 'pious Æneas,' is as pretty a scoundrel as you often meet with."