The highlanders yielded with reluctance, and without confidence. "We have undertaken to re-establish the kingdom as well as the King of Scotland," they had often said, and Charles Edward had solemnly announced that his father would never ratify the union. He had even thought of convoking a parliament at Edinburgh. The practical difficulties of the project had deterred him from it. Before turning his steps into England, the prince published an appeal to his subjects of the three kingdoms, as clever as it was impassioned. "It has been sought to frighten you concerning the dangers that your religion and liberty might run. You have been spoken to of arbitrary power; of the tyranny of France and Spain. Give ear to the simple truth. I have at my own expense hired a vessel. {204} Provided but ill with money, arms, or friends, I have come to Scotland with seven persons. I have published the declaration of the king my father, and I have proclaimed his rights, with pardon in one hand and liberty of conscience in the other. As for the reproaches lately addressed to the royal family, the wrongs which might have called them forth have been sufficiently expiated. During the fifty-seven years that our house has lived in exile, has the nation been more happy and more prosperous for it? Are you right, as fathers of Great Britain and Ireland, to love those who have governed you? Have you found more humanity among those whom their birth did not call to the throne than among my royal ancestors? Do you owe them other benefits than the crushing burden of an enormous debt? If it be not so, whence come so many complaints and such continual reproaches in your meetings? I have come here without the aid of France or Spain. But when I see my enemies rallying against me--Dutch, Danes, Hessians, Swiss--and that the Elector of Hanover summons his allies to protect him against the subjects of the king, it seems to me that the king my father is also, in his turn, warranted in accepting some assistance. I am ready, however. If my enemies desire to put it to the proof, let them send back their foreign mercenaries; let them trust to the lot of battles. I shall run my chance with the subjects of my father alone."