This time he is better provided. His party consists of only eight persons, but he has mules for the stores, fourteen horses, forty oxen, and two hundred and seventy goats. And he further takes with him--light but pleasant baggage--the warm sympathy and hearty good wishes of all to whom his amiable character and previous labours are known, a class which the publication of the present Journal will doubtless tend largely to increase. FOOTNOTE: [15]_Journal of an Overland Expedition in Australia, from Moreton Bay to Port Essington_. By Dr LUDWIG LEICHHARDT. London: Boone, 1847. MAGUS MUIR. The subject of the following ballad is the atrocious and dastardly assassination of James Sharp, Archbishop of St Andrews and Primate of Scotland. More than one attempt was made upon the life of that eminent prelate. On the 11th of July, 1668, a shot was fired into his carriage in the High Street of Edinburgh, by one James Mitchell, a fanatical field preacher, and an associate of the infamous Major Weir. The primate escaped unharmed, but his colleague Honyman, Bishop of Orkney, received a severe wound, from the effects of which he died in the following year. The assassin Mitchell fled to Holland, but subsequently returned, and was arrested in the midst of his preparations for another diabolical attempt. This man, who afterwards suffered for his crimes, and who in consequence has obtained a place in the book of "Covenanting Martyrology," described his motive "as an impulse of the Holy Spirit, and justified it from Phinehas killing Cosbi and Zimri, and from that law in Deuteronomy commanding to kill false prophets!" This is no matter of surprise, when it is recollected that the "principles of assassination," as Mr C. K. Sharp observes, "were strongly recommended in _Naphthali, Jus Populi Vindicatum_, and afterwards in _The Hind let Loose_, which books were in almost as much esteem with the Presbyterians as their Bibles." Sir George Mackenzie states, "These irreligious and heterodox books, called _Naphthali_ and _Jus Populi_, had made the killing of all dissenters from Presbytery seem not only lawful, but a duty among many of that profession: and in a postscript to _Jus Populi_, it was told that the sending of the Archbishop of St Andrews' head to the king would be the best present that could be made to Jesus Christ."[16] These principles, at first received with doubt, were afterwards carried out to the utmost extent by the more violent of the insurgent party. Murder and assault, frequently perpetrated upon unoffending and defenceless persons, became so common, that the ordinary course of the law was suspended, and its execution devolved upon the military. Scotland was indeed in a complete state of terrorism. Gangs of armed fanatics, who had openly renounced their allegiance, perambulated the country, committing every sort of atrocity, and directing their attacks promiscuously against the clerical incumbents and the civil magistracy.