There had been for some time in Scotland a considerable number of French Protestants, for whom the charity of the nation had been called forth. To these was now added a multitude of poor Irish of the same faith, refugees from the cruel wars going on in their own country, and many of whom were women, children, and infirm persons. Slender as the resources of Scotland usually were, and sore pressed upon at present by the exactions necessary for supporting the new government, a collection was going on in behalf of the refugee Irish. It was [Sidenote: 1689.] now, however, represented, that many in the western counties were in such want, that they could not wait till the collection was finished; and so the Lords of the Privy Council ordered that the sums gathered in those counties be immediately distributed in fair proportions between the French and Irish, and enjoining the distributors ‘to take special care that such of those poor Protestants as stays in the remote places of those taxable bounds and districts be duly and timeously supplied.’ Seventy pounds in all was distributed. Five days before this, we hear of John Adamson confined in Burntisland tolbooth as a papist, and humanely liberated, that he might be enabled to depart from the kingdom.[9] [Sidenote: JUNE 23.] This morning, being Sunday, the royal orders for the appointment of fifteen new men to be Lords of Session reached Edinburgh, all of them being, of course, persons notedly well affected to the new order of things. Considering the veneration professed for the day by zealous Presbyterians in Scotland, and how high stood the character of the Earl of Crawford for a religious life, one is rather surprised to find one of the new judges (Crossrig) bluntly telling that that earl ‘sent for me in the morning, and intimated to me that I was named for one of them.’ He adds a curious fact. ‘It seems the business had got wind, and was talked some days before, for Mr James Nasmyth, advocate, who was then concerned for the Faculty’s Library, spoke to me to pay the five hundred merks I had given bond for when I entered advocate; which I paid. It may be he thought it would not be so decent to crave me after I was preferred to the bench.’[10] It is incidental to liberating and reforming parties that they seldom escape having somewhat to falsify their own professions. The Declaration of the Estates containing the celebrated Claim of Right (April 1689) asserted that ‘the imprisoning of persons, without expressing the reasons thereof, and delaying to put them to trial, is contrary to law.’ It also pronounced as equally illegal ‘the using of torture without evidence in ordinary crimes.’ Very good as a party condemnation of the late government, or as a declaration of general principles; but, for a time, nothing more.