The Jacobites trumpeted it as an offset against the imputed severities of the late reigns. Its whole details were given in the French gazettes, as an example of the paternal government now planted in Britain. The government was compelled, in self-defence, to order an inquiry into the affair, and the report presented in 1695 fully brought out the facts as here detailed, leaving the principal odium to rest with Dalrymple. The king himself, whose signature follows close below the savage sentence, ‘If M‘Ian of Glencoe,’ &c., did not escape reproach. True it is, that so far from punishing his secretary, he soon after this report gave him a full remission, and conferred on him the teinds of the parish in which lay his principal estates.[80] [Sidenote: FEB. 16.] The Privy Council had before them a petition from Lieutenant Brisbane of Sir Robert Douglas’s regiment, regarding one Archibald Baird, an Irish refugee, imprisoned at Paisley for housebreaking. The sheriff thought the probation ‘scrimp’ (scanty), and besides, was convinced that ‘extreme poverty had been a great temptation to him to commit the said crime.’ Seeing he was, moreover, ‘a proper young man fit for service,’ and ‘willing and forward to go over to Flanders to fight against the French,’ the sheriff had hitherto delayed to pronounce sentence upon him. Without any ceremony, the Council ordered that Baird be delivered to Brisbane, that he might be transported to Flanders as a soldier. The reader will probably be amused by the sheriff’s process of ideas—first, that the crime was not proved; and, second, that it had been committed under extenuating circumstances. The leniency of the Privy Council towards such a culprit, in ordering him out of the country as a soldier, is scarcely less characteristic. The truth is, the exigencies of the government for additional military force were now greater than ever, so that scruples about methods of recruiting had come to be scarcely recognisable. Poor people confined in jail on suspicion of disaffection, were in many instances brought to a purchase of liberty by taking on as soldiers; criminals, who had pined there for months or years, half-starved, were glad to take soldiering as their punishment. Sturdy vagrants [Sidenote: 1692.] were first gathered into the jails for the offence of begging, and then made to know that, only by taking their majesties’ pay, could they regain their freedom. But freedom was not to be instantly gained even in this way. The recruits were kept in jail, as well as the criminals and the disaffected—little distinction, we may well believe, observed between them. Not till ready to go on board for Flanders, were these gallant Britons permitted to breathe the fresh air.