In similar unfairness of spirit, Jacobite squires in England were described as maintaining that there had been neither tolerable weather nor good laws in the country since the Revolution of 1688. Such squires read only ‘Dyer’s Letter,’ and that rather for the style than for news. They were heart and soul for Passive Obedience, and were ready to knock out the brains of whoever held contrary opinions. A fling at ‘Dyer’ was a favourite amusement with the Whig Essayist, who also assailed the news-writer on the stage. ‘The reasons,’ says Vellum in ‘The Drummer,’ ‘why I should believe Sir George Truman is still living, are manifold.’ One of them is, ‘because the news of his death was first published in “Dyer’s Letter.”’ For a few days, the noblest of the prisoners were lightly held. Their going to and fro between prison and the Secretary of State’s office, in order to be questioned, kept the streets lined with gazers. Soon, however, the various cases assumed more gravity. In the Tower the captives were put under closer restraint, and the privilege of visiting them was abolished. The wives and other relatives of the chief prisoners endeavoured to present petitions on their behalf to the king, but mostly in vain. The guards kept them at a distance from the royal person. The Whigs were now thinking less of the prisoners than of their estates. The St. James’s ‘Evening Post’ was delighted to inform the public that all the estates and property, forfeited by rebellion, would be ‘strictly applied to public uses.’ In some of the papers the Jacobite ladies who were petitioning for their husbands’ or kinsmen’s lives, were denounced as barbarous women who had driven their husbands and relatives into rebellion. They were stigmatised as ‘tigresses,’ and it was pointed out to them that, to find themselves compelled to seek mercy at the foot of that throne which they had sought to overturn by fire and sword, was a retribution which they had justly incurred. London was told to be glad at having escaped the tax which the chiefs of the rebellion in Scotland were levying upon gentlemen who voluntarily failed to join them, namely, 50 per cent. of their property. ◆[Sidenote: _WHIG LIBERALITY._]◆ Whig liberality was praised in the person of Lord Strathnaver, the Earl of Sutherland’s son. He had promised his vassals to make good all their losses; and if the married men fell in battle for King George, Lord Strathnaver undertook to transfer their leases, if they held any, to their widows――gratis, and for their lives. Many a Scottish wife in London sighed when she thought of the pleasant alternative here suggested. With regard to the rank and file of the Preston prisoners, who were not thought worth the expense of bringing to London, judges left the capital to dispose of them in a singular way. Every twentieth man taken by lot was to stand a trial, all the rest were to be transported! This was the sternest of jokes