William Russell, who had with undaunted firmness maintained the fundamental principle of free government, was the first victim through this unfortunate affair, to the eagerness of the king's bloodthirsty revenge. Foredoomed, he was tried by a packed jury, and condemned against conclusive proof of his innocence. Alerngon Sidney, another apostle of liberty, was unjustly charged with high treason. The law requiring two witnesses to substantiate allegations of this nature, and but one having appeared, and he as unreliable as he was promptly received, the infamous Jeffrey summoned into court a manuscript which had been found in the closet of the defendant. In this manuscript the author expressed a preference for a free to an arbitrary government. The judge deciding that the document was a competent witness in his court, (although he did not swear it), and that it supplied the want of the other witness required by the law of treason, proceeded to pass sentence of death on the accused. By means of similar unwarrantable proceedings, and the co-operation of the papal machinery, the king succeeded in dragooning Scotland into conformity, in suppressing the bold Covenanters, and in amassing almost sufficient power for the accomplishment of any purpose. After he had, in defiance of parliament and the laws, and by means of tyrannical measures and execrable usurpations, rendered himself as absolute in power as any despot in Europe, death interposed in the midst of his success, and removed him from a throne which he had disgraced, and a people whom he had oppressed. Had his conduct during his life left a doubt of his genuine Catholicism, and hypocritical profession of Protestantism, the last moments of his existence were sufficient to dispel them. Just before his death he received the sacrament according to the rites of the Catholic church, and having no further need of deception, openly professed himself a Catholic.