ONE:The Young Pretender, during this time, had been making a hard run for his life, beset and hunted on all sides for the thirty thousand pounds set upon his head. During the whole five months of his adventurous wanderings and hidings, nothing could induce a single Highlander to betray him, notwithstanding the temptation of the thirty thousand pounds. The most familiar story is his escape from South Uist, where he had been tracked and surrounded. At this moment Miss Flora Macdonald, a near relative of Macdonald of Clanranald, with whom she was on a visit, stepped forward to rescue him. She procured a pass from Hugh Macdonald, her stepfather, who commanded part of the troops now searching the island, for herself, her maid, Betty Burke, and her servant, Neil Mac Eachan. She, moreover, induced Captain Macdonald to recommend the maid, Betty Burkewhich Betty Burke was to be Charles in disguiseto his wife in Skye as very clever at spinning. At the moment that all was ready, General Campbell, as if suspecting something, came with a company of soldiers, and examined Clanranald's house. The prince, in his female attire, however, was concealed in a farm-house, and the next morning he and his deliverer embarked in a boat with six rowers and the servant Neil. In passing the point of Vaternish, in Skye, they ran a near chance of being all killed, for the militia rushed out and fired upon them. Luckily the tide was out, so that they were at a tolerable distance, were neither hurt, nor could be very quickly pursued. The boatmen pulled stoutly, and landed them safely at Mougstot, the seat of Sir Alexander Macdonald. Sir Alexander was on the mainland in Cumberland's army; but the young heroine had the address to induce his wife, Lady Margaret Macdonald, to receive him; and as the house was full of soldiers, she sent him to her factor and kinsman, Macdonald of Kingsburgh, in the interior of the island, who brought him to a place of safety. At last, on the 20th of September, he got on board the French vessel. Lochiel and Cluny, and about a hundred other refugees, sailed with him, and they landed at the little port of Roscoff, near Morlaix, in Finistre, on the 29th of September, whence Charles hastened to Paris, was received in a very friendly manner by Louis XV., and by the Parisians, when he appeared at the opera, with rapturous acclamations.129
ONE:On the 27th of April Pitt introduced a message from the king, recommending the settlement of a suitable provision on the Prince of Wales on his marriage. The Prince expected that Pitt would propose and carry, by means of his compliant majority, which had readily voted away millions to foreign monarchs, a vote for the immediate discharge of his debts. His astonishment may therefore be imagined, when Pitt proposed that Parliament should grant him such an income as should enable him, by decent economy, to defray these debts by instalments through a course of years. Having stated these debts at six hundred and thirty thousand pounds, he proposed to increase the Prince's allowance from seventy-five thousand to one hundred and forty thousand pounds, an increase of sixty-five thousand pounds a-year. Twenty-five thousand pounds of this were to be set apart every year for the liquidation of the debts in the course of twenty-seven years. This was, in fact, only giving him an increase on his marriage of forty thousand pounds per annum; but so unpopular was the Prince that not even that amount of money could be obtained. The question was warmly debated during two months, and it was not till the 27th of June that it was finally settled in still worse terms for the Prince, namely, that his allowance should be one hundred and twenty-five thousand pounds per annum, with the income of the Duchy of Cornwall, about fifteen thousand pounds more, thus making up the one hundred and forty thousand pounds; but out of this seventy-five thousand pounds per annum were appropriated to the payment of his debts, leaving him only sixty-seven thousand pounds a year clear for his own expenditure, or eight thousand pounds per annum less than his previous allowance. With the grant to the Prince this Session closed, namely, on the 27th of June.
ONE:The Gila River cutting straight across the southern portion of Arizona, from the Alkali flats on the east to the Colorado at Yuma on the west, flowed then its whole course through desolation. Sometimes cottonwoods and sycamore trees rose in the bottom, and there was a patch of green around some irrigated land. But, for the most part, the basin was a waste of glittering sand and white dust, and beyond, the low hills, bare of every plant save a few stunted wild flowers, cacti and sage, greasewood and mesquite, rolled for miles and miles of barrenness. The chicken hawk and crow sailed through the fiercely blue sky, the air waved and quivered with incredible heat. At night malaria rose from the ground, the coyote barked and whined at the light of the brilliant stars, and the polecat prowled deliberately.During the discussion of this question, Sir George Savile brought forward another. This was a Bill for relieving Catholics, by repealing the penalties and disabilities imposed by the 10th and 11th of King William III. The hardships sought to be removed were these:The prohibition of Catholic priests or Jesuits teaching their own doctrines in their own churches, such an act being high treason in natives and felony in foreigners; the forfeitures by Popish heirs of their property who received their education abroad, in such cases the estates going to the nearest Protestant heir; the power given to a Protestant to take the estate of his father, or next kinsman, who was a Catholic, during his lifetime; and the debarring all Catholics from acquiring legal property by any other means than descent. Dunning declared the restrictions a disgrace to humanity, and perfectly useless, as they were never enforced; but Sir George Savile said that was not really the fact, for that he himself knew Catholics who lived in daily terror of informers and of the infliction of the law. Thurlow, still Attorney-General, but about to ascend the woolsack, promptly supported the Bill; and Henry Dundas, the Lord Advocate of Scotland, lamented that it would afford no relief to his own country. These Acts did not affect Scotland, as they had been passed before the union; but Scotland had a similar Act passed by its own Parliament, and he promised to move for the repeal of this Scottish Act in the next Session. In the Commons there was an almost total unanimity on the subject; and in the Lords, the Bishop of Peterborough was nearly the only person who strongly opposed it. He asked that if, as it was argued, these Acts were a dead letter, why disturb the dead?
