Note 116 — D E F O R M I T I E S, &c.

On this subject nothing liberal could be expected from Dr Johnson, who, in spite of his murmurs about Excise, and his actual benevolence in private life, has always been the firm advocate of oppression. His project of hiring the Cherokees to massacre the North Americans (vide supra p. 32) may serve to inform us what he himself would have done, had he been seated in the saddle of authority. But what shall be said for some Scottish historians who have adopted the same ideas? One of them tells us, that Beaton had prepared a list of three hundred and sixty of the leaders of the Protestant party, whose lives and fortunes were to be sacrificed to the rapacity and the pride of this ambitious prelate. Yet he pronounces the killing of such a dangerous monster to be a most execrable deed. He dwells with studied exultation on the execution of Charles I. but if our King really deserved his fate, Was not Beaton by many degrees more criminal? An author can hardly spend his time worse, than in writing to flatter the prejudices, and to corrupt the common sense of the world.