An excerpt from Redgauntlet
by Sir Walter Scott
1824
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In one instance alone this very prudential and humane line of conduct
was departed from, and the event seemed to confirm the policy of the general
course. Doctor Archibald Cameron, brother of the celebrated Donald
Cameron of Lochiel, attainted for the rebellion of 1745, was found by a party
of soldiers lurking with a comrade in the wilds of Loch Katrine five or six
years after the battle of Culloden, and was there seized. There were
circumstances in his case, so far as was made known to the public, which
attracted much compassion, and gave to the judicial proceedings against him
an appearance of cold-blooded revenge on the part of government; and the
following argument of a zealous Jacobite in his favour, was received as
conclusive by Dr. Johnson and other persons who might pretend to impartiality.
Dr. Cameron had never borne arms, although engaged in the Rebellion,
but used his medical skill for the service, indifferently, of the wounded
of both parties. His return to Scotland was ascribed exclusively to
family affairs. His behaviour at the bar was decent, firm, and respectful.
His wife threw herself, on three different occasions, before George
II and the members of his family, was rudely repulsed from their presence,
and at length placed, it was said, in the same prison with her husband, and
confined with unmanly severity.
Dr. Cameron was finally executed with all the severities of the law of
treason; and his death remains in popular estimation a dark blot upon the
memory of George II, being almost publicly imputed to a mean and personal
hatred of Donald Cameron of Lochiel, the sufferer's heroic brother. Yet
the fact was that whether the execution of Archibald Cameron was political
or otherwise, it might certainly have been justified, had the king's ministers
so pleased, upon reasons of a public nature. The unfortunate sufferer
had not come to the Highlands solely upon his private affairs, as was the
general belief; but it was not judged prudent by the English ministry to
let it be generally known that he came to inquire about a considerable sum
of money which had been remitted from France to the friends of the exiled
family. He had also a commission to hold intercourse with the well
known M'Pherson of Cluny, chief of the clan Vourich, whom the Chevalier had
left behind at his departure from Scotland in 1746, and who remained during
ten years of proscription and danger, skulking from place to place in the
Highlands, and maintaining an uninterrupted correspondence between Charles
and his friends. That Dr. Cameron should have held a commission to
assist this chief in raking together the dispersed embers of disaffection,
is in itself sufficiently natural, and, considering his political principles,
in no respect dishonourable to his memory. But neither ought it to
be imputed to George II that he suffered the laws to be enforced against
a person taken in the act of breaking them.
When he lost his hazardous game, Dr. Cameron only paid the forfeit which
he must have calculated upon. The ministers, however, thought it proper
to leave Dr. Cameron's new schemes in concealment, lest, by divulging them,
they had indicated the channel of communication which, it is now well known,
they possessed to all the plots of Charles Edward. But it was equally
ill advised and ungenerous to sacrifice the character of the king to the
policy of the administration. Both points might have been gained by
sparing the life of Dr. Cameron after conviction, and limiting his punishment
to perpetual exile.
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