That subordination without which an army is the worst of all rabbles would be at an end, if every soldier were to be held answerable for the justice of every order in obedience to which he pulls his trigger.

The case of Glencoe was, doubtless, an extreme case; but it cannot easily be distinguished in principle from cases which, in war, are of ordinary occurrence.

Very terrible military executions are sometimes indispensable.

Humanity itself may require them.

Who then is to decide whether there be an emergency such as makes severity the truest mercy?
Who is to determine whether it be or be not necessary to lay a thriving town in ashes, to decimate a large body of mutineers, to shoot a whole gang of banditti?
Is the responsibility with the commanding officer, or with the rank and file whom he orders to make ready, present and fire?
And if the general rule be that the responsibility is with the commanding officer, and not with those who obey him, is it possible to find any reason for pronouncing the case of Glencoe an exception to that rule?
It is remarkable that no member of the Scottish Parliament proposed that any of the private men of Argyle's regiment should be prosecuted for murder.
Absolute impunity was granted to everybody below the rank of Serjeant.
Yet on what principle?
Surely, if military obedience was not a valid plea, every man who shot a Macdonald on that horrible night was a murderer.