To be the guardian of her laws,
and of the individual right of every man born on Scottish ground, is my
ambition. Ill should I perform the one duty, were I to wrong the
posterity of Alexander by invading their throne; and horrible would be
my treason against the other, could I sell my confiding country for a
name and a bauble into the grasp of a usurper."
"Brand not with so unjust an epithet the munificent Edward!"
interrupted Lord Arundel; "let your own noble nature be a witness of
his. Put from you all the prejudice which the ill conduct of his
officers have excited, and you must perceive that in accepting his
terms you will best repay your country's confidence by giving it peace."
"So great would be my damning sin in such an acceptance," cried
Wallace, "that I should be abhorred by God and man. You talk of noble
minds, earl; look into your own, and will it not tell you that in the
moment a people bring themselves to put the command of their actions,
and with that, their consciences, into the hands of a usurper (and that
Edward is one in Scotland our annals and his tyrannies declare), they
sell their birthright and become unworthy the name of men? In that
deed they abjure the gift with which God had intrusted them; and
justly, the angels of his host depart from them.
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