"There comes a point when it becomes futile to try to sustain rebellion"

Maybe I'm missing something but I still don't really get how this could be a rebel song as much as anti-rebel song! Maybe I'm thinking of rebel to literally? I agree that the song talks about the futility of continuing rebellion but as far as I can see it is not about his (ie the personae in the song's) rebellion. Even though he left out the anti-Jacobite vitriol of the original and makes it more of a "lets have some common sense song" it still seems to be written from a Whig perspective. Or at the the very least from a non-Jacobite perspective. Surely the first verse makes that clear. You Jacobites by name, your faults I will proclaim, your doctrines I must blame, you will hear.