No More Learning

He was strenuously supported by Sir James Montgomery, member
for Ayrshire, a man of considerable abilities, but of loose principles,
turbulent temper, insatiable cupidity, and implacable malevolence. The
Archbishop of Glasgow and Sir George Mackenzie spoke on the other side:
but the only effect of their oratory was to deprive their party of the
advantage of being able to allege that the Estates were under duress,
and that liberty of speech had been denied to the defenders of
hereditary monarchy.

When the question was put, Athol, Queensberry, and some of their
friends withdrew. Only five members voted against the resolution which
pronounced that James had forfeited his right to the allegiance of his
subjects. When it was moved that the Crown of Scotland should be
settled as the Crown of England had been settled, Athol and Queensberry
reappeared in the hall. They had doubted, they said, whether they could
justifiably declare the throne vacant. But, since it had been declared
vacant, they felt no doubt that William and Mary were the persons who
ought to fill it.

The Convention then went forth in procession to the High Street. Several
great nobles, attended by the Lord Provost of the capital and by the
heralds, ascended the octagon tower from which rose the city cross
surmounted by the unicorn of Scotland, [304] Hamilton read the vote of
the Convention; and a King at Arms proclaimed the new Sovereigns with
sound of trumpet. On the same day the Estates issued an order that the
parochial clergy should, on pain of deprivation, publish from their
pulpits the proclamation which had just been read at the city cross, and
should pray for King William and Queen Mary.

Still the interregnum was not at an end. Though the new Sovereigns had
been proclaimed, they had not yet been put into possession of the royal
authority by a formal tender and a formal acceptance. At Edinburgh,
as at Westminster, it was thought necessary that the instrument which
settled the government should clearly define and solemnly assert those
privileges of the people which the Stuarts had illegally infringed. A
Claim of Right was therefore drawn up by the Twenty Four, and adopted by
the Convention. To this Claim, which purported to be merely declaratory
of the law as it stood, was added a supplementary paper containing a
list of grievances which could be remedied only by new laws. One most
important article which we should naturally expect to find at the head
of such a list, the Convention, with great practical prudence, but in
defiance of notorious facts and of unanswerable arguments, placed in the
Claim of Right. Nobody could deny that prelacy was established by Act
of Parliament. The power exercised by the Bishops might be pernicious,
unscriptural, antichristian but illegal it certainly was not; and to
pronounce it illegal was to outrage common sense. The Whig leaders
however were much more desirous to get rid of episcopacy than to
prove themselves consummate publicists and logicians. If they made the
abolition of episcopacy an article of the contract by which William was
to hold the crown, they attained their end, though doubtless in a manner
open to much criticism. If, on the other hand, they contented themselves
with resolving that episcopacy was a noxious institution which at some
future time the legislature would do well to abolish, they might find
that their resolution, though unobjectionable in form, was barren of
consequences. They knew that William by no means sympathized with their
dislike of Bishops, and that, even had he been much more zealous for
the Calvinistic model than he was, the relation in which he stood to the
Anglican Church would make it difficult and dangerous for him to declare
himself hostile to a fundamental part of the constitution of that
Church. If he should become King of Scotland without being fettered by
any pledge on this subject, it might well be apprehended that he would
hesitate about passing an Act which would be regarded with abhorrence
by a large body of his subjects in the south of the island. It was
therefore most desirable that the question should be settled while the
throne was still vacant. In this opinion many politicians concurred, who
had no dislike to rochets and mitres, but who wished that William might
have a quiet and prosperous reign. The Scottish people,--so these men
reasoned,--hated episcopacy. The English loved it. To leave William
any voice in the matter was to put him under the necessity of deeply
wounding the strongest feelings of one of the nations which he governed.
It was therefore plainly for his own interest that the question, which
he could not settle in any manner without incurring a fearful amount of
obloquy, should be settled for him by others who were exposed to no
such danger. He was not yet Sovereign of Scotland. While the interregnum
lasted, the supreme power belonged to the Estates; and for what the
Estates might do the prelatists of his southern kingdom could not hold
him responsible. The elder Dalrymple wrote strongly from London to this
effect, and there can be little doubt that he expressed the sentiments
of his master. William would have sincerely rejoiced if the Scots could
have been reconciled to a modified episcopacy. But, since that could not
be, it was manifestly desirable that they should themselves, while
there was yet no King over them, pronounce the irrevocable doom of the
institution which they abhorred, [305]

The Convention, therefore, with little debate as it should seem,
inserted in the Claim of Right a clause declaring that prelacy was an
insupportable burden to the kingdom, that it had been long odious to the
body of the people, and that it ought to be abolished.

Nothing in the proceedings at Edinburgh astonishes an Englishman more
than the manner in which the Estates dealt with the practice of torture.
In England torture had always been illegal. In the most servile times
the judges had unanimously pronounced it so. Those rulers who had
occasionally resorted to it had, as far as was possible, used it in
secret, had never pretended that they had acted in conformity with
either statute law or common law, and had excused themselves by saying
that the extraordinary peril to which the state was exposed had
forced them to take on themselves the responsibility of employing
extraordinarily means of defence. It had therefore never been thought
necessary by any English Parliament to pass any Act or resolution
touching this matter. The torture was not mentioned in the Petition
of Right, or in any of the statutes framed by the Long Parliament.
No member of the Convention of 1689 dreamed of proposing that the
instrument which called the Prince and Princess of Orange to the throne
should contain a declaration against the using of racks and thumbscrews
for the purpose of forcing prisoners to accuse themselves. Such a
declaration would have been justly regarded as weakening rather than
strengthening a rule which, as far back as the days of the Plantagenets,
had been proudly declared by the most illustrious sages of Westminster
Hall to be a distinguishing feature of the English jurisprudence, [306]
In the Scottish Claim of Right, the use of torture, without evidence,
or in ordinary cases, was declared to be contrary to law. The use of
torture, therefore, where there was strong evidence, and where the crime
was extraordinary, was, by the plainest implication, declared to be
according to law; nor did the Estates mention the use of torture among
the grievances which required a legislative remedy. In truth, they could
not condemn the use of torture without condemning themselves. It had
chanced that, while they were employed in settling the government, the
eloquent and learned Lord President Lockhart had been foully murdered in
a public street through which he was returning from church on a Sunday.
The murderer was seized, and proved to be a wretch who, having treated
his wife barbarously and turned her out of doors, had been compelled by
a decree of the Court of Session to provide for her. A savage hatred of
the judges by whom she had been protected had taken possession of his
mind, and had goaded him to a horrible crime and a horrible fate. It
was natural that an assassination attended by so many circumstances
of aggravation should move the indignation of the members of the
Convention. Yet they should have considered the gravity of the
conjuncture and the importance of their own mission. They unfortunately,
in the heat of passion, directed the magistrates of Edinburgh to strike
the prisoner in the boots, and named a Committee to superintend the
operation. But for this unhappy event, it is probable that the law of
Scotland concerning torture would have been immediately assimilated to
the law of England, [307]

Having settled the Claim of Right, the Convention proceeded to revise
the Coronation oath. When this had been done, three members were
appointed to carry the Instrument of Government to London. Argyle,
though not, in strictness of law, a Peer, was chosen to represent the
Peers: Sir James Montgomery represented the Commissioners of Shires, and
Sir John Dalrymple the Commissioners of Towns.

The Estates then adjourned for a few weeks, having first passed a vote
which empowered Hamilton to take such measures as might be necessary for
the preservation of the public peace till the end of the interregnum.

The ceremony of the inauguration was distinguished from ordinary
pageants by some highly interesting circumstances. On the eleventh of
May the three Commissioners came to the Council Chamber at Whitehall,
and thence, attended by almost all the Scotchmen of note who were then
in London, proceeded to the Banqueting House. There William and Mary
appeared seated under a canopy. A splendid circle of English nobles, and
statesmen stood round the throne: but the sword of state as committed to
a Scotch lord; and the oath of office was administered after the Scotch
fashion. Argyle recited the words slowly. The royal pair, holding up
their hands towards heaven, repeated after him till they came to the
last clause. There William paused. That clause contained a promise that
he would root out all heretics and all enemies of the true worship of
God; and it was notorious that, in the opinion of many Scotchmen,
not only all Roman Catholics, but all Protestant Episcopalians, all
Independents, Baptists and Quakers, all Lutherans, nay all British
Presbyterians who did not hold themselves bound by the Solemn League and
Covenant, were enemies of the true worship of God, [308] The King had
apprised the Commissioners that he could not take this part of the oath
without a distinct and public explanation; and they had been authorised
by the Convention to give such an explanation as would satisfy him.
"I will not," he now said, "lay myself under any obligation to be
a persecutor. " "Neither the words of this oath," said one of the
Commissioners, "nor the laws of Scotland, lay any such obligation on
your Majesty. " "In that sense, then, I swear," said William; "and I
desire you all, my lords and gentlemen, to witness that I do so. " Even
his detractors have generally admitted that on this great occasion he
acted with uprightness, dignity, and wisdom, [309]

As King of Scotland, he soon found himself embarrassed at every step by
all the difficulties which had embarrassed him as King of England, and
by other difficulties which in England were happily unknown. In the
north of the island, no class was more dissatisfied with the Revolution
than the class which owed most to the Revolution. The manner in which
the Convention had decided the question of ecclesiastical polity had
not been more offensive to the Bishops themselves than to those fiery
Covenanters who had long, in defiance of sword and carbine, boot and
gibbet, worshipped their Maker after their own fashion in caverns and on
mountain tops. Was there ever, these zealots exclaimed, such a halting
between two opinions, such a compromise between the Lord and Baal? The
Estates ought to have said that episcopacy was an abomination in
God's sight, and that, in obedience to his word, and from fear of
his righteous judgment, they were determined to deal with this great
national sin and scandal after the fashion of those saintly rulers who
of old cut down the groves and demolished the altars of Chemosh and
Astarte. Unhappily, Scotland was ruled, not by pious Josiahs, but by
careless Gallios. The antichristian hierarchy was to be abolished, not
because it was an insult to heaven, but because it was felt as a burden
on earth; not because it was hateful to the great Head of the Church,
but because it was hateful to the people. Was public opinion, then, the
test of right and wrong in religion? Was not the order which Christ had
established in his own house to be held equally sacred in all countries
and through all ages? And was there no reason for following that order
in Scotland except a reason which might be urged with equal force for
maintaining Prelacy in England, Popery in Spain, and Mahometanism in
Turkey? Why, too, was nothing said of those Covenants which the nation
had so generally subscribed and so generally violated? Why was it not
distinctly affirmed that the promises set down in those rolls were still
binding, and would to the end of time be binding, on the kingdom? Were
these truths to be suppressed from regard for the feelings and interests
of a prince who was all things to all men, an ally of the idolatrous
Spaniard and of the Lutheran bane, a presbyterian at the Hague and a
prelatist at Whiteball? He, like Jelin in ancient times, had doubtless
so far done well that he had been the scourge of the idolatrous House of
Ahab. But he, like Jelin, had not taken heed to walk in the divine
law with his whole heart, but had tolerated and practised impieties
differing only in degree from those of which he had declared himself the
enemy. It would have better become godly senators to remonstrate with
him on the sin which he was committing by conforming to the Anglican
ritual, and by maintaining the Anglican Church government, than to
flatter him by using a phraseology which seemed to indicate that they
were as deeply tainted with Erastianism as himself. Many of those who
held this language refused to do any act which could be construed into a
recognition of the new Sovereigns, and would rather have been fired upon
by files of musketeers or tied to stakes within low water mark than have
uttered a prayer that God would bless William and Mary.

Yet the King had less to fear from the pertinacious adherence of these
men to their absurd principles, than from the ambition and avarice of
another set of men who had no principles at all. It was necessary
that he should immediately name ministers to conduct the government of
Scotland: and, name whom he might, he could not fail to disappoint
and irritate a multitude of expectants. Scotland was one of the least
wealthy countries in Europe: yet no country in Europe contained a
greater number of clever and selfish politicians. The places in the
gift of the Crown were not enough to satisfy one twentieth part of the
placehunters, every one of whom thought that his own services had
been preeminent, and that, whoever might be passed by, he ought to
be remembered. William did his best to satisfy these innumerable and
insatiable claimants by putting many offices into commission. There were
however a few great posts which it was impossible to divide. Hamilton
was declared Lord High Commissioner, in the hope that immense pecuniary
allowances, a residence in Holyrood Palace, and a pomp and dignity
little less than regal, would content him. The Earl of Crawford was
appointed President of the Parliament; and it was supposed that this
appointment would conciliate the rigid Presbyterians, for Crawford was
what they called a professor. His letters and speeches are, to use his
own phraseology, exceeding savoury. Alone, or almost alone, among the
prominent politicians of that time, he retained the style which had
been fashionable in the preceding generation. He had a text of the
Old Testament ready for every occasion. He filled his despatches with
allusions to Ishmael and Hagar, Hannah and Eli, Elijah, Nehemiah,
and Zerubbabel, and adorned his oratory with quotations from Ezra and
Haggai. It is a circumstance strikingly characteristic of the man, and
of the school in which he had been trained, that, in all the mass of his
writing which has come down to us, there is not a single word indicating
that he had ever in his life heard of the New Testament. Even in our own
time some persons of a peculiar taste have been so much delighted by the
rich unction of his eloquence, that they have confidently pronounced
him a saint. To those whose habit it is to judge of a man rather by his
actions than by his words, Crawford will appear to have been a selfish,
cruel politician, who was not at all the dupe of his own cant, and whose
zeal against episcopal government was not a little whetted by his desire
to obtain a grant of episcopal domains. In excuse for his greediness, it
ought to be said that he was the poorest noble of a poor nobility, and
that before the Revolution he was sometimes at a loss for a meal and a
suit of clothes, [310]

The ablest of Scottish politicians and debaters, Sir John Dalrymple, was
appointed Lord Advocate. His father, Sir James, the greatest of Scottish
jurists, was placed at the head of the Court of Session. Sir William
Lockhart, a man whose letters prove him to have possessed considerable
ability, became Solicitor General.

Sir James Montgomery had flattered himself that he should be the chief
minister. He had distinguished himself highly in the Convention. He
had been one of the Commissioners who had tendered the Crown and
administered the oath to the new Sovereigns. In parliamentary ability
and eloquence he had no superior among his countrymen, except the new
Lord Advocate. The Secretaryship was, not indeed in dignity, but in real
power, the highest office in the Scottish government; and this office
was the reward to which Montgomery thought himself entitled. But the
Episcopalians and the moderate Presbyterians dreaded him as a man
of extreme opinions and of bitter spirit. He had been a chief of
the Covenanters: he had been prosecuted at one time for holding
conventicles, and at another time for harbouring rebels: he had been
fined: he had been imprisoned: he had been almost driven to take refuge
from his enemies beyond the Atlantic in the infant settlement of New
Jersey. It was apprehended that, if he were now armed with the whole
power of the Crown, he would exact a terrible retribution for what he
had suffered, [311] William therefore preferred Melville, who, though
not a man of eminent talents, was regarded by the Presbyterians as a
thoroughgoing friend, and yet not regarded by the Episcopalians as an
implacable enemy. Melville fixed his residence at the English Court,
and became the regular organ of communication between Kensington and the
authorities at Edinburgh.

William had, however, one Scottish adviser who deserved and possessed
more influence than any of the ostensible ministers. This was Carstairs,
one of the most remarkable men of that age. He united great scholastic
attainments with great aptitude for civil business, and the firm faith
and ardent zeal of a martyr with the shrewdness and suppleness of a
consummate politician. In courage and fidelity he resembled Burnet; but
he had, what Burnet wanted, judgment, selfcommand, and a singular power
of keeping secrets. There was no post to which he might not have aspired
if he had been a layman, or a priest of the Church of England. But a
Presbyterian clergyman could not hope to attain any high dignity either
in the north or in the south of the island. Carstairs was forced to
content himself with the substance of power, and to leave the semblance
to others. He was named Chaplain to their Majesties for Scotland, but
wherever the King was, in England, in Ireland, in the Netherlands, there
was this most trusty and most prudent of courtiers. He obtained from
the royal bounty a modest competence; and he desired no more. But it
was well known that he could be as useful a friend and as formidable an
enemy as any member of the cabinet; and he was designated at the
public offices and in the antechambers of the palace by the significant
nickname of the Cardinal, [312]

To Montgomery was offered the place of Lord Justice Clerk. But that
place, though high and honourable, he thought below his merits and his
capacity; and he returned from London to Scotland with a heart ulcerated
by hatred of his ungrateful master and of his successful rivals. At
Edinburgh a knot of Whigs, as severely disappointed as himself by the
new arrangements, readily submitted to the guidance of so bold and
able a leader. Under his direction these men, among whom the Earl of
Annandale and Lord Ross were the most conspicuous, formed themselves
into a society called the Club, appointed a clerk, and met daily at a
tavern to concert plans of opposition. Round this nucleus soon gathered
a great body of greedy and angry politicians, [313] With these dishonest
malecontents, whose object was merely to annoy the government and to get
places, were leagued other malecontents, who, in the course of a long
resistance to tyranny, had become so perverse and irritable that
they were unable to live contentedly even under the mildest and most
constitutional government. Such a man was Sir Patrick Hume. He had
returned from exile, as litigious, as impracticable; as morbidly jealous
of all superior authority, and as fond of haranguing, as he had been
four years before, and was as much bent on making a merely nominal
sovereign of William as he had formerly been bent on making a merely
nominal general of Argyle, [314] A man far superior morally and
intellectually to Hume, Fletcher of Saltoun, belonged to the same party.
Though not a member of the Convention, he was a most active member of
the Club, [315] He hated monarchy: he hated democracy: his favourite
project was to make Scotland an oligarchical republic. The King, if
there must be a King, was to be a mere pageant. The lowest class of the
people were to be bondsmen. The whole power, legislative and executive,
was to be in the hands of the Parliament. In other words, the country
was to be absolutely governed by a hereditary aristocracy, the most
needy, the most haughty, and the most quarrelsome in Europe. Under such
a polity there could have been neither freedom nor tranquillity. Trade,
industry, science, would have languished; and Scotland would have been
a smaller Poland, with a puppet sovereign, a turbulent diet, and an
enslaved people. With unsuccessful candidates for office, and with
honest but wrongheaded republicans, were mingled politicians whose
course was determined merely by fear. Many sycophants, who were
conscious that they had, in the evil time, done what deserved
punishment, were desirous to make their peace with the powerful and
vindictive Club, and were glad to be permitted to atone for their
servility to James by their opposition to William. [316] The great body
of Jacobites meanwhile stood aloof, saw with delight the enemies of the
House of Stuart divided against one another, and indulged the hope that
the confusion would end in the restoration of the banished king, [317]

While Montgomery was labouring to form out of various materials a party
which might, when the Convention should reassemble, be powerful enough
to dictate to the throne, an enemy still more formidable than Montgomery
had set up the standard of civil war in a region about which the
politicians of Westminster, and indeed most of the politicians of
Edinburgh, knew no more than about Abyssinia or Japan.

It is not easy for a modern Englishman, who can pass in a day from his
club in St. James's Street to his shooting box among the Grampians, and
who finds in his shooting box all the comforts and luxuries of his
club, to believe that, in the time of his greatgrandfathers, St. James's
Street had as little connection with the Grampians as with the Andes.
Yet so it was. In the south of our island scarcely any thing was known
about the Celtic part of Scotland; and what was known excited no feeling
but contempt and loathing. The crags and the glens, the woods and the
waters, were indeed the same that now swarm every autumn with admiring
gazers and stretchers. The Trosachs wound as now between gigantic walls
of rock tapestried with broom and wild roses: Foyers came headlong down
through the birchwood with the same leap and the same roar with which
he still rushes to Loch Ness; and, in defiance of the sun of June, the
snowy scalp of Ben Cruachan rose, as it still rises, over the willowy
islets of Loch Awe. Yet none of these sights had power, till a recent
period, to attract a single poet or painter from more opulent and more
tranquil regions. Indeed, law and police, trade and industry, have done
far more than people of romantic dispositions will readily admit,
to develope in our minds a sense of the wilder beauties of nature.
A traveller must be freed from all apprehension of being murdered or
starved before he can be charmed by the bold outlines and rich tints
of the hills. He is not likely to be thrown into ecstasies by the
abruptness of a precipice from which he is in imminent danger of falling
two thousand feet perpendicular; by the boiling waves of a torrent which
suddenly whirls away his baggage and forces him to run for his life; by
the gloomy grandeur of a pass where he finds a corpse which marauders
have just stripped and mangled; or by the screams of those eagles whose
next meal may probably be on his own eyes. About the year 1730, Captain
Burt, one of the first Englishmen who caught a glimpse of the spots
which now allure tourists from every part of the civilised world, wrote
an account of his wanderings. He was evidently a man of a quick, an
observant, and a cultivated mind, and would doubtless, had he lived in
our age, have looked with mingled awe and delight on the mountains of
Invernessshire. But, writing with the feeling which was universal in
his own age, he pronounced those mountains monstrous excrescences. Their
deformity, he said, was such that the most sterile plains seemed lovely
by comparison. Fine weather, he complained, only made bad worse; for,
the clearer the day, the more disagreeably did those misshapen masses
of gloomy brown and dirty purple affect the eye. What a contrast, he
exclaimed, between these horrible prospects and the beauties of Richmond
Hill! [318] Some persons may think that Burt was a man of vulgar and
prosaical mind: but they will scarcely venture to pass a similar
judgment on Oliver Goldsmith. Goldsmith was one of the very few Saxons
who, more than a century ago, ventured to explore the Highlands. He
was disgusted by the hideous wilderness, and declared that he greatly
preferred the charming country round Leyden, the vast expanse of verdant
meadow, and the villas with their statues and grottoes, trim flower
beds, and rectilinear avenues. Yet it is difficult to believe that
the author of the Traveller and of the Deserted Village was naturally
inferior in taste and sensibility to the thousands of clerks and
milliners who are now thrown into raptures by the sight of Loch Katrine
and Loch Lomond, [319] His feelings may easily be explained. It was not
till roads had been cut out of the rocks, till bridges had been flung
over the courses of the rivulets, till inns had succeeded to dens of
robbers, till there was as little danger of being slain or plundered
in the wildest defile of Badenoch or Lochaber as in Cornhill, that
strangers could be enchanted by the blue dimples of the lakes and by
the rainbows which overhung the waterfalls, and could derive a solemn
pleasure even from the clouds and tempests which lowered on the mountain
tops.

The change in the feeling with which the Lowlanders regarded the
highland scenery was closely connected with a change not less remarkable
in the feeling with which they regarded the Highland race. It is not
strange that the Wild Scotch, as they were sometimes called, should,
in the seventeenth century, have been considered by the Saxons as mere
savages. But it is surely strange that, considered as savages, they
should not have been objects of interest and curiosity. The English were
then abundantly inquisitive about the manners of rude nations separated
from our island by great continents and oceans. Numerous books were
printed describing the laws, the superstitions, the cabins, the repasts,
the dresses, the marriages, the funerals of Laplanders and Hottentots,
Mohawks and Malays. The plays and poems of that age are full of
allusions to the usages of the black men of Africa and of the red men
of America. The only barbarian about whom there was no wish to have any
information was the Highlander. Five or six years after the Revolution,
an indefatigable angler published an account of Scotland. He boasted
that, in the course of his rambles from lake to lake, and from brook to
brook, he had left scarcely a nook of the kingdom unexplored. But, when
we examine his narrative, we find that he had never ventured beyond
the extreme skirts of the Celtic region. He tells us that even from the
people who lived close to the passes he could learn little or nothing
about the Gaelic population. Few Englishmen, he says, had ever seen
Inverary. All beyond Inverary was chaos, [320] In the reign of George
the First, a work was published which professed to give a most exact
account of Scotland; and in this work, consisting of more than three
hundred pages, two contemptuous paragraphs were thought sufficient for
the Highlands and the Highlanders, [321] We may well doubt whether, in
1689, one in twenty of the well read gentlemen who assembled at Will's
coffeehouse knew that, within the four seas, and at the distance of less
than five hundred miles from London, were many miniature courts, in
each of which a petty prince, attended by guards, by armour bearers, by
musicians, by a hereditary orator, by a hereditary poet laureate, kept
a rude state, dispensed a rude justice, waged wars, and concluded
treaties. While the old Gaelic institutions were in full vigour, no
account of them was given by any observer, qualified to judge of them
fairly. Had such an observer studied the character of the Highlanders,
he would doubtless have found in it closely intermingled the good and
the bad qualities of an uncivilised nation. He would have found that the
people had no love for their country or for their king; that they had
no attachment to any commonwealth larger than the clan, or to any
magistrate superior to the chief. He would have found that life was
governed by a code of morality and honour widely different from that
which is established in peaceful and prosperous societies. He would have
learned that a stab in the back, or a shot from behind a fragment of
rock, were approved modes of taking satisfaction for insults. He would
have heard men relate boastfully how they or their fathers had wreaked
on hereditary enemies in a neighbouring valley such vengeance as would
have made old soldiers of the Thirty Years' War shudder. He would have
found that robbery was held to be a calling, not merely innocent, but
honourable. He would have seen, wherever he turned, that dislike of
steady industry, and that disposition to throw on the weaker sex the
heaviest part of manual labour, which are characteristic of savages. He
would have been struck by the spectacle of athletic men basking in
the sun, angling for salmon, or taking aim at grouse, while their aged
mothers, their pregnant wives, their tender daughters, were reaping the
scanty harvest of oats. Nor did the women repine at their hard lot. In
their view it was quite fit that a man, especially if he assumed the
aristocratic title of Duinhe Wassel and adorned his bonnet with the
eagle's feather, should take his ease, except when he was fighting,
hunting, or marauding. To mention the name of such a man in connection
with commerce or with any mechanical art was an insult. Agriculture was
indeed less despised. Yet a highborn warrior was much more becomingly
employed in plundering the land of others than in tilling his own. The
religion of the greater part of the Highlands was a rude mixture of
Popery and Paganism. The symbol of redemption was associated with
heathen sacrifices and incantations. Baptized men poured libations of
ale to one Daemon, and set out drink offerings of milk for another.
Seers wrapped themselves up in bulls' hides, and awaited, in that
vesture, the inspiration which was to reveal the future. Even among
those minstrels and genealogists whose hereditary vocation was to
preserve the memory of past events, an enquirer would have found very
few who could read. In truth, he might easily have journeyed from sea to
sea without discovering a page of Gaelic printed or written. The price
which he would have had to pay for his knowledge of the country would
have been heavy. He would have had to endure hardships as great as if
he had sojourned among the Esquimaux or the Samoyeds. Here and
there, indeed, at the castle of some great lord who had a seat in the
Parliament and Privy Council, and who was accustomed to pass a large
part of his life in the cities of the South, might have been found wigs
and embroidered coats, plate and fine linen, lace and jewels, French
dishes and French wines. But, in general, the traveller would have
been forced to content himself with very different quarters. In many
dwellings the furniture, the food, the clothing, nay the very hair
and skin of his hosts, would have put his philosophy to the proof. His
lodging would sometimes have been in a but of which every nook would
have swarmed with vermin. He would have inhaled an atmosphere thick with
peat smoke, and foul with a hundred noisome exhalations. At supper grain
fit only for horses would have been set before him, accompanied by a
cake of blood drawn from living cows. Some of the company with which he
would have feasted would have been covered with cutaneous eruptions, and
others would have been smeared with tar like sheep. His couch would have
been the bare earth, dry or wet as the weather might be; and from that
couch he would have risen half poisoned with stench, half blind with the
reek of turf, and half mad with the itch, [322]

This is not an attractive picture.
And yet an enlightened and
dispassionate observer would have found in the character and manners of
this rude people something which might well excite admiration and a good
hope. Their courage was what great exploits achieved in all the
four quarters of the globe have since proved it to be. Their intense
attachment to their own tribe and to their own patriarch, though
politically a great evil, partook of the nature of virtue. The sentiment
was misdirected and ill regulated; but still it was heroic. There must
be some elevation of soul in a man who loves the society of which he is
a member and the leader whom he follows with a love stronger than the
love of life. It was true that the Highlander had few scruples about
shedding the blood of an enemy: but it was not less true that he had
high notions of the duty of observing faith to allies and hospitality
to guests. It was true that his predatory habits were most pernicious to
the commonwealth. Yet those erred greatly who imagined that he bore any
resemblance to villains who, in rich and well governed communities, live
by stealing. When he drove before him the herds of Lowland farmers up
the pass which led to his native glen, he no more considered himself as
a thief than the Raleighs and Drakes considered themselves as thieves
when they divided the cargoes of Spanish galleons. He was a warrior
seizing lawful prize of war, of war never once intermitted during
the thirty-five generations which had passed away since the Teutonic
invaders had driven the children of the soil to the mountains. That, if
he was caught robbing on such principles, he should, for the protection
of peaceful industry, be punished with the utmost rigour of the law
was perfectly just. But it was not just to class him morally with the
pickpockets who infested Drury Lane Theatre, or the highwaymen who
stopped coaches on Blackheath. His inordinate pride of birth and his
contempt for labour and trade were indeed great weaknesses, and had done
far more than the inclemency of the air and the sterility of the soil
to keep his country poor and rude. Yet even here there was some
compensation. It must in fairness be acknowledged that the patrician
virtues were not less widely diffused among the population of the
Highlands than the patrician vices. As there was no other part of the
island where men, sordidly clothed, lodged, and fed, indulged themselves
to such a degree in the idle sauntering habits of an aristocracy, so
there was no other part of the island where such men had in such a
degree the better qualities of an aristocracy, grace and dignity of
manner, selfrespect, and that noble sensibility which makes dishonour
more terrible than death. A gentleman of this sort, whose clothes were
begrimed with the accumulated filth of years, and whose hovel smelt
worse than an English hogstye, would often do the honours of that hovel
with a lofty courtesy worthy of the splendid circle of Versailles.
Though he had as little booklearning as the most stupid ploughboys
of England, it would have been a great error to put him in the same
intellectual rank with such ploughboys. It is indeed only by reading
that men can become profoundly acquainted with any science. But the arts
of poetry and rhetoric may be carried near to absolute perfection, and
may exercise a mighty influence on the public mind, in an age in which
books are wholly or almost wholly unknown. The first great painter
of life and manners has described, with a vivacity which makes it
impossible to doubt that he was copying from nature, the effect produced
by eloquence and song on audiences ignorant of the alphabet. It is
probable that, in the Highland councils, men who would not have been
qualified for the duty of parish clerks sometimes argued questions of
peace and war, of tribute and homage, with ability worthy of Halifax and
Caermarthen, and that, at the Highland banquets, minstrels who did
not know their letters sometimes poured forth rhapsodies in which a
discerning critic might have found passages which would have reminded
him of the tenderness of Otway or of the vigour of Dryden.

There was therefore even then evidence sufficient to justify the belief
that no natural inferiority had kept the Celt far behind the Saxon.
It might safely have been predicted that, if ever an efficient police
should make it impossible for the Highlander to avenge his wrongs by
violence and to supply his wants by rapine, if ever his faculties should
be developed by the civilising influence of the Protestant religion and
of the English language, if ever he should transfer to his country and
to her lawful magistrates the affection and respect with which he had
been taught to regard his own petty community and his own petty prince,
the kingdom would obtain an immense accession of strength for all the
purposes both of peace and of war.

Such would doubtless have been the decision of a well informed and
impartial judge. But no such judge was then to be found. The Saxons
who dwelt far from the Gaelic provinces could not be well informed. The
Saxons who dwelt near those provinces could not be impartial. National
enmities have always been fiercest among borderers; and the enmity
between the Highland borderer and the Lowland borderer along the
whole frontier was the growth of ages, and was kept fresh by constant
injuries. One day many square miles of pasture land were swept bare by
armed plunderers from the hills. Another day a score of plaids dangled
in a row on the gallows of Crieff or Stirling. Fairs were indeed held on
the debatable land for the necessary interchange of commodities. But
to those fairs both parties came prepared for battle; and the day often
ended in bloodshed. Thus the Highlander was an object of hatred to his
Saxon neighbours; and from his Saxon neighbours those Saxons who dwelt
far from him learned the very little that they cared to know about his
habits. When the English condescended to think of him at all,--and it
was seldom that they did so,--they considered him as a filthy abject
savage, a slave, a Papist, a cutthroat, and a thief, [323]

This contemptuous loathing lasted till the year 1745, and was then for a
moment succeeded by intense fear and rage. England, thoroughly alarmed,
put forth her whole strength. The Highlands were subjugated rapidly,
completely, and for ever. During a short time the English nation, still
heated by the recent conflict, breathed nothing but vengeance. The
slaughter on the field of battle and on the scaffold was not sufficient
to slake the public thirst for blood. The sight of the tartan inflamed
the populace of London with hatred, which showed itself by unmanly
outrages to defenceless captives. A political and social revolution
took place through the whole Celtic region. The power of the chiefs was
destroyed: the people were disarmed: the use of the old national garb
was interdicted: the old predatory habits were effectually broken; and
scarcely had this change been accomplished when a strange reflux of
public feeling began. Pity succeeded to aversion. The nation execrated
the cruelties which had been committed on the Highlanders, and forgot
that for those cruelties it was itself answerable. Those very Londoners,
who, while the memory of the march to Derby was still fresh, had
thronged to hoot and pelt the rebel prisoners, now fastened on the
prince who had put down the rebellion the nickname of Butcher. Those
barbarous institutions and usages, which, while they were in full force,
no Saxon had thought worthy of serious examination, or had mentioned
except with contempt, had no sooner ceased to exist than they became
objects of curiosity, of interest, even of admiration. Scarcely had the
chiefs been turned into mere landlords, when it became the fashion to
draw invidious comparisons between the rapacity of the landlord and the
indulgence of the chief. Men seemed to have forgotten that the ancient
Gaelic polity had been found to be incompatible with the authority of
law, had obstructed the progress of civilisation, had more than once
brought on the empire the curse of civil war. As they had formerly
seen only the odious side of that polity, they could now see only the
pleasing side. The old tie, they said, had been parental: the new tie
was purely commercial. What could be more lamentable than that the head
of a tribe should eject, for a paltry arrear of rent, tenants who were
his own flesh and blood, tenants whose forefathers had often with their
bodies covered his forefathers on the field of battle? As long as there
were Gaelic marauders, they had been regarded by the Saxon population
as hateful vermin who ought to be exterminated without mercy. As soon as
the extermination had been accomplished, as soon as cattle were as safe
in the Perthshire passes as in Smithfield market, the freebooter was
exalted into a hero of romance. As long as the Gaelic dress was worn,
the Saxons had pronounced it hideous, ridiculous, nay, grossly indecent.
Soon after it had been prohibited, they discovered that it was the most
graceful drapery in Europe. The Gaelic monuments, the Gaelic usages, the
Gaelic superstitions, the Gaelic verses, disdainfully neglected during
many ages, began to attract the attention of the learned from the moment
at which the peculiarities of the Gaelic race began to disappear. So
strong was this impulse that, where the Highlands were concerned, men of
sense gave ready credence to stories without evidence, and men of taste
gave rapturous applause to compositions without merit. Epic poems, which
any skilful and dispassionate critic would at a glance have perceived
to be almost entirely modern, and which, if they had been published as
modern, would have instantly found their proper place in company with
Blackmore's Alfred and Wilkie's Epigoniad, were pronounced to be fifteen
hundred years old, and were gravely classed with the Iliad. Writers of
a very different order from the impostor who fabricated these forgeries
saw how striking an effect might be produced by skilful pictures of the
old Highland life. Whatever was repulsive was softened down: whatever
was graceful and noble was brought prominently forward. Some of these
works were executed with such admirable art that, like the historical
plays of Shakspeare, they superseded history. The visions of the poet
were realities to his readers. The places which he described became
holy ground, and were visited by thousands of pilgrims. Soon the
vulgar imagination was so completely occupied by plaids, targets, and
claymores, that, by most Englishmen, Scotchman and Highlander were
regarded as synonymous words. Few people seemed to be aware that, at no
remote period, a Macdonald or a Macgregor in his tartan was to a citizen
of Edinburgh or Glasgow what an Indian hunter in his war paint is to
an inhabitant of Philadelphia or Boston. Artists and actors represented
Bruce and Douglas in striped petticoats. They might as well have
represented Washington brandishing a tomahawk, and girt with a string of
scalps. At length this fashion reached a point beyond which it was not
easy to proceed. The last British King who held a court in Holyrood
thought that he could not give a more striking proof of his respect for
the usages which had prevailed in Scotland before the Union, than by
disguising himself in what, before the Union, was considered by nine
Scotchmen out of ten as the dress of a thief.

Thus it has chanced that the old Gaelic institutions and manners have
never been exhibited in the simple light of truth. Up to the middle of
the last century, they were seen through one false medium: they have
since been seen through another. Once they loomed dimly through an
obscuring and distorting haze of prejudice; and no sooner had that
fog dispersed than they appeared bright with all the richest tints of
poetry. The time when a perfectly fair picture could have been painted
has now passed away. The original has long disappeared: no authentic
effigy exists; and all that is possible is to produce an imperfect
likeness by the help of two portraits, of which one is a coarse
caricature and the other a masterpiece of flattery.

Among the erroneous notions which have been commonly received concerning
the history and character of the Highlanders is one which it is
especially necessary to correct. During the century which commenced with
the campaign of Montrose, and terminated with the campaign of the young
Pretender, every great military exploit which was achieved on British
ground in the cause of the House of Stuart was achieved by the valour
of Gaelic tribes. The English have therefore very naturally ascribed to
those tribes the feelings of English cavaliers, profound reverence for
the royal office, and enthusiastic attachment to the royal family. A
close inquiry however will show that the strength of these feelings
among the Celtic clans has been greatly exaggerated.

In studying the history of our civil contentions, we must never forget
that the same names, badges, and warcries had very different meanings
in different parts of the British isles. We have already seen how little
there was in common between the Jacobitism of Ireland and the Jacobitism
of England. The Jacobitism of the Scotch Highlander was, at least in the
seventeenth century, a third variety, quite distinct from the other
two. The Gaelic population was far indeed from holding the doctrines of
passive obedience and nonresistance. In fact disobedience and resistance
made up the ordinary life of that population. Some of those very clans
which it has been the fashion to describe as so enthusiastically loyal
that they were prepared to stand by James to the death, even when he was
in the wrong, had never, while he was on the throne, paid the smallest
respect to his authority, even when he was clearly in the right. Their
practice, their calling, had been to disobey and to defy him. Some of
them had actually been proscribed by sound of horn for the crime of
withstanding his lawful commands, and would have torn to pieces without
scruple any of his officers who had dared to venture beyond the passes
for the purpose of executing his warrant. The English Whigs were accused
by their opponents of holding doctrines dangerously lax touching the
obedience due to the chief magistrate. Yet no respectable English Whig
ever defended rebellion, except as a rare and extreme remedy for rare
and extreme evils. But among those Celtic chiefs whose loyalty has been
the theme of so much warm eulogy were some whose whole existence from
boyhood upwards had been one long rebellion. Such men, it is evident,
were not likely to see the Revolution in the light in which it appeared
to an Oxonian nonjuror. On the other hand they were not, like the
aboriginal Irish, urged to take arms by impatience of Saxon domination.
To such domination the Scottish Celt had never been subjected. He
occupied his own wild and sterile region, and followed his own national
usages. In his dealings with the Saxons, he was rather the oppressor
than the oppressed. He exacted black mail from them: he drove away their
flocks and herds; and they seldom dared to pursue him to his native
wilderness. They had never portioned out among themselves his dreary
region of moor and shingle. He had never seen the tower of his
hereditary chieftains occupied by an usurper who could not speak Gaelic,
and who looked on all who spoke it as brutes and slaves; nor had his
national and religious feelings ever been outraged by the power
and splendour of a church which he regarded as at once foreign and
heretical.

The real explanation of the readiness with which a large part of the
population of the Highlands, twice in the seventeenth century, drew
the sword for the Stuarts is to be found in the internal quarrels which
divided the commonwealth of clans. For there was a commonwealth of
clans, the image, on a reduced scale, of the great commonwealth of
European nations. In the smaller of these two commonwealths, as in the
larger, there were wars, treaties, alliances, disputes about territory
and precedence, a system of public law, a balance of power. There was
one inexhaustible source of discontents and disputes. The feudal system
had, some centuries before, been introduced into the hill country, but
had neither destroyed the patriarchal system nor amalgamated completely
with it. In general he who was lord in the Norman polity was also
chief in the Celtic polity; and, when this was the case, there was no
conflict. But, when the two characters were separated, all the willing
and loyal obedience was reserved for the chief. The lord had only what
he could get and hold by force. If he was able, by the help of his own
tribe, to keep in subjection tenants who were not of his own tribe,
there was a tyranny of clan over clan, the most galling, perhaps, of
all forms of tyranny. At different times different races had risen to an
authority which had produced general fear and envy. The Macdonalds had
once possessed, in the Hebrides and throughout the mountain country of
Argyleshire and Invernessshire, an ascendancy similar to that which the
House of Austria had once possessed in Christendom. But the ascendancy
of the Macdonalds had, like the ascendancy of the House of Austria,
passed away; and the Campbells, the children of Diarmid, had become in
the Highlands what the Bourbons had become in Europe. The parallel might
be carried far. Imputations similar to those which it was the fashion to
throw on the French government were thrown on the Campbells. A peculiar
dexterity, a peculiar plausibility of address, a peculiar contempt
for all the obligations of good faith, were ascribed, with or without
reason, to the dreaded race. "Fair and false like a Campbell" became
a proverb. It was said that Mac Callum More after Mac Callum More had,
with unwearied, unscrupulous, and unrelenting ambition, annexed mountain
after mountain and island after island to the original domains of
his House. Some tribes had been expelled from their territory, some
compelled to pay tribute, some incorporated with the conquerors. At
length the number of fighting men who bore the name of Campbell was
sufficient to meet in the field of battle the combined forces of all
the other western clans, [324] It was during those civil troubles which
commenced in 1638 that the power of this aspiring family reached the
zenith. The Marquess of Argyle was the head of a party as well as the
head of a tribe. Possessed of two different kinds of authority, he
used each of them in such a way as to extend and fortify the other.
The knowledge that he could bring into the field the claymores of five
thousand half heathen mountaineers added to his influence among the
austere Presbyterians who filled the Privy Council and the General
Assembly at Edinburgh. His influence at Edinburgh added to the terror
which he inspired among the mountains. Of all the Highland princes whose
history is well known to us he was the greatest and most dreaded. It was
while his neighbours were watching the increase of his power with hatred
which fear could scarcely keep down that Montrose called them to arms.
The call was promptly obeyed. A powerful coalition of clans waged war,
nominally for King Charles, but really against Mac Callum More. It is
not easy for any person who has studied the history of that contest
to doubt that, if Argyle had supported the cause of monarchy, his
neighbours would have declared against it. Grave writers tell of the
victory gained at Inverlochy by the royalists over the rebels. But the
peasants who dwell near the spot speak more accurately. They talk of the
great battle won there by the Macdonalds over the Campbells.

The feelings which had produced the coalition against the Marquess
of Argyle retained their force long after his death. His son, Earl
Archibald, though a man of many eminent virtues, inherited, with the
ascendancy of his ancestors, the unpopularity which such ascendancy
could scarcely fail to produce. In 1675, several warlike tribes formed
a confederacy against him, but were compelled to submit to the superior
force which was at his command. There was therefore great joy from sea
to sea when, in 1681, he was arraigned on a futile charge, condemned to
death, driven into exile, and deprived of his dignities. There was great
alarm when, in 1685, he returned from banishment, and sent forth the
fiery cross to summon his kinsmen to his standard; and there was again
great joy when his enterprise had failed, when his army had melted away,
when his head had been fixed on the Tolbooth of Edinburgh, and when
those chiefs who had regarded him as an oppressor had obtained from the
Crown, on easy terms, remissions of old debts and grants of new titles.
While England and Scotland generally were execrating the tyranny of
James, he was honoured as a deliverer in Appin and Lochaber, in Glenroy
and Glenmore, [325] The hatred excited by the power and ambition of the
House of Argyle was not satisfied even when the head of that House had
perished, when his children were fugitives, when strangers garrisoned
the Castle of Inverary, and when the whole shore of Loch Fyne was laid
waste by fire and sword. It was said that the terrible precedent which
had been set in the case of the Macgregors ought to be followed, and
that it ought to be made a crime to bear the odious name of Campbell.

On a sudden all was changed. The Revolution came. The heir of Argyle
returned in triumph. He was, as his predecessors had been, the head, not
only of a tribe, but of a party. The sentence which had deprived him
of his estate and of his honours was treated by the majority of the
Convention as a nullity. The doors of the Parliament House were thrown
open to him: he was selected from the whole body of Scottish nobles
to administer the oath of office to the new Sovereigns; and he was
authorised to raise an army on his domains for the service of the Crown.
He would now, doubtless, be as powerful as the most powerful of his
ancestors. Backed by the strength of the Government, he would demand
all the long and heavy arrears of rent and tribute which were due to him
from his neighbours, and would exact revenge for all the injuries and
insults which his family had suffered. There was terror and agitation
in the castles of twenty petty kings. The uneasiness was great among the
Stewarts of Appin, whose territory was close pressed by the sea on one
side, and by the race of Diarmid on the other. The Macnaghtens were
still more alarmed. Once they had been the masters of those beautiful
valleys through which the Ara and the Shira flow into Loch Fyne. But the
Campbells had prevailed. The Macnaghtens had been reduced to subjection,
and had, generation after generation, looked up with awe and detestation
to the neighbouring Castle of Inverary. They had recently been promised
a complete emancipation. A grant, by virtue of which their chief would
have held his estate immediately from the Crown, had been prepared, and
was about to pass the seals, when the Revolution suddenly extinguished a
hope which amounted almost to certainty, [326]

The Macleans remembered that, only fourteen years before, their lands
had been invaded and the seat of their chief taken and garrisoned by
the Campbells, [327] Even before William and Mary had been proclaimed
at Edinburgh, a Maclean, deputed doubtless by the head of his tribe, had
crossed the sea to Dublin, and had assured James that, if two or three
battalions from Ireland were landed in Argyleshire, they would be
immediately joined by four thousand four hundred claymores, [328]

A similar spirit animated the Camerons. Their ruler, Sir Ewan Cameron,
of Lochiel, surnamed the Black, was in personal qualities unrivalled
among the Celtic princes. He was a gracious master, a trusty ally, a
terrible enemy. His countenance and bearing were singularly noble.
Some persons who had been at Versailles, and among them the shrewd and
observant Simon Lord Lovat, said that there was, in person and manner, a
most striking resemblance between Lewis the Fourteenth and Lochiel;
and whoever compares the portraits of the two will perceive that there
really was some likeness. In stature the difference was great. Lewis, in
spite of highheeled shoes and a towering wig, hardly reached the middle
size. Lochiel was tall and strongly built. In agility and skill at his
weapons he had few equals among the inhabitants of the hills. He had
repeatedly been victorious in single combat. He was a hunter of great
fame. He made vigorous war on the wolves which, down to his time, preyed
on the red deer of the Grampians; and by his hand perished the last
of the ferocious breed which is known to have wandered at large in
our island. Nor was Lochiel less distinguished by intellectual than
by bodily vigour. He might indeed have seemed ignorant to educated
and travelled Englishmen, who had studied the classics under Busby at
Westminster and under Aldrich at Oxford, who had learned something about
the sciences among Fellows of the Royal Society, and something about the
fine arts in the galleries of Florence and Rome. But though Lochiel
had very little knowledge of books, he was eminently wise in council,
eloquent in debate, ready in devising expedients, and skilful in
managing the minds of men. His understanding preserved him from those
follies into which pride and anger frequently hurried his brother
chieftains. Many, therefore, who regarded his brother chieftains as mere
barbarians, mentioned him with respect. Even at the Dutch Embassy in St.
James's Square he was spoken of as a man of such capacity and courage
that it would not be easy to find his equal. As a patron of literature
he ranks with the magnificent Dorset. If Dorset out of his own purse
allowed Dryden a pension equal to the profits of the Laureateship,
Lochiel is said to have bestowed on a celebrated bard, who had been
plundered by marauders, and who implored alms in a pathetic Gaelic ode,
three cows and the almost incredible sum of fifteen pounds sterling. In
truth, the character of this great chief was depicted two thousand five
hundred years before his birth, and depicted,--such is the power of
genius,--in colours which will be fresh as many years after his death.
He was the Ulysses of the Highlands, [329]

He held a large territory peopled by a race which reverenced no lord,
no king but himself. For that territory, however, he owed homage to the
House of Argyle. He was bound to assist his feudal superiors in war,
and was deeply in debt to them for rent. This vassalage he had doubtless
been early taught to consider as degrading and unjust. In his minority
he had been the ward in chivalry of the politic Marquess, and had been
educated at the Castle of Inverary. But at eighteen the boy broke loose
from the authority of his guardian, and fought bravely both for Charles
the First and for Charles the Second. He was therefore considered by
the English as a Cavalier, was well received at Whitehall after the
Restoration, and was knighted by the hand of James. The compliment,
however, which was paid to him, on one of his appearances at the English
Court, would not have seemed very flattering to a Saxon. "Take care of
your pockets, my lords," cried his Majesty; "here comes the king of the
thieves. " The loyalty of Lochiel is almost proverbial: but it was
very unlike what was called loyalty in England. In the Records of the
Scottish Parliament he was, in the days of Charles the Second, described
as a lawless and rebellious man, who held lands masterfully and in high
contempt of the royal authority, [330] On one occasion the Sheriff of
Invernessshire was directed by King James to hold a court in Lochaber.
Lochiel, jealous of this interference with his own patriarchal
despotism, came to the tribunal at the head of four hundred armed
Camerons. He affected great reverence for the royal commission, but he
dropped three or four words which were perfectly understood by the pages
and armourbearers, who watched every turn of his eye. "Is none of my
lads so clever as to send this judge packing? I have seen them get up a
quarrel when there was less need of one. " In a moment a brawl began
in the crowd, none could say how or where. Hundreds of dirks were out:
cries of "Help" and "Murder" were raised on all sides: many wounds were
inflicted: two men were killed: the sitting broke up in tumult; and the
terrified Sheriff was forced to put himself under the protection of the
chief, who, with a plausible bow of respect and concern, escorted him
safe home. It is amusing to think that the man who performed this feat
is constantly extolled as the most faithful and dutiful of subjects
by writers who blame Somers and Burnet as contemners of the legitimate
authority of Sovereigns. Lochiel would undoubtedly have laughed
the doctrine of nonresistance to scorn. But scarcely any chief in
Invernessshire had gained more than he by the downfall of the House
of Argyle, or had more reason than he to dread the restoration of that
House. Scarcely any chief in Invernessshire, therefore, was more alarmed
and disgusted by the proceedings of the Convention.

But of all those Highlanders who looked on the recent turn of fortune
with painful apprehension the fiercest and the most powerful were the
Macdonalds. More than one of the magnates who bore that widespread name
laid claim to the honour of being the rightful successor of those
Lords of the Isles, who, as late as the fifteenth century, disputed the
preeminence of the Kings of Scotland. This genealogical controversy,
which has lasted down to our own time, caused much bickering among the
competitors. But they all agreed in regretting the past splendour of
their dynasty, and in detesting the upstart race of Campbell. The old
feud had never slumbered. It was still constantly repeated, in verse and
prose, that the finest part of the domain belonging to the ancient
heads of the Gaelic nation, Islay, where they had lived with the pomp of
royalty, Iona, where they had been interred with the pomp of religion,
the paps of Jura, the rich peninsula of Kintyre, had been transferred
from the legitimate possessors to the insatiable Mac Callum More. Since
the downfall of the House of Argyle, the Macdonalds, if they had not
regained their ancient superiority, might at least boast that they had
now no superior. Relieved from the fear of their mighty enemy in the
West, they had turned their arms against weaker enemies in the East,
against the clan of Mackintosh and against the town of Inverness.