第22章 THE HIGHLANDS(2)

They regularly plunder their neighbours,for their neighbours are commonly their enemies;and having lost that reverence for property,by which the order of civil life is preserved,soon consider all as enemies,whom they do not reckon as friends,and think themselves licensed to invade whatever they are not obliged to protect.

By a strict administration of the laws,since the laws have been introduced into the Highlands,this disposition to thievery is very much represt.Thirty years ago no herd had ever been conducted through the mountains,without paying tribute in the night,to some of the clans;but cattle are now driven,and passengers travel without danger,fear,or molestation.

Among a warlike people,the quality of highest esteem is personal courage,and with the ostentatious display of courage are closely connected promptitude of offence and quickness of resentment.The Highlanders,before they were disarmed,were so addicted to quarrels,that the boys used to follow any publick procession or ceremony,however festive,or however solemn,in expectation of the battle,which was sure to happen before the company dispersed.

Mountainous regions are sometimes so remote from the seat of government,and so difficult of access,that they are very little under the influence of the sovereign,or within the reach of national justice.Law is nothing without power;and the sentence of a distant court could not be easily executed,nor perhaps very safely promulgated,among men ignorantly proud and habitually violent,unconnected with the general system,and accustomed to reverence only their own lords.It has therefore been necessary to erect many particular jurisdictions,and commit the punishment of crimes,and the decision of right to the proprietors of the country who could enforce their own decrees.It immediately appears that such judges will be often ignorant,and often partial;but in the immaturity of political establishments no better expedient could be found.As government advances towards perfection,provincial judicature is perhaps in every empire gradually abolished.

Those who had thus the dispensation of law,were by consequence themselves lawless.Their vassals had no shelter from outrages and oppressions;but were condemned to endure,without resistance,the caprices of wantonness,and the rage of cruelty.

In the Highlands,some great lords had an hereditary jurisdiction over counties;and some chieftains over their own lands;till the final conquest of the Highlands afforded an opportunity of crushing all the local courts,and of extending the general benefits of equal law to the low and the high,in the deepest recesses and obscurest corners.

While the chiefs had this resemblance of royalty,they had little inclination to appeal,on any question,to superior judicatures.Aclaim of lands between two powerful lairds was decided like a contest for dominion between sovereign powers.They drew their forces into the field,and right attended on the strongest.This was,in ruder times,the common practice,which the kings of Scotland could seldom control.

Even so lately as in the last years of King William,a battle was fought at Mull Roy,on a plain a few miles to the south of Inverness,between the clans of Mackintosh and Macdonald of Keppoch.Col.Macdonald,the head of a small clan,refused to pay the dues demanded from him by Mackintosh,as his superior lord.

They disdained the interposition of judges and laws,and calling each his followers to maintain the dignity of the clan,fought a formal battle,in which several considerable men fell on the side of Mackintosh,without a complete victory to either.This is said to have been the last open war made between the clans by their own authority.

The Highland lords made treaties,and formed alliances,of which some traces may still be found,and some consequences still remain as lasting evidences of petty regality.The terms of one of these confederacies were,that each should support the other in the right,or in the wrong,except against the king.

The inhabitants of mountains form distinct races,and are careful to preserve their genealogies.Men in a small district necessarily mingle blood by intermarriages,and combine at last into one family,with a common interest in the honour and disgrace of every individual.Then begins that union of affections,and co-operation of endeavours,that constitute a clan.They who consider themselves as ennobled by their family,will think highly of their progenitors,and they who through successive generations live always together in the same place,will preserve local stories and hereditary prejudices.Thus every Highlander can talk of his ancestors,and recount the outrages which they suffered from the wicked inhabitants of the next valley.

Such are the effects of habitation among mountains,and such were the qualities of the Highlanders,while their rocks secluded them from the rest of mankind,and kept them an unaltered and discriminated race.They are now losing their distinction,and hastening to mingle with the general community.