It affords a generous and manly pleasure to conceive a little
nation gathering its fruits and tending its herds
With fearless
confidence, though it lies open on every side to invasion, where,
in contempt of walls and trenches, every man sleeps securely with
his sword beside him; where all on the first approach of hostility
came together at the call to battle, as at a summons to a festal
show; and committing their cattle to the care of those whom age or
nature has disabled, engage the enemy with that competition for
hazard and for glory, which operate in men that fight under the eye
of those, whose dislike or kindness they have always considered as
the greatest evil or the greatest good.
This was, in the beginning of the present century, the state of the
Highlands. Every man was a soldier, who partook of national
confidence, and interested himself in national honour. To lose
this spirit, is to lose what no small advantage will compensate.
It may likewise deserve to be inquired, whether a great nation
ought to be totally commercial? whether amidst the uncertainty of
human affairs, too much attention to one mode of happiness may not
endanger others? whether the pride of riches must not sometimes
have recourse to the protection of courage? and whether, if it be
necessary to preserve in some part of the empire the military
spirit, it can subsist more commodiously in any place, than in
remote and unprofitable provinces, where it can commonly do little
harm, and whence it may be called forth at any sudden exigence?
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