It Must However Be Confessed, That A Man, Who Places Honour Only In
Successful Violence, Is A Very Troublesome And Pernicious Animal In
Time Of Peace; And That The Martial Character Cannot Prevail In A
Whole People, But By The Diminution Of All Other Virtues.
He that
is accustomed to resolve all right into conquest, will have very
little tenderness or equity.
All the friendship in such a life can
be only a confederacy of invasion, or alliance of defence. The
strong must flourish by force, and the weak subsist by stratagem.
Till the Highlanders lost their ferocity, with their arms, they
suffered from each other all that malignity could dictate, or
precipitance could act. Every provocation was revenged with blood,
and no man that ventured into a numerous company, by whatever
occasion brought together, was sure of returning without a wound.
If they are now exposed to foreign hostilities, they may talk of
the danger, but can seldom feel it. If they are no longer martial,
they are no longer quarrelsome. Misery is caused for the most
part, not by a heavy crush of disaster, but by the corrosion of
less visible evils, which canker enjoyment, and undermine security.
The visit of an invader is necessarily rare, but domestick
animosities allow no cessation.
The abolition of the local jurisdictions, which had for so many
ages been exercised by the chiefs, has likewise its evil and its
good. The feudal constitution naturally diffused itself into long
ramifications of subordinate authority.
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