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. A
claim 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.
GLENELG
We left Auknasheals and the Macraes its the afternoon, and in the
evening came to Ratiken, a high hill on which a road is cut, but so
steep and narrow, that it is very difficult. There is now a design
of making another way round the bottom. Upon one of the
precipices, my horse, weary with the steepness of the rise,
staggered a little, and I called in haste to the Highlander to hold
him. This was the only moment of my journey, in which I thought
myself endangered.
Having surmounted the hill at last, we were told that at Glenelg,
on the sea-side, we should come to a house of lime and slate and
glass. This image of magnificence raised our expectation. At last
we came to our inn weary and peevish, and began to inquire for meat
and beds.
Of the provisions the negative catalogue was very copious. Here
was no meat, no milk, no bread, no eggs, no wine. We did not
express much satisfaction. Here however we were to stay. Whisky
we might have, and I believe at last they caught a fowl and killed
it. We had some bread, and with that we prepared ourselves to be
contented, when we had a very eminent proof of Highland
hospitality. Along some miles of the way, in the evening, a
gentleman's servant had kept us company on foot with very little
notice on our part. He left us near Glenelg, and we thought on him
no more till he came to us again, in about two hours, with a
present from his master of rum and sugar. The man had mentioned
his company, and the gentleman, whose name, I think, is Gordon,
well knowing the penury of the place, had this attention to two
men, whose names perhaps he had not heard, by whom his kindness was
not likely to be ever repaid, and who could be recommended to him
only by their necessities.
We were now to examine our lodging. Out of one of the beds, on
which we were to repose, started up, at our entrance, a man black
as a Cyclops from the forge.
