Mountaineers Are Warlike, Because By Their Feuds And Competitions
They Consider Themselves As Surrounded With Enemies, And Are Always
Prepared To Repel Incursions, Or To Make Them.
Like the Greeks in
their unpolished state, described by Thucydides, the Highlanders,
till lately, went always armed, and carried their weapons to
visits, and to church.
Mountaineers are thievish, because they are poor, and having
neither manufactures nor commerce, can grow richer only by robbery.
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.
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