in such traffic, empowering them to carry arms for the defence of their persons and property. In all his proceedings towards the Highlanders, there be distinguished a general air of humanity and good sense, which rendered him a popular character, even while engaged in executing orders which they looked upon with the utmost degree of jealousy and suspicion.1

may

The Jacobite partisans, in the mean while, partly by letters from abroad, partly by agents of ability who traversed the country on purpose, did all in their power to thwart and interrupt the measures which were taken to reduce the Highlands to a state of peaceful cultivation. The act for disarming the body of the people they represented in the most odious colours, though, indeed, it is hardly possible to aggravate the feelings of shame and dishonour in which a free people must always indulge at being deprived of the means of self-de

[In a letter from Wade to Duncan Forbes of Culloden, then Lord Advocate, dated the 2d October, 1729, the Field-marshal says, "The Knight and I travelled in my coach with great ease and pleasure to the feast of oxen, which the highwaymen had prepared for us, opposite Loch Garry, where we found four oxen roasting at the same time, in great order and solemnity. We dined in a tent pitched for that purpose. The beef was excellent; and we had plenty of bumpers, not forgetting your lordship and Culloden's health; and after three hours' stay, took leave of our benefactors the highwaymen, and arrived at the hut of Dalnacardoch before it was dark."— Culloden Papers, p. 111. "The Marshal," says Stewart of Garth, "had not at this period been long enough in the Highlands to distinguish a cearnach, or lifter of cattle,' from a highwayman. No such character as the latter then existed in the country."-Sketches, vol. i. p.

fence. And the practical doctrine was not new to them, that if the parties concerned could evade this attempt to deprive them of their natural right and lawful property, either by an elusory surrender, or by such professions as might induce the Government to leave them in possession of their weapons, whether under license, or as members of the independent companies, it would be no dishonour in oppressed men meeting force by craft, and eluding the unjust and unreasonable demands which they wanted means openly to resist. Much of the quiet obtained by Marshal Wade's measures was apparent only; and while he boasts that the Highlanders, instead of going armed with guns, swords, dirks, and pistols, now travelled to churches, markets, and fairs with only a staff in their hands, the veteran General was ignorant how many thousand weapons, landed from the Spanish frigates in 1719, or otherwise introduced into the country, lay in caverns and other places of concealment, ready for use when occasion should offer.

But the gigantic part of Marshal Wade's task, and that which he executed with the most complete success, was the establishment of military roads through the rugged and desolate regions of the north, ensuring the free passage of regular troops in a country, of which it might have been said, while in its natural state, that every mountain was a natural fortress, every valley a defensible pass. The roads, as they were termed, through the Highlands, had been hitherto mere tracks, made by the feet of men and the cattle which they drove before

them, interrupted by rocks, morasses, torrents, and all the features of an inaccessible country, where a stranger, even unopposed, might have despaired of making his solitary way, but where the passage of a regular body of troops, with cavalry, artillery, and baggage, was altogether impossible. These rugged paths, by the labours of the soldiers employed under Field-marshal Wade, were, by an extraordinary exertion of skill and labour, converted into excellent roads of great breadth and sound formation, which have ever since his time afforded a free and open communication through all parts of the Scottish Highlands.1

Two of these highways enter among the hills from the low country, the one at Crieff, twenty miles north of Stirling, the other at Dunkeld, fifteen miles north of Perth. Penetrating around the mountains from different quarters, these two branches unite at Dalnacardoch. From thence a single line leads to Dalwhinny, where it again divides into two. One road runs north-west through Garviemore, and over the tremendous pass of Corryarrack, to a new fort raised by Marshal

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"["The roads on these moors," says Captain Burt in 1737, are now as smooth as Constitution Hill, and I have galloped on some of them for miles together in great tranquillity; which was heightened by reflection on my former fatigue, when for a great part of the way I had been obliged to quit my horse, it being too dangerous or impracticable to ride, and even hazardous to pass on foot."-Letters from the North. A kindred feeling produced the celebrated naïve couplet, stuck up near Fortwilliam,

"Had you seen these roads before they were made,

You would hold up your hands and bless General Wade."]

Wade, called Fort Augustus. The second line extends from Dalnacardoch north to the barracks of Ruthven, in Lochaber, and thence to Inverness. From that town it proceeds almost due westward across the island, connecting Fort Augustus abovementioned, with Inverness, and so proceeding to Fort William, in Lochaber, traversing the country inhabited by the Camerons, the MacDonalds of Glengarry, and other clans judged to be the worst affected to the reigning family.

It is not to be supposed that the Highlanders of that period saw with indifference the defensive character of their country destroyed, and the dusky wildernesses, which had defied the approach of the Romans, rendered accessible in almost every direction to the regular troops of the Government. We can suppose that it affected them as the dismantling of some impregnable citadel might do the inhabitants of the country which it protected, and that the pang which they experienced at seeing their glens exposed to a hostile, or at least a stranger force, was similar to that which they felt at the resignation of the weapons of their fathers. But those feelings and circumstances have passed away, and the Highland military roads will continue an inestimable advantage to the countries which they traverse, although no longer requiring them to check apprehended insurrection, and will long exhibit a public monument of skill and patience, not unworthy of the ancient Romans. Upon the Roman principle, also, the regular soldiers were employed in this laborious work, and reconciled to

the task by some trifling addition of pay; an experiment which succeeded so well as to excite some surprise that public works have not been more frequently executed by similar means.

Other measures of the most laudable character were resorted to by the Government and their friends, for the improvement of the Highlands; but as they were of a description not qualified to produce ameliorating effects, save after a length of time, they were but carelessly urged. They related to the education of this wild population, and the care necessary to train the rising generation in moral and religious principles; but the Act of Parliament framed for this end proved in a great measure ineffectual. Those exertions, which ought to have been national, were in some degree supplied by the Society for the Propagation of Christian Knowledge in the Highlands and Isles, who, by founding chapels and schools in different places, did more for enlightening the people of that country, than had been achieved by any prince who had yet reigned in or over Scotland.

While Marshal Wade was employed in pacifying the Highlands, and rendering them accessible to military forces, a subject of discontent broke out in the Lowlands which threatened serious consequences. The Government had now become desirous to make the income of Scotland a source of revenue to the general exchequer, as hitherto it had been found scarcely adequate to maintain the public institutions of the kingdom, and to pay and support the troops which it was necessary to quar