chief was always held up and maintained to be the lineal representative of the founder of the family and common father of the clan.

In like manner it was a leading principle that the clan, from the highest to the lowest, were all members of one family, bearing the same name, and connected in blood with the chief. He was expected, therefore, even in the height of his authority, to acknowledge the meanest of them as his relation, and to shake hands with him wherever they might happen to meet. There were, nevertheless, exceptions also to this rule. Small clans were sometimes totally broken up, their chiefs slain, and their independence destroyed. In this situation they became a sort of clients to some clan of greater importance, and bore to those under whom they lived very nearly the same relation which the Humsauyas, described by Mr Elphinstone, bear to the Ooloss, or Afghaun tribe, with whom they reside. Several of the most ancient of the Highland names and tribes are to be found in this state of depression. Sometimes whole clans, without renouncing their dependence upon their own chief, subjected themselves to a tribe of predominating influence, whose name they assumed. In this case they continued to subsist as a dependent but distinct branch of the general community; and their chief, now sunk to the rank of a chieftain, exercised his authority in subordination to that of the chief whose name he had adopted. The Campbells are said to have received numerous additions in this manner. Besides these accessions, each clan, especially when

headed by a chief who stood high in the public estimation, was strengthened by individuals who came to associate themselves with the community, and who never scrupled to assume the name of the tribe. Even to this day a Highlander sometimes considers, that, upon changing his residence, a change of his name to that of his new landlord is at once a point of civility, and a means of obtaining favour. A friend of ours was shooting in the North, and as the face of the Highlander, who acted as his guide, was familiar to him, he asked if his name was not MacPherson-"No; Gordon is my name," replied the guide. "I was shooting a few years ago at some distance from this place; you then guided me, and I remember you called yourself MacPherson "-"Yes," answered the Highlander, composedly; "but that was when I lived on the other side of the hill." There yet remained another source of accession. In ancient times, the Highlanders, like the Indians, adopted prisoners of war into their tribes. Thus when the Marquis of Huntley and the Laird of Grant made a tremendous foray along Dee side, laying waste the whole dale, they carried off a great number of children whose parents they had put to death. About a year afterwards the Laird of Grant, being on a visit to Castle Huntley, saw these children receive their food:a kitchen trough was filled with the relics of the provisions on which the servants had dined, and at the summons of a whistle from the master cook, this mob of half naked orphans rushed in to scramble for the fragments. Shocked at the sight, Grant

obtained permission to carry them into his country, where he adopted them into his own tribe, and gave them his name, which they still bear but their descendants are distinguished from other Grants, being called "Children of the trough."

The most powerful of the Highland chiefs became in latter times frequenters of the Scottish court, and often obtained from the monarchs grants of lands and jurisdictions, which, at convenient times, they failed not to use in aid of their patriarchal authority over their own sept, and as a pretext for subjugating others. They did not, indeed, need the excuse of such authority towards the oppressed party, who lived in a state of society in which superior force necessarily constituted right.

"For why?-because the good old rule
Sufficed them; the simple plan

That they should take who had the power,

And they should keep who can.'

But the more prudent chiefs had now learned that there was a world beyond the mountains, and that there were laws of the kingdom which Scottish kings sometimes strove to make effectual, even among their fastnesses. And although these efforts, owing to the weakness of the government, were but transient and desultory; yet the great houses of Argyle, Huntley, Athole, and others, whose rank placed them often at court, and within the grasp of authority, found advantage in keeping o' the windy side of the law, and in qualifying their aggressions on their Highland neighbours by such '[Wordsworth.]

plausible forms as might pass current in case of enquiry at the seat of government. Nothing was more hateful to their ruder neighbours than claims of this kind, which they neither understood nor acknowledged. The mode in which the rights of jurisdiction obtained by the higher families were exercised, had little tendency to reconcile the less powerful chiefs to what they considered as legalized modes of oppression. "Take care of yourselves in Sutherland," said an old Highlander as he communicated the alarming news which he had just learned, "the law is come as far as Tain." cordingly, the execution of the laws, to the last, was resisted in the Highlands; nor was the authority of the magistrates respected, nor durst any inferior officer of the law execute his duty. The traces of this state of manners were long visible: and so late as thirty years since, and within twenty miles of Stirling Castle, it was found necessary to obtain a military escort, to protect the officer who was to serve a civil process giving a Highland tenant warning to remove.

Ac

This state of disorder cannot be imputed to the neglect of the Scottish parliament, who frequently exercised their sagacity in framing laws for the regulations of the Highlands and Borders; the high grounds of which last were, until the union of the crowns, in the same, or in a more lawless condition than the Highlands themselves. But previously to any notice of these laws, it will be necessary to give a brief retrospect of the state of the Highlands before they were so united with the rest of

the kingdom as to be proper subjects of its legislature. We have already observed that, in former times, the Highland chiefs paid allegiance to princes of their own, altogether distinct from the King of Scotland, with whom they were sometimes at war, sometimes at peace, or, at the utmost, acknowledged only a slight and nominal dependence upon him ;-this was that powerful dynasty of the Lords of the Isles, who flourished, from a dark and remote period, down to the reign of James V. Their authority extended over all the western islands, from Ilay northward, over Kintyre, Knapdale, and the western parts of Inverness-shire; and they exercised the influence of powerful allies, if not of lords paramount, over the M'Dougals, Lords of Lorn. Their claim to the

earldom of Ross often laid that northern county at their disposal; and their supremacy was disputed in that district by the Earls of Sutherland alone. These districts make up the bulk of the Highlands. The rest was swayed by the Strathbogies, Earls of Athol, who had under their authority, Athole, Strathbogie, and Lochaber; by the Cumings, in Badenoch; by the Earls of Mar, in the Highlands of Aberdeenshire; the Earl of Lennox, in Dumbartonshire; and the Knight of Lochowe, in Argyleshire. Many of the Highland lords, having taken part against Bruce in his struggles for the crown, were involved in ruin by his success: among those were the families of Cuming of Strathbogie, and of MacDougal, whose power passed over to the Stuarts, Campbells, Gor