Chapter XXIX: Causes of Disaffection: Risings of 1715 and 1745

NO reasonable historian of the present age would maintain that the Union was not a wise and beneficial measure; yet such were the circumstances of the Scots, that nearly half a century passed ere they were able to take the full advantage of it. So vast a change could not be effected without rousing passions and bitter feelings in the hearts of many, which nothing but time could efface. To give a brief exposition of the causes of this will be the aim of the present chapter.

It was the earnest desire of the Scots to obtain equal commercial rights which made the Union possible and endurable. Prior to the Union the Scots were permitted to trade only where the English Government thought fit; while after it there was no limitation――their ships might trade with the remotest quarters of the world. Another very important arrangement was the coinage. In 1708 the Scottish coins were finally called in, and preparations were made for a coinage exactly on the method of the English mint. Thus one of the good results of the Union was soon obtained; as the convenience and advantage of only one coinage and standard of money for the Island is obvious.

Although the Scots relinquished their separate legislative power, they gained a position and share in the government of a larger nation, and in the honour and glory of the British Empire. As they retained their own laws and legal organisations, and their religious and educational institutions, the great change implied in the Union embraced many elements of moral advantage. Scottish nationality and patriotism have continued essentially unimpaired, but much of its prejudice and narrowness, which the strife of preceding ages had generated, has been slowly thrown off. It is always true that a people’s own country and affairs are of prime importance to them; yet a people which limited all their faculties and energies to the internal affairs of their own country, would be emphatically characterised as a narrow-minded and unsympathetic community. If all our political institutions and social organisations were expressly framed and exclusively directed to this one end, it would manifest a weak and contemptible ideal of humanity. From these and many other considerations, it appears that the Union afforded inestimable moral benefits.

The Union conferred many advantages, but it also entailed disadvantages, in political and legislative relations. It might be assumed that the united deliberation and counsel of the British Parliament would be more competent to frame wise and useful legislative measures than a Scottish Parliament. This would depend on the accuracy of the information which the British Parliament possessed concerning the opinions and convictions of the Scottish people and of their institutions, as, from a lack of this, it has occasionally inflicted pain and injustice on the people. An instructive instance occurred after the rising of 1715, touching the disposal of the forfeited estates. Parliament placed the control of the matter in the hands of a Commission, which proceeded to sell the estates. A number of creditors, however, who had claims on the estates applied to the Court of Session, and sequestration was granted. The Commissioners entirely failed to understand this proceeding, and complained to the Government that they were prevented from discharging their duty by a body calling itself the Court of Session; and therefore they asked the Government to increase their powers. The British Parliament passed an act which ignored the jurisdiction of the Court of Session, in direct violation of the stipulations of the Union, and in spite of the protest of the Scotch judges.

In finance and fiscal arrangements the British Parliament has not generally treated Scotland worse than England. Although, for a generation or two after the Union much irritation was caused by changes and rearrangements in this branch of government, of which a few examples may be narrated. Ale was a staple necessary in the domestic economy and trade of the nation. At the time of the Union there was no malt tax in Scotland, but there was a duty on liquor. In 1713 a malt tax of 6 pence per bushel was imposed upon Scotland, though the Scotch members in both Houses of Parliament determinedly opposed it. At this date there were upwards of five thousand maltsters in Scotland; and in June the tax was ordered to be enforced. “But such was the general and determined resolution of the inhabitants not to submit, that the officers of excise for several years were everywhere refused access to survey and charge the duty; and that when charged it was never paid, nor could it be recovered by proceedings at law, as the justices of peace in all the counties refused to act. The consequence was that, during the twelve years after the 24th of June 1713, while the tax continued at 6 pence per bushel, the duty actually levied amounted to a mere trifle, and fell considerably short of the necessary expense attending this branch of the revenue.”

In 1724, the Government wished to raise £20,000 by a tax on Scotch ale. Parliament passed an Act proposing to levy 6 pence per barrel on ale instead of the malt tax, and to exclude the Scots from the bounty on exported grain, which was to be continued in England. The nation vehemently resented the proposal, and protested against it. The Jacobites used every means to fan the wrath of the people against the Government, and there were signs of an outburst of violence. It was relinquished, and a malt tax of 3 pence per bushel imposed. As £20,000 had to be drawn from the Scots, it was enacted that, if the tax of 3 pence failed to produce the amount, it must be made up by a surcharge on maltsters.

The Act came into operation in June, 1725, and the citizens of Glasgow manifested a sullen attitude when the excisemen were preparing to enforce it. The following day they appeared in crowds on the streets; and the magistrates having failed to disperse them, a party of soldiers were called into the city. Shouts were raised against Campbell of Shawfield, their member of parliament, who was suspected of having assisted the Government. They said, as he had already betrayed them, now he was to enslave them beneath a military yoke, and slay them if they resisted. At night they attacked his house and laid it in ruins. Next morning the mob appeared and jeered at the soldiers on guard; and their Commander ordered them to turn out and form square, and, without the authority of the Provost, commanded them to fire on the crowd. Eight of the citizens were killed and many wounded. The crisis was reached. The people ran to an old armoury, and having armed themselves, at once presented so threatening a front that it was feared all the soldiers would be massacred, but the officer marched them to Dumbarton. A regiment of infantry, seven troops of dragoons, and a company of Highlanders, from General Wade’s force, were sent into Glasgow, and quietness was restored. Criminal proceedings were instituted, and the magistrates of Glasgow were seized and imprisoned in Edinburgh. The charges against them were abandoned; but a few of the rioters were punished. The captain in command of the party who fired upon the crowd, was tried and condemned, but received a royal pardon. The citizens of Glasgow were deeply offended; while the Jacobites were jubilant.

In Edinburgh the opposition to the malt tax assumed a determined form. All the brewers resolved to cease brewing. The Lord Advocate lodged a complaint against them in the Court of Session, and the Court ordered them to proceed with their work as usual. They refused, and some of them were imprisoned; but at last they yielded. These proceedings were only the first of a series of excise difficulties which continued for more than a hundred years. In some parts in the north and west the practice of smuggling whisky was quite common till well into the first quarter of the present century. The smuggling brew houses were often beside a fresh spring or stream of water, in out of the way glens and hill sides, where no one could find them without searching carefully; but in general they were small and rudely constructed. The whisky smuggler usually stored his malt in a square pit on a hill among long heather and at some distance from his brewing house.

From the date of the malt tax riots, till about the end of the eighteenth century, smuggling in various kinds of goods was rather common in Scotland, although the burgesses of the trading burghs generally protested against it. “In place of pursuing fair trade, they universally, with the exception of Glasgow, Aberdeen, and a few other places, took to smuggling; their small stock they invested in goods that bore high duties, and under the favour of running these secretly on our wide and ill-guarded coasts, they flattered themselves that they should soon grow rich, profiting at least off the high duty, which by running they were to save.... The smuggler was the favourite. His prohibited high duty goods were run ashore by the boats on whatever part of the coast he came near; when ashore, they were guarded by the countrymen from the custom-house officers; if seized, they were rescued, and if any seizure was retained and tried, the juries seldom failed to find for the defendant.”¹

¹ Lockhart’s _Papers_, Volume II., pages 162‒168: _Some
Considerations on the Present State of Scotland_; Clelland’s
_Annals of Glasgow_.

The chief aim of the Jacobite party was to encourage the discontent of the people, and to frustrate the policy of the Whig government. In Scotland they were still a strong party, numbering among their adherents some of the nobles and many of the gentry, and the body of the episcopal clergy, who in the northern parts of the country commanded considerable influence. Their plots and schemes to restore the exiled house of Stuart were incessant; while other occasions of irritating the Scots naturally arose in connection with the new revenue system. The English introduced their own modes of collecting duties and customs, and what was far more offensive, the taxes were greatly increased. The Jacobites loudly proclaimed that what they had predicted――the ruin of the nation――was coming to pass.

Shortly after the Union some disputes arose between the Established Church and the episcopal clergy, which strengthened the Jacobite party. In 1710, the Whig government fell, and was succeeded by the Tories, and this change had some influence upon the affairs of the nation. Reports had been spread that Englishmen living in Scotland could not have the English service read to them, or their children baptised, without going to a presbyterian minister and signing the Confession of Faith. In 1712, the Imperial Parliament passed an act of toleration for the episcopal denomination in Scotland, in the exercise of their worship; and also repealed an act of the Scotch parliament against irregular marriages and baptisms. The act was carried in both Houses of Parliament by a large majority. But one clause of it required that the episcopal and presbyterian clergy both, should take the oath of adjuration, and pray for the Queen by name. By another clause of the act, the authority of the Established Church was limited to her own members, the power of summoning dissenters before her courts under penalties was taken from her.

The Government directly passed another bill which restored the right of patronage. This point, as we have seen, had been repeatedly considered by the Church since the Reformation; and from the date of the act of Queen Anne’s government to a recent period, patronage has been a source of the bitterest disputes and divisions in the Church of Scotland. It was introduced and passed by the influence of the Jacobite party, and it succeeded admirably in augmenting the disturbing elements in Scotland. Burnet expressly states that clauses were put into the toleration act with the intention of provoking the Scotch presbyterians. “One clause put into it occasioned great complaints; the magistrates, who by the laws were obliged to execute the sentences of the judicatories of their Church, were by this act required to execute none of them. It was reasonable to require them to execute no sentences that might be passed on any for doing what was tolerated by this act, but the carrying this to a general clause took away the civil sanction, which in most places is looked on as the chief, if not the only strength of Church power. Those who were to be thus tolerated were required, by a day limited in the act, to take the oath of adjuration; it was well known that few, if any of them, would take that oath; so, to cover them from it, a clause was put in this act requiring all the presbyterian ministers to take it, since it seemed reasonable that those of the legal establishment should be required to take that which was now to be imposed on those who were only to be tolerated. It was well understood that there were words in the oath of adjuration to which the presbyterians excepted.” Regarding the patronage act, he says: “By these steps the presbyterians were alarmed, when they saw the success of every motion that was made on design to weaken and undermine their establishment.”¹

¹ _Parliamentary History of England_, Volume VI., pages
1126‒1129; Lockhart’s _Memoirs_, Volume I., pages 378‒387;
_History of His Own Time_, Volume VI., page 98.

As many of the patrons were Episcopalians, it was feared that they might use their right of presentation to advance the interest of their own party; and the vaunting tone of the Jacobites gave colour to this suspicion. The most obnoxious part of the Toleration Act was the adjuration oath, imposed upon all the ministers; and those who took it abjured the Pretender, but promised to support the succession to the Crown as settled by specified acts of the English Parliament. According to these acts, the occupant of the throne must belong to the communion of the Church of England; and this was an obstacle to the presbyterians, because if they took it, they implicitly sanctioned a form of church polity which they repudiated. As the law required that the oath should be taken, many of the ministers were greatly annoyed. At last it was concluded to give an explanation of the sense in which they understood it, and then take it under protest; but a number of them declined to take it under any conditions, and in the end the government ceased to enforce it. A few years later, the oath was altered and a new form adopted, containing a plain declaration of allegiance to the Hanover settlement, and a renunciation of the title of the banished dynasty, thus freeing it from the objectionable features of the former oath.¹

¹ _Acts of the General Assembly._

In the latter years of Queen Anne’s reign, the Jacobites had been gaining ground in Scotland, but they had very little hold upon England; hence they made the northern part of the United Kingdom the field of their subsequent attempts to restore the exiled family. The Queen died on the 1st of August, 1714; thereupon the Elector of Hanover ascended the throne, under the title of George I. The accession of the new king was received with general satisfaction among the Presbyterians of Scotland, and he endeavoured to deserve their support. When the General Assembly met in May, 1715, he thanked them for the expression of their loyalty, and explicitly stated that he would maintain the Church of Scotland in all her rights and privileges.¹

¹ _Ibid._

Though the Jacobites were not prepared for active operations themselves, they had hopes of external aid. The Earl of Mar, as we have seen, was on the Whig side at the Union proceedings, but he was a shifty politician, and was Secretary of State for Scotland in the Tory Government of Bolingbroke. While in this office, he was entrusted with the distribution of sums of money among the Highland clans, voted by the government, for keeping them quiet; this gave him some influence over the chiefs, and partly explains their readiness to enter into his scheme of restoring the Pretender. If Mar himself had obtained full recognition from George I., and a post in his government, which he anxiously desired, he would not have headed a rising of the Jacobites; but on finding himself neglected, he then determined to be revenged. Mar left the Court of George I. in the beginning of August 1715, landed in Fifeshire, and proceeded to Braemar, whence he issued invitations to the chiefs to join him in a hunting party in his forest of Mar. He reached Invercauld Castle on the 22nd of August; and on the 26th he met his followers and friends in Braemar. He was joined by the Marquis of Huntly, the Marquis of Tullibardine, and the Earls of Seaforth, Southesk, Nithsdale, Stormont, Earl Marischal, and other nobles, and a number of the Highland chiefs. As the rising spread some of the nobles in the North of England joined it, Mar himself assuming the chief command.

Mar unfurled the standard of revolt on the 6th of September, at Castletown of Braemar, and marched by Dunkeld. He entered Perth on the 28th with an army of five thousand men, which was soon increased. In November there were fourteen thousand men in arms for the Stuart cause. But Mar had little military skill, and remained too long inactive in Perth. The body of the insurgents who were operating in England under the command of Forster, encountered the royal troops at Preston, on the 12th of November, and were completely defeated, and many of the Scots and their leaders were taken prisoners. The following day, the insurgents under Mar, and the royal army under the Duke of Argyle, fought the battle of Sheriffmuir near Dunblane, which was indecisive; as the loss was nearly equal on each side, both claimed the victory. The result, however, was that Mar drew back his army to Perth, where his force soon melted away to a few thousands. James VIII., the Pretender, landed at Peterhead on the 22nd of December, and was proclaimed King at Aberdeen, Montrose, Dundee, and other places. He suffered from attacks of ague in his progress southward, and reached Perth on the 6th of January, 1716. His presence inspired no new hope; as this representative of the Stuart line had not the mien of a man likely to lead an army to victory and glory. Preparations were made, however, for his coronation at the historic burgh of Scone, on the 23rd of January; but when that day came, the royal army under Argyle had begun their march on Perth, and James was thinking seriously of flight.¹

¹ _Historical Memoirs of the House and Clan of Mackintosh_, by
Alexander Mackintosh Shaw, pages 413‒414; _Mar Papers_.

The hapless prince and his army commenced their retreat on the 30th of January, 1716, and marched by Dundee to Montrose, where on the 4th of February, James and the Earl of Mar went aboard a French vessel, and sailed for France. The insurgent army was rapidly diminishing as it proceeded northward, and on reaching Aberdeen, it was disbanded on the 7th of February. Thus ended a project begun without requisite preparation, conducted without energy or skill, and leading to nothing but suffering and ruin to a portion of the people.

Lenient counsel towards the insurgents prevailed in Scotland, and few of them were judicially punished. But the English took the punishment of the prisoners and those implicated in the rising into their own hands. A large number of all ranks of men were executed, while hundreds were sent to the plantations to drag out a wretched life in slavery. Several of the higher prisoners escaped from prison, and fled for their lives, amongst whom were Forster, Lord Nithsdale, and Mackintosh of Borlum. The estates of upwards of forty families in Scotland were forfeited, and justice and revenge were at last appeased.¹

¹ _Culloden Papers_, Number 69; _Lancaster Memorials_; _A
Faithful Register of the Late Rebellion_; Rae’s _History of
the Rebellion_; _Historical Memoirs of the House and Clan of
Mackintosh_, by Alexander Mackintosh Shaw, page 433, 1880.

Naturally, the episcopal clergy in Scotland had always leaned to the side of the exiled house, and when the temporary restoration came, they could not resist the temptation, and openly sided with the Pretender, and prayed for his success. The government therefore proceeded to prosecute them; and those who occupied chapels were summoned in groups before the magistrates, and tried under the Toleration Act: their chapels were shut, and some of them imprisoned, until they complied with the provisions of the act. Any of the old episcopal ministers who still occupied parish churches, were summoned before their presbyteries, and, if found guilty were deposed. In the diocese of Aberdeen alone, upwards of thirty of these ministers were deprived. Indeed, they were prosecuted with great and unnecessary severity.¹

¹ Dr. Grub’s _Ecclesiastical History of Scotland_, Volume III.,
pages 373‒377.

But the Jacobites were not daunted by the failure of the rising. On the contrary, they continued to plot and scheme for the restoration of those whom they regarded as the right and lawful line of kings. Although after the accession of George I., the Jacobites had little voice in the British Parliament, yet beyond the walls of St. Stephens they commanded a local influence in several quarters of the country.

Soon after the suppression of the insurrection, the government adopted measures to secure the peace of the Island. An act was passed for disarming the Highlanders, embracing the counties to the north of the Forth, and the Highland districts of the West. But the act did not attain its object; as it merely imposed penalties, rising to transportation, against those found guilty of appearing in arms; and as no means were provided for enforcing disarmament, the act was inoperative. In 1725, another disarming act was passed, which ordered each clan to be summoned to appear at a fixed place and deliver up their arms. The execution of the act was entrusted to General Wade, who imagined that he had performed the task effectively; and informed the King that the Highlander had now become a simple peasant with his staff in his hand. He also stated that if the system of roads and fortresses proposed by him were made, any future rising of the Highlanders would be impossible; but subsequent events proved that the General’s sanguine anticipations were false.¹

¹ Burt’s _Letters_; _Miscellany of the Spalding Club_, Volume
III.

He erected two forts, one at Inverness, and the other at the western end of loch Ness, called Fort-Augustus; while among the remote glens square towers were built, in which small garrisons were placed. But the great work of General Wade was the system of military roads which he made in the Highlands; ten years being occupied in constructing these. The main line of the system proceeded from Perth north-westward by Dunkeld and Blair-Athol, thence through Drumnouchter and other mountainous moorlands, onward to Inverness; while a subsidiary road started from Stirling through Crieff, thence through Glen Almond, past Loch Tay, and joined the main road at Dalnacardoch. Another great road passed from shore to shore, through the valleys in which the Caledonian Canal was afterwards formed, and connected Inverness with Fort-Augustus and Fort-William. A branch road connected Fort-Augustus with the main Highland road. Afterwards the system was extended, by branches passing by Loch Lomond and Callander to the main Highland road; and other branches were made in the district to the north-west of Inverness, and the chain of lakes between the east and west coasts. These roads were constructed ‘for military purposes’.

The clan form of polity, with some of the feudal elements superposed upon it, was continued in the Highlands till after the rising of 1745; but it has to be remembered that the Lowland nobles also formally retained their hereditary jurisdiction over their vassals up to the same date. A lord of regality in any quarter of Scotland possessed a despotic power. The regality was a little kingdom in itself, within the larger one which the King was supposed to rule; and it is mainly in these hereditary customs and habits, in some parts of the Lowlands as in the Highlands, that the causes of the rising of 1745 should be sought. In the seventeenth century and the early part of the eighteenth, the Scots were extremely poor, and it was only after the abolition of hereditary jurisdictions, and other feudal usages of a lawless age, that the people had a fair chance of obtaining wealth from their industry. While these local powers, spread throughout the country, could disturb the peace of the kingdom, and render the executive authority of the government uncertain and fluctuating, the progress of industry, the accumulation of wealth, and the advance of civilisation, were very slow; but in a comparatively short time the Union enabled the Scots to surmount the greater part of these obstacles.

Yet these great changes could not be effected in a day or a year. Hence among the social causes of the rising may be enumerated the prejudices still existing against the Union; the poverty of the nobles and the people; the power of the Highland chiefs and of the nobles over many of the people; and a general disaffection towards England――the residue of a mass of animosities and antipathies――the natural growth of centuries of war and strife between the two nations. A kind of half-romantic and indescribable leaning towards the ancient line of kings undoubtedly existed, and still exists in the nation. There were other special causes, but those mentioned were the chief, which made rebellion possible; while, on the other side, the unprepared condition and culpable neglect of government, allowed the Prince and his followers for a time to appear in a career of success.

When Prince Charles landed in the western islands in the middle of July, 1745, his prospects of success were indeed dreary, as it was some time before he could find a single man to give him the least hope that a rising was possible. The Highland chiefs whom he first met and consulted all spoke against the enterprise. But the young Prince was naturally full of hope and faith in his destiny, and determined to recover the throne of his ancestors. After repeated efforts he induced a number of the chiefs to promise him support, and Lochiel, the chief of the Camerons, the Macdonalds of Boisdale, Glengarry, Keppoch, and many others joined him. On the 19th of August he unfurled his standard in Glenfinnan, with upwards of a thousand men around him. Next morning they commenced their march, and were soon joined by other chiefs and their followers. As the only regular army in the kingdom, under General Cope, was moved from Edinburgh to Inverness, Prince Charles resolved to advance on the capital. He entered Perth on the 4th of September, and there his army was largely reinforced. Parties were sent into the neighbouring counties of Forfar and Fife to proclaim the Pretender, levy money, and enlist men. At Perth Lord George Murray joined the Prince, and was appointed a lieutenant-general of the army. On the 11th Charles recommenced his march southward, crossed the Forth, and continuing his advance, on the 17th he took possession of Edinburgh, and proclaimed King James.

By this time Cope had returned from Inverness, and was landing his troops at Dunbar. But the insurgents anticipated his action and advanced to meet him. The Highland army, numbering about two thousand men, marched from Edinburgh; and on the 21st of September attacked the royal army at Preston, completely defeated it, and Cope fled in haste to Berwick. Many prisoners and much booty fell into the hands of the victors. Charles with his army re-entered Edinburgh in triumph; and he assumed all the functions of sovereignty. He held his Court at Holyrood Palace and acted as King of Scotland. His Council consisted of Lord George Murray, lieutenant-general; James Drummond (called Duke of Perth), lieutenant-general; Sullivan, quartermaster-general; Mungo Murray, secretary; Lord Pitsligo; Lord Elcho; and all the Highland chiefs. But Charles’s difficulties were only beginning. He had failed to take the Castle of Edinburgh, and comparatively few of the Lowland people supported his cause.

Full of confidence in his destiny, Charles assembled his troops at Dalkeith on 2nd of November, and, with an army of about six thousand men, commenced to march on London. They entered England on the 8th, and took possession of Carlisle on the 15th, and levied a large contribution from the citizens. Leaving a garrison in the castle, they resumed the march on the 22nd, but few recruits joined the Prince in his progress southwards. They reached Manchester on the 27th, where about two hundred recruits joined his standard. Thence the army pushed forward to Derby, within one hundred and twenty miles of London; but at this point, the leaders of the army received intelligence which convinced them of the hopelessness of attempting to continue the march on London, as there was no indication of a great movement on Charles’s side in England. The position of the insurgents was extremely critical; as there were three armies in the field against them, two between them and Scotland, and one posted for the defence of London. Immediate retreat seemed to be their only chance of saving themselves from destruction. But Prince Charles was exceedingly unwilling to turn back, and bitterly protested against such a proposal; he had great confidence in the divine right and the justice of his cause, and persisted in advancing to the culmination of his destiny. The retreat was ordered, however, and on 6th of December the army turned towards Scotland,――Lord George Murray undertaking the charge of the rear. The rank and file of the army rent the air with cries of indignation; they could have endured to be defeated by superior numbers, but to retreat without striking a blow, was an insufferable disgrace.¹

¹ Lockhart’s _Papers_, Volume II., page 468; _et seq._; Homes’
_History of the Rebellion of 1745_, Chapter VII., 1802.

When the insurgents returned to Scotland, they found that Edinburgh was in the possession of the government, and defended by a strong force, and that in other parts of the country bodies of troops were organised and prepared to act against them. But they retreated successfully, passing through Dumfries, and entered Glasgow on the 24th of December, wearied and tattered with their long march. They exacted a large contribution of clothing and shoes from the city, and, after staying a week, proceeded to Stirling. On the 17th of January, 1746, they attacked and defeated a royal force commanded by General Hawley, at Falkirk. The Duke of Cumberland was commissioned to extinguish the rising; the work was congenial to him, and he executed it thoroughly. He arrived at Edinburgh in the end of January, with an army of ten thousand men, and a train of artillery, and proceeded northward.

While Charles’s army was attempting to reduce Stirling, they received tidings of Cumberland’s advance. The insurgents then commenced a retreat, and reached Crieff on the 2nd of February. There they separated into two divisions――one, under the Prince himself, moved by Blair-Athol, and the other, under Lord George Murray, proceeded by Montrose and Aberdeen. It was arranged that they should meet at Inverness. Cumberland proceeded to Aberdeen, and rested his army till the spring. On the 8th of April, he began his march northwards along the coast, in connection with a victualling fleet which sailed parallel with his army; and on the 14th he reached Nairn.

By this time Prince Charles’ army was suffering severely from constant exposure and want of food. The men were much exhausted, and at the utmost did not number more than five thousand, and one hundred and fifty horse. They formed on a moor beyond the enclosures of Culloden House; but the most experienced chiefs earnestly entreated Charles to avoid a battle or remove to a better position, yet he was deaf to all reason and insisted on an immediate action.

The Duke continued his march, and came in sight of the insurgents. On the 16th of April, 1746, he began the battle by a cannonade which committed much havoc in the insurgents’ ranks. The Highlanders became impatient and advanced to the attack; and after an heroic charge and a severe but brief combat, the clansmen were defeated by the weight of superior numbers, and many of them were mercilessly massacred in the pursuit. The victors then began an indiscriminate slaughter of all those supposed to be disaffected to the Government, or in any way connected with the rising. The Duke of Cumberland and General Hawley have entailed on themselves eternal infamy by the extreme cruelties which they inflicted upon the defenceless and innocent inhabitants of the Highlands.

There was great rejoicing in London over the victory at Culloden; but many people who were not Jacobites, were much shocked by the details of the cruelties and sufferings inflicted on the Celtic population. After the battle the feeling of the Highlanders was expressed in ballads such as these:――

“Fair lady, mourn the memory
O’ all our Scottish fame;
Fair lady, mourn the memory
Ev’n of the Scottish name;
How proud were we of our young prince,
And of his native sway;
But all our hopes are past and gone,
Upon Culloden day.
There was no lack of bravery there,
No spare of blood or breath,
For, one to two, our foes we dar’d,
For freedom or for death.

“The bitterness of death is past,
Of terror and dismay;
The die was risked, and foully cast,
Upon Culloden day.

* * * * *

What is there now in thee, Scotland,
To us can pleasure give?
What is there now in thee, Scotland,
For which we ought to live?
Since we have stood, and stood in vain,
For all that we hold dear;
Still have we left a sacrifice,
To offer on our bier.
But there is naught for us or ours,
In which to hope or trust,
But hide us in our father’s graves,
Amid our father’s dust.”¹

¹ Mackay’s _Jacobite Songs_, pages 209‒211. This song is
translated from the Gaelic one, entitled “Culloden Day,” and
sung to a tune of the same name.

A few lines of another ballad may be quoted:――

“Ochon! ochon! the fatal day,
The day of dark despair.

* * * * *

The flower o’ a’ the Highland clans――
Their like we’ll never see――
Lay strecket in their bloody plaids,
Cauld on Culloden lee.”

This was the last of the risings of the Celts against the Government. Henceforth they had to seek other fields for the exercise of their energy and powers. A considerable number of the Highlanders found an honourable career in the British army, in which they have never disgraced their standard in the hour of danger. They have contributed much to the power and glory of the United Kingdom; for upwards of a hundred years the Highland regiments have been characterised by obedience and fidelity to their commanders, loyalty to the throne, and faithful service to the Empire. Let us simply mention their service on the battlefields of the Vimiera, Corunna, Badajos, Salamanca, Vittoria, Toulouse, and Waterloo; their memorable action and heroic endurance under the scorching sun on the blinding sands of Africa; their services in the East and West, at Alma, Balaklava, Sebastopol, and Lucknow. For courage and bravery in the hour of peril and battle they have never been surpassed.

The subsequent social changes in the Highlands will be treated in the next volume; but it may be observed that, despite the injustice, the oppression and suffering inflicted upon the Celtic people during a period of six centuries, they have shown a readiness to appreciate the benefits and blessings of civilisation. They have contributed important elements to art and literature. In every quarter of the world they have distinguished themselves in the fields of enterprise and industry.

Politically, it was best that the Island should be under one supreme Government; as this enhanced the strength, the confidence, and the security of the people. After many ages of internal war, this blessing of political union and peace was at last obtained. Thus a position and a career was opened to the people of the United Kingdom, such as few nations have ever enjoyed. It is much to be desired that the people of Ireland would recognise the great utility of the Imperial Parliament of Britain. If I might venture a word for the whole Celtic inhabitants of Britain and Ireland, I would earnestly urge the necessity of recognising the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament; for on this the welfare and progress of the people ♦depends. When the Irish have become as reconciled to the supremacy of the Imperial Parliament as the Welsh and the Scots have long been, we may look forward with reasonable hope to a time of greater prosperity, of happiness and higher civilisation for the Irish people. Let us all endeavour in a spirit of honesty and justice to contribute to this result.

♦ “dedepends” replaced with “depends”