The Highlanders of Scotland - Clan Strachan Society

96 'the HIGHLANDERS [part i
smarting under a sense of previous discomfiture and disgrace,
capable of inflicting, was for some time committed on the
unfortunate Highlanders ; their peaceful glens were visited with
the scourge of a licentious soldiery let loose upon the helpless
inhabitants, and every means was taken to break up the peculiar
organization and consequent power of the Highland clans. The
disarming Act which had been passed after the insurrection of
the year 1715 was now carried into rigid execution;
view to destroy as much as possible any distinctive
and with a
usages and
peculiarities of this primeval race, and thus to efface their
nationality, an Act was passed proscribing the use of their
ancient garb. The indignity inflicted b\' this act was perhaps
more keenly felt by the Highlanders, attached in no ordinary
degree to their ancient customs, than any of the other measures
resorted to by the English government, but at the same time
It must be admitted that it effected the object contemplated
in its formation, and that more was accomplished by this
measure in destroying the nationality and breaking up the
spirit of the clansmen, than by any of the other acts. The
system of clanship was also assailed by an act passed in the
year 1748, by which heritable jurisdictions were
heritable
jurisdictions.
aboHshed throughout Scotland, and thus the sanction
,.,.,_,
of law \\as removed from any claim which Highland
chiefs or barons might in future be disposed to make upon
the obedience or services of their followers.
The general effect of these enactments was altogether to
change the character of the Highlanders as a nation ; their
long-cherished ideas of clanship gradually gave way under the
absence and ruin of so many of their chiefs, while, with the
loss of their peculiar dress, and the habitual use of arms, they
also lost their feelings of independence. But what was left
unaccomplished by the operation of these penal acts, was finally
completed by the skill and policy of the Earl of Chatham,
who, by levying regiments in the Highlands for the service
of the government in Canada, rendered the hardihood,
fidelity, and martial spirit, so eminently characteristic of
the Gael, subservient to the interest of government, to which,
when in opposition, it had been so formidable, at the same
time that "the absence of the most inflammable part of a