“I humbly beg leave to observe to your majesty, that nothing has contributed more to the success of my endeavours in disarming the Highlanders, and reducing the vassals of the late Earl of Seafield to your obedience, than the power your majesty was pleased to grant me of receiving the submissions of persons attainted of high treason. They were dispersed in different parts of the Highlands, without the least apprehension of being betrayed or molested by their countrymen, and, for their safety and protection, must have contributed all they were able to encourage the use of arms, and to infect the minds of those people on whose protection they depended. In this situation, they were proper instruments, and always ready to be employed in promoting the interest of the Pretender, or any other foreign power they thought capable of contributing to a change in that government to which they had forfeited their lives, and from whom they expected no favour. The greatest part of them were drawn into the rebellion at the instigation of their superiors, and, in my humble opinion, have continued their disaffection, rather from despair than any real dislike to your majesty’s government; for it was no sooner known that your majesty had empowered me to receive the submissions of those who repented of their crimes, and were willing and desirous for the future to live peaceably under your mild and moderate government, but applications were made to me from several of them to intercede with your majesty on their behalf, declaring their readiness to abandon the Pretender’s party, and to pay a dutiful obedience to your majesty; to which I answered, that I should be ready to intercede in their favour, when I was farther convinced of the sincerity of their promises; that it would soon come to their turn to be summoned to bring in their arms; and, when they had paid that first mark of their obedience, by peaceably surrendering them, I should thereby be better justified in receiving their submissions, and in recommending them to your majesty’s mercy and clemency.
“As soon as their respective clans had delivered up their arms, several of these attainted persons came to me at different times and places to render their submissions to your majesty. They laid down their swords on the ground, expressed their sorrow and concern for having made use of them in opposition to your majesty; and promised a peaceful and dutiful obedience for the remaining part of their lives. They afterwards sent me their several letters of submission, copies of which I transmitted to your majesty’s principal secretary of state.
“I made use of the proper arguments to convince them of their past folly and rashness, and gave them hopes of obtaining pardon from your majesty’s gracious and merciful disposition; but, being a stranger both to their persons and character, I required they would procure gentlemen of unquestioned zeal to your majesty’s government, who would write to me in their favour, and in some measure be answerable for their future conduct—which was accordingly done.
“When the news came that your majesty was graciously pleased to accept their submission, and had given the proper orders for preparing their pardons, it was received with great joy and satisfaction throughout the Highlands, which occasioned the Jacobites at Edinburgh to say, (by way of reproach,) that I had not only defrauded the Highlanders of their arms, but had also debauched them from their loyalty and allegiance.”[758]
Barracks were built at Inverness, a fort erected at Fort-Augustus, and at various places over the country small towers or forts, each capable of containing a small number of soldiers.
Wade at the same time received letters of submission from a considerable number of chiefs and other troublesome Highlanders who were lying under the taint of high treason. These were expressed in terms of excessive humility and contrition, and were full of the strongest promises of future good behaviour. Wade seems, as Burton[759] remarks, “to have known so little of the people as to believe in their sincerity. Yet the contemporary correspondence of the Jacobites indicates, what subsequent events confirmed, that the Highlanders, with the inscrutable diplomatic cunning peculiar to their race, had overreached the military negotiator, and committed a quantity of effective arms to places of concealment.”[760]
One of the greatest services rendered by Wade to the government, and that for which he is chiefly known to posterity, was the construction of roads through the Highlands, in order to facilitate the march of troops, and open up a communication between the various garrisons. Previous to this the only substitutes for roads existing in the Highlands were the rude tracts, sometimes scarcely distinguishable from the surrounding waste, made by many generations of Highlanders and their cattle over mountains, through bogs, across rapid rivers, skirting giddy precipices, and perfectly bewildering and fraught with danger to any but natives. Captain Burt, one of the engineers engaged in Wade’s expedition, gives in his Letters many graphic descriptions of the difficulties and dangers attendant on travelling in the Highlands before the making of these new roads. “The old ways,” he says, “(for roads I shall not call them,) consisted chiefly of stony moors, bogs, rugged, rapid fords, declivities of hills, entangling woods, and giddy precipices.”[761] As a specimen of what the traveller might expect in his progress among the mountains, we give the following incident which occurred to Burt in one of his own journeys.[762] “There was nothing remarkable afterwards, till I came near the top of the hill; where there was a seeming plain, of about 150 yards, between me and the summit.
“No sooner was I upon the edge of it, but my guide desired me to alight; and then I perceived it was a bog, or peat-moss, as they call it.
“I had experience enough of these deceitful surfaces to order that the horses should be led in separate parts, lest, if one broke the turf, the other, treading in his steps, might sink.
“The horse I used to ride having little weight but his own, went on pretty successfully; only now and then breaking the surface a little; but the other, that carried my portmanteau, and being not quite so nimble, was much in danger, till near the further end, and there he sank. But it luckily happened to be in a part where his long legs went to the bottom, which is generally hard gravel, or rock; but he was in almost up to the back.