[CHAPTER XLI.]
Proceedings which followed Culloden, their cause and consequences—Influence of clan-feeling—Lord Lovat and the Frasers—Parliamentary measures—Disarming Act—Act against the Highland dress—Abolition of Hereditary Jurisdictions—The Scottish Episcopalians—Effect of these measures—The Old Jacobites—The Jacobite Songs—Whig Songs—Sir Walter Scott—Jacobitism at the present day—Queen Victoria—Innovations, and their probable consequences.
The harsh military proceedings which followed the battle of Culloden, of which we have already endeavoured to give the reader an idea, seem to have completely crushed the spirit out of the poor, and, in many cases, innocent Highlanders. The Duke of Cumberland and his subordinates exercised, as we have seen, no discrimination in the selection of their victims, laying their bloody clutches on chiefs and people, him who had been “out” and him who had not; it was sufficient to bring slaughter, slavery, or ruin on a man and his family, if he bore upon or about him any mark of Highland origin or connection,—wore a kilt, or could not justify himself in English. The end which it was intended to accomplish by these cruel and saddening measures, was no doubt in the main highly desirable; it was well to let it be distinctly known once for all, that the divine hereditary right of ruling could be conferred only by the people, and that these would bestow the post of king on him who could fill it best, and who would by no caprices of his own obstruct the progress of the nation. It was assuredly right and absolutely necessary that the Highlanders should be made clearly to understand that they lived in the middle of the 18th century, and were only a very small part of a great nation which was leading the march of the world’s progress, and that, instead of doing their best to pull their country back a century, they should lend the aid of the many valuable and noble qualities with which they were endowed, but which were running comparatively waste, to enable Britain to keep her proud position in the van of the nations, and help the world on in its glorious course of progress, to try to stop which would certainly lead to their own destruction. It was, we say, high time that such a splendid race of men should be roused out of self-satisfied slumber and brought to their senses, but surely there was some gentler method of effecting this than by thrusting a sword into their hearts or blowing out their bewildered brains; their tendency to rebellion was no disease which required to be “stamped out,” but merely the result of much unoccupied energy, which only required proper direction in order to become a blessing instead of a curse to their fellow-countrymen. No one, possessing ordinary human feeling, can regard the proceedings which followed Culloden, and which were continued for many months, with any feelings but those of pity, sadness, and horror, combined with loathing at those who were so inhuman as to carry out the bloody work of wholesale butchery and ruin. We of the present day regard the Highlanders of ’45 as a chivalrous, impulsive, simple-minded race, who really wished to do no one any harm, and perhaps we are to a certain extent right. But, as at the time of the massacre of Glencoe, their southern fellow-countrymen looked upon them as a pestiferous race of semi-barbarians, enemies to progress, “thieves and lawless limmers,” who, like vermin, should be annihilated, or at least for ever incapacitated from doing harm to any but themselves. This seems especially to have been the case with the Duke of Cumberland, who was utterly incapable of regarding the Highlanders in any other light than as a set of barbarous villains, to whom no mercy ought to be shown. Writing, April 4, 1746, to the Duke of Newcastle, he says, “All in this country are almost to a man Jacobites, and mild measures will not do. You will find that the whole laws of this ancient kingdom must be new modelled. Were I to enumerate the villains and villanies this country abounds in, I should never have done.” And again, July 17, “I am sorry to leave this country in the condition it is in; for all the good that we have done is a little blood-letting, which has only weakened the madness, but not at all cured it; and I tremble for fear that this vile spot may still be the ruin of this island and of our family.” From a man of Cumberland’s character, cherishing such feelings as the above towards an enemy in his power, what other course of conduct was to be expected than that which he followed, more especially when it is remembered that these feelings must have been considerably aggravated by the defeats which the royal army had already sustained. On this last account the royal soldiers themselves must have cherished more than usually bitter feelings towards their opponents; for what can be more chagrining to regularly disciplined troops than to be routed by a wretchedly armed rabble of half naked, untrained men, in which light the royal army must have regarded the Highlanders. These special causes, added to the insatiable thirst for blood which seems to take possession of a victorious army, sufficiently account for the inhuman, heartless, and uncalled for treatment of the Highlanders after the battle of Culloden. Good as the end was, the means was utterly unjustifiable and abhorrent.
The end, however, was accomplished. The spirit of the Highlanders was totally broken; they were left completely prostrate, broken hearted, and bleeding, with no power left of further disturbing the peace of the kingdom, and with little inclination, at least among the great majority of the clansmen, to lend their aid towards another rising. Indeed, it is well known that, so far as the mass of the clansmen, as distinguished from the chiefs and tacksmen, were concerned, they were entirely the tools of their superiors, and were ready, according as their chiefs ordered, either to espouse the cause of Prince Charles, or to be loyal to the existing government. There is not a better instance of the indifference of the common Highlanders as to whom they fought for, than the conduct of the clan Fraser in the rebellion of 1715. At the time this rebellion broke out, Lovat was in France, the headship of the clan being assumed by Mackenzie of Fraserdale, who favoured the cause of the Stuarts, and who had joined the Earl of Mar at Perth with 400 of the Frasers, many other members of the clan remaining neutral till the pleasure of Simon, their real chief, should be known. Lovat returned from France, espoused the side of King George, in which he was immediately followed by the neutral Frasers, while those who were in the camp of Marr left it to a man, and joined themselves to him whom they regarded as their rightful chief. Such was the strength of the clannish principle, and such the indifference of the majority of the Highlanders as to which side they espoused, so long as they pleased their chief, to please whom, they had been taught from their infancy, was the first and great commandment, to offend him being little better than banishment or death. To say the least, then, how utterly indiscriminating and shameful was the cruel conduct of “Butcher” Cumberland and his assistants.
The cruel and unconstitutional method of punishing the Highland rebels, and crushing the sting out of them, adopted by Cumberland, was at length put a stop to about the month of August, the Civil Courts successfully asserting their supremacy over military licence and coercion. Parliament set itself to devise and adopt such measures as it thought would be calculated to assimilate the Highlands with the rest of the kingdom, and deprive the Highlanders of the power to combine successfully in future against the established government. To effect these ends, Parliament, in 1746 and 1747, passed various Acts, by which it was ordained that the Highlanders should be disarmed, their peculiar dress laid aside, and the heritable jurisdictions and wardholding abolished.
Marshal Wade, in 1725, seems really to have succeeded in confiscating a very considerable number of good, useful arms, although the pawky Highlanders managed to throw a glamour over even his watchful eyes, and secrete many weapons for use when occasion should offer. Still, that arms were scarce in the Highlands after this, is shown by the rude and unmilitary character of the weapons possessed by the majority of the rebel army previous to the battle of Prestonpans; there, many of the Highlanders were able to exchange their irregular and ugly, but somewhat formidable weapons for government firelocks and bayonets. Still Culloden, and the merciless oppression which followed, more than annulled all that the Highlanders had gained in this and other respects by their previous success; so that those who had the enforcing of the disarming Act would have comparatively little work to do, and were not likely to meet with much opposition in performing it. Severe penalties were threatened upon any who dared to keep possession of weapons after the Act came in force; for the first offence the delinquent was liable to a heavy fine, to be sent to serve as a soldier in America, or, if unfit for service, to be imprisoned for six months. Seven years’ transportation followed the second offence.
There can, we think, be no doubt as to the wisdom and prudence of this Act if judiciously and thoroughly carried out, although the penalties certainly do seem too severe. It seems to have accomplished its purpose: “the last law,” says Dr. Johnson,[1368] “by which the Highlanders are deprived of their arms, has operated with efficacy beyond expectation ... the arms were collected with such rigour, that every house was despoiled of its defence.” Not only was this disarming of the Highlanders effectual in preventing future rebellion, but also helped considerably to soften and render less dangerous their daily intercourse with each other. Formerly it was quite a common occurrence for the least difference of opinion between two Highlanders—whose bristling pride is always on the rise—to be followed by high words and an ultimate appeal to weapons, in which the original combatants were often joined by their respective friends, the result being a small battle ending in one or more deaths and many wounds. The Disarming Act tended to make such occurrences extremely rare.
There is certainly great room for doubting the wisdom which prompted the enactment that followed the above, enforcing the discontinuance of the peculiar dress of the Highlanders. By this Act, “Any person within Scotland, whether man or boy (excepting officers and soldiers in his majesty’s service), who should wear the plaid, philibeg, trews, shoulder belts, or any part of the Highland garb, or should use for great coats, tartans, or parti-coloured plaid, or stuffs, should, without the alternative of a fine, be imprisoned for the first conviction for six months, without bail, and on the second conviction be transported for seven years.”[1369] Of all the medicines administered by the government physicians to the Highlanders at this time, this was certainly the most difficult for them to swallow, and the one least calculated to serve the purpose for which it was intended. As to the other enactments made by government to keep down rebellion, the Highlanders could not but feel that those in power were only doing what common prudence dictated. But this interference in a matter so personal and apparently so harmless as that of dress, this prohibition of a costume so national, ancient (at least in fashion), and characteristic as that of the Highlanders, seemed to them an act of mere wanton and insulting oppression, intended to degrade them, and without purpose, to outrage their most cherished and harmless prejudices. They seem to have felt it as keenly as any officer would feel the breaking of his sword or the tearing off of his epaulets, or as the native troops, previous to the Indian mutiny, felt the imposition of greased cartridges. It humbled and irritated them far more than did any of the other acts, or even than the outrages and barbarities which followed Culloden; instead of eradicating their national spirit, and assimilating them in all respects with the Lowland population, it rather intensified that spirit, and their determination to preserve themselves a separate and peculiar people, besides throwing in their way an additional and unnecessary temptation to break the laws. A multitude of prohibitory statutes is always irritating to a people, and serves only to multiply offences and demoralize a nation; it is generally a sign of weakness and great lack of wisdom in a government. This enactment as to the Highland dress was as unwise as religious intolerance, which is invariably a nurse of discord, a promoter of sectarianism. This Act surrounded the Highland dress with a sort of sacred halo, raised it into a badge of nationality, and was probably the means of perpetuating and rendering popular the use of a habit, which, had it been left alone, might long ere now have died a natural death, and been found only in our museums, side by side with the Lochaber axe, the two-handed sword, and the nail-studded shield.