dowry, together with her hand, upon MacDonald of Kingsburgh, who had been her assistant in the action which procured her so much fame. The applause due to her noble conduct was not rendered by Jacobites alone; many of the royal family, and particularly the generous and good-natured Prince Frederick of Wales, felt and expressed what was due to the worth of Flora MacDonald, though exerted for the safety of so dangerous a rival. The simplicity and dignity of her character was expressed in her remark, that she never thought she had done anything wonderful till she heard the world wondering at it. She afterwards went to America with her husband Kingsburgh, but both returned in consequence of the civil war, and died in their native Isle of Skye.

As to the rank and file of the rebellion —that is to say, the Highlanders generally a measure was prepared to disarm them, and forbid the wearing of their peculiar dress. The bill was bitterly opposed. It was represented that the form of the dress, light, warm, and convenient for the use of those who were accustomed to it, was essentially necessary to men who had to perform long journeys through a wild and desolate country; or discharge the labours of the shepherd or herdsman among extensive mountains and deserts, which

must

necessarily be applied to pasture. The proscription also of a national garb, to which the people had been long accustomed, and were necessarily much attached, was complained of as a stretch of arbitrary power, especially as the law was declared to extend to large districts and tracts of country, the inhabitants of which had not only refrained from aiding the rebellion, but had given ready and effectual assistance in its suppression.

Notwithstanding these reasons, and notwithstanding the representation of the loyal chiefs that it was unjust to deprive them of the swords which they

had used in the government's defence, it was judged necessary to proceed with the proposed measure, as one which, rigidly enforced by the proposed severity of government, promised completely to break the martial spirit of the Highlanders, so far as it had been found inconsistent with the peace and safety of the country at large. A law was accordingly passed, forbidding the use of what is called tartan, in all its various checkers and modifications, under penalties which, at that time, might be necessary to overcome the reluctance of the Highlanders to part with their national dress, but which certainly now appear disproportioned to the offence.

The wearing any part of what is called the Highland garb, that is, the plaid, philibeg, trews, shoulder-belt, or any other distinctive part of the dress, or the use of any garment composed of tartan, or parti-coloured cloth, made the offender liable, for the first offence, to six months' imprisonment; and for the second, to transportation to the colonies. At the same time, the wearing or even possession of arms subjected a Highlander to serve as a common soldier, if he should prove unable to pay a fine of fifteen pounds. A second offence was to be punished with transportation for seven years. The statute is 20th George II. chap. 51.

Whatever may be thought of these two statutes, not only restraining the use of arms under the highest penalties, but proscribing the dress of a whole nation, no objection can be made to another Act of Parliament, passed in the year 1748, for abolishing the last effectual remnant of the feudal system, viz., the hereditary jurisdictions throughout Scotland. These last remains of the feudal system have been repeatedly denounced, as contrary alike to common sense, and to the free and impartial administration of justice. In fact, they vested the power of deciding all ordinary actions at law in the persons of great land

owners, neither educated to the legal profession, nor in the habit of separating their own interests and passions from the causes which they were to decide as judges. The statute appointed sums of money to be paid as a compensation to the possessors of those judicial rights, whose existence was inimical to the progress of a free country. The administration of justice was vested in professional persons, called Sheriffs-depute (so called as deputed by the Crown, in contradistinction to the Sheriffs-principal, formerly enjoying jurisdiction as attached to their patrimony). Such a Sheriff-depute was named for each county, to discharge the judicial duties formerly exercised by hereditary judges.

This last act was not intended for the Highlands alone, its influence being extended throughout Scotland. By the Act of 20th King Geo. II. cap. 5, all tenures by ward-holding, that is, where the vassal held lands for the performance of military service, were declared unlawful, and those which existed were changed into holdings for feu, or for blench tenures-that is to say, either for payment of an annual sum of money, or some honorary acknowledgment of vassalage, so that it became impossible for any superior or overlord, in future, to impose upon his vassals the fatal service of following him to battle, or to discharge the oppressive duties of what were called hunting, hosting, watching, and warding. Thus, although the feudal forms of investiture were retained, all the essential influence of the superior or overlord over the vassal or tenant, and especially the right which he had to bring him into the field of battle, in consequence of his own quarrels, was in future abrogated and disallowed. The consequence of these great alterations was on the whole beneficial, and the north of Scotland every year became more and more reconciled to the dominion of the House of Hanover.

While a good understanding was

gradually increasing between the Highlanders and the government, which they had opposed so long and with so much obstinacy, the management of the forfeited estates in the Highlands was so conducted as to afford the cultivators a happy and easy existence; and though old men might turn back with fondness to the recollection of their younger days, when every Highlander walked the heath with his weapons rattling around him, the preference must, upon the whole, have been given to a period, in which a man's right needed nothing else to secure it than the equal defence of the law. In process of time, it was conceived by government that the period of punishment by forfeiture ought, in equity as well as policy, to be brought to a close, and that the descendants of the original insurgents of the year 1745, holding different tenets from their unfortunate ancestors, might be safely restored to the enjoyment of their patrimonial fortunes. By an Act of Grace accordingly, dated 24th George III. chap. 37, the estates forfeited for treason, in the year 1745, were restored to the descendants of those by whom they had been forfeited. A long train of honourable names was thus restored to Scottish history, and a debt of gratitude imposed upon their representatives to the memory of the then reigning monarch. To complete this Act of Grace, the government, in addition to the forfeited property, restored, in blood, such persons descended of attainted individuals as would have been heirs to peerages, had it not been for the attainder; -a step well chosen to mark the favour entertained by his Majesty for his Scottish subjects, and his desire to obliterate all recollection that discord had ever existed between his royal house and any of their ancestors.

Another feature of the same lenient and healing measures, was the restoring the complete liberty of wearing the Highland dress, without incurring penalty or

prosecution, by 22nd George III. chap. 63. This boon was accepted with great apparent joy by the natives of the Highlands; but an effectual change of customs having been introduced during the years in which it was proscribed, and the existing generation having become accustomed to the Lowland dress, the ancient garb is seldom to be seen, excepting when assumed upon festive

occasions.

A change of a different kind is very deeply connected with the principles of political economy, but we can here do little more than name it. Clanship was abolished, or subsisted only as the shadow of a shade; the generality of Highland proprietors, therefore, were unwilling to support, upon their own estates, in the capacity of poor kindred, a number of men whom they no longer had the means of employing in military service. They were desirous, like a nation in profound peace, to discharge the soldiers for whom they had no longer use, and who, indeed, could no longer legally remain under their authority. The country was, therefore, exposed to all the inconvenience of an over population, while the proprietors were, by the same circumstance, encumbered by the number of persons whom, under the

old system, they would have been glad to have enrolled in their clan-following.

Another circumstance greatly increased the multitude of Highlanders, whom this new state of things threw out of employment.

The mountainous region of the north of Scotland contained large tracts of moorland, which was anciently employed, chiefly, if not entirely, for the rearing of black cattle. It was, however, found at a later period, that these extensive pastures might, with much better advantage, be engaged in the feeding of sheep; but to this latter mode of employing them, the Highlanders are by nature and education decidedly averse and illqualified, being as unfit for the cares of a shepherd, as they are eminently well acquainted with those of the rearer of cattle. The consequence was, that as the Highlands began to be opened to inhabitants from the Lowlands, the sheep farmers of the southland mountains made offers of large rents to the proprietors of these store-farms, with which the Highland tenant was unable to enter into competition; and the latter, deprived at once of their lands and their occupation, left the country in numbers, and emigrated to North America and other foreign settlements.