natural sentiments, they resolutely declined all share in so wild an undertaking. Charles talked to two of them who had come on board his vessel; he persuaded, argued, and explained; and as he walked backwards and forwards on the deck, he was overheard by a Highlander, who had come on board with his leader, and who had no sooner gathered from the discourse that the stranger was the Prince of Wales, and that the chief and his brother refused to take arms, than his colour went and came, his eyes sparkled, he shifted his place, he grasped his sword. "And will not you assist me?" said Charles, who had observed him. "I will, I will," said Ronald; "though no other man in the Highlands should draw a sword, I am ready to die for you." "I only wish that all the Highlanders were like you," said Charles. Without further deliberation the chief and the brother, the two Macdonalds, declared that they also would join and use their utmost endeavours to engage their countrymen to come forward in his cause. Now such was the first extraordinary step in this extraordinary enterprise. Another remained. Lochiel, then the head of the powerful clan of the Cameronians, was yet to be gained over. He was coming to Charles to give his reasons for not joining him-reasons, as he had told his brother, which admitted of no reply. "But that is of no consequence," said his wiser brother. He was no doubt very right; they certainly admitted of no reply, and had received none when urged to the prince. But as the conference was closing, Charles, in his despair, declared that he would erect the royal standard even with the few friends he had; proclaim to the people of Britain that Charles Stuart was come over to claim the crown of his ancestors-to win it, or perish in the attempt. "You, Lochiel," said he, "whom my father has often told me was our firmest friend-you, Lochiel, may stay at home, and learn from the newspapers the fate of your prince." "No," said Lochiel, "I will share the fate of my prince, and so shall every man over whom nature or fortune has given me any power." It is a point agreed amongst the Highlanders, that if Lochiel had persisted in his refusal to take up arms, that the other chiefs would not have joined the standard of Charles; and the spark of rebellion must have instantly expired. Such were the chances and turns of elevated sentiment on which this enterprise depended; such were the grounds on which these bands of brothers were to descend from their mountains, at every step they took incur the penalties of treason and death, lift up their eyes and gaze unappalled on the colossal power of England!-never pause for a moment to contrast the simple target and claymore of Scotland with her mighty lance and ægis-the artillery at her feet, and her fleets in the distance; but at all events precipitate themselves forward, and ask from their chief no question but-" Was it his will?" and from their prince no signal but-“ Did he lead ?" It may be doubted whether the history of the world ever exhibited a stronger instance of the triumph of heroic sentiment over the calmer suggestions of reason. But when our first impression of surprise and indeed of admiration is passed away, we must look upon this as a very striking instance to prove the indispensable necessity of the general diffusion of political knowledge among all ranks and descriptions of men. A mistake was now made merely from the want of political knowledge; and on this account, and on no other, brave men were to perish in the field, and the great cause of civil and religious liberty was to be endangered to the utmost, the cause of the Revolution of 1688, the cause of England and of mankind, and endangered by the most noble and generous of men. I say, endangered to the utmost; for had the northern parts of England been as magnanimous in sentiment as they, too, were mistaken in opinion; had they been, like the Highlanders, not only ignorant and misled in their political notions, but generous and fearless in their characters, it is scarcely too much to affirm that the Rebellion of 1745 would have been successful, the Brunswick family driven from our land, and freedom would have lost her boast (a boast so cheering to a philosophic mind), that she, too, had placed a monarch on a throne, and, in England at least, was had in honour in palaces and courts. The sentiment on which the Stuart family had to depend, from the first, was merely an over-statement of an acknow ledged principle in political science, the principle of hereditary right. It was this sentiment, and this alone, that now armed the clans of Scotland in their cause, and so prejudiced Wales and the northern counties of England in their favour. I will not insult, as some seem ready to do, the memory of these heroes of the Highlands (for such they were) by supposing that either plunder or power were their object; far higher and more noble were the feelings of their hearts. It was loyalty to the chief in the follower; it was loyalty to the prince in the chief; it was in all the indefeasible nature, as they supposed, of hereditary right, that made the cause of Charles Stuart, in their opinion, the good cause and the true, whatever might be its issue, however discountenanced and abandoned by the time-serving sycophants of the Lowlands and of the south. "The king shall have his own again," was the language of the popular ballads of the time. The same sentiment has been caught by the poet of Caledonia, in his Chevalier's Lament: "His right are these hills, and his right are these valleys, It is impossible not to respect men who could thus devote themselves, from principle, to an unprotected adventurer like Charles. It may be useful for us to meditate upon these examples of elevated sentiment, that we may catch a portion for our own hearts of the divine flame which we are admiring. But we must be admonished, at the same time, by examples like these, that heroism in the sentiment, and generosity in the feeling, are not alone sufficient; that these are the lights, which, "though lights from heaven, may lead astray;" that principles, however elevated, must be properly estimated, their bounds ascertained, their value compared with that of other principles, and, in a word, that sentiment alone must not actuate the man, till it has first been shown its course and taught its limits by the superintending power of the understanding. What spectacle was ever seen like that before us? The children of poetry, gallantry, and song-of hardiness and courage-of courteousness and truth-rushing from the free air and simple pleasures of their mountains, to fight the battles of what?-of arbitrary power! to bleed in defence of whom?—of the representatives of civil and religious tyranny! to perish, and for what end?-that they might destroy the fair fabric of the constitution of England! It pleased a Higher Power, in his overruling mercies to these kingdoms, to order it otherwise; to decree that they should not succeed. They paid the forfeit of their delusions and mistakes: they lay slaughtered on the plain of Culloden; they were hunted down by their conquerors amid their native wilds; they perished, and their cause has perished with them. So perish the memory of their faults! Their high and noble qualities survive, for they have descended to their countrymen, the heroes of our own days, the heroes who carry terror into the legions of France, and who have at length found a cause where the muse of history may tell their achievements without a blush, and record their virtues without a sigh. When we reflect on the character of these inhabitants of the Highlands, it is not very agreeable to observe the want of prospective wisdom that was shown by our English cabinets. The exiled family of the Stuarts had belonged to Scotland; there had been a rebellion in their favour in 1715; and it was always the maxim of Sir Robert Walpole, that on the event of a French war another would take place. Was no effort, therefore, made by the legislature to counteract this disposition of the Highlanders to insurrection? Could nothing have been attempted? Could not their generous and active qualities have been converted to the benefit, as they had been to the injury, of the state? A mechanic requires a fulcrum, an artist a rude material; he asks no more; his ingenuity and labour are to do the rest. Were there, therefore, in the character of the Highlanders no opportunities for the science of a statesman? no fulcrum, and no rude material? These are questions that should occupy your thoughts while you read the events of this rebellion; and before you consider what might have been done, I will mention what really was done, in the way of legislative provision. The Highland clans, you will observe, were not all dis affected: far from it. There were Whig as well as Jacobite clans. The government, therefore, of George I. issued out its orders to disarm the Highlanders. This is always a very favourite measure of lazy and arbitrary, and I may add, ignorant legislators. They seize the arms, and leave the hearts of a people to be seized by others. But what was the result? The common one-that the well affected gave up their arms at the time appointed, and the rest concealed them, or took some subsequent opportunity of providing themselves afresh. At last Duncan Forbes, the president of the Court of Session, seeing a war with Spain approaching, and aware of the consequences, in the autumn of the year 1738 (more than twenty years after the first rebellion) proposed that government should raise four or five regiments in the Highlands, appoint an English or Scotch officer of undoubted loyalty to be colonel of each regiment, and name all the other officers from a list which he gave in, and which comprehended all the chiefs and chieftains of the disaffected clans. He had no doubt, he said, that these men would serve well against the enemy abroad, and even, in fact, be hostages for the good behaviour of their relations at home. That this at least should have been one of the expedients resorted to long before, is sufficiently obvious; but what was the event? Sir Robert Walpole said it was the most sensible plan he had seen, summoned a cabinet council, laid it before them, recommended it strongly, and then, what was the difficulty? Why, every other member of the cabinet was against it, because opposition, they said, would exclaim that Sir Robert Walpole was raising an army of Highlanders to join the standing army and enslave the people of England. The plan was, therefore, laid aside, and Sir Robert, and probably the cabinet, with the fear of a rebellion constantly before their eyes, did nothing. They had done nothing for twenty years before, when any expedients of the kind might have been tried with a good grace and with a proper chance for success. What impolicy! we cry, and justly. But this is not a field in which our English statesmen, at least our English cabinets, have much displayed their legislative wisdom. More than a thousand years before the Revolution of 1688, the Romans |