in Scotland immediately followed our defeat.’ Johnstone's Memoirs of the Rebellion in 1745, p. 211. He, of course, could not perceive that, sad as such ruin was to the individual sufferers, it was an immense benefit to the nation. Mr. Skene, referring to the year 1748, says of the Highlanders: ‘their long-cherished ideas of clanship gradually gave way under the absence and ruin of so many of their chiefs.’ Skene's Highlanders, vol. i. p. 147.
378
‘About 1784, the exiled families began to return.’ Penny's Traditions of Perth, p. 41. See also Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iv. p. 53. In 1784, ‘a bill passed the Commons without opposition,’ to restore the ‘Forfeited Estates’ in the north of Scotland. See Parliamentary History, vol. xxiv. pp. 1316–1322. On that occasion, Fox said (p. 1321) the proprietors ‘had been sufficiently punished by forty years' deprivation of their fortunes for the faults of their ancestors.’
379
Dean Ramsay, in his Reminiscences (5th edit. Edinburgh, 1859, p. 57), notices that, owing to ‘transfers of property and extinction of old families in the Highlands, as well as from more general causes,’ the old clannish affection ‘is passing away.’ But this intelligent observer has not indicated the connexion between so important a fact and the Rebellion of 1745. In 1792, Heron writes: ‘The prejudices of clanship have almost died away.’ … ‘The dependents of the family of Kenmure are still attached to its representative with much of that affection and respect with which the tribes of the Highlands have till lately been accustomed to adhere to their lord.’ Heron's Journey through the Western Counties of Scotland, 2nd edit. Perth, 1799, vol. i. p. 248, vol. ii. p. 154. See also the remarks made, in the same year, in Lettice's Letters on a Tour through various parts of Scotland, London, 1794, p. 340. To trace the movement back still further, Pennant writes, in 1769: ‘But in many parts of the Highlands, their character begins to be more faintly marked; they mix more with the world; and become daily less attached to their chiefs.’ … ‘During the feudal reign, their love for their chieftain induced them to bear many things, at present intolerable.’ These two important passages are in the 4th edition of Pennant's Tour in Scotland, vol. i. p. 194, vol. ii. p. 307, Dublin, 1775. They prove that, twenty-four years after the Rebellion of 1745, the decay of affection was so manifest, as to strike a candid and careful, but by no means philosophic, observer. For Pennant to have discerned these changes, they must already have risen to the surface. Other and corroborative evidence will be found in Sinclair's Account of Scotland, vol. ii. p. 545, Edinburgh, 1792; and vol. iii. pp. 377, 437, vol. xiii. p. 310, vol. xv. p. 592, vol. xx. p. 33.
380
Burton's History of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 535–537. Struthers' History of Scotland, Glasgow, 1828, vol. ii. pp. 519–525.
381
Macpherson (Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. p. 259) says, ‘This excellent statute may not unfitly be termed a new magna charta to the free people of Scotland.’
382
I cannot, therefore, agree with Macpherson, who asserts, in his valuable work, that the abolition of these jurisdictions ‘should undoubtedly have been made an essential preliminary of the consolidating union of the two kingdoms of England and Scotland, concluded forty years before.’ Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. iii. p. 257. Compare De Foe's History of the Union between England and Scotland, pp. 458, 459, London, 1786, 4to.
383
In 1740, ‘the rising manufacturing and trading interests of the country’ were ‘looked down upon and discouraged by the feudal aristocracy.’ Burton's Lives of Lovat and Forbes, p. 361.
384
‘Whereas Scotland had, before this, prohibited all the English woollen manufactures, under severe penalties, and England, on the other hand, had excluded the Scots from trading with Scots ships to their colonies in America, directly from Scotland, and had confiscated even their own English ships trading to the said colonies from England, if navigated or manned with above one-third Scots seamen,’ &c. De Foe's History of the Union, p. 603. In 1696, the wise men in our English Parliament passed a law, ‘that on no pretence whatever any kind of goods from the English American plantations should hereafter be put on shore, either in the kingdoms of Ireland or Scotland, without being first landed in England, and having also paid the duties there, under forfeiture of ship and cargo.’ Macpherson's Annals of Commerce, vol. ii. p. 684. Certainly, the more a man knows of the history of legislation, the more he will wonder that nations should have been able to advance in the face of the formidable impediments which legislators have thrown in their way.
385
‘A spirit for commerce appears to have been raised among the inhabitants of Glasgow between the periods of 1660 and 1707, when the union with England took place.’ … But, ‘whatever their trade was, at this time, it could not be considerable; the ports to which they were obliged to trade, lay all to the eastward; the circumnavigation of the island would, therefore, prove an almost insurmountable bar to the commerce of Glasgow; the people upon the east coast, from their situation, would be in possession of almost the whole commerce of Scotland.’ Gibson's History of Glasgow, p. 205, Glasgow, 1777.
386
‘The importance of the measure induced the inhabitants of Greenock to make a contract with the superior, by which they agreed to an assessment of 1s. 4d. sterling on every sack of malt, brewed into ale, within the limits of the town; the money so levied to be applied in liquidating the expence of forming a proper harbour at Greenock. The work was begun at the epoch of the Union, in 1707; and a capacious harbour, containing upwards of ten Scottish acres, was formed by building an extensive circular pier, with a straight pier, or tongue, in the middle, by which the harbour was divided into two parts. This formidable work, the greatest of the kind, at that time, in Scotland, incurred an expence of more than 100,000 marks Scots.’ Chalmers' Caledonia, vol. iii. p. 807, London, 1824, 4to. In M'Culloch's Geographical and Statistical Dictionary, London, 1849, vol. i. p. 930, it is stated, that ‘the inhabitants took the matter (1707) into their own hands, and agreed with their superior to assess themselves at a certain rate, to build a proper pier and harbour. The work was finished in 1710, at an expence of 5,555l.’
387
‘The trade of Greenock has kept pace with the improvements made on its harbour. The union of the kingdoms (1707) opened the colonies to the enterprising inhabitants of this town, and generally of the west of Scotland; but it was not till 1719 that the first vessel belonging to Greenock crossed the Atlantic.’ M'Culloch's Geographical and Statistical Dictionary, vol. i. p. 930.
388
‘Such was the effect of the new harbour in increasing the trade, and the population, of the town, that the assessment, and port dues, cleared off the whole debt before 1740, and left, in that year, a clear surplus of 27,000 marks Scots, or 1,500l. sterling.’ Chalmers' Caledonia, vol. iii. p. 807. ‘After the Union, however, the trade of the port increased so rapidly, that, in the year 1740, the whole debt was extinguished, and there remained a surplus, the foundation of the present town's funds, of 27,000 marks.’ Sinclair's Statistical Account of Scotland, vol. v. p. 576, Edinburgh, 1793.
389
‘By the Union, however, new views were opened up to the merchants of the city; they thereby obtained the liberty of a free commerce to America and the West Indies, from which they had been before shut out; they chartered English vessels for these voyages, having none at first fit for the purpose; sent out cargoes of goods for the use of the colonies, and returned home laden with tobacco. The business doing well, vessels were built belonging to the city, and in the year 1718, the first ship, the property of Glasgow, crossed the Atlantic.’ Denholm's History of Glasgow, p. 405, 3rd edit. Glasgow, 1804. Brown (History of Glasgow, vol. ii. p. 330, Edinburgh, 1797) says, that the Glasgow merchants ‘chartered Whitehaven ships for many years:’ but that, ‘in 1716, a vessel of sixty tons burden
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