Their Case Is Undoubtedly Hard, But In Political
Regulations, Good Cannot Be Complete, It Can Only Be Predominant.
Whether by disarming a people thus broken into several tribes, and
thus remote from the seat of power, more good than evil has been
produced, may deserve inquiry.
The supreme power in every
community has the right of debarring every individual, and every
subordinate society from self-defence, only because the supreme
power is able to defend them; and therefore where the governor
cannot act, he must trust the subject to act for himself. These
Islands might be wasted with fire and sword before their sovereign
would know their distress. A gang of robbers, such as has been
lately found confederating themselves in the Highlands, might lay a
wide region under contribution. The crew of a petty privateer
might land on the largest and most wealthy of the Islands, and riot
without control in cruelty and waste. It was observed by one of
the Chiefs of Sky, that fifty armed men might, without resistance
ravage the country. Laws that place the subjects in such a state,
contravene the first principles of the compact of authority: they
exact obedience, and yield no protection.
It affords a generous and manly pleasure to conceive a little
nation gathering its fruits and tending its herds with fearless
confidence, though it lies open on every side to invasion, where,
in contempt of walls and trenches, every man sleeps securely with
his sword beside him; where all on the first approach of hostility
came together at the call to battle, as at a summons to a festal
show; and committing their cattle to the care of those whom age or
nature has disabled, engage the enemy with that competition for
hazard and for glory, which operate in men that fight under the eye
of those, whose dislike or kindness they have always considered as
the greatest evil or the greatest good.
This was, in the beginning of the present century, the state of the
Highlands. Every man was a soldier, who partook of national
confidence, and interested himself in national honour. To lose
this spirit, is to lose what no small advantage will compensate.
It may likewise deserve to be inquired, whether a great nation
ought to be totally commercial? whether amidst the uncertainty of
human affairs, too much attention to one mode of happiness may not
endanger others? whether the pride of riches must not sometimes
have recourse to the protection of courage? and whether, if it be
necessary to preserve in some part of the empire the military
spirit, it can subsist more commodiously in any place, than in
remote and unprofitable provinces, where it can commonly do little
harm, and whence it may be called forth at any sudden exigence?
It must however be confessed, that a man, who places honour only in
successful violence, is a very troublesome and pernicious animal in
time of peace; and that the martial character cannot prevail in a
whole people, but by the diminution of all other virtues.
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