Celts. Down to the Hanoverian times the chain of the Grampians which
from the Castle of Stirling is seen rising like a wall over the rich
plain, divided from each other two nationalities, differing totally in
ideas, institutions, habits, and costume, as well as in speech, and the
less civilized of which still regarded the more civilized as alien
intruders, while the more civilized regarded the less civilized as
robbers. Internally, the topographical character of the Highlands was
favourable to the continuance of the clan system, because each clan
having its own separate glen, fusion was precluded, and the progress
towards union went no further than the domination of the more powerful
clans over the less powerful. Mountains also preserve the general
equality and brotherhood which are not less essential to the
constitution of the clan than devotion to the chief, by preventing the
use of that great minister of aristocracy, the horse. At Killiecrankie
and Prestonpans the leaders of the clan and the humblest clansman still
charged on foot side by side. Macaulay is undoubtedly right in saying
that the Highland risings against William III. and the first two Georges
were not dynastic but clan movements. They were in fact the last raids
of the Gael upon the country which had been wrested from him by the
Sassenach. Little cared the clansman for the principles of Filmer or
Locke, for the claims of the House of Stuart or for those of the House
of Brunswick. Antipathy to the Clan Campbell was the nearest approach to
a political motive. Chiefs alone, such as the unspeakable Lovat, had
entered as political _condottieri_ into the dynastic intrigues of
the period, and brought the claymores of their clansmen to the standard
of their patron, as Indian chiefs in the American wars brought the
tomahawks of their tribes to the standard of France or England. Celtic
independence greatly contributed to the general perpetuation of anarchy
in Scotland, to the backwardness of Scotch civilization, and to the
abortive weakness of the Parliamentary institutions. Union with the more