n decrees. It
immediately appears that such judges will be often ignorant, and often
partial; but in the immaturity of political establishments no better
expedient could be found. As government advances towards perfection,
provincial judicature is perhaps in every empire gradually abolished.

Those who had thus the dispensation of law, were by consequence
themselves lawless. Their vassals had no shelter from outrages and
oppressions; but were condemned to endure, without resistance, the
caprices of wantonness, and the rage of cruelty.

In the Highlands, some great lords had an hereditary jurisdiction over
counties; and some chieftains over their own lands; till the final
conquest of the Highlands afforded an opportunity of crushing all the
local courts, and of extending the general benefits of equal law to the
low and the high, in the deepest recesses and obscurest corners.

While the chiefs had this resemblance of royalty, they had little
inclination to appeal, on any question, to superior judicatures. A claim
of lands between two powerful lairds was decided like a contest for
dominion between sovereign powers. They drew their forces into the
field, and right attended on the strongest. This was, in ruder times,
the common practice, which the kings of Scotland could seldom control.

Even so lately as in the last years of King William, a battle was fought
at Mull Roy, on a plain a few miles to the south of Inverness, between
the clans of Mackintosh and Macdonald of Keppoch. Col. Macdonald, the
head of a small clan, refused to pay the dues demanded from him by
Mackintosh, as his superior lord. They disdained the interposition of
judges and laws, and calling each his followers to maintain the dignity
of the clan, fought a formal battle, in which several considerable men
fell on the side of Mackintosh, without a complete victory to either.
This is said to have been the last open war made between the clans by
their own authority.

The Highland lords made treaties, and formed alliances, of which some
traces may still be found, and some consequences still remain as lasting
evidences of petty regality. The terms of one of these confederacies
were, that each should support the other in the right, or in the wrong,
except against the king.

The inhabitants of mountains form distinct races, and are careful to
preserve their genealogies. Men in a small district necessarily mingle
blood by intermarriages, and combine