cts, without subjecting themselves to pay
him a heavy and shameful tax of _black-mail._ He at last proceeded to
such a degree of audaciousness that he committed robberies, raised
contributions, and resented quarrels, at the head of a very considerable
body of armed men, in open day, and in the face of the government."*

* Mr. Grahame of Gartmore's Causes of the Disturbances in the Highlands.
See Jamieson's edition of Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland,
Appendix, vol. ii. p. 348.

The extent and success of these depredations cannot be surprising, when
we consider that the scene of them was laid in a country where the
general law was neither enforced nor respected.

Having recorded that the general habit of cattle-stealing had blinded
even those of the better classes to the infamy of the practice, and that
as men's property consisted entirely in herds, it was rendered in the
highest degree precarious, Mr. Grahame adds--

"On these accounts there is no culture of ground, no improvement of
pastures, and from the same reasons, no manufactures, no trade; in short,
no industry. The people are extremely prolific, and therefore so
numerous, that there is not business in that country, according to its
present order and economy, for the one-half of them. Every place is full
of idle people, accustomed to arms, and lazy in everything but rapines
and depredations. As _buddel_ or _aquavitae_ houses are to be found
everywhere through the country, so in these they saunter away their time,
and frequently consume there the returns of their illegal purchases. Here
the laws have never been executed, nor the authority of the magistrate
ever established. Here the officer of the law neither dare nor can
execute his duty, and several places are about thirty miles from lawful
persons. In short, here is no order, no authority, no government."

The period of the rebellion, 1715, approached soon after Rob Roy had
attained celebrity. His Jacobite partialities were now placed in
opposition to his sense of the obligations which he owed to the indirect
protection of the Duke of Argyle. But the desire of "drowning his
sounding steps amid the din of general war" induced him to join the
forces of the Earl of Mar, although his patron the Duke of Argyle was at
the head of the army opposed to the Highland insurgents.

The MacGregors, a large sept of them at least, that of Ciar Mhor, on this
occasion were not commanded by Rob Roy, but by his nephe