essful in attempting to ignore "all
Celtic usages inconsistent with its principles", and it "regarded all
persons possessing a feudal title as absolute proprietors of the land,
and all occupants of the land who could not show a right derived from
the proprietor, as simple tenants".[99] Thus the strongest support of
the clan system had been removed before the suppression of the clans.
The Government of George II placed the Highlands under military
occupation, and began to root out every tendency towards the persistence
of a clan organization. The clan, as a military unit, ceased to exist
when the Highlanders were disarmed, and as a unit for administrative
purposes when the heritable jurisdictions were abolished, and it could
no longer claim to be a political force of any kind, for every vestige
of independence was removed. The only individual characteristic left to
the clan or to the Highlander was the tartan and the Celtic garb, and
its use was prohibited under very severe penalties. These were measures
which were not possible in the days of David as they were in those of
George. But a further step was common to both centuries--the forfeiture
of lands, and although a later Government restored many of these to
descendants of the attainted chiefs, the magic spell had been broken,
and the proprietor was no longer the head of the clan. Such measures,
and the introduction of sheep-farming, had, within sixty years, changed
the whole face of the Highlands.

Another century has been added to Sir Walter's _Sixty Years Since_, and
it may be argued that all the resources of modern civilisation have
failed to accomplish, in that period, what the descendants of Malcolm
Canmore effected in the twelfth and thirteenth centuries. This is true
as far as language is concerned, but only with regard to language. The
Highlanders have not forgotten the Gaelic tongue as the Lowlanders had
forgotten it by the outbreak of the War of Independence.[100] Various
facts account for this. One of the features of recent days is an
antiquarian revival, which has tended to preserve for Highland children
the great intellectual advantage of a bi-lingual education. The very
severance of the bond between chieftain and clan has helped to
perpetuate the ancient language, for the people no longer adopt the
speech of their chief, as, in earlier days, the Celt of Moray or of Fife
adopted the tongue spoken by his Anglo-Norman lord, or learned by the
great men of hi