else had a clan to back him.

So far as primitive society is concerned, we may admit with the Scotch
historian Henderson that "the clan system of government was in its way
an ideally perfect one--probably the only perfect one that has ever
existed.... The clansman was not the subject--a term implying some sort
of conquest--but the kinsman of his chief.... Obedience became rather a
privilege than a task, and no possible bribery or menace could shake his
fidelity. Towards the Sassenach or the members of clans at feud with him
he might act meanly, treacherously, and cruelly without check and
without compunction, for there he recognized no moral obligations
whatever. But as a clansman to his clan he was courteous, truthful,
virtuous, benevolent, with notions of honor as punctilious as those of
the ancient knight."

The trouble with clan government was, as this same writer has pointed
out, that "it was the very thoroughness of its adaptation to early needs
that made it so hard to adjust to new necessities. In its principles and
motives it was essentially opposed to the bent of modern influences. Its
appeal was to sentiment rather than to law or even reason: it was a
system not of the letter but of the spirit.... The clan system was
efficient only within a narrow area; it gave rise to interminable feuds;
and it was inapplicable to the circumstances created by the rise of
modern industry and trade."

Everywhere throughout Highland Dixie to-day we can observe how clan
loyalty interferes with the administration of justice. When a case
involving some strong family comes up in the courts, immediately a cloud
of false witnesses arises, men who should testify on the other side are
bribed or run out of the country before subpoenas can be served, and
every juror knows that his peace and prosperity in future depend largely
upon which side he espouses.

To what lengths the hostility of a clan may go in defying justice was
shown recently in the massacre of almost a whole court by the Allen clan
at Hillsville, Virginia. The news of that atrocity swept like wildfire
throughout all Appalachia, its history is being reviewed to-day in
thousands of mountain cabins, and it is deeply significant that, away
out here in western Carolina, where no Allen blood relationship
prejudices men's minds, the prevailing judgment of our backwoodsmen is
that the State of Virginia did wrong in executing any of the offenders.
"There was something back of it