Historical memoirs of Rob Roy and the Clan Macgregor

INTRODUCTORY SKETCH. 3
quality than that of personal courage. Possess-
ing neither acquired embellishments, nor useful
knowledge, they were in no respect different
from other untutored nations of the same age.
This state of ignorance will account for the
prevalence of superstition and its concomitant
prejudices among them, even to a more recent
period than could have been imagined, after the
universal progress of civilization. So late as
the breaking out of the last civil commotion in
Scotland, the Highland peasantry were held in
abject dependence by their chiefs, and kept in
dark subjection to the sanctimonious artifices of
their priesthood, for the success of whose
machinations, an unlettered mind seems to
have been an indispensable quality.
During this remote antiquity, their oral
history, for they had no other, declares an
unsettled state of society, where the passions,
unrestrained by the influence of principle or
example, did not confine the wandering in-
clination to moderate bounds, and where
equitable laws did not curb the indulgence of
extravagant habits. Being almost destitute of
jurisprudence, or sanctioned rules to enforce
rectitude, or repress evil practices, the High-
landers unavoidably became rapacious and