ess in the sun beneath the accursed
blows of the Pagans--returns, after a few weeks set apart to natural
grief and indignation, with unabated energy, to the self-same work, even
within view of the former ruins, and pouring out a libation of the first
amalgamated hotness that deserves the name of speerit, devotes the whole
Board of Excise to the Infernal Gods?

The argument of idleness has not a leg to stand on, and falls at once to
the ground.--But the Still makes men dishonest. We grant that there is a
certain degree of dishonesty in cheating the Excise; and we shall allow
yourself to fix it, who give as fine a caulker from the sma' still as
any moral writer on Honesty with whom we have the pleasure occasionally
to take a family dinner. But the poor fellows either grow or purchase
their own malt. They do not steal it; and many is the silent benediction
that we have breathed over a bit patch of barley, far up on its stony
soil among the hills, bethinking us that it would yield up its precious
spirit unexcised! Neither do they charge for it any very extravagant
price--for what is twelve, fourteen, twenty shillings a-gallon for such
drink divine as is now steaming before us in that celestial caldron?

Having thus got rid of the charge of idleness and dishonesty, nothing
more needs to be said on the Moral Influence of the Still; and we come
now, in the second place, to consider it in a Social Light. The biggest
bigot will not dare to deny, that without whisky the Highlands of
Scotland would be uninhabitable. And if all the population were gone, or
extinct, where then would be your social life? Smugglers are seldom
drunkards; neither are they men of boisterous manners or savage
dispositions. In general, they are grave, sedate, peaceable characters,
not unlike elders of the Kirk. Even Excisemen admit them, except on rare
occasions when human patience is exhausted, to be merciful. Four
pleasanter men do not now exist in the bosom of the earth, than the
friends with whom we are now on the hobnob. Stolen waters are sweet--a
profound and beautiful reflection--and no doubt originally made by some
peripatetic philosopher at a Still. The very soul of the strong drink
evaporates with the touch of the gauger's wand. An evil day would it
indeed be for Scotland, that should witness the extinguishment of all
her free and unlicensed mountain stills! The charm of Highland
hospitality would be wan and withered, and the _doch-an-dorras_, in