stead
of a blessing, would sound like a ban.

We have said that smugglers are never drunkards, not forgetting that
general rules are proved by exceptions; nay, we go farther, and declare
that the Highlanders are the soberest people in Europe. Whisky is to
them a cordial, a medicine, a life-preserver. Chief of the umbrella and
wraprascal! were you ever in the Highlands? We shall produce a single
day from any of the fifty-two weeks of the year that will out-argue you
on the present subject, in half an hour. What sound is that? The rushing
of rain from heaven, and the sudden outcry of a thousand waterfalls.
Look through a chink in the bothy, and far as you can see for the mists,
the heath-covered desert is steaming like the smoke of a smouldering
fire. Winds biting as winter come sweeping on their invisible chariots
armed with scythes, down every glen, and scatter far and wide over the
mountains the spray of the raging lochs. Now you have a taste of the
summer cold, more dangerous far than that of Yule, for it often strikes
"aitches" into the unprepared bones, and congeals the blood of the
shelterless shepherd on the hill. But one glorious gurgle of the speerit
down the throat of a storm-stayed man! and bold as a rainbow he faces
the reappearing sun, and feels assured (though there he may be mistaken)
of dying at a good old age.

Then think, oh think, how miserably poor are most of those men who have
fought our battles, and so often reddened their bayonets in defence of
our liberties and our laws! Would you grudge them a little whisky? And
depend upon it, a little is the most, taking one day of the year with
another, that they imbibe. You figure to yourself two hundred thousand
Highlanders, taking snuff, and chewing tobacco, and drinking whisky, all
year long. Why, one pound of snuff, two of tobacco, and two gallons of
whisky, would be beyond the mark of the yearly allowance of every
grown-up man! Thousands never taste such luxuries at all--meal and
water, potatoes and salt, their only food. The animal food, sir, and the
fermented liquors of various kinds, Foreign and British, which to our
certain knowledge you have swallowed within the last twelve months,
would have sufficed for fifty families in our abstemious region of mist
and snow. We have known you drink a bottle of champagne, a bottle of
port, and two bottles of claret, frequently at a sitting, equal, in
prime cost, to three gallons of the best Glenlivet! And YOU (