d Commerce, and it is unnecessary to lay further
stress upon the importance of these elements in twelfth century life. It
may be interesting to compare with this the process by which the
Scottish Highlands have been Anglicized within the last century and a
half. It must, in the first place, be fully understood that the interval
between the twelfth century and the suppression of the last Jacobite
rising was not void of development even in the Highlands. "It is in the
reign of David the First", says Mr. Skene,[98] "that the sept or clan
first appears as a distinct and prominent feature in the social
organization of the Gaelic population", and it is not till the reign of
Robert III that he finds "the first appearance of a distinct clan".
Between the end of the fourteenth century and the middle of the
eighteenth, the clan had developed a complete organization, consisting
of the chief and his kinsmen, the common people of the same blood, and
the dependants of the clan. Each clan contained several septs, founded
by such descendants of chiefs as had obtained a definite possession in
land. The writer of _Letters from a Gentleman in the North of Scotland
in 1726_, mentions that the Highland clans were "subdivided into smaller
branches of fifty or sixty men, who deduce their original from their
particular chieftains, and rely upon them as their more immediate
protectors and defenders".

The Hanoverian government had thus to face, in 1746, a problem in some
respects more difficult than that which the descendants of Malcolm
Canmore had solved. The clan organization was complete, and clan loyalty
had assumed the form of an extravagant devotion; a hostile feeling had
arisen between Highlands and Lowlands, and all feeling of common
nationality had been lost. There was no such important factor as the
Church to help the change; religion was, on the whole, perhaps rather
adverse than favourable to the process of Anglicization. On the other
hand, the task was, in other aspects, very much easier. The Highlands
had been affected by the events of the seventeenth century, and the
chiefs were no longer mere freebooters and raiders. The Jacobite rising
had weakened the Highlands, and the clans had been divided among
themselves. It was not a united opposition that confronted the
Government. Above all, the methods of land-tenure had already been
rendered subject to very considerable modification. Since the reign of
James VI, the law had been succ