employed one half of the thieves to recover stolen cattle, and the other
half of them to steal, in order to make this agreement and black-mail
contract necessary. The estates of those gentlemen who refused to
contract, or give countenance to that pernicious practice, are plundered
by the thieving part of the watch, in order to force them to purchase
their protection. Their leader calls himself the _Captain_ of the
_Watch,_ and his banditti go by that name. And as this gives them a kind
of authority to traverse the country, so it makes them capable of doing
any mischief. These corps through the Highlands make altogether a very
considerable body of men, inured from their infancy to the greatest
fatigues, and very capable, to act in a military way when occasion
offers.

"People who are ignorant and enthusiastic, who are in absolute dependence
upon their chief or landlord, who are directed in their consciences by
Roman Catholic priests, or nonjuring clergymen, and who are not masters
of any property, may easily be formed into any mould. They fear no
dangers, as they have nothing to lose, and so can with ease be induced to
attempt anything. Nothing can make their condition worse: confusions and
troubles do commonly indulge them in such licentiousness, that by these
they better it."*

* Letters from the North of Scotland, vol. ii. pp. 344, 345.

As the practice of contracting for black-mail was an obvious
encouragement to rapine, and a great obstacle to the course of justice,
it was, by the statute 1567, chap. 21, declared a capital crime both on
the part of him who levied and him who paid this sort of tax. But the
necessity of the case prevented the execution of this severe law, I
believe, in any one instance; and men went on submitting to a certain
unlawful imposition rather than run the risk of utter ruin--just as it is
now found difficult or impossible to prevent those who have lost a very
large sum of money by robbery, from compounding with the felons for
restoration of a part of their booty.

At what rate Rob Roy levied black-mail I never heard stated; but there is
a formal contract by which his nephew, in 1741, agreed with various
landholders of estates in the counties of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton,
to recover cattle stolen from them, or to pay the value within six months
of the loss being intimated, if such intimation were made to him with
sufficient despatch, in consideration of a payment of L5 on each L100