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Date: | Fri Mar 31 17:18:50 2006 |
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Scott Stradeley should brush up on his history of Scotland. The Highlanders and
the Lowlanders were entirely different people. The former were Gaelic-speaking,
(mainly) papist, and locked in to a tribal society much like that of present-
day sub-Saharan Africa; in a state of continual semi-anarchy, constantly
plagued by clan wars, cattle-rustling, raids and massacres. Each chief had
power of life and death over his clansmen. The Lowlanders were English-speaking
(indeed were ethnically North English), protestant, whig, agricultural and
commercial, law-abiding and for the most part fervent allies of the government
of the united kingdom during the two Jacobite rebellions (1715, 1745). The last
thing Adam Smith wanted was the Young Pretender and his breekless rabble
infesting the streets of Edinburgh! The majority of the troops deployed in
putting down the Jacobites in 1746 were not 'Brits' at all, and several
important units in the government army, including the the largest and most
important of the Clans, the Campbells, were not merely Scotch but Highland. For
David Hume and Adam Smith, the destruction of the power of the Highland chiefs
was exactly what Scotland needed in order to become civilized.
Anthony Waterman
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