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