■WILLIAM AND MART.

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the internal quarrels which divided the eommonv'ealth of clans, chap.For there was a eommomvealth of clans, the image, on a re—duced scale, of the great commonwealth of European nations.

In the smaller of these two commonwealths, as in the larger,there were wars, treaties, alliances, disputes about territoryand precedence, a system of public law, a balance of power.

There was one inexhaustible source of discontents and disputes.

The feudal system had, some centuries before, been introducedinto the hill country, but had neither destroyed the patriarchalsystem nor amalgamated completely with it. In general hewho was lord in the Norman polity was also chief in the Celticpolity; and, when this was the case, there was no conflict. But,when the two characters were separated, all the willing andloyal obedience was reserved for the chief. The lord had onlywhat he could get and hold by force. If he was able, by thehelp of his own tribe, to keep in subjection tenants who werenot of his own tribe, there was a tyranny of clan over clan, themost galling, perhaps, of all forms of tyranny. At differenttimes different races had risen to an authority which had pro-duced general fear and envy. The Macdonalds had once 3 j a '5’“, sypossessed, in the Hebrides and throughout the mountain *“emi-country of Argyleshire and Invernessshire, an ascendency thec.mip-similar to that which the House of Austria had once possessedin Christendom. But the ascendency of the Macdonalds had,like the ascendency of the House of Austria, passed away; andthe Campbells, the children of Diarmid, had become in theHighlands what the Bourbons had become in Europe. Theparallel might be carried far. Imputations similar to thosewhich it was the fashion to throw on the French governmentwere thrown on the Campbells. A peculiar dexterity, a peculiarplausibility of address, a peculiar contempt for all the obli-gations of good faith, were ascribed, with or without reason,to the dreaded race. “Fair and false like a Campbell” became