330

niSTOBY OF ENGLAND.

CnAP.

XIII.

' 1689 .

Tarbet’sadvice t(the go-vern-ment.

It does not appear that a single chief who had net some■ special cause to dread and detest the House of Argyle obeyedDundee’s summons. There is indeed strong reason to believe' that the chiefs who came would have remained quietly at homeif the government had understood the politics of the Highlands.Those politics were thoroughly understood by one able andexperienced statesman, sprung from the great Highland familyof Mackenzie, the Viscount Tarbet. He at this conjuncturepointed out to Melville by letter, andtoMackay in conversa-tion, both the cause and the remedy of the distempers whichseemed likely to bring on Scotland the calamities of civil war.There was, Tarbet said, no general disposition to insurrectionamong the Gael. Little w r as to be apprehended even from thosepopish clans which were under no apprehension of being sub-jected to the yoke of the Campbells. It was notorious that theablest and most active of the discontented chiefs troubled them-selves not at all about the questions which were in dispute betweenthe Whigs and the Tories. Lochiel in particular, whose eminentpersonal qualities made him the most important man amongthe mountaineers, cared no more for James than for AVilliam.If the Camerons, the Macdonalds, and the Macleans could beconvinced that, under the new government, their estates andtheir dignities would be safe, if Mac Callum More would makesome concessions, if their Majesties w r ould take on themselvesthe payment of some arrears of rent, Dundee might call theclans to arms; but he would call to little purpose. Five thou-sand pounds, Tarbet thought, would be sufficient to quiet allthe Celtic magnates; and in truth, though that sum mightseem ludicrously small to the politicians of Westminster, thoughit was not larger than the annual gains of the Groom of theStole or of the Paymaster of the Forces, it might well hethought immense by a barbarous potentate who, while he ruledhundreds of square miles, and could bring hundreds of warriors