Note 377 — Chapter III

The Chevalier de Johnstone, in his plaintive remarks on the battle of Culloden, says: ‘The ruin of many of the most illustrious families in Scotland immediately followed our defeat.’ Johnstone's Memoirs of the Rebellion in 1745, p. 211. He, of course, could not perceive that, sad as such ruin was to the individual sufferers, it was an immense benefit to the nation. Mr. Skene, referring to the year 1748, says of the Highlanders: ‘their long-cherished ideas of clanship gradually gave way under the absence and ruin of so many of their chiefs.’ Skene's Highlanders, vol. i. p. 147.