Those politics were thoroughly understood by one able and experienced statesman, sprung from the great Highland family of Mackenzie, the Viscount Tarbet.

He at this conjuncture pointed out to Melville by letter, and to Mackay in conversation, both the cause and the remedy of the distempers which seemed likely to bring on Scotland the calamities of civil war.

There was, Tarbet said, no general disposition to insurrection among the Gael.

Little was to be apprehended even from those popish clans which were under no apprehension of being subjected to the yoke of the Campbells.

It was notorious that the ablest and most active of the discontented chiefs troubled themselves not at all about the questions which were in dispute between the Whigs and the Tories.