The plans of the Master of Stair were conceived in the spirit of James and of Sixtus; and the rebellion of the mountaineers furnished what seemed to be an excellent opportunity for carrying those plans into effect.

Mere rebellion, indeed, he could have easily pardoned.

On Jacobites, as Jacobites, he never showed any inclination to bear hard.
He hated the Highlanders, not as enemies of this or that dynasty, but as enemies of law, of industry and of trade.

In his private correspondence he applied to them the short and terrible form of words in which the implacable Roman pronounced the doom of Carthage.

His project was no less than this, that the whole hill country from sea to sea, and the neighbouring islands, should be wasted with fire and sword, that the Camerons, the Macleans, and all the branches of the race of Macdonald, should be rooted out.