It was, however, when the Scottish trade with the plantations began to open up, soon after the Union, that the disgraceful practice of kidnapping and transporting children became prevalent. The power possessed by many of the chiefs, as independent local judges, with but a nominal responsibility to the control of the crown or the intervention of the supreme courts, gave facilities for this traffic, which poor human nature seems to have been incapable of resisting. The victims were sometimes persons tried and convicted before the hereditary tribunal; and since they _must_ be punished, it were pity to allow an opportunity to be lost, by which the infliction might be turned to the profit of the judge or his friends. Thus we find Lovat, desirous to propitiate the favour of Duncan Forbes, offering his brother a gift of "a few Strathglass rogues," clansmen of his next neighbour and hereditary enemy, whom he had caught in his own domain, and convicted in his own court. He had at first proposed to send them to America; but, as they are "handsome fellows," he offers them to Forbes, for his nephew's Dutch regiment. "I shall send them to him," says the accommodating chief, "without any expense in keeping of them; for I will send immediately orders to carry them south with a guard. There is a captain there of Arthur's regiment, who will receive them and deliver them to Arthur; and I'll send him other two Camerons that are in your prison--tall fellows; and five such good men will do him more service, now that the Dutch expect a war, than thirty men next season."[16] [16] _Culloden Papers_, 118. It was in reference to such practices that the engineer officer, who, while employed in laying out the military roads through the Highlands, preserved so many shrewd remarks on the manners of the people, added the following to his budget:-- "When any ship in these parts is bound for the West Indies, to be sure, a neighbouring chief, of whom none dares openly to complain, has several thieves to send prisoners to town. "It has been whispered their crimes were only asking their dues, and such-like offences; and I have been well assured they have been threatened with hanging, or at least perpetual imprisonment, to intimidate and force them to sign a contract for their banishment, which they seldom refused to do, as knowing there could be no want of witnesses against them, however innocent they were; and then they were put on board the ship, the master paying so much a head for them. Thus two purposes were served at once--viz.: the getting rid of troublesome fellows, and making money of them at the same time."[17] [17] Burt's _Letters from the North of Scotland_, 5th Edit., i. 50.