While the clan, viewed as a single community, thus consisted of the chief, with his kinsmen to a certain limited degree of relationship; the commonalty who were of the same blood, who all bore the same name, and his dependants, consisting of subordinate septs of native-men, who did not claim to be of the blood of the chief, but were either probably descended from the more ancient occupiers of the soil, or were broken men from other clans, who had taken protection from him, the influence of the acquisition of the right of property in land, which had originally developed the septs out of the tribe, likewise tended to make smaller septs within the clan. Those kinsmen of the chief who acquired the property of their land founded families, in which the land became hereditary, and which thus became the centres of a new organisation within the clan. The most influential of these was that of the oldest cadet in the family which had been longest separated from the main stem, and usually presented the appearance of a rival house little less powerful than that of the chief. There is perhaps no better description of the form which the clan ultimately assumed, and of the spirit which animated its members, than that given by an acute observer in the early part of last century.[456] ‘The Highlanders,’ he says, ‘are divided into tribes or clans, under chiefs or chieftains, as they are called in the laws of Scotland; and each clan again divided into branches from the main stock, who have chieftains over them. These are subdivided into smaller branches of fifty or sixty men, who deduce their original from their particular chieftains, and rely upon them as their more immediate protectors and defenders. The ordinary Highlanders esteem it the most sublime degree of virtue to love their chief and pay him a blind obedience, although it be in opposition to the government, the laws of the kingdom, or even to the law of God. Next to this love of their chief is that of the particular branch from whence they sprang, and, in a third degree, to those of the whole clan or name, whom they will assist, right or wrong, against those of any other tribe with which they are at variance. They likewise owe goodwill to such clans as they esteem to be their particular well-wishers; and, lastly, they have an adherence one to another as Highlanders in opposition to the people of the Low Country, whom they despise as inferior to them in courage, and believe they have a right to plunder them whenever it is in their power. This last arises from a tradition that the Lowlands, in old times, were the possession of their ancestors. The chief exercises an arbitrary authority over his vassals, determines all differences and disputes that happen among them, and levies taxes upon extraordinary occasions, such as the marriage of a daughter, building a house, or some pretence for his support and the honour of the name. This power of the chiefs is not