Many reasons have been assigned why the evils of the feudal system should have been more severely felt in Scotland than elsewhere. The leading causes, as given by the best historians, seem to be,--the geographical nature of the country, which made its baronial fastnesses almost impregnable;--the want of large towns, by which the vassals of different barons were prevented from mingling together, and rubbing off, in the collision, the prepossessions they mutually entertained against each other;--the division of the inhabitants, not only into the followers of different chiefs but into clans, which resembled so many great families, among all whose branches a relationship existed, and who looked with jealousy upon the increasing strength or wealth of any other clan;--the smallness of the number of Scottish nobles, a circumstance materially contributing to enhance the weight and dignity of each;--the frequent recourse which these barons had, for the purpose of overawing the crown, to leagues of mutual defence with their equals, or bonds of reciprocal protection and assistance with their inferiors;--the unceasing wars which raged between England and Scotland, and which were the perpetual means of proving to the Scottish king, that the very possession of his crown depended upon the fidelity and obedience of his nobles, whose good-will it was therefore necessary to conciliate upon all occasions, by granting them whatever they chose to demand; and, lastly--the long minorities to which the misfortunes of its kings exposed the country at an early period of its history, when the vigour and consistency, commonly attendant upon the acts of one mind, were required more than any thing else, but instead of which, the contradictory measures of contending nobles, or of regents hastily elected, and as hastily displaced, were sure to produce an unnatural stagnation in the government, from which it could be redeemed only by still more unnatural convulsions.