The nature of the Highlands of Scotland was peculiarly favourable to the clan system, and no doubt helped to a considerable extent to perpetuate it. The division of the country into so many straths, and valleys, and islands, separated from one another by mountains or arms of the sea, necessarily gave rise to various distinct societies. Their secluded situation necessarily rendered general intercourse difficult, whilst the impenetrable ramparts with which they were surrounded made defence easy. The whole race was thus broken into many individual masses, possessing a community of customs and character, but placed under different jurisdictions; every district became a sort of petty independent state; and the government of each community or clan assumed the patriarchal form, being a species of hereditary monarchy, founded on custom, and allowed by general consent, rather than regulated by positive laws. The system of clanship in the Highlands,[120] although possessing an apparent resemblance to feudalism, was in principle very different indeed from that system as it existed in other parts of the country. In the former case, the people followed their chief as the head of their race, and the representative of the common ancestor of the clan; in the latter, they obeyed their leader as feudal proprietor of the lands to which they were attached, and to whom they owed military service for their respective portions of these lands. The Highland chief was the hereditary lord of all who belonged to his clan, wherever they dwelt or whatever lands they occupied; the feudal baron was entitled to the military service of all who held lands under him, to whatever race they might individually belong. The one dignity was personal, the other was territorial; the rights of the chief were inherent, those of the baron were accessory; the one might lose or forfeit his possessions, but could not thereby be divested of his hereditary character and privileges; the other, when divested of his fee, ceased to have any title or claim to the service of those who occupied the lands. Yet these two systems, so different in principle, were in effect nearly identical. Both exhibited the spectacle of a subject possessed of unlimited power within his own territories, and exacting unqualified obedience from a numerous train of followers, to whom he stood in the several relations of landlord, military leader, and judge, with all the powers and prerogatives belonging to each of those characters. Both were equally calculated to aggrandise turbulent chiefs and nobles, at the expense of the royal authority, which they frequently defied, generally resisted, and but seldom obeyed; although for the most part, the chief was less disloyal than the baron, probably because he was farther removed from the seat of government, and less sensible of its interference with his own jurisdiction. The one system was adapted to a people in a pastoral state of society, and inhabiting a country, like