It has been commonly alleged, that ideas of succession were so loose in the Highlands, that brothers were often preferred to grandsons and even to sons. But this assertion proceeds on a most erroneous assumption, inasmuch as election was never in any degree admitted, and a system of hereditary succession prevailed, which, though different from that which has been instituted by the feudal law, allowed of no such deviations or anomalies as some have imagined. The Highland law of succession, as Mr Skene observes, requires to be considered in reference, first, to the chiefship and the superiority of the lands belonging to the clan; and secondly, in respect to the property or the land itself. The succession to the chiefship and its usual prerogatives was termed the law of _tanistry_; that to the property or the land itself, _gavel_. But when the feudal system was introduced, the law of tanistry became the law of succession to the property as well as the chiefship; whilst that of gavel was too directly opposed to feudal principles to be suffered to exist at all, even in a modified form. It appears, indeed, that the Highlanders adhered strictly to succession in the male line, and that the great peculiarity which distinguished their law of succession from that established by the feudal system, consisted in the circumstance that, according to it, brothers invariably succeeded before sons. In the feudal system property was alone considered, and the nearest relation to the last proprietor was naturally accounted the heir. But, in the Highland system, the governing principle of succession was not property, but the right of chiefship, derived from being the lineal descendant of the founder or patriarch of the tribe; it was the relation to the common ancestor, to whom the brother was considered as one degree nearer than the son, and through whom the right was derived, and not to the last chief, which regulated the succession. Thus, the brothers of the chief invariably succeeded before the sons, not by election, but as a matter of right, and according to a fixed rule which formed the law or principle of succession, instead of being, as some have supposed, a departure from it, occasioned by views of temporary expediency, by usurpation, or otherwise. In a word, the law of tanistry, however much opposed to the feudal notions of later times, flowed naturally from the patriarchal constitution of society in the Highlands, and was peculiarly adapted to the circumstances of a people such as we have described, whose warlike habits and love of military enterprise, or armed predatory expeditions, made it necessary to have at all times a chief competent to act as their leader or commander.