You see I was brought up a Jacobite, and I
have been a soldier all my life, accustomed to charge when I was told to
charge and to kill those I was told to kill; but I own that since I have
been out now I have got to look at matters differently. The sight of all
these poor Highland bodies blindly following their chiefs and risking
life and all for a cause in which they have no shadow of interest has
made me think. A soldier is a soldier, and if he were to sit down to
argue about the justice of every cause in which he is ordered to fight
there would be an end to all discipline. But these poor fellows are not
soldiers, and so I say to myself, What concern have they in this matter?
Their chiefs would gain honours and rewards, patents of high nobility,
and additions to their estates if the Stuarts conquered, but their
followers would gain nothing whatever. No, lad, if we get over this
scrape I have done with fighting; and I hope that no Stuart will ever
again succeed in getting Scotland to take up his cause. I shall go on
fighting for Prince Charles as long as there is a man left with him; but
after that there is an end of it as far as I am concerned, and I hope as
far as Scotland is concerned."
"I hope so too, Malcolm. When Scotland is herself divided, Ireland
passive, and all England hostile, success is hopeless. The Stuarts will
never get such another chance again as they had on the day when we turned
our backs on London at Derby, and I hope that they will not again make
the attempt, especially as it is manifest now that France has only used
them as tools against England, and has no idea of giving them any
effectual aid.
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