with vigour and spirit, and
preserved great order in the country under his charge. He caused his vassals to
enter by rotation into his company, and serve for a certain space of time, which
gave them all in turn a general notion of military discipline. In his campaigns
against the banditti, it was observed that he assumed and exercised to the
utmost the discretionary power, which, while the law had no free course in the
Highlands, was conceived to belong to the military parties who were called in to
support it. He acted, for example, with great and suspicious lenity to those
freebooters who made restitution on his summons, and offered personal submission
to himself, while he rigorously pursued, apprehended, and sacrificed to justice,
all such interlopers as dared to despise his admonitions or commands. On the
other hand, if any officers of justice, military parties, or others, presumed to
pursue thieves or marauders through his territories, and without applying for
his consent and concurrence, nothing was more certain than that they would meet
with some notable foil or defeat; upon which occasions Fergus Mac-Ivor was the
first to condole with them, and, after gently blaming their rashness, never
failed deeply to lament the lawless state of the country. These lamentations did
not exclude suspicion, and matters were so represented to Government, that our
Chieftain was deprived of his military command.42
    Whatever Fergus Mac-Ivor felt on this occasion, he had the art of entirely
suppressing every appearance of discontent; but in a short time the neighbouring
country began to feel bad effects from his disgrace. Donald Bean Lean, and
others of his class, whose depredations had hitherto been confined to other
districts, appeared from thenceforward to have made a settlement on this devoted
border; and their ravages were carried on with little opposition, as the Lowland
gentry were chiefly Jacobites, and disarmed. This forced many of the inhabitants
into contracts of black-mail with Fergus Mac-Ivor, which not only established
him their protector, and gave him great weight in all their consultations, but,
moreover, supplied funds for the waste of his feudal hospitality, which the
discontinuance of his pay might have otherwise essentially diminished.
    In following this course of conduct, Fergus had a farther object than merely
being the great man of his neighbourhood, and ruling despotically over a small
clan. From his infancy upward he had devoted himself to the cause of the exiled
family, and had persuaded himself, not only that their restoration to the crown
of Britain would be speedy, but that those who assisted them would be raised to
honour and rank.