In the year 1778, the Seaforth Highlanders were
marched to Leith, where they were quartered, for a short interns though
long enough to produce complaints about the infringement of their
engagements, and some pay and bounty which they said were due to them.
Their disaffection was greatly increased by the activity of emissaries
from Edinburgh, like those just mentioned as having gone down from
London to Portsmouth. The regiment refused to embark, and marching out
of Leith, with pipes playing and two plaids fixed on poles instead of
colours, took a position on Arthur's Seat, of which they kept possession
for several days, during which time the inhabitants
of Edinburgh amply supplied them with provisions and ammunition.
After much negotiation, in which the Earls of Dunmore and Seaforth, Sir
James Grant of Grant, and other gentlemen connected with the Highlands,
were actively engaged, the causes of the soldiers' complaints were
investigated and settled to their satisfaction; they then marched down
the hill in the same manner in which they had gone up, with pipes
playing, and "with the Earls of Seaforth and Dunmore, and General Skene,
at their head. They entered Leith, and went on board the transports with
the greatest readiness and cheerfulness."
In this case, as in that of the Athole Highlanders,
none of the men were brought to trial, or even put into confinement,
for these acts of open resistance; consequently, similar inferences
have been drawn, accompanied by that feeling of distrust in their future
transactions which I have just noticed, and which has contributed to
give strangers an unjust and prejudiced view of the real character of
this race of people; for when a seemingly ungenerous want of confidence
and narrowness of mind has, in a manner, been forced on men, by meeting
with breaches of faith and with deception at the hands of their
superiors, it cannot, with justice, be called their original native
character.
