During their voyage, which was slow, for they were obliged to row the
whole way, and often against the tide, Sir George Staunton's inquiries
ran chiefly on the subject of the Highland banditti who had infested that
country since the year 1745. Butler informed him that many of them were
not native Highlanders, but gipsies, tinkers, and other men of desperate
fortunes, who had taken advantage of the confusion introduced by the
civil war, the general discontent of the mountaineers, and the unsettled
state of police, to practise their plundering trade with more audacity.
Sir George next inquired into their lives, their habits, whether the
violences which they committed were not sometimes atoned for by acts of
generosity, and whether they did not possess the virtues as well as the
vices of savage tribes?
Butler answered, that certainly they did sometimes show sparks of
generosity, of which even the worst class of malefactors are seldom
utterly divested; but that their evil propensities were certain and
regular principles of action, while any occasional burst of virtuous
feeling was only a transient impulse not to be reckoned upon, and excited
probably by some singular and unusual concatenation of circumstances.
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