BLACK-MAIL, a scarcely voluntary impost submitted to. in the earlier half of the 18th c., by the people of the Ilighlands, and parts of the Lowlands bordering, on the Highlands, as a kind of compromise with robbers. The districts in question, being then in an extremely barbarous state. enjoyed but an imperfect protection from the law. Owing, Moreover, in part. to political and social circumstances, theft and robbery were not then regarded in the Highlands as they are now: to carry off the cattle of a neighbor was perhaps only wreaking out an old family quarrel or elan dispute, or making repris als for some severity of persons in power. (!ertilln it is that men of good standing gave a certain degree of protection to notorious cattle-lifters. In these circumstances, a class of men rose up who professed to take upon themselves the duty of protecting the property of individuals, on the payment by them of a percentage on their rents, generally 4 per cent. They were not low men who did so; nearly all of them had good Highland pedi grees, and passed externally as honorable persons, though there was only too great reason to snspect that they encouraged find profited by robberies, in order to make the black-mail a necessity. The celebrated Rob Roy was, about 1730,a notable levier of black mail In the southern Highlands and adjacent Lowland districts. A little later, Coll
M'Donell of Barrisdale, a enact of the Glengarry family, was equally noted further north. When one of the payers of the black-mail suffered what was called a hership, the levier of the impost, being quickly informed of what had happened, busied himself to recover the lost cattle, and it he failed, he held himself bound to pay an equivalent. We are informed by Mr. Lapslie, the minister of Campsie, Stirlingshire, in his statistical account of the parish, 1795, that his father, John Lapslie, was a farmer who paid black mail in 1744 to 31'Gregor of Glengye, the nephew of Rob Roy. The engagement was that he should make good losses, if the number of sheep stolen exceeded 7, for anything less was held as not a herddp or lifting, but merely a picking. Early in 1745. 15 were stolen, and M'Gregor was honorably preparing to replace them, when the breaking out of the rebellion, in which he became involved, deprived him of the power of fulfilling his engagement, and likewise put an end to his self-created wardenship of the Highland borders. After that period, law was vigorously enforced in the Highlands, and black mail ceased to be heard of,