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A hundred years ago, we had fallen to almost the lowest condition as a nation. We had not a harbour; we had not a dock. The most extensive system of robbery prevailed on the River Thames. The roads, such as they were, swarmed with highwaymen; and black-mail was levied by the Highlanders upon the Lowland farmers, down to the middle of last century.
"I beg your pardon sir; but I say so," answered Laud, apparently unmoved by the violence of his auditor. "You were in the boat formerly owned by Mr. Ramsay, and you ran over towards the Northport shore." "Did you see me?" "I did," replied Laud. "And you have come to levy black-mail upon me," added the captain, with a withering stare at his visitor. "Nothing of the sort, sir.
No outrage which even a Spanish army could inflict was spared the miserable inhabitants. Cities and villages were sacked and burned, the whole country was placed under the law of black-mail. The places of worship, mainly Protestant, were all converted at a blow of the sword into Catholic churches. Men were hanged, butchered, tossed in sport from the tops of steeples, burned, and buried alive.
Found all the principal Ghadamsee merchants at the Castle, closeted in a small apartment with the Commandant, Ahmed Effendi, talking over the affairs of the ghafalah. At first I imagined this officer had brought them up from Yefran to make them pay black-mail in various presents. But it was only his vanity which dragged up the poor camels this fatiguing route, an ascent of four hours.
Indeed, the levying of black-mail was, before 1745, practised by several chiefs of very high rank, who, in doing so, contended that they were lending the laws the assistance of their arms and swords, and affording a protection which could not be obtained from the magistracy in the disturbed state of the country.
At what rate Rob Roy levied black-mail I never heard stated; but there is a formal contract by which his nephew, in 1741, agreed with various landholders of estates in the counties of Perth, Stirling, and Dumbarton, to recover cattle stolen from them, or to pay the value within six months of the loss being intimated, if such intimation were made to him with sufficient despatch, in consideration of a payment of L5 on each L100 of valued rent, which was not a very heavy insurance.
Sather, of the excellent banking firm of Drexel, Sather & Church, came to me, and called my attention to an article in Casey's paper so full of falsehood and malice, that we construed it as an effort to black-mail the banks generally.
Not an article of Mr Deák's was touched; they even contented themselves with a very moderate amount of black-mail from the master of the house, and no one was personally injured in any way. My next story is a very romantic one; it was related to me by an English friend who was travelling in Hungary as long ago as 1846, when the circumstance had recently occurred.
I dinna wish the young gentleman ill, he said, 'but I hope that they that hae got him will keep him, and no let him back to this Hieland border to plague us wi' black-mail and a' manner o' violent, wrongous, and masterfu' oppression and spoliation, both by himself and others of his causing, sending, and hounding out; and he couldna tak care o' the siller when he had gotten it neither, but flung it a' into yon idle quean's lap at Edinburgh; but light come light gane.
For more than a twelvemonth the best troops of the Spanish army had been thus established as a separate empire, levying black-mail on the obedient provinces, hanging such of their old officers as dared to remonstrate, and obeying their elected chief magistrates with exemplary docility.
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