Campbell, John , fourth Earl of Breadalbane (1762 — 1834)

Burns wrote his 'Address of Beelzebub' on this subject, prefacing it with the satiric comment: 'To the Rt Hon. The Earl of Breadalbane, President of the Rt Honorable and Honorable the Highland Society, which met on 23^rd May last, at the Shakespeare, Covent Garden to concert ways and means to frustrate the designs of 500 HIGHLANDERS who, as the Society were informed by Mr M'Kenzie of Applecross, were so audacious as to attempt an escape from their lawful lords and masters whose property they were, by emigrating from the lands of Mr M'Donald of Glengarry to the lands of Canada, in search of that fantastic thing — LIBERTY.'

Dr Johnson commented: 'The great business of insular policy is now to keep the people in their own country. As the world has been let in upon them they have heard of happier climates and less arbitrary government... all that go may be considered lost to the British crown.' Johnson, notoriously anti-Scottish, failed to see that political and sociological events stemming from the Union of 1707 had reduced the Highlanders, one of whom, at Anoch, had once reminded the Doctor that 'no man willingly left his native country'.

Even so, it is wryly amusing to find Burns supporting a cause which, within half a century, had become transformed into the tragic, compulsory evacuations of the Clearances!