‘Things such as these, we know, must beAt every famous victory.’
‘Things such as these, we know, must beAt every famous victory.’
And in this instance the victory of the lord of the soil over the children of the soil was signal and complete. In little more than nine years a population of fifteen thousand individuals were removed from the interior of Sutherland to its sea-coasts, or had emigrated to America. The inland districts were converted into deserts, through which the traveller may take a long day’s journey, amid ruins that still bear the scathe of fire, and grassy patches betraying, when the evening sun casts aslant its long deep shadows, the half-effaced lines of the plough. The writer of the singularly striking passage we have just quoted, revisited his native place (Kildonan) in the year 1828, and attended divine service in the parish church. A numerous and devout congregation had once worshipped there: the congregation now consisted of eight shepherds and theirdogs. In a neighbouring district––the barony of Strathnaver, a portion of the parish of Farr––the church, no longer found necessary, was razed to the ground. The timber was carried away to be used in the erection of an inn, and the minister’s house converted into the dwelling of a fox-hunter. ‘A woman well known in the parish,’ says M’Leod, ‘happening to traverse the Strath the year after the burning, was asked, on her return, What news? “Oh,” said she, “sgeul bronach, sgeul bronach!sad news, sad news! I have seen the timber of our kirk covering the inn at Altnaharran; I have seen the kirkyard, where our friends are mouldering, filled with tarry sheep, and Mr. Sage’s study-room a kennel for Robert Gun’s dogs.’”424
Let us follow, for a little, the poor Highlanders of Sutherland to the sea-coast. It would be easy dwelling on the terrors of their expulsion, and multiplying facts of horror; but had there been no permanent deterioration effected in their condition, these, all harrowing and repulsive as they were, would have mattered less. Sutherland would have soon recovered the burning up of a few hundred hamlets, or the loss of a few bedridden old people, who would have died as certainly under cover, though perhaps a few months later, as when exposed to the elements in the open air. Nay, had it lost a thousand of its best men in the way in which it lost so many at the storming of New Orleans, the blank ere now would have been completely filled up. The calamities of fire or of decimation even, however distressing in themselves, never yet ruined a country: no calamity ruins a country that leaves the surviving inhabitants to develope, in their old circumstances, their old character and resources.
In one of the eastern eclogues of Collins, where two shepherds are described as flying for their lives before the troops of a ruthless invader, we see with how much of the terrible the imagination of a poet could invest the evils of war, when aggravated by pitiless barbarity. Fertile as that imagination was, however, there might be found new circumstances to heighten the horrors of the scene––circumstances beyond the reach of invention––in the retreat of the Sutherland Highlanders from the smoking ruins of their cottages to their allotments on the coast. We have heard of one man, named M’Kay, whose family, at the time of425the greater conflagration referred to by M’Leod, were all lying ill of fever, who had to carry two of his sick children on his back a distance of twenty-five miles. We have heard of the famished people blackening the shores, like the crew of some vessel wrecked on an inhospitable coast, that they might sustain life by the shell-fish and sea-weed laid bare by the ebb. Many of their allotments, especially on the western coast, were barren in the extreme––unsheltered by bush or tree, and exposed to the sweeping sea-winds, and, in time of tempest, to the blighting spray; and it was found a matter of the extremest difficulty to keep the few cattle which they had retained, from wandering, especially in the night-time, into the better sheltered and more fertile interior. The poor animals were intelligent enough to read a practical comment on the nature of the change effected; and, from the harshness of the shepherds to whom the care of the interior had been entrusted, they served materially to add to the distress of their unhappy masters. They were getting continually impounded; and vexatious fines, in the form of trespass-money, came thus to be wrung from the already impoverished Highlanders. Many who had no money to give were obliged to relieve them by depositing some of their few portable articles of value, such as bed or body clothes, or, more distressing still, watches and rings and pins––the only relics, in not a few instances, of brave men whose bones were mouldering under the fatal rampart at New Orleans, or in the arid sands of Egypt––on that spot of proud recollection, where the invincibles of Napoleon went down before the Highland bayonet. Their first efforts as fishermen were what might be expected from a rural people unaccustomed to the sea. The shores of Sutherland, for immense tracts together, are iron-bound, and much exposed––open on the eastern coast to the waves of the German Ocean, and on the north and west to the long roll of the Atlantic. There could not be more426perilous seas for the unpractised boatman to take his first lessons on; but though the casualties were numerous, and the loss of life great, many of the younger Highlanders became expert fishermen. The experiment was harsh in the extreme, but so far, at least, it succeeded. It lies open, however, to other objections than those which have been urged against it on the score of its inhumanity.
The reader must be acquainted with Goldsmith’s remarks on the herring fishery of his days. ‘A few years ago,’ he says, ‘the herring fishing employed all Grub Street; it was the topic in every coffee-house, and the burden of every ballad. We were to drag up oceans of gold from the bottom of the sea; we were to supply all Europe with herrings upon our own terms. At present, however, we hear no more of all this; we have fished up very little gold that I can learn; nor do we furnish the world with herrings, as was expected.’ We have, in this brief passage, a history of all the more sanguine expectations which have been founded on herring fisheries. There is no branch of industry so calculated to awaken the hopes of the speculator, or so suited to disappoint them. So entirely is this the case, that were we desirous to reduce an industrious people to the lowest stage of wretchedness compatible with industry, we would remove them to some barren district, and there throw them on the resources of this fishery exclusively. The employments of the herring fisher have all the uncertainty of the ventures of the gambler. He has first to lay down, if we may so speak, a considerable stake, for his drift of nets and his boat involve a very considerable outlay of capital; and if successful, and if in general the fishery benotsuccessful, thetakeof a single week may more than remunerate him. A single cast of his nets may bring him in thirty guineas and more. The die turns up in his favour, and he sweeps the board. And hence those golden dreams of the speculator so happily described by Goldsmith. But year after year may pass, and427the run of luck be against the fisherman. A fishing generally good at all the stations gluts the market, necessarily limited in its demands to an average supply, and, from the bulk and weight of the commodity, not easily extended to distant parts: and the herring merchant first, and the fisherman next, find that they have been labouring hard to little purpose. Again, a fishing under average, from the eccentric character of the fish, is found almost always to benefit a few, and to ruin a great many. The average deficiency is never equally spread over the fishermen; one sweeps the board––another loses all. Nor are the cases few in which the accustomed shoal wholly deserts a tract of coast for years together; and thus the lottery, precarious at all times, becomes a lottery in which there are only blanks to be drawn. The wealthy speculator might perhaps watch such changes, and by supplementing the deficiency of one year by the abundance of another, give to the whole a character of average; but alas for the poor labouring man placed in such circumstances! The yearly disbursements of our Scottish Fishery Board, in the way of assistance to poverty-struck fishermen, unable even to repair their boats, testify all too tangibly that they cannot regulate their long runs of ill luck by their temporary successes! And if such be the case among our hereditary fishermen of the north, who derive more than half their sustenance from the white fishery, how much more must it affect those fishermen of Sutherland, who, having no market for their white fish in the depopulated interior, and no merchants settled among them to find markets farther away, have to depend exclusively on their herring fishing! The experiment which precipitated the population of the country on its barer skirts, as some diseases precipitate the humours on the extremities, would have been emphatically a disastrous one, so far at least as the people were concerned, even did it involve no large amount of human suffering, and no deterioration of character.428
One of the first writers, of unquestioned respectability, who acquainted the public with the true character of the revolution which had been effected in Sutherland, was the late General Stewart of Garth. He was, we believe, the first man––and the fact says something for his shrewdness––who saw a coming poor-law looming through theclearingof Sutherland. His statements are exceedingly valuable; his inferences almost always just. The General––a man of probity and nice honour––had such an ability of estimating the value of moral excellence in a people, as the originators of the revolution had of estimating the antagonist merits of double pounds of mutton and single pounds of beef. He had seen printed representations on the subject––tissues of hollow falsehood, that have since been repeated in newspapers and reviews; and though unacquainted with the facts at the time, he saw sufficient reason to question their general correctness, from the circumstance that he found in them the character of the people, with which no man could be better acquainted, vilified and traduced. The General saw one leviathan falsehood running through the whole, and, on the strength of the old adage, naturally suspected the company in which he found it. And so, making minute and faithful inquiry, he published the results at which he arrived. He refers to the mode of ejectment by the torch. He next goes on to show how some of the ejected tenants were allowed small allotments of moor on the coast side, of from half an acre to two acres in extent, which it was their task to break into corn land; and how that, because many patches of green appear in this way, where all was russet before, the change has been much eulogized as improvement. We find him remarking further, with considerable point and shrewdness, that ‘many persons are, however, inclined to doubt the advantages of improvements which call for such frequent apologies,’ and that, ‘if the advantage to the people were so evident, or if more lenient measures429had been pursued, vindication could not have been necessary.’ The General knew how to pass from the green spots themselves to the condition of those who tilled them. The following passage must strike all acquainted with the Highlanders of Sutherland as a true representation of the circumstances to which they have been reduced:
‘Ancient respectable tenants who have passed the greater part of life in the enjoyment of abundance, and in the exercise of hospitality and charity, possessing stock of ten, twenty, and thirty breeding cows, with the usual proportion of other stock, are now pining on one or two acres of bad land, with one or two starved cows; and for this accommodation a calculation is made, that they must support their families, and pay the rent of their lots, not from the produce, but from the sea, thus drawing a rent which the land cannot afford. When the herring fishing succeeds, they generally satisfy the landlord, whatever privations they may suffer; but when the fishing fails, they fall into arrears. The herring fishing, always precarious, has for a succession of years been very defective, and this class of people are reduced to extreme misery. At first, some of them possessed capital, from converting their farm-stock into cash, but this has been long exhausted; and it is truly distressing to view their general poverty, aggravated by their having once enjoyed abundance and independence.’
Some of the removals to which we have referred took place during that group of scarce seasons in which the year 1816 was so prominent; but the scarcity which these induced served merely to render the other sufferings of the people more intense, and was lost sight of in the general extent of the calamity. Another group of hard seasons came on,––one of those groups which seem of such certain and yet of such irregular occurrence in our climate, that though they have attracted notice from the days of Bacon downwards, they have hitherto resisted all attempts to include430them in some definite cycle. The summer and harvest of 1835 were the last of a series of fine summers and abundant harvests; and for six years after there was less than the usual heat, and more than the usual rain. Science, in connection with agriculture, has done much for us in the low country, and so our humbler population were saved from the horrors of a dearth of food; but on the green patches which girdle the shores of Sutherland, and which have been esteemed such wonderful improvements, science had done and could do nothing. The people had been sinking lower and lower during the previous twenty years, and what would have been great hardship before had become famine now. One feels at times that it may be an advantage to have lived among the humbler people. We have been enabled, in consequence, to detect many such gross misstatements as those with which the apologists of the disastrous revolution effected in Sutherland have attempted to gloss over the ruin of that country. In other parts of the Highlands, especially in the Hebrides, the failure of the kelp trade did much to impoverish the inhabitants; but in the Highlands of Sutherland the famine was the effect ofimprovementalone.
The writer of these chapters saw how a late, untoward year operates on the bleak shores of the north-western Highlands, when spending a season there a good many years ago. He found what only a few twelvemonths previous had been a piece of dark moor, laid out into minute patches of corn, and bearing a dense population. The herring fishing had failed for the two seasons before, and the poor cottars were, in consequence, in arrears with their rent; but the crops had been tolerable; and though their stores of meal and potatoes were all exhausted at the time of our coming among them (the month of June), and though no part of the growing crop was yet fit for use, the white fishing was abundant, and a training of hardship had enabled431them to subsist on fish exclusively. Their corn shot in the genial sunshine, and gave fair promise, and their potatoes had become far enough advanced to supplement their all too meagre meals, when, after a terrible thunder-storm, the fine weather broke up, and for thirteen weeks together there scarce passed a day without its baffling winds and its heavy chilling showers. The oats withered without ripening; the hardy bear might be seen rustling on all the more exposed slopes, light as the common rye-grass of our hay-fields, the stalks, in vast proportion, shorn of the ears. It was only in a very few of the more sheltered places that it yielded a scanty return of a dark-coloured and shrivelled grain. And to impart a still deeper shade to the prospects of the poor Highlanders, the herring fishery failed as signally as in the previous years. There awaited them all too obviously a whole half year of inevitable famine, unless Lowland charity interfered in their behalf. And the recurrence of this state of things no amount of providence or exertion on their own part, when placed in such circumstances, can obviate or prevent. It was a conviction of this character, based on experience, which led the writer of these remarks to state, when giving evidence before the present Poor-Law Commissioners for Scotland, that though opposed to the principle of legal assessment generally, he could yet see no other mode of reaching the destitution of the Highlands. Our humane Scottish law compels the man who sends another man to prison to support him there, just because it is held impossible that within the walls of a prison a man can support himself. Should the principle alter, if, instead of sending him to a prison, he banishes him to a bleak, inhospitable coast, where, unless he receives occasional support from others, he must inevitably perish?
The sufferings of the people of Sutherland during the first of these years of destitution (1836), we find strikingly described by M’Leod:432
‘In this year,’ says the author, ‘the crops all over Britain were deficient, having bad weather for growing and ripening, and still worse for gathering in. But in the Highlands they were an entire failure; and on the untoward spots, occupied by the Sutherland small tenants, there was literally nothing fit for human subsistence. And to add to the calamity, the weather had prevented them from securing the peats, their only fuel; so that, to their previous state of exhaustion, cold and hunger were to be superadded. The sufferings endured by the poor Highlanders in the succeeding winter truly beggar description. Even the herring fishing had failed, and consequently their credit in Caithness, which depended on its success, was at an end. Any little provision they might be able to procure was of the most inferior and unwholesome description. It was no uncommon thing to see people searching among the snow for the frosted potatoes to eat in order to preserve life. As the harvest had been disastrous, so the winter was uncommonly boisterous and severe, and consequently little could be obtained from the sea to mitigate the calamity. The distress rose to such a height as to cause a sensation all over the island; and there arose a general cry for Government interference, to save the people from death by famine.’
Public meetings were held, private subscriptions entered into, large funds collected, the British people responded to the cry of their suffering fellow-subjects, and relief was extended to every portion of the Highlands except one. Alas for poor Sutherland! There, it was said, the charity of the country was not required, as the noble and wealthy proprietors had themselves resolved to interfere; and as this statement was circulated extensively through the public prints, and sedulously repeated at all public meetings, the mind of the community was set quite at rest on the matter. And interfere the proprietors at length did. Late in the433spring of 1837, after sufferings the most incredible had been endured, and disease and death had been among the wretched people, they received a scanty supply of meal and seed-corn, for which, though vaunted at the time as a piece of munificent charity, the greater part of them had afterwards to pay.
In the next chapter we shall endeavour bringing these facts to bear on the cause of the Free Church in Sutherland. We close for the present by adding just one curious fact more. We have already shown how the bleak moors of Sutherland have been mightily improved by the revolution which ruined its people. They bear many green patches which were brown before. Now it so happened that rather more than ten years ago, the idea struck the original improvers, that as green was an improvement on brown, so far as the moors were concerned, white would be an equally decided improvement on black, so far as the houses were concerned. An order was accordingly issued, in the name of the Duke and Duchess of Sutherland, that all the small tenants on both sides the public road, where it stretches on the northern coast from the confines of Reay to the Kyle of Tongue, a distance of about thirty miles, should straightway build themselves new houses of stone and mortar, according to a prescribed plan and specification. Pharaoh’s famous order could not have bred greater consternation. But the only alternative given was summed up in the magic wordremoval; and the poor Highlanders, dejected, tamed, broken in spirit as in means, well knew from experience what the magic word meant. And so, as their prototypes set themselves to gather stubble for their bricks, the poor Highlanders began to build. We again quote from M’Leod:
‘Previous to this, in the year 1829, I and my family had been forced away, like others, being particularly obnoxious to those in authority for sometimes showing an inclination434to oppose their tyranny, and therefore we had to be made examples of to frighten the rest; but in 1833 I made a tour of the district, when the building was going on, and shall endeavour to describe a small part of what met my eye on that occasion. In one locality (and this was a specimen of the rest) I saw fourteen different squads of masons at work, with the natives attending them. Old grey-headed men, worn down by previous hardship and present want, were to be seen carrying stones, and wheeling them and other materials on barrows, or conveying them on their backs to the buildings, and with their tottering limbs and trembling hands straining to raise them on the walls. The young men also, after toiling all night at sea endeavouring for subsistence, were obliged to yield their exhausted frames to the labours of the day. Even female labour could not be dispensed with; the strong as well as the weak, the delicate and sickly, and (shame to their oppressors) even the pregnant, barefooted and scantily clothed, were obliged to join in those rugged, unfeminine labours. In one instance I saw the husband quarrying stones, and the wife and children dragging them along in an old cart to the building. Such were the building scenes of that period. The poor people had often to give the last morsel of food they possessed to feed the masons, and subsist on shell-fish themselves. This went on for several years, in the course of which many hundreds of these houses were erected on unhospitable spots unfit for a human residence.’
We add another extract from the same writer:
‘It might be thought,’ adds M’Leod, ‘that the design of forcing the people to build such houses was to provide for their comfort and accommodation, but there seems to have been quite a different object,––which, I believe, was the true motive,––and that was to hide the misery that prevailed. There had been a great sensation created in the public mind by the cruelties exercised in these districts; and it435was thought that a number of neat white houses, ranged on each side of the road, would take the eye of strangers and visitors, and give a practical contradiction to the rumours afloat. Hence the poor creatures were forced to resort to such means, and to endure such hardships and privations as I have described, to carry the scheme into effect. And after they had spent their remaining all, and more than their all, on the erection of these houses, and involved themselves in debt, for which they have been harassed and pursued ever since, what are these erections but whitened tombs! many of them now ten years in existence, and still without proper doors or windows, destitute of furniture and of comfort,––the unhappy lairs of a heart-broken, squalid, fast-degenerating race.’436
We have exhibited to our readers, in theclearingof Sutherland, a process of ruin so thoroughly disastrous, that it might be deemed scarce possible to render it more complete. And yet, with all its apparent completeness, it admitted of a supplementary process. To employ one of the striking figures of Scripture, it was possible to grind into powder what had been previously broken into fragments,––to degrade the poor inhabitants to a still lower level than that on which they had been so cruelly precipitated,––though persons of a not very original cast of mind might have found it difficult to say how; and the Duke of Sutherland has been ingenious enough to fall on exactly the one proper expedient for supplementing their ruin. All in mere circumstance and situation that could lower and deteriorate, had been present as ingredients in the first process; but there still remained for the people, however reduced to poverty or broken in spirit, all in religion that consoles and ennobles. Sabbath-days came round with their humanizing influences; and, under the teachings of the gospel, the poor and oppressed looked longingly forward to a future scene of being, in which there is no poverty and no oppression. They still possessed, amid their misery, something positively good, of which it was possible to deprive them; and hence the ability derived to the present lord of Sutherland, of deepening and rendering more signal the ruin accomplished by his predecessor.
Napoleon, when on the eve of re-establishing Popery in France, showed his conviction of the importance of national religions, by remarking that, did there exist no ready-made437religion to serve his turn, he would be under the necessity of making one on purpose. And his remark, though perhaps thrown into this form merely to give it point, and render it striking, has been instanced as a proof that he could not have considered the matter very profoundly. It has been said, and said truly, that religions of stamina enough to be even politically useful cannot bemade: that it is comparatively easy to gain great battles, and frame important laws; but that to create belief lay beyond the power of even a Napoleon. France, instead of crediting his manufactured religion, would have laughed at both him and it. The Duke of Sutherland has, however, taken upon himself a harder task than the one to which Napoleon could refer, probably in joke. His aim seems to be, not the comparatively simple one of making a new religion where no religion existed before, but of making men already firm in their religious convictions believe that to be a religion which they believe to be no such thing. His undertaking involves adischargingas certainly as aninjectingprocess,––the erasure of an existing belief, as certainly as the infusion of an antagonistic belief that has no existence. We have shown how evangelism took root and grew in Sutherland, as the only form of Christianity which its people could recognise; how the antagonist principle of Moderatism they failed to recognise as Christianity at all; and how, when the latter was obtruded into their pulpits, they withdrew from the churches in which their fathers had worshipped, for they could regard them as churches no longer, and held their prayer and fellowship meetings in their own homes, or travelled far to attend the ministrations of clergymen in whose mission theycouldbelieve. We have shown that this state of feeling and belief still pervades the county. It led to an actual disruption between its evangelized people and its moderate clergy, long ere the disruption of last May took place: that important event has438had but the effect of marshalling them into one compact body under a new name. They are adherents of the Free Church now, just because they have been adherents to its principles for the last two centuries. And to shake them loose from this adherence is the object of his Grace; to reverse the belief of ages; to render them indifferent to that which they feel and believe to be religion; and to make them regard as religion that which they know to be none. His task is harder by a great deal than that to which Napoleon barely ventured to advert; and how very coarse and repulsive his purposed means of accomplishing it!
These harmonize but too well with the mode in which the interior of Sutherland was cleared, and the improved cottages of its sea-coasts erected. The plan has its two items. No sites are to be granted in the district for Free churches, and no dwelling-houses for Free Church ministers. The climate is severe; the winters prolonged and stormy; the roads which connect the chief seats of population with the neighbouring counties dreary and long. May not ministers and people be eventually worn out in this way? Such is the portion of the plan which his Grace and his Grace’s creatures can afford to present to the light. But there are supplementary items of a somewhat darker kind. The poor cottars are, in the great majority of cases, tenants at will; and there has been much pains taken to inform them, that to the crime of entertaining and sheltering a protesting minister, the penalty of ejection from their holdings must inevitably attach. The laws of Charles have again returned in this unhappy district; and free and tolerating Scotland has got, in the nineteenth century, as in the seventeenth, its intercommuned ministers. We shall not say that the intimation has emanated from the Duke. It is the misfortune of such men that there creep around them creatures whose business it is to anticipate their wishes; but who, at times, doubtless, instead of anticipating, misinterpret439them; and who, even when not very much mistaken, impart to whatever they do the impress of their own low and menial natures, and thus exaggerate in the act the intention of their masters. We do not say, therefore, that the intimation has emanated from the Duke; but this we say, that an exemplary Sutherlandshire minister of the Protesting Church, who resigned his worldly all for the sake of his principles, had lately to travel, that he might preach to his attached people, a long journey of forty-five miles outwards, and as much in return, and all this without taking shelter under the cover of a roof, or without partaking of any other refreshment than that furnished by the slender store of provisions which he had carried with him from his new home. Willingly would the poor Highlanders have received him at any risk; but knowing from experience what a Sutherlandshire removal means, he preferred enduring any amount of hardship, rather than that the hospitality of his people should be made the occasion of their ruin. We have already adverted to the case of a lady of Sutherland threatened with ejection from her home because she had extended the shelter of her roof to one of the protesting clergy––an aged and venerable man, who had quitted the neighbouring manse, his home for many years, because he could no longer enjoy it in consistency with his principles; and we have shown that that aged and venerable man was the lady’s own father. What amount of oppression of a smaller and more petty character may not be expected in the circumstances, when cases such as these are found to stand but a very little over the ordinary level?
The meannesses to which ducal hostility can stoop in this hapless district impress with a feeling of surprise. In the parish of Dornoch, for instance, where his Grace is fortunately not the sole landowner, there has been a site procured on the most generous terms from Sir George440Gun Munro of Poyntzfield; and this gentleman––believing himself possessed of a hereditary right to a quarry, which, though on the Duke’s ground, had been long resorted to by the proprietors of the district generally––instructed the builder to take from it the stones which he needed. Here, however, his Grace interfered. Never had the quarry been prohibited before; but on this occasion a stringent interdict arrested its use. If his Grace could not prevent a hated Free Church from arising in the district, he could at least add to theexpenseof its erection. We have even heard that the portion of the building previously erected had to be pulled down, and the stones returned.
How are we to account for a hostility so determined, and that can stoop so low? In two different ways, we are of opinion, and in both have the people of Scotland a direct interest. Did his Grace entertain a very intense regard for Established Presbytery, it is probable that he himself would be a Presbyterian of the Establishment. But such is not the case. The Church into which he would so fain force the people has been long since deserted by himself. The secret of the course which he pursues can have no connection therefore with religious motive or belief. It can be no proselytizing spirit that misleads his Grace. Let us remark, in the first place,––rather, however, in the way of embodying a fact than imputing a motive,––that with his present views, and in his present circumstances, it may not seem particularly his Grace’s interest to make the county of Sutherland a happy or desirable home to the people of Sutherland. It may not seem his Grace’s interest that the population of the district should increase. Theclearingof the sea-coast may seem as little prejudicial to his Grace’s welfare now, as theclearingof the interior seemed adverse to the interests of his predecessor thirty years ago; nay, it is quite possible that his Grace may be led to regard theclearingof the coast as the better and more importantclearing441of the two. Let it not be forgotten that a poor-law hangs over Scotland; that the shores of Sutherland are covered with what seems one vast straggling village, inhabited by an impoverished and ruined people; and that the coming assessment may yet fall so weighty, that the extra profits derived to his Grace from his large sheep-farms, may go but a small way in supporting his extra paupers. It is not in the least improbable that he may live to find the revolution effected by his predecessor taking to itself the form, not of a crime––for that would be nothing––but of a disastrous and very terrible blunder.
There is another remark which may prove not unworthy the consideration of the reader. Ever since the completion of the fatal experiment which ruined Sutherland, the noble family through which it was originated and carried on have betrayed the utmost jealousy of having its real results made public. Volumes of special pleading have been written on the subject; pamphlets have been published; laboured articles have been inserted in widely-spread reviews; statistical accounts have been watched over with the most careful surveillance. If the misrepresentations of the press could have altered the matter of fact, famine would not have been gnawing the vitals of Sutherland in every year just a little less abundant than its fellows, nor would the dejected and oppressed people be feeding their discontent, amid present misery, with the recollections of a happier past. If a singularly well-conditioned and wholesome district of country has been converted into one wide ulcer of wretchedness and wo, it must be confessed that the sore has been carefully bandaged up from the public eye; that if there has been little done for its cure, there has at least been much done for its concealment. Now, be it remembered that the Free Church threatens to insert atentinto this wound, and so keep it open. It has been said that the Gaelic language removes a district more effectually442from the influence of English opinion than an ocean of three thousand miles, and that the British public know better what is doing in New York than what is doing in Lewis and Skye. And hence one cause, at least, of the thick obscurity that has so long enveloped the miseries which the poor Highlander has had to endure, and the oppressions to which he has been subjected. The Free Church threatens totranslateher wrongs into English, and to give them currency in the general mart of opinion. She might possibly enough be no silent spectator of conflagrations such as those which characterized the first general improvement of Sutherland, nor yet of such Egyptian schemes of house-building as that which formed part of the improvements of a later plan. She might be somewhat apt to betray the real state of the district, and thus render laborious misrepresentation of little avail. She might effect a diversion in the cause of the people, and shake the foundations of the hitherto despotic power which has so long weighed them down. She might do for Sutherland what Cobbett promised to do for it, but what Cobbett had not character enough to accomplish, and what he did not live even to attempt. A combination of circumstances have conspired to vest in a Scottish proprietor, in this northern district, a more despotic power than even the most absolute monarchs of the Continent possess; and it is, perhaps, no great wonder that that proprietor should be jealous of the introduction of an element which threatens, it may seem, materially to lessen it. And so he struggles hard to exclude the Free Church, and, though no member of the Establishment himself, declaims warmly in its behalf. Certain it is, that from the Establishment, as now constituted, he can have nothing to fear, and the people nothing to hope.
After what manner may his Grace the Duke of Sutherland be most effectually met in this matter, so that the443cause of toleration and freedom of conscience may be maintained in the extensive district which God, in His providence, has consigned to his stewardship? We shall in our next chapter attempt giving the question an answer. Meanwhile, we trust the people of Sutherland will continue, as hitherto, to stand firm. The strong repugnance which they feel against being driven into churches which all their better ministers have left, is not ill founded. No Church of God ever employs such means of conversion as those employed by his Grace: they are means which have been often resorted to for the purpose of making men worse, never yet for the purpose of making them better. We know that, with their long-formed church-going habits, the people must feel their now silent Sabbaths pass heavily; but they would perhaps do well to remember, amid the tedium and the gloom, that there were good men who not only anticipated such a time of trial for this country, but who also made provision for it. Thomas Scott, when engaged in writing his Commentary, used to solace himself with the belief that it might be of use at a period when the public worship of God would be no longer tolerated in the land. To the great bulk of the people of Sutherland that time seems to have already come. They know, however, the value of the old divines, and have not a few of their more practical treatises translated into their own expressive tongue: Alleine’sAlarm, Boston’sFourfold State, Doddridge’sRise and Progress, Baxter’sCall, Guthrie’sSaving Interest. Let these, and such as these, be their preachers, when they can procure no other. The more they learn to relish them, the less will they relish the bald and miserable services of the Residuary Church. Let them hold their fellowship and prayer meetings; let them keep up the worship of God in their families; the cause of religious freedom in the district is involved in the stand which they make. Above all, let them possess their souls in patience.444We are not unacquainted with the Celtic character, as developed in the Highlands of Scotland. Highlanders, up to a certain point, are the most docile, patient, enduring of men; but that point once passed, endurance ceases, and the all too gentle lamb starts up an angry lion. The spirit is stirred that maddens at the sight of the naked weapon, and that, in its headlong rush upon the enemy, discipline can neither check nor control. Let our oppressed Highlanders of Sutherland beware. They have suffered much; but, so far as man is the agent, their battles can be fought on only the arena of public opinion, and on that ground which the political field may be soon found to furnish. Any explosion of violence on their part would be ruin to both the Free Church and themselves.445
How is the battle of religious freedom to be best fought in behalf of the oppressed people of Sutherland? We shall attempt throwing out a few simple suggestions on the subject, which, if in the right track, the reader may find it easy to follow up and mature.
First, then, let us remember that in this country, in which opinion is all-potent, and which for at least a century and a half has been the envy of continental states for the degree of religious freedom which it enjoys, the policy of the Duke of Sutherland cannot be known without being condemned. The current which he opposes has been scooping out its channel for ages. Every great mind produced by Britain, from the times of Milton and Locke down to the times of Mackintosh and of Chalmers, has been giving it impetus in but one direction; and it is scarce likely that it will reverse its course now, at the bidding of a few intolerant and narrow-minded aristocrats. British opinion has but to be fairly appealed to, in order to declare strongly in favour of the oppressed Highlanders of Sutherland. What we would first remark, then, is, that the policy of his Grace the Duke cannot be too widely exposed. The press and the platform must be employed. The frank and generous English must be told, that that law of religious toleration which did so much at a comparatively early period to elevate the character of their country in the eye of the world, and which, in these latter times, men have been accustomed to regard as somewhat less, after all, than an adequate embodiment of the rights of conscience, has446been virtually repealed in a populous and very extensive district of the British empire, through a capricious exercise of power on the part of a single man. Why, it has been asked, in a matter which lies between God and conscience, and between God and the conscience only, should a third party be permitted to interfere so far as even to say, ‘I tolerate you? I tolerate your Independency––your Episcopacy––your Presbyterianism: you are a Baptist, but I tolerate you?’ There is an insult implied, it has been said, in the way in which the liberty purports to be granted. It bestows as a boon what already exists as a right. We want no despot to tell us that he gives us leave to breathe the free air of heaven, or that he permits us to worship Godagreeablyto the dictates of our conscience. Such are the views with which a majority of the British people regard, in these latter times, the right to tolerate; and regarding arightNOTto tolerate, they must be more decided still. The Free Church, then, must lay her complaint before them. She must tell them, that such is the oppression to which her people are subjected, that she would be but too happy to see even the beggarly elements of the question recognised in their behalf; that she would be but too happy to hear the despot of a province pronounce the deprecated ‘I tolerate you,’ seeing that his virtual enunciation at present is, ‘I do NOT tolerate you,’ and seeing that he is powerful enough, through a misapplication of his rights and influence as the most extensive of British proprietors, to give terrible effect to the unjust and illiberal determination. The Free Church, on this question, must raise her appeal everywhere to public opinion, and we entertain no doubt that she will everywhere find it her friend.
But how is its power to be directed? How bring it to bear upon the Duke of Sutherland? It is an all-potent lever, but it must be furnished with a fulcrum on which to rest, and a direction in which to bear. Let us remark,447first, that no signal privilege or right was ever yet achieved for Britain, that was not preceded by some signal wrong. From the times of Magna Charta down to the times of the Revolution, we find every triumph of liberty heralded in by some gross outrage upon it. The history of the British Constitution is a history of great natural rights established piecemeal under the immediate promptings of an indignation elicited by unbearable wrongs. It was not until the barrier that protected the privileges of the citizen from the will of the despot gave way at some weak point, that the parties exposed to the inundation were roused up to re-erect it on a better principle and a surer foundation. Now, the Duke of Sutherland (with some of his brother proprietors) has just succeeded in showing us a signal flaw in our scheme of religious toleration, and this at an exceedingly critical time. He has been perpetrating a great and palpable wrong, which, if rightly represented, must have the effect of leading men, in exactly the old mode, to arouse themselves in behalf of the corresponding right. If a single proprietor can virtually do what the sovereign of Great Britain would forfeit the crown for barely attempting to do––if a single nobleman can do what the House of Lords in its aggregate capacity would peril its very existence for but proposing to do––then does there exist in the British Constitution a palpable flaw, which cannot be too soon remedied. There must be a weak place in the barrier, if the waters be rushing out; and it cannot be too soon rebuilt on a surer plan. Here, then, evidently, is the point on which the generated opinion ought to be brought to bear. It has as its proper arena the political field. It is a defect in the British Constitution, strongly exemplified by the case of Sutherland, that the rights of property may be so stretched as to overbear the rights of conscience––that though toleration be the law of the land generally, it may be so set aside by the country’s proprietary, as not to448be the law in any particular part of it; and to reverse this state of things––to make provision in the Constitution that the rights of the proprietor be not so overstretched, and that a virtual repeal of the toleration laws in any part of the country be not possible––are palpably the objects to which the public mind should be directed.
We have said that the Duke of Sutherland has succeeded in showing us this flaw in the Constitution at a peculiarly critical time. A gentleman resident in England, for whose judgment we entertain the highest respect, told us only a few days since, that the rising, all-absorbing party of that kingdom, so far at least as the Established Church and the aristocracy are concerned, still continues to be the Puseyite party. If Puseyism does not bid fair to possess a majority of the people of the country, it bids fair at least to possess a majority of its acres. And we need scarce remind the reader how peculiarly this may be the case with Scotland, whose acres, in such large proportions, are under the control of an incipient Puseyism already. In both countries, therefore, is it of peculiar importance, in a time like the present, that the law of toleration should be placed beyond the control of a hostile or illiberal proprietary––so placed beyond their control, that they may be as unable virtually to suspend its operation in any part of the country, as they already are to suspend its operation in the whole of the country. We are recommending, be it remembered, no wild scheme of Chartist aggression on the rights of property––we would but injure our cause by doing so: our strength in this question must altogether depend on the soundness of the appeal which we can carry to the natural justice of the community. We merely recommend that that be done in behalf of the already recognised law of toleration, which Parliament has no hesitation in doing in behalf of some railway or canal, or water or dock company, when, for what is deemed a public good, it sets aside the absolute449control of the proprietor over at least a portion of his property, and consigns it at a fair price to the corporation engaged in the undertaking. The principle of the scheme is already recognised by the Constitution, and its legislative embodiment would be at once easy and safe. Property would be rendered not less, but more secure, if, in every instance in which a regularly-organized congregation of any denomination of Christians to which the law of toleration itself extended, made application for ground on which to erect a place of worship, the application would be backed and made effectual, in virtue of an enacted law, by the authority of the Constitution. There is no Scotch or English Dissenter––no true friend of religious liberty in Britain or Ireland––who would not make common cause with the Free Church in urging a measure of this character on Parliament, when fairly convinced, by cases such as that of Sutherland, how imperatively such a measure is required.
Unavoidably, however, from the nature of things, the relief which ultimately may be thus secured cannot be other than distant relief. Much information must first be spread, and the press and the platform extensively employed. Can there be nothing done for Sutherland through an already existing political agency? We are of opinion there can. Sutherland itself is even more thoroughly aclosecounty now, than it was ere the Reform Bill had swamped the paper votes, and swept away the close burghs. His Grace the Duke has but to nominate his member, and his member is straightway returned. But all the political power which, directly or indirectly, his Grace possesses, is not equally secure. Sutherland is a close county; but the Northern Burghs are not rotten burghs; on the contrary, they possess an independent and intelligent constituency; and in scarce any part of Scotland is the Free Church equally strong. And his Grace derives no inconsiderable portion of his political influence from them. The member for Sutherland450is virtually his Grace’s nominee, but the member for the Northern Burghs is not his Grace’s nominee at all; and yet certain it is that the gentleman by whom these burghs are at present represented in Parliament is his Grace’s agent and adviser in all that pertains to the management of Sutherland, and has been so for many years. His Grace’s member for Sutherland sits in Parliament in virtue of being his Grace’s nominee; but the sort of prime minister through which his Grace governs his princely domains, sits in Parliament, not in virtue of being his Grace’s nominee, but in virtue of his being himself a man of liberal opinions, and an enemy to all intolerance. He represents them in the Whig interest, and in his character as a Whig. His Grace would very soon have one member less in Parliament, did that member make common cause with his Grace in suppressing the Free Church in Sutherland. Now, the bruit shrewdly goeth, that that member does make common cause with his Grace. The bruit shrewdly goeth, that in this, as in most other matters, his Grace acts upon that member’s advice. True, the report may be altogether idle––it may be utterly without foundation; instead of being true, it may be exactly the reverse of being true; but most unquestionable it is, that, whether true or otherwise, it exists, and that that member’s constituency have a very direct interest in it. He represents them miserably ill, and must be a very different sort of Whig from them, if he hold that proprietors do right in virtually setting aside the Toleration Act. The report does one of two things,––it either does him great injustice, or it shows that he has sat too long in Parliament for the Northern Burghs. It is in the power, then, of the highly respectable and intelligent Whig constituency of this district to make such a diversion in favour of the oppressed people of Sutherland, as can scarce fail to tell upon the country, and this in thorough consistency with the best and highest principles of their party. Let them put themselves451in instant communication with their member, and, stating the character of the report which so generally exists to his prejudice, request a categorical answer regarding it,––let them request an avowal of his opinion of the Duke’s policy, equally articulate with that opinion which the Hon. Mr. Fox Maule submitted to the public a few weeks ago in the columns of theWitness,––and then, as the ascertained circumstances of the case may direct, let them act, and that publicly, in strict accordance with their principles. Of one thing they may be assured,––the example will tell.
In order to raise the necessary amount of opinion for carrying the ulterior object––the enactment of a law––there are various most justifiable expedients to which the friends of toleration in the country should find it not difficult to resort. Petitions addressed to the Lower House in its legislative capacity, and to the members of the Upper House as a body of men who have, perhaps, of all others the most direct stake in the matter––we need scarce say how––ought, of course, to take a very obvious place on the list. Much, too, might be done by deputations from the General Assembly of the Free Church, instructed from time to time to ascertain, and then publicly to report on, the state of Sutherland. Each meeting of the Assembly might be addressed on the subject by some of its ablest men, in which case their statements and speeches would go forth, through the medium of the press, to the country at large. The co-operation and assistance of all bodies of evangelical Dissenters, both at home and abroad, should be sedulously sought after, and correct information on the subject circulated among them extensively. There has been much sympathy elicited for the Church, during her long struggle, among good men everywhere. Her cause has been tried, and judgment given in her favour, in France, Holland, and America, and in not a few of the colonies. In the case of Sismondi ‘On theClearingof Sutherland,’ we see the452opinion of a continental philosopher re-echoed back upon our own country, not without its marked effect; and it might be well to try whether the effect of foreign opinion might not be at least equally influential ‘On the Suppression of the Toleration Laws in Sutherland.’ There is one great country with which we hold our literature in common, and which we can address, and by which we can be in turn addressed, in our native tongue. Unluckily, what ought to have existed as a bond of union and amity has been made to subserve a very different purpose; and we cannot conceal from ourselves the fact, that our own country has been mainly to blame. The manners, habits, and tastes of the Americans have been exhibited, by not a few of our popular writers, in the broadest style of caricature; they have been described as a nation of unprincipled speculators, devoid not only of right feeling, but even of common honesty, and remarkable for but their scoundrelism and conceit. Even were such descriptions just, which they are not, most assuredly would they be unwise. It is the American people, rather than the American government, who make peace and war; and the first American war with England will be one of the most formidable in which this country has yet been engaged. The bowie-knife is no trifling weapon; and the English writer laughs at a very considerable expense, if his satires have the effect of whetting it. At present, however, the war between the two countries is but a war of libel and pasquinade, and the advantage hitherto has been on the side of the aggressor. America has not been happy in her retaliation. We would fain direct her to aim where her darts, instead of provoking national hostility, or exciting a bitter spirit among the entire people of a country, would but subserve the general cause of liberty and human improvement. It is but idle to satirize our manners and customs; we think them good. There is nothing to be gained by casting ridicule on our453peculiar modes of thinking; they are the modes to which we have been accustomed, and we prefer them to any others. But there are matters of a different kind, regarding which the country bears a conscience, and is not quite at its ease; and there we are vulnerable. We speak often, we would fain say, of slavery in your country, literati of America, and justly deem it a great evil. It might do us good were you to remind us, in turn, that there are extensive districts in our own, in which virtually there exists no toleration law for the religion of the people, though that religion be Protestantism in its purest form. Cast your eyes upon the county of Sutherland.
MURRAY AND GIBB, EDINBURGH,PRINTERS TO HER MAJESTY’S STATIONERY OFFICE.
Footnotes for all chapters in “Thoughts on the Educational Question”