NOTABLE DICTA.The Rev. Dr.MACLACHLAN.
The late Rev. Dr. Maclachlan, Edinburgh, wrote a series of articles in theWitness, during its palmy days under the editorship of Hugh Miller. These were afterwards published in 1849, under the title of “The Depopulation System of the Highlands,” in pamphlet form, by Johnston and Hunter. The rev. author visited all the places to which he refers. Hesays:—
“A complete history of Highland clearances would, we doubt not, both interest and surprise the British public. Men talk of the Sutherland clearings as if they stood alone amidst the atrocities of the system; but those who know fully the facts of the case can speak with as much truth of the Ross-shire clearings, the Inverness-shire clearings, the Perthshire clearings, and, to some extent, the Argyllshire clearings. The earliest of these was the great clearing on the Glengarry estate, towards, we believe, the latter end of the last century. The tradition among the Highlanders is (and some Gaelic poems composed at the time would go to confirm it), that the chief’slady had taken umbrage at the clan. Whatever the cause might have been, the offence was deep, and could only be expiated by the extirpation of the race. Summonses of ejection were served over the whole property, even on families the most closely connected with the chief; and if we now seek for the Highlanders of Glengarry, we must search on the banks of the St. Lawrence.
“To the westward of Glengarry lies the estate of Lochiel—a name to which the imperishable poetry of Campbell has attached much interest. It is the country of the brave clan Cameron, to whom, were there nothing to speak of but their conduct at Waterloo, Britain owes a debt. Many of our readers have passed along Loch Lochy, and they have likely had the mansion of Auchnacarry pointed out to them, and they have been told of the Dark Mile, surpassing, as some say, the Trossachs in romantic beauty; but perhaps they were not aware that beyond lies the wide expanse of Loch Arkaig, whose banks have been the scene of a most extensive clearing. There was a day when three hundred able, active men could have been collected from the shores of this extensive inland loch; but eviction has long ago rooted them out, and nothing is now to be seen but the ruins of their huts, with the occasional bothy of a shepherd, while their lands are held by one or two farmers from the borders.
“Crossing to the south of the great glen, we may begin with Glencoe. How much of its romantic interest does this glen owe to its desolation? Let us remember, however, that the desolation, in a large part of it, is the result of the extrusion of the inhabitants. Travel eastward, and the footprints of the destroyer cannot be lost sight of. Large tracks along the Spean and its tributaries are a wide waste. The southern bank of Loch Lochy is almost without inhabitants, though the symptoms of former occupancy are frequent.
“When we enter the country of the Frasers, the same spectacle presents itself—a desolate land. With the exception of the miserable village of Fort-Augustus the native population is almost extinguished,while those who do remain are left as if, by their squalid misery, to make darkness the more visible. Across the hills, in Stratherrick, the property of Lord Lovat, with the exception of a few large sheep farmers, and a very few tenants, is one wide waste. To the north of Loch Ness, the territory of the Grants, both Glenmoriston and the Earl of Seafield, presents a pleasing feature amidst the sea of desolation. But beyond this, again, let us trace the large rivers of the east coast to their sources.
“Trace the Beauly through all its upper reaches, and how many thousands upon thousands of acres, once peopled, are, as respects human beings, a wide wilderness! The lands of the Chisholm have been stripped of their population down to a mere fragment; the possessors of those of Lovat have not been behind with their share of the same sad doings. Let us cross to the Conon and its branches, and we will find that the chieftains of the Mackenzies have not been less active in extermination. Breadalbane and Rannoch, in Perthshire, have a similar tale to tell, vast masses of the population having been forcibly expelled. The upper portions of Athole have also suffered, while many of the valleys along the Spey and its tributaries are without an inhabitant, if we except a few shepherds. Sutherland, with all its atrocities, affords but a fraction of the atrocities that have been perpetrated in following out the ejectment system of the Highlands. In truth, of the habitable portion of the whole country but a small part is now really inhabited. We are unwilling to weary our readers by carrying them along the west coast from the Linnhe Loch, northwards; but if they inquire, they will find that the same system has been, in the case of most of the estates, relentlessly pursued.
“These are facts of which, we believe, the British public know little, but they are facts on which the changes should be rung until they have listened to them and seriously considered them. May it not be that part of the guilt is theirs, who might, yet did not, step forward to stop such cruel and unwise proceedings?
“Let us leave the past, however” he continues, “and consider the present. And it is a melancholy reflectionthat the year 1849 has added its long list to the roll of Highland ejectments. While the law is banishing its tens for terms of seven or fourteen years, as the penalty of deep-dyed crimes, irresponsible and infatuated power is banishing its thousands for life for no crime whatever. This year brings forward, as leader in the work of expatriation, the Duke of Argyll. Is it possible that his vast possessions are over-densely peopled? “Credat Judæus appelles.” And the Highland Destitution Committee co-operate. We had understood that the large sums of money at their disposal had been given them for the purpose of relieving, and not of banishing, the destitute. Next we have Mr. Baillie of Glenelg, professedly at their own request, sending five hundred souls off to America. Their native glen must have been made not a little uncomfortable for these poor people, ere they could have petitioned for so sore a favour. Then we have Colonel Gordon expelling upwards of eighteen hundred souls from South Uist; Lord Macdonald follows with a sentence of banishment against six or seven hundred of the people of North Uist, with a threat, as we learn, that three thousand are to be driven from Skye next season; and Mr. Lillingston of Lochalsh, Maclean of Ardgour, and Lochiel, bring up the rear of the black catalogue, a large body of people having left the estates of the two latter, who, after a heart-rending scene of parting with their native land, are now on the wide sea on their way to Australia. Thus, within the last three or four months, considerably upwards of three thousand of the most moral and loyal of our people—people who, even in the most trying circumstances, never required a soldier, seldom a policeman, among them, to maintain the peace—are driven forcibly away to seek subsistence on a foreign soil.”
Writing in 1850, on more “Recent Highland Evictions,” the same authorsays:—
“The moral responsibility for these transactions lies in a measure with the nation, and not merely with the individuals immediately concerned in them. Some years ago the fearful scenes thatattended the slave trade were depicted in colours that finally roused the national conscience, and the nation gave its loud, indignant, and effective testimony against them. The tearing of human beings, with hearts as warm, and affections as strong as dwell in the bosom of the white man, from their beloved homes and families—the packing them into the holds of over-crowded vessels, in the burning heat of the tropics—the stifling atmosphere, the clanking chain, the pestilence, the bodies of the dead corrupting in the midst of the living—presented a picture which deeply moved the national mind; and there was felt to be guilt, deep-dyed guilt, and the nation relieved itself by abolishing the traffic. And is the nation free of guilt in this kind of white-slave traffic that is now going on—this tearing of men whether they will or not, from their country and kindred—this crowding them into often foul and unwholesome vessels with the accompanying deaths of hundreds whose eyes never rest on the land to which they are driven. Men may say that they have rights in the one case that they have not in the other. Then we say that they are rights into whose nature and fruits we would do well to enquire, lest it be found that the rude and lawless barbarism of Africa, and the high and boasted civilisation of Britain, land us in the same final results.... It is to British legislation that the people of the Highlands owe the relative position in which they stand to their chiefs. There was a time when they were strangers to the feudal system which prevailed in the rest of the kingdom. Every man among them sat as free as his chief. But by degrees the power of the latter, assisted by Saxon legislation, encroached upon the liberty of the former. Highland chiefs became feudal lords—the people were robbed to increase their power—and now we are reaping the fruits of this in recent evictions.”
At a meeting of the Inverness, Ross, and Nairn Club, in Edinburgh, in 1877, the venerable Doctor referred to the same sad subject amid applause and expressions of regret. We extract the following from a report of the meeting which appeared at the time in theInverness Courier:—
“The current that ran against their language seemed tobe rising against the people themselves. The cry seemed to be, Do away with the people: this is the shorthand way of doing away with the language. He reminded them of the saying of a queen, that she would turn Scotland into a hunting field, and of the reply of a Duke of Argyll it is time for me to make my hounds ready, and said he did not know whether there was now an Argyll who would make the same reply. But there were other folks—less folks than queens—who had gone pretty deep in the direction indicated by this queen. He would not say it was not a desirable thing to see Highlanders scattered over the earth—they were greatly indebted to them in their cities and the colonies; but he wished to preserve their Highland homes, from which the colonies and large cities derived their very best blood. Drive off the Highlander and destroy his home, and you destroy that which had produced some of the best and noblest men who filled important positions throughout the empire. In the interests of great cities, as a citizen of Edinburgh, he desired to keep the Highlanders in their own country, and to make them as comfortable as possible. He only wished that some of the Highland proprietors could see their way to offer sections of the land for improvement by the people, who were quite as able to improve the land in their own country as to improve the great forests of Canada. He himself would rather to-morrow begin to cultivate an acre in any habitable part of the Highlands of Scotland than to begin to cultivate land such as that on which he had seen thousands of them working in the forests of Canada. What had all this to do with Celtic Literature? Dr. Maclachlan replied that the whole interest which Celtic Literature had to him was connected with the Celtic people, and if they destroyed the Celtic people, his entire interest in their literature perished. They had been told the other day that this was sentiment, and that there were cases in which sentiment was not desirable. He agreed with this so far; but he believed that when sentiment was driven out of a Highlander the best part of him was driven out, for it ever had a strong place among mountain people.He himself had a warm patriotic feeling, and he grieved whenever he saw a ruined house in any of their mountain glens. And ruined homes and ruined villages he, alas! had seen—villages on fire—the hills red with burning homes. He never wished to see this sorry sight again. It was a sad, a lamentable sight, for he was convinced the country had not a nobler class of people than the Highland people, or a set of people better worth preserving.”
Mr. Robert Brown, Sheriff-Substitute of the Western District of Inverness-shire, in 1806, wrote a pamphlet of 120 pages, now very scarce, entitled, “Strictures and Remarks on the Earl of Selkirk’s ‘Observations on the Present State of the Highlands of Scotland,’” Sheriff Brown was a man of keen observation, and his work is a powerful argument against the forced depopulation of the country. Summing up the number who left from 1801 to 1803, hesays:—
“In the year 1801, a Mr. George Dennon, from Pictou, carried out two cargoes of emigrants from Fort William to Pictou, consisting of about seven hundred souls. A vessel sailed the same season from Isle Martin with about one hundred passengers, it is believed, for the same place. No more vessels sailed that year; but in 1802, eleven large ships sailed with emigrants to America. Of these, four were from Fort William, one from Knoydart, one from Isle Martin, one from Uist, one from Greenock. Five of these were bound for Canada, four for Pictou, and one for Cape Breton. The only remaining vessel, which took a cargo of people in Skye, sailed for Wilmington, in the United States. In the year 1803, exclusive of Lord Selkirk’s transport, eleven cargoes of emigrants went from the North Highlands. Of these, four were from the Moray Firth, two from Ullapool, three from Stornoway, and two from Fort William. The whole of these cargoes were bound for the British settlements, and most of them were discharged at Pictou.”
Soon after, several other vessels sailed from the North West Highlands with emigrants, the whole of whom were for the British Colonies. In addition to these, Lord Selkirk took out 250 from South Uist in 1802, and in 1803 he sent out to Prince Edward Island about 800 souls, in three different vessels, most of whom were from the Island of Skye, and the remainder from Ross-shire, North Argyll, the interior of the County of Inverness, and the Island of Uist. In 1804, 1805, and 1806, several cargoes of Highlanders left Mull, Skye, and other Western Islands, for Prince Edward Island and other North American Colonies. Altogether, not less than 10,000 souls left the West Highlands and Isles during the first six years of the present century, a fact which will now appear incredible.
Sir Walter Scott writes:—“In too many instances the Highlands have been drained, not of their superfluity of population, but of the whole mass of the inhabitants, dispossessed by an unrelenting avarice, which will be one day found to have been as shortsighted as it is unjust and selfish. Meantime, the Highlands may become the fairy ground for romance and poetry, or the subject of experiment for the professors of speculation, political and economical. But if the hour of need should come—and it may not, perhaps, be far distant—the pibroch may sound through the deserted region, but the summons will remain unanswered.”
M. Michelet, the great Continental historian, writes:—“The Scottish Highlanders will ere long disappear from the face of the earth; the mountains are daily depopulating; the great estates have ruined the land of the Gael, as they did ancient Italy. The Highlander will ere long exist only in the romances of Walter Scott. The tartan and the claymore excite surprise in the streets of Edinburgh; theHighlanders disappear—they emigrate—their national airs will ere long be lost, as the music of the Eolian harp when the winds are hushed.”
In his work on the Nationalisation of Land, Mr. Alfred Russel Wallace, in the chapter on “Landlordism in Scotland,” says to the Englishpeople:—
“The facts stated in this chapter will possess, I feel sure, for many Englishmen, an almost startling novelty; the tale of oppression and cruelty they reveal reads like one of those hideous stories peculiar to the dark ages, rather than a simple record of events happening upon our own land and within the memory of the present generation. For a parallel to this monstrous power of the landowner, under which life and property are entirely at his mercy, we must go back to mediæval, or to the days when serfdom not having been abolished, the Russian noble was armed with despotic authority; while the more pitiful results of this landlord tyranny, the wide devastation of cultivated lands, the heartless burning of houses, the reckless creation of pauperism and misery, out of well-being and contentment, could only be expected under the rule of Turkish Sultans or greedy and cruel Pashas. Yet these cruel deeds have been perpetrated in one of the most beautiful portions of our native land. They are not the work of uncultured barbarians or of fanatic Moslems, but of so-called civilised and Christian men; and—worst feature of all—they are not due to any high-handed exercise of power beyond the law, but are strictly legal, are in many cases the acts of members of the Legislature itself, and, notwithstanding that they have been repeatedly made known for at least sixty years past, no steps have been taken, or are even proposed to be taken, by the Legislature to prevent them for the future! Surely it is time that the people of England should declare that such things shall no longer exist—that the rich shall no longer have such legal power to oppress the poor—thatthe land shall be free for all who are willing to pay a fair value for its use—and, as this is not possible under landlordism, that landlordism shall be abolished....
“The general results of the system of modern landlordism in Scotland are not less painful than the hardship and misery brought upon individual sufferers. The earlier improvers, who drove the peasants from their sheltered valleys to the exposed sea-coast, in order to make room for sheep and sheep farmers, pleaded erroneously the public benefit as the justification of their conduct. They maintained that more food and clothing would be produced by the new system, and that the people themselves would have the advantage of the produce of the sea as well as that of the land for their support. The result, however, proved them to be mistaken, for henceforth the cry of Highland destitution began to be heard, culminating at intervals into actual famines, like that of 1836-37, when £70,000 were distributed to keep the Highlanders from death by starvation. ... just as in Ireland, there was abundance of land capable of cultivation, but the people were driven to the coast and to the towns to make way for sheep, and cattle, and lowland farmers; and when the barren and inhospitable tracts allotted to them became overcrowded, they were told to emigrate. As the Rev. J. Macleod says:—“By the clearances one part is depopulation and the other overpopulated; the people are gathered into villages where there is no steady employment for them, where idleness has its baneful influence and lands them in penury and want.
“The actual effect of this system of eviction and emigration—of banishing the native of the soil and giving it to the stranger—is shown in the steady increase of poverty indicated by the amount spent for the relief of the poor having increased from less than £300,000 in 1846 to more than £900,000 now; while in the same period the population has only increased from 2,770,000 to 3,627,000, so that pauperism has grown about nine times faster than population!... The fact that a whole population could be driven from their homes like cattle at thewill of a landlord, and that the Government which taxed them, and for whom they freely shed their blood on the battle-field, neither would nor could protect them from cruel interference with their personal liberty, is surely the most convincing and most absolute demonstration of the incompatibility of landlordism with the elementary rights of a free people.
“As if, however, to prove this still more clearly, and to show how absolutely incompatible with the well-being of the community is modern landlordism, the great lords of the soil in Scotland have for the last twenty years or more been systematically laying waste enormous areas of land for purposes of sport, just as the Norman Conqueror laid waste the area of the New Forest for similar purposes. At the present time, more than two million acres of Scottish soil are devoted to the preservation of deer alone—an area larger than the entire Counties of Kent and Surrey combined. Glen Tilt Forest includes 100,000 acres; the Black Mount is sixty miles in circumference; and Ben Alder Forest is fifteen miles long by seven broad. On many of these forests there is the finest pasture in Scotland, while the valleys would support a considerable population of small farmers, yet all this land is devoted to the sport of the wealthy, farms being destroyed, houses pulled down, and men, sheep, and cattle all banished to create a wilderness for the deer-stalkers! At the same time the whole people of England are shut out from many of the grandest and most interesting scenes of their native land, gamekeepers and watchers forbidding the tourist or naturalist to trespass on some of the wildest Scotch mountains.
“Now, when we remember that the right to a property in these unenclosed mountains was most unjustly given to the representatives of the Highland chiefs little more than a century ago, and that they and their successors have grossly abused their power ever since, it is surely time to assert those fundamental maxims of jurisprudence which state that—“No man can have a vested right in the misfortunes and woes of his country,” and that “the Sovereign ought not to allow either communities or private individuals to acquire large tracts of land in order to leave it uncultivated.” If the oft-repeated maxim that “property has its duties as well as its rights” is not altogether a mockery, then we maintain that in this case thetotalneglect of all the duties devolving on the owners of these vast tracts of land affords ample reason why the State should take possession of them for the public benefit. A landlord government will, of course, never do this till the people declare unmistakably that it must be done. To such a government the rights of property aresacred, while those of their fellow-citizens are of comparatively little moment; but we feel sure that when the people fully know and understand the doings of the landlords of Scotland, the reckless destruction of homesteads, and the silent sufferings of the brave Highlanders, they will make their will known, and, when they do so, thatwillmust soon be embodied into law.”
After quoting the opinion of the Rev. Dr. John Kennedy of Dingwall, given at length on other pages, Mr. Wallace next quotes from an article in theWestminster Review, in 1868. “The Gaels,” this writer says, “rooted from the dawn of history on the slopes of the northern mountains, have been thinned out and thrown away like young turnips too thickly planted. Noble gentlemen and noble ladies have shown a flintiness of heart and a meanness of detail in carrying out their clearings, upon which it is revolting to dwell; and after all, are the evils of over-population cured? Does not the disease still spring up under the very torture of the knife? Are not the crofts slowly and silently taken at every opportunity out of the hands of the peasantry? When a Highlander has to leave his hut there is now no resting-place for him save the cellars or attics of the closes of Glasgow, or some other large centre of employment; it has been noticed that the poor Gael is even more liable than the Irishman to sink under the debasement in which he is then immersed.” The same writer holds:—“No error could be grosser than that of reviewing the chiefs as unlimited proprietors not only of the land, but of the whole territory of the mountain, lake, river, and sea-shore,held and won during hundreds of years by the broad swords of the clansmen. Could any Maclean admit, even in a dream, that his chief could clear Mull of all the Macleans and replace them with Campbells; or the Mackintosh people his lands with Macdonalds, and drive away his own race, any more than Louis Napoleon could evict all the population of France and supply their place with English and German colonists?” Yet this very power and right the English Government, in its aristocratic selfishness, bestowed upon the chiefs, when, after the great rebellion of 1745, it took away their privileges of war and criminal jurisdiction, and endeavoured to assimilate them to the nobles and great landowners of England. The rights of the clansmen were left entirely out of consideration.[28]
The following remarks by the celebrated French economist, M. de Lavaleye, will prove interesting. There is no greater living authority on land tenure than this writer, and being a foreigner, his opinions are not open—as the opinions of our own countrymen may be—to the suspicion of political bias or partisanship on a question which is of universal interest all over the world. Referring to land tenure in this country, hesays:—
“The dispossession of the old proprietors, transformed by time into new tenants, was effected on a larger scale by the “clearing of estates.” When a lord of the manor, for his own profit, wanted to turn the small holdings into large farms, or into pasturage, the small cultivators were of no use. The proprietors adopted a simple means of getting rid of them; and, by destroying their dwellings, forced them into exile. The classical land of this system is Ireland, or more particularly the Highlands of Scotland.
“It is now clearly established that in Scotland, just as in Ireland, the soil was once the property of the clan or sept. The chiefs of the clan had certain rights over the communal domain; but they were even further from being proprietors than was Louis XIV. from being proprietor of the territory of France. By successive encroachments, however, they transformed their authority of suzerain into a right of private ownership, without even recognising in their old co-proprietors a right of hereditary possession. In a similar way the Zemindars and Talugdars in India were, by the Act of the British Government, transformed into absolute proprietors. Until modern days the chiefs of the clan were interested in retaining a large number of vassals, as their power, and often their security, were only guaranteed by their arms. But when the order was established, and the chiefs—or lords, as they now were—began to reside in the towns, and required large revenues rather than numerous retainers, they endeavoured to introduce large farms and pasturage.
“We may follow the first phases of this revolution, which commences after the last rising under the Pretender, in the works of James Anderson, and James Stuart. The latter tells us that in his time—in the last third of the 18th century—the Highlands of Scotland still presented a miniature picture of the Europe of four hundred years ago. The rent (so he misnames the tribute paid to the chief of the clan) of these lands is very little in comparison with their extent, but if it is regarded relatively to the number of mouths which the farm supports, it will be seen that land in the Scotch Highlands supports perhaps twice as many persons as land of the same value in a fertile province. When, in the last thirty years of the 18th century, they began to expel the Gaels, they at the same time forbade them to emigrate to a foreign country, so as to compel them by these means to congregate in Glasgow and other manufacturing towns.
“In his observations on Smith’sWealth of Nations, published in 1814, David Buchanan gives us an idea of the progress made by the clearing of estates. ‘In the Highlands,’ he says, ‘the landed proprietor, without regard to thehereditary tenants’ (he wrongly applies this term to the clansmen who were joint proprietors of the soil), ‘offers the land to the highest bidder, who, if he wishes to improve the cultivation, is anxious for nothing but the introduction of a new system. The soil, dotted with small peasant proprietors, was formerly well populated in proportion to its natural fertility. The new system of improved agriculture and increased rents demands the greatest net profit with the least possible outlay, and with this object the cultivators are got rid of as being of no further use. Thus cast from their native soil, they go to seek their living in the manufacturing towns.’
“George Ensor, in a work published in 1818, says:—They (the landed proprietors of Scotland) dispossessed families as they would grub up coppice-wood, and they treated the villages and their people as Indians harassed with wild beasts do in their vengeance a jungle with tigers.... Is it credible, that in the 18th century, in this missionary age, in this Christian era, man shall be bartered for a fleece or a carcase of mutton—nay, held cheaper?... Why, how much worse is it than the intention of the Moguls, who, when they had broken into the northern provinces of China, proposed in Council to exterminate the inhabitants, and convert the land into pasture? This proposal many Highland proprietors have effected in their own country against their own countrymen.
“M. de Sismondi has rendered celebrated on the Continent the famous clearing executed between 1814 and 1820 by the Duchess of Sutherland. More than three thousand families were driven out; and 800,000 acres of land, which formerly belonged to the clan, were transformed into seignorial domain. Men were driven out to make room for sheep. The sheep are now replaced by deer, and the pastures converted into deer forests, which are treeless solitudes. TheEconomistof June 2, 1866, said on this subject:—Feudal instincts have as full career now as in the time when the Conqueror destroyed thirty-six villages to make the New Forest. Two millions of acres, comprising most fertile land, have beenchanged into desert. The natural herbage in Glen Tilt was known as the most succulent in Perth; the deer forest of Ben Alder was the best natural meadow of Badenoch; the forest of Black Mount was the best pasturage in Scotland for black-woolled sheep. The soil thus sacrificed for the pleasures of the chase extends over an area larger than the county of Perth. The land in the new Ben Alder forest supported 15,000 sheep; and this is but the thirtieth part of the territory sacrificed, and thus rendered as unproductive as if it were buried in the depths of the sea.
“The destruction of small property is still going on, no longer, however, by encroachment, but by purchase. Whenever land comes into the market it is bought by some rich capitalist, because the expenses of legal inquiry are too great for a small investment. Thus, large properties are consolidated, and fall, so to speak, into mortmain, in consequence of the law of primogeniture and entails. In the 15th century, according to Chancellor Fortescue, England was quoted throughout Europe for its number of proprietors and the comfort of its inhabitants. In 1688, Gregory King estimates that there were 180,000 proprietors, exclusive of 16,560 proprietors of noble rank. In 1786 there were 250,000 proprietors of England. According to the “Domesday Book” of 1876, there were 170,000 rural proprietors in England owning above an acre; 21,000 in Ireland, and 8000 in Scotland. A fifth of the entire country is in the hands of 523 persons. Are you aware, said Mr. Bright, in a speech delivered at Birmingham, August 27, 1866, that one-half of the soil of Scotland belongs to ten or twelve persons? Are you aware of the fact that the monopoly of landed property is continually increasing and becoming more and more exclusive?
“In England, then, as at Rome, large property has swallowed up small property, in consequence of a continuous evolution unchecked from the beginning to the end of the nation’s history; and the social order seems to be threatened just as in the Roman Empire.
“An ardent desire for a more equal division of the produce of labour inflames the labouring classes, and passes from land to land. In England, it arouses agitation among the industrial classes, and is beginning to invade the rural districts. It obviously menaces landed property as constituted in this country. The labourers who till the soil will claim their share in it; and, if they fail to obtain it here, will cross the sea in search of it. To retain a hold on them they must be given a vote; and there is fresh danger in increasing the number of electors while that of proprietors diminishes, and maintaining laws which renders inequality greater and more striking, while ideas of equality are assuming more formidable sway. To make the possession of the soil a closed monopoly and to augment the political powers of the class who are rigidly excluded, is at once to provoke levelling measures and to facilitate them. Accordingly we find that England is the country where the scheme of the nationalisation of the land finds most adherents, and is most widely proclaimed. The country which is furthest from the primitive organisations of property is likewise the one where the social order seems most menaced.”
In a speech delivered at Inverness, on 18th September, 1885, Mr. Joseph Chamberlainsaid:—
“The history of the Highland clearances is a black page in the account with private ownership in land, and if it were to form a precedent, if there could be any precedent for wrong-doing, if the sins of the fathers ought to be visited upon the children, we should have an excuse for more drastic legislation than any which the wildest reformer has ever proposed. Thousands of industrious, hard-working, God-fearing people were driven from the lands which had belonged to their ancestors, and which for generations they had cultivated; their houses were unroofed and destroyed, they were turned out homeless and forlorn, exposed to the inclemency of the winter season, left to perish on the hillsides or to swell the full flood of misery and destitution in the cities to which theywere driven for refuge. In some cases the cruel kindness of their landlords provided the means of emigration—in some cases they were actually driven abroad. They suffered greatly in foreign countries, being unprovided with the means of sustaining themselves until they could earn a livelihood, but the descendants of those who survived have contributed in no mean degree to the prosperity of the countries in which they finally settled. Those who remained behind had, I am afraid, little cause to be grateful for the consideration which was shown to them. In the course of years they were deprived of all the advantages which they had previously enjoyed. They had never had legal security of tenure, and they were transferred from their original holdings in the glens and straths, which at one time resounded with their industry, and they were placed out upon barren patches on the sea-shore where it was impossible for the most exacting toil and industry to obtain a subsistence. The picture that I have drawn was no doubt relieved in some cases by the exceptional generosity and kindness of particular proprietors, but, speaking generally, I think it is the fact that the Highland country was to a considerable extent depopulated by those clearances. The general condition of the people suffered, and it has gone on deteriorating until it has become at last a matter of national concern. If I am correct in the statement in which I have endeavoured to summarise what I have read, and learned upon this subject, I ask you whether it is not time that we should submit to careful examination and review a system which places such vast powers for evil in the hands of irresponsible individuals, and which makes the possession of land not a trust but a means of extortion and exaction?”
The reader is already acquainted with the misery endured by those evicted from Barra and South Uist byColonel Gordon, after their arrival in Canada. This was no isolated case. We shall here give a few instances of the unspeakable suffering of those pioneers who left so early as 1773, in the shipHector, for Pictou, Nova Scotia, gathered from trustworthy sources during the writer’s late visit to that country. TheHectorwas owned by two men, Pagan and Witherspoon, who bought three shares of land in Pictou, and they engaged a Mr. John Ross as their agent, to accompany the vessel to Scotland, to bring out as many colonists as could be induced, by misrepresentation and falsehoods, to leave their homes. They offered a free passage, a farm, and a year’s free provisions to their dupes. On his arrival in Scotland, Ross drew a glowing picture of the land and other manifold advantages of the country to which he was enticing the people.
The Highlanders knew nothing of the difficulties awaiting them in a land covered over with a dense unbroken forest; and, tempted by the prospect of owning splendid farms of their own, they were imposed upon by his promise, and many of them agreed to accompany him across the Atlantic and embraced his proposals. Calling first at Greenock, three families and five single young men joined the vessel at that port. She then sailed to Lochbroom, in Ross-shire, where she received 33 families and 25 single men, the whole of her passengers numbering about 200 souls. This band, in the beginning of July, 1773, bade a final farewell to their native land, not a soul on board having ever crossed the Atlantic except a single sailor and John Ross, the agent. As they were leaving, a piper came on board who had not paid his passage; the captain ordered him ashore, but the strains of the national instrument affected those on board so much that they pleaded to have him allowed to accompany them, and offered to share their own rations with him in exchange for his music during the passage. Their request was granted, and his performances aided in no small degree to cheer the noble band of pioneers in their long voyage of eleven weeks, in a miserable hulk, across the Atlantic.
The pilgrim band kept up their spirits as best they could by song, pipe-music, dancing, wrestling, and other amusements, through the long and painful voyage. The ship was so rotten that the passengers could pick the wood out of her sides with their fingers. They met with a severe gale off the Newfoundland coast, and were driven back by it so far that it took them about fourteen days to get back to the point at which the storm met them. The accommodation was wretched, smallpox and dysentry broke out among the passengers. Eighteen of the children died, and were committed to the deep amidst such anguish and heart-rending agony as only a Highlander can understand. Their stock of provisions became almost exhausted, the water became scarce and bad; the remnant of provisions left consisted mainly of salt meat, which, from the scarcity of water, added greatly to their sufferings. The oatcake carried by them became mouldy, so that much of it had been thrown away before they dreamt of having such a long passage. Fortunately for them, one of the passengers, Hugh Macleod, more prudent than the others, gathered up the despised scraps into a bag, and during the last few days of the voyage his fellows were too glad to join him in devouring this refuse to keep souls and bodies together.
At last theHectordropped anchor in the harbour, opposite where the town of Pictou now stands. Though the Highland dress was then proscribed at home, this emigrant band carried theirs along with them, and, in celebration of their arrival, many of the younger men donned their national dress—to which a few of them were able to add thesgian dubhand the claymore—while the piper blew up his pipes with might and main, its thrilling tones, for the first time, startling the denizens of the endless forest, and its echoes resounding through the wild solitude. Scottish emigrants are admitted upon all hands to have given its backbone of moral and religious strength to the Province, and to those brought over from the Highlands in this vessel is due the honour of being in the forefront—the pioneers and vanguard.
But how different was the reality to the expectations ofthese poor creatures, led by the plausibility of the emigration agent, to expect free estates on their arrival.
The whole scene, as far as the eye could see, was a dense forest. They crowded on the deck to take stock of their future home, and their hearts sank within them. They were landed without the provisions promised, without shelter of any kind, and were only able by the aid of those few before them, to erect camps of the rudest and most primitive description, to shelter their wives and their children from the elements. Their feelings of disappointment were most bitter, when they compared the actual facts with the free farms and the comfort promised them by the lying emigration agent. Many of them sat down in the forest and wept bitterly; hardly any provisions were possessed by the few who were before them, and what there was among them was soon devoured; making all—old and new comers—almost destitute. It was now too late to raise any crops that year. To make matters worse they were sent some three miles into the forest, so that they could not even take advantage with the same ease of any fish that might be caught in the harbour. The whole thing appeared an utter mockery. To unskilled men the work of clearing seemed hopeless; they were naturally afraid of the Red Indian and of the wild beasts of the forest; without roads or paths, they were frightened to move for fear of getting lost.
Can we wonder that, in such circumstances, they refused to settle on the company’s lands? though, in consequence, when provisions arrived, the agents refused to give them any. Ross and the company quarrelled, and he ultimately left the newcomers to their fate. The few of them who had a little money bought what provisions they could from the agents, while others, less fortunate, exchanged their clothes for food; but the greater number had neither money nor clothes to spend or exchange, and they were all soon left quite destitute. Thus driven to extremity, they determined to have the provisions retained by the agents, right or wrong, and two of them went to claim them. They were positively refused, but they determined to take what they could by force.They seized the agents, tied them, took their guns from them, which they hid at a distance; told them that they must have the food for their families, but that they were quite willing and determined to pay for them if ever they were able to do so. They then carefully weighed or measured the various articles, took account of what each man received and left, except one, the latter, a powerful and determined fellow, who was left behind to release the two agents. This he did, after allowing sufficient time for his friends to get to a safe distance, when he informed the prisoners where they could find their guns. Intelligence was sent to Halifax that the Highlanders were in rebellion, from whence orders were sent to a Captain Archibald in Truro, to march his company of militia to suppress and pacify them; but to his honour be it said, he, point blank, refused, and sent word that he would do no such thing. “I know the Highlanders,” he said, “and if they are fairly treated there will be no trouble with them.” Finally, orders were given to supply them with provisions, and Mr. Paterson, one of the agents, used afterwards to say that the Highlanders who arrived in poverty, and who had been so badly treated, had paid him every farthing with which he had trusted them.
It would be tedious to describe the sufferings which they afterwards endured. Many of them left. Others, fathers, mothers, and children, bound themselves away, as virtual slaves, in other settlements, for mere subsistence. Those who remained lived in small huts, covered only with the bark of branches of trees to shelter them from the bitter winter cold, of the severity of which they had no previous conception. They had to walk some eighty miles, through a trackless forest, in deep snow to Truro, to obtain a few bushels of potatoes, or a little flour in exchange for their labour, dragging these back all the way again on their backs, and endless cases of great suffering from actual want occurred. The remembrance of these terrible days sank deep into the minds of that generation, and long after, even to this day, the narration of the scenes and cruel hardships through which they hadto pass beguiled, and now beguiles many a winter’s night as they sit by their now comfortable firesides.
In the following spring they set to work. They cleared some of the forest, and planted a larger crop. They learned to hunt the moose, a kind of large deer. They began to cut timber, and sent a cargo of it from Pictou—the first of a trade very profitably and extensively carried on ever since. The population had, however, grown less than it was before their arrival; for in this year it amounted only to 78 persons. One of the modes of laying up a supply of food for the winter was to dig up a large quantity of clams or large oysters, pile them in large heaps on the sea-shore, and then cover them over with sand, though they were often, in winter, obliged to cut through ice more than a foot thick to get at them. This will give a fair idea of the hardships experienced by the earlier emigrants to these Colonies.
In Prince Edward Island, however, a colony from Lockerbie, in Dumfriesshire, who came out in 1774, seemed to have fared even worse. They commenced operations on the Island with fair prospects of success, when a plague of locusts, or field mice, broke out, and consumed everything, even the potatoes in the ground; and for eighteen months the settlers experienced all the miseries of a famine, having for several months only what lobsters or shell-fish they could gather from the sea-shore. The winter brought them to such a state of weakness that they were unable to convey food a reasonable distance even when they had means to buy it.
In this pitiful position they heard that the Pictou people were making progress that year, and that they had even some provisions to spare. They sent one of their number to make enquiry. An American settler, when he came to Pictou, brought a few slaves with him, and at this time he had just been to Truro to sell one of them, and brought home some provisions with the proceeds of the sale of his negro. The messenger from Prince Edward Island was putting up at this man’s house. He was a bit of a humorist, and continued cheerful in spite of all his troubles. On his return to the Island, the peoplecongregated to hear the news. “What kind of place is Pictou?” enquired one. “Oh, an awful place. Why, I was staying with a man who was just eating the last of his niggers;” and the poor creatures were reduced to such a point themselves that they actually believed the people of Pictou to be in such a condition as to oblige them to live on the flesh of their coloured servants. They were told, however, that matters were not quite so bad as that, and fifteen families left for the earlier settlement, where, for a time, they fared but very little better, but afterwards became prosperous and happy. A few of their children and thousands of their grandchildren are now living in comfort and plenty.
But who can think of these early hardships and cruel existences without condemning—even hating—the memories of the harsh and heartless Highland and Scottish lairds, who made existence at home even almost as miserable for those noble fellows, and who then drove them in thousands out of their native land, not caring one iota whether they sank in the Atlantic, or were starved to death on a strange and uncongenial soil? Retributive justice demands that posterity should execrate the memories of the authors of such misery and horrid cruelty. It may seem uncharitable to write thus of the dead; but it is impossible to forget their inhuman conduct, though, no thanks to them—cruel tigers in human form—it has turned out for the better, for the descendants of those who were banished to what was then infinitely worse than transportation for the worst crimes. Such criminals were looked after and cared for; but those poor fellows, driven out of their homes by the Highland lairds, and sent across there, were left to starve, helpless, and uncared for. Their descendants are now a prosperous and thriving people, and retribution is at hand. The descendants of the evicted from Sutherland, Ross, Inverness-shires, and elsewhere, to Canada, are producing enormous quantities of food, and millions of cattle, to pour them into this country. What will be the consequence? The sheep farmer—the primary and original cause of the evictions—will be the first to suffer. Theprice of stock in Scotland must inevitably fall. Rents must follow, and the joint authors of the original iniquity will, as a class, then suffer the natural and just penalty of their past misconduct.
Giving evidence before the Deer Forest Commission of 1892, the late Mr. Æneas R. Macdonell of Camusdarroch, Arisaig, made an interesting statement. After mentioning that he was a member of the Scottish Bar, and had previously been proprietor of Morar, heproceeded:—
I am able to speak generally as to the population there used to be in Arisaig in my young days,—in fact, the whole tract of country seemed to be populated and to have numerous houses on all parts of it; but I want to confine my evidence almost entirely to that portion of the district which is now under deer forest. It is now called Rhu-Arisaig, but 100 years ago it was called Dubh-chamus.
Although I am only seventy-two years of age, I am able to speak of thirty years beyond that, from 1794. My grandfather occupied the various places or townships in Dubh-chamus or Rudha. These were Dubh-chamus, Rhu, Tirnadrish, Torbae, Rhubrec, Tormor, Rhuemoch, Claggan, Portavullid, Bal-ur, Ardgaserie, and Achagarrailt. I am able to speak concerning that period from an old account-book belonging to my grandfather, to which I had access a good many years ago, and it was in connection with a very melancholy occasion in which I was unfortunately implicated, viz., an emigration from the estate of Loch Sheil in Moidart. In that account-book I found thirty-seven names of individuals in the various families who were paying rent, as sub-tenants to my grandfather, Archibald Macdonald, Rudha, Arisaig, who died, I think, in 1828 or 1829. I don’t know where that account-book now is. At that time it was in the possession of my uncle, Macdonald of Loch Sheil; andI may as well mention that it was in connection with Rudha that I came to examine the book.
First I should mention that these people occupied Rhu as cottars, and they had land for which apparently they paid no rent, but worked the land, of which Mr. Macdonald of Rudha cropped a portion. They paid rent for grazing,—a small nominal sum, and he himself paid a very small rent also to the then proprietor, Macdonald of Clanranald. In fact he, as well as Macdonald of Borrodale and Macdonald of Glen Alladale, came into possession of the various lands as being sons of the then Macdonald of Clanranald. They took these lands with the population on them, and occupied them.
The rents were paid to the tenants, to these Macdonalds, at a very small rate, because they themselves were not highly charged.
It so came to pass that in Lord Cranston’s time my uncle, Gregor Macdonald, who then occupied Rudha, had to give a large increase of rent, or be quit of it. Well, he could not under the old system on which he held it afford to give more rent. The consequence was that the farm was taken over him; and the cruel thing was, that he was obliged to remove all the sub-tenants upon it who had been there generations before him or his ancestors. The only thing that he could do was to get his brother Macdonald of Loch Sheil to take the people over to Loch Sheil in Moidart. Times grew black, and the potato famine occurred, and the consequence was that there was a redundant population, for Moidart had previously been well inhabitated, and the addition of so many families from Rudha, Arisaig, quite overwhelmed them when the potato famine occurred.
I was then puzzled to know how many came from Rhu, Arisaig, and I got access in that way to the old books from which I took an extract, and I have here a list of the names of the various people and the portions of Rudha that they occupied. InArdgaserichthere were 12, viz., Lachlan Mackinnon, Donald Roy Macinnes, John Macintyre, John Mackinnon, Patrick Maccormack, Neil Mackinnon, Ronald Macdonald, Mrs. Macdonald,Donald Macvarish, Duncan Macinnes, John Macdonald, and Allan Mackinnon. InTorbaethere were 4, viz., Angus Smith, L. Mackinnon, J. Macdonald, John Maciasaac. InDubh-chamus, ten, viz., John Kinnaird, John Macisaac, Finlay Mackellaig, Archibald Macfarlane, James Macdonald, Widow Maceachan, Patrick Grant, Allan Mackinnon, Dugald Macpherson, and Widow Maclean. InRudha, 11, viz., Mrs. Donald Macdonald, Donald Macinnes, Roderick Mackinnon, John Maccormack, Rory Smith, Angus Bain Macdonald, Ewan Mackinnon, Peter Macfarlane, Dugald Gillies, Alexander Macleod, Angus Roy Maceachan. These are in all 37, and they are evidently of different families. The rents were given, and the payments made, and everything in connection with their holdings. The date of this is 1794.
I was going on to explain that these people, or rather the descendants of some of them, had to be removed to Moidart, and in the congested state of the estate it had to be considered what was best to be done. I was then a young man. I had just passed at the Bar, and I and the late respected James Macgregor of Fort William were appointed trustees to do what was best. We could see nothing for it,—it was impossible for the people to subsist,—but to assist them to emigrate, and we were assisted very materially in carrying out the emigration by the resident Catholic clergyman of that time, Rev. Ronald Rankine, who indeed followed them. So many of them went to Australia and a few of them to America. But never shall I forget until my dying day,—it is a source of grief to me that I had anything whatsoever to do with that emigration, although, at the same time, God knows I cannot understand how it could have been averted. Many of the people have succeeded well and are well-to-do, but if they had remained, they would have been impoverished themselves, and they would have impoverished the few that are still on the estate.
In his interesting volume entitledReminiscences and Reflections of an Octogenarian Gael, Mr. Duncan Campbell, for over twenty-six years editor of theNorthern Chronicle, writes as follows with regard to the BreadalbaneEvictions:—
As second Marquis, “the son of his father,” contrary to all prognostications, became, as soon as expiring leases permitted it, an evicting landlord on a large scale, and he continued to pursue the policy of joining farm to farm, and turning out native people, to the end of his twenty-eight years’ reign. But like the first spout of the haggis, his first spout of evicting energy was the hottest. I saw with childish sorrow, impotent wrath, and awful wonder at man’s inhumanity to man, the harsh and sweeping Roro and Morenish clearances, and heard much talk about others which were said to be as bad if not worse. A comparison of the census returns for 1831 with those of 1861 will show how the second Marquis reduced the rural population on his large estates, while the inhabitants of certain villages were allowed, or, as at Aberfeldy, encouraged to increase. When such a loud and long-continued outcry took place about the Sutherland clearances, it seems at first sight strange that such small notice was taken by the Press, authors, and contemporary politicians, of the Breadalbane evictions, and that the only set attack on the Marquis should have been left to the vainglorious, blundering, Dunkeld coal merchant, who added the chief-like word “Dunalastair” to his designation. One reason—perchance the chief one—for the Marquis’s immunity was the prominent manner in which he associated himself with the Nonintrusionists, and his subsequently becoming an elder and a liberal benefactor of the Free Church. He had a Presbyterian upbringing, and lived in accordance with that upbringing. His Free Church zeal may, therefore, have been as genuine as he wished it to be believed; but whether simply real or partlysimulated, it covered as with a saintly cloak his evictions proceedings in the eyes of those who would have been his loud denouncers and scourging critics had he been an Episcopalian or remained in the Church of Scotland. The people he evicted, and all of us, young and old, who were witnesses of the clearances, could not give him much credit for any good in what seemed to us the purely hard and commercial spirit of the policy which he carried out as the owner of a princely Highland property. Such of the witnesses of the clearances as have lived to see the present desolation of rural baronies on the Breadalbane estates can now charitably assume that, had he foreseen what his land-management policy was to lead up to, he would, at least, have gone about his thinning-out business in a more cautious, kindly, and considerate manner, and not rudely cut, as he did, the precious ties of hereditary mutual sympathy and reliance which had long existed between the lords and the native Highland people of Breadalbane.
It is quite true that in 1834 the population on the Breadalbane estate needed thinning. The old Marquis had made a great mistake in dividing holdings which were too small before, in order to make room for Fencible soldiers who were not, as eldest sons, heirs to existing holdings. In twenty years, congestion to an alarming extent was the natural result of the old man’s mistaken kindness. There was indeed a good deal of congestion before that mistake was committed, although migration and emigration helped to keep it within some limits. Emigration would have proceeded briskly from 1760 onwards had it not been discouraged by landlords who found the fighting manhood on their estates a valuable asset; and when not positively prohibited, emigration was impeded in various ways by the Government, now alive to the value of Highlands and Isles as a nursery of soldiers and sailors. Although discouraged and impeded, emigration was never wholly stopped, and after Waterloo Glenlyon, Fortingall, and Breadalbane, Rannoch, Strathearn and Balquhidder, sent off swarms to Canada, the United States, and the West Indies. A large swarmfrom Breadalbane, Lochearnhead, and Balquhidder went off to Nova Scotia about 1828, and got Gaelic-speaking ministers to follow them. In 1829 a great number of Skyemen from Lord Macdonald’s estate went to Cape Breton, where Gaelic is the language of the people and pulpit to this day. The second Marquis of Breadalbane would have won for himself lasting glory and honour, and done his race and country valuable service, if he had chosen to place himself at the head of an emigration scheme for his surplus people, instead of merely driving them away, and further trampling on their feelings by letting the big farms he made by clearing out the native population to strangers in race, language, and sympathies. He was rich, childless, and gifted, and he utterly missed his vocation, or grand chance for gaining lasting fame among the children of the Gael.
At a later period of my life than this of which I am now writing, I looked into many kirk session books, and found that those of the parishes of Kenmore and Killin indicated a worse state of matters in Breadalbane than existed in any of the neighbouring parishes. Pauperism was increasing at a rapid rate, although it was a notorious fact that rents there were lower than on other Highland estates. The old Marquis was never a rack-renter. Other proprietors, when leases terminated, took more advantage than he did of a chance to raise rents, and when once raised they strove ever afterwards to keep them up. But I do not wonder that his son thought that if things were allowed to go on as he found them on succeeding to titles and estates, a general bankruptcy would soon be the result. Without ceasing to regret and detest his methods, I learned to see the reasonableness of the second Marquis’s view of the alarming situation. The population had simply outgrown the means of decent subsistence from the carefully cultivated small holdings which were the general rule. Had it not been for the frugality and self-helpfulness of the people, the crisis of general poverty would have come when the inflated war prices ceased, or at least in the short-crop year of 1826, when the corn raised inBreadalbane, although the hillsides were cultivated as far up as any cereal crop could be expected to ripen in the most favourable season, did not supply meal enough for two-thirds of the people. But the “calanas” of the women, especially as long as flax-spinning continued in a flourishing condition, brought in a good deal of money; and for many years “Calum a Mhuilin” (Calum of the Mill), otherwise Malcolm Campbell, road contractor, Killin, led out a host of young men to make roads in various parts of the country, and these returned with their earnings to spend the winter at home. These sources of profit were beginning to dry up when the old Marquis died.
What came of the dispersed? The least adventurous or poorest of them slipped away into the nearest manufacturing town, or mining districts where there was a demand for unskilled labourers. There some of them flourished, but not a few of them foundered. The larger portion of them emigrated to Canada, mainly to the London district of Ontario, where they cleared forest farms, cherished their Gaelic language and traditions, prospered, and hated the Marquis more, perhaps, than he rightly deserved when things were looked at from his own hard political-economy point of view.