The Project Gutenberg eBook, The History of the Highland Clearances, by Alexander Mackenzie

THE HISTORY
OF THE
HIGHLAND
CLEARANCES

BY
ALEXANDER MACKENZIE, F.S.A., Scot.

WITH A NEW INTRODUCTION
BY
IAN MacPHERSON, M.P.

“Truth is stranger than fiction.”

P. J. O’CALLAGHAN,
132-134 WEST NILE STREET, GLASGOW.

[CONTENTS.]

[EDITOR’S PREFACE]
TO SECOND EDITION.

Mackenzie’s History of the Highland Clearances, with its thrilling and almost incredible narratives of oppression and eviction, has been for a long time out of print. In view of the current movement, described by Mr. Asquith as an “organised campaign against the present system of land tenure,” it has occurred to the holder of the copyright, Mr. Eneas Mackay, publisher, Stirling, that, at the present juncture, a re-issue might be expediently prepared. He recognised that the story of the great upheaval which, early in the nineteenth century, took place among the Highland crofters would be of undoubted interest and utility to those who follow the efforts now put forth to settle the land question in Scotland. At his request I readily undertook the task of re-editing.

The circumstances, or points of view, having changed in no slight measure since the first appearance of the work, I decided to subject it to a pretty thorough revision—to excise a large mass of irrelevant matter and to introduce several fresh articles. Donald Macleod’s “Gloomy Memories” are omitted out of considerations for space, and because it is proposed to reprint them shortly in a separate form. There is included, for the first time, a vindication of the Sutherland Clearances by Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, author of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” and another by Mr. James Loch, principal factor on the Sutherland Estates during the time the removals were carried out. There are also given graphic and realistic word pictures of these evictions by the Rev. Donald Sage. The general arrangement of the book has been altered to the extent of grouping together the accounts relating to each particular county, and descriptions are added of a number of Clearances which were not dealt with in the first edition.

I have pleasure in acknowledging my indebtedness to Mr. Ian Macpherson, M.P., and Dr. J. H. Fullarton, London, for kindly looking over the proofs.

Special and very sincere thanks are due to Mr. John Henderson, secretary of the National Library Club, London, who manifested the kindest and liveliest interest in the undertaking. Not only did he read the proofs with scrupulous care, but he was ever ready to give advice and offer suggestions when cases of doubt arose. To me, one of the most pleasant memories connected with the labour of editing is the valuable assistance always so promptly and cheerfully given by Mr. Henderson.

I greatly appreciate the courtesy shown by Messrs. Daniel Ross & Co., Ltd., publishers, Wick, in permitting extracts to be taken from Mr. Sage’s Memorabilia Domestica.

Regarding the Publisher, I may be permitted to mention that he rendered my task very easy by providing, sometimes at considerable trouble and expense, all works of reference which I considered would be of service in endeavouring to make this History thoroughly accurate and reliable.

[INTRODUCTION.]

It is with great pleasure that I accede to the request that I should write a short introduction to welcome this reprint of so interesting and valuable a book as Mackenzie’s Highland Clearances. It has long been out of print, which anyone who recalls its first appearance will easily understand. It was written by a Highlander who commanded in a great measure the esteem of Highlanders, and it collected for the first time the sane and authenticated accounts of the experience of the Highlanders in the great agrarian crisis of their history. It appealed to the race as no book within recent years has done. The Highlander loves his past and his native land with a passionate attachment, and the story of the great wrongs of the days of the clearances is still deeply embedded in his mind. Within the last year or two many accounts, more or less imaginary, have appeared purporting to be true stories of those terrible days in the north, and it is peculiarly appropriate that, when once again men’s minds are centred on the great problem of the land in this country as a whole, and specific attention has been directed towards the Highlands, this reprint should now appear. We are all, therefore, under deep obligations to the public spirit and enterprize of the publishers and others who have been good enough to secure in an accessible form a reliable account of the conditions and events which at once intensified the acuteness of the land-hunger in the Highlands and constituted the blackest page in Highland history.

Many evil deeds have been associated with the abuse of the monopoly power of land ownership in this and other countries, but it is safe to say that nowhere within the limits of those islands, or, indeed, anywhere else at any time have blacker or more foul deeds been committed in the sacred name of property than in the Highlands of Scotland in those days. It has always been a matter of astonishment that a brave race should ever have submitted to them. This becomes all the more remarkable, too, when one remembers that during those very years regiments raised in these very districts of the finest soldiers who ever marched to the stirring strains of the bagpipes, were gaining for the empire and for British arms the most noted achievements ever won in the Napoleonic wars and in the colonies. It is true, of course, and it is an eternal discredit, that many of these brave fellows came back wounded and war-scarred to find, not that a grateful country had taken care that the homes and the helpless ones they had left behind were kept sacred and immune from the greed and ruthless savagery of the landlord or his hirelings, but that their hearths and homes were desecrated and destroyed, and every moral law of patriotism and honour had been violated. “Their humble dwellings,” says Hugh Miller, “were of their own rearing; it was they themselves who had broken in their little fields from the waste; from time immemorial, far beyond the reach of history, they had possessed their mountain holdings, they had defended them so well of old that the soil was still virgin ground, in which the invader had found only a grave; and their young men were now in foreign lands fighting at the command of their chieftainess the battles of their country, not in the character of hired soldiers, but of men who regarded these very holdings as their stake in the quarrel.” Well has my friend Mackenzie MacBride expressed it:—

“Ye remnant of the brave!

Who charge when the pipes are heard;

Don’t think, my lads, that you fight for your own,

’Tis but for the good of the land.

And when the fight is done

And you come back over the foam,

‘Well done,’ they say, ‘you are good and true,

But we cannot give you a home.

‘For the hill we want for the deer,

And the glen the birds enjoy,

And bad for the game is the smoke of the cot,

And the song of the crofter’s boy.’”

The silence with which men of that calibre met these hardships and cruelty might well remain an enigma to one who does not know the Highlands. They knew that for centuries their ancestors had tilled those lands and lived free and untrammelled. By every moral law, if not by the law of the land, they had a right to the soil which had been defended with their own right arm and that of their ancestors. These were the days when they were useful to the chief, who assumed some indefinable right to the land. But the day came after the “Forty-Five” when men were no longer assets to the chief. His territorial jurisdiction was broken. He wanted money, not men, and the lonely silences of the hills instead of merry laughter and prattle of children singing graces by the wayside. And these men bore the change which meant so much to them with patience. Why? The Highlands were permeated then as now with a deep religious sense. They lent a willing ear to the teachings of the ministers of the Gospel, who wielded the power of the iron hand which left its deep impress on the social life and even the literature of the Highlands. They regarded the minister as the stern oracle of truth, and the strict interpreter of the meaning of the ways of God to man. What happened was right. And a perusal of the pages that are to follow will show what a mean use many of these ministers made of the power which their faithful flock believed was vested in them. These men were—with a noble exception or two—in reality the servile tools of the “estate” whose powers they feared, and whose support they received. In their own interests and in those of their earthly lord and master, they assured the people that all their troubles were but part of the punishment inflicted on them by Providence in the course of working out their redemption! This attitude of the ministers had another significance. In many parishes they were the only persons who were educated enough to write, and so able to express the wrongs which their people were called upon to endure. But their voices were silent and their pens were idle, except, indeed, when they were used to ennoble the character, the prestige, and the benevolence of the evicting tyrant!

If they were thus comparatively passive in their “white-washing,” there were others openly active. In Hugh Miller’s words. “Ever since the planning of the fatal experience which ruined Sutherland, the noble family through which it was originated and carried on, had betrayed the utmost jealousy in having its real result 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 utmost surveillance. If the misrepresentations of the press could have altered the matter of fact, famine would not now be gnawing the vitals of Sutherland in a year a little less abundant than its predecessors, 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 woe, 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.” And then he goes on to say, “It has been said that the Gaelic language removed a district more effectually from 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 or Skye.” And so the House of Sutherland inveigles Mrs. Harriet Beecher Stowe, fresh from her literary triumphs in the American environment of “Uncle Tom’s Cabin,” with no knowledge of the Gaelic language which “separated so effectually the district in which it was spoken” from English public opinion, but in which language alone grievances were likely to be expressed, to write a grovelling apology. This she does, forsooth, in “Sunny Memories,” when the hearts and the spirits of the people outside the circle in which she was receiving well-merited, if short, hospitality were broken! Readers of the “Clearances” will notice how completely Donald M’Leod, whose name every lover of nobility of character, courage, and justice will ever honour, demolishes her insipid table-talk. An even worse type of white-washer was James Loch, who is now put forward as an unbiassed and disinterested observer of the gracious benevolence and marvellous generosity of the House of Sutherland. It was not mentioned that he was the factor for the then Duke!

The most notorious of all the evictions were the Sutherlandshire ones, and though there are many accounts of them in this volume, the gruesomeness of which has become a bye-word, they do not tell the whole tale. Since this question was revived during these last few months, I have had letters from descendants of the evicted from all over the colonies with new and conclusive proofs of the recklessness and severity which characterised them. A factor visited a township in western Sutherland, and went towards the house of the great grandmother of one correspondent. He met her as she was returning from milking the cows carrying a wooden vessel of milk. Brutally he snatched it from her, and to use his words, “drowned for ever the fire of her hearth with it,” and then drove her and her children to search through great privation for some foothold on rugged ground beside the western sea. When this factor died, his body was carried through another township. The sympathy of the people was but slight, for they remembered his cruelty. An old woman expressed the general, but hitherto suppressed, feeling of the community when she said, “Cha deach am maor rìamh troimh na bhaile cho samhach sa chaidh e an duigh” (“The factor never went through this township so peacefully as he went to-day”).

If, as Hugh Miller says, there has been no lack of professional white-washers, there has equally been no lack of testimony, straight and true, from the hearts of the people, in bitter lamentation over the cruelty that befel the race at the hands of mercenary landlords. This testimony does not come from one class nor from one county. I have shown in another place how even Dr. Johnson, who loved neither the Scots nor their traditions, found himself “full of the old Highland spirit, and was dissatisfied at hearing of rack rents and emigration,” and was compelled to remark, “A rapacious chief would make a wilderness of his estate;” how unprejudiced writers like Mrs. Grant of Laggan bemoaned the rapacity of those who drove away the descendants of men whom their fathers led; and how bitterly a scholar like Professor Blackie viewed the depopulated glens where once heroes lived and fought. The bitterest note of all, as well as the truest, is sung by the Gaelic bards. They were of the people, and lived among them. They knew their feelings, none better, and it was their right to express that feeling with truth and with fearlessness in the language of the people. And I know of no bard in any county in the Highlands who has not vigorously denounced in some way the cruelty to which his people were arbitrarily subjected. It was a blow to them to find that chiefs of the old school had departed, that a change—in Gaelic, change is the best word for death—had taken place from the spirit of the chief who said, “I would rather drink punch in the house of my people than be enabled by their hardships to drink claret in my own.” Well might a good Celt of a later day have written of the new type of so-called chief:

“See that you kindly use them, O man

To whom God giveth

Stewardship over them in thy short span,

Not for thy pleasure;

Woe be to them who choose for a clan

Four-footed people.”

Take the Islay bard. He seeks to arouse our indignation because of glens and hillsides reft of men to work and fight and of children who might sing to Nature and her God. Clearly his patriotic soul is sorely burdened: the cold iron that has entered into it has made his soul terribly bitter. “Facit indignatio versus.” When he looks around and thinks of the days that were, his spirit is that of blood and carnage. He describes the hills that he loves with wonderful grace of diction; he hears a song or two—shieling songs—of marvellous beauty, and “shieling songs contain many soft, siren strains, which were believed to have their source in fairyland,” for their airs came from the good folk of the hills. But these things do not tempt him long; he is soon back again to the point that was sorest of all to him—the desolate glens and the hillsides “left to be garrisoned by the lonely shepherd.” Some of the poets were sportsmen like Duncan M’Intyre. Their grievance was always against the sheep, and the lowland shepherds, who desecrated for filthy lucre the hills which were their birthright and who spoke an alien tongue which frightened even the echoes!

Deer and sporting rights (after game laws were enacted) soon became more profitable than sheep, and it is amusing to find controversialists of to-day attempting to show that evictions never took place on account of deer forests. It was not the fault of the landlords that they did not. Evictions took place for the object that was at the moment most profitable. The Napoleonic wars made sheep runs temporarily more profitable; but the moment there was more profit to be obtained from sport and deer forests, then deer forests were to a large extent substituted for sheep runs. To-day there are over three million acres in Northern Scotland alone devoted to these preserves; and in 1892 the Deer Forest Commission scheduled over one million seven hundred thousand acres as being fit for small-holding purposes. The casual reader must beware, and must notice that this vast number of acres includes grazing lands also, otherwise critics who “avowedly represent the landlord interests” may feel aggrieved. But it will also be remembered that evictions primarily took place for grazing purposes; and further, that a small holding in Scotland is not quite the same as a small holding in England. In England it consists of a number of acres which are under cultivation; in Scotland, I am referring, of course, to the deer forest country, it consists of some acres of cultivated land with very often a very large common outrun in moorland and hills for the township. So that when the uninitiated see pictures of deer forests that are said to be fit for small-holding purposes, they will now understand and suppress a smile. If only men could realise what can be produced out of what might appear to be the most impossible places! It has been said that if you give a man the secure possession of a rock, he will turn it into a garden, and one has only got to visit the Highlands to see how a hard-working and industrious peasantry have sought in this way with success to fight against the ills with which they were confronted by an ungrateful landlordism. One of the worst features of the “Clearances” was the method in which they were perpetrated. Examples will be found in these pages of sick people being carried out of their houses, and left on the wayside when their houses were in flames, and the present locations of some of the crofters are grim reminders of the extreme privations suffered by the people who settled in them. Perched on the rocks and moorlands, these people were driven from the inland valleys, and had to build themselves shelters from the turf and stones of the hillside, and carve out of barren land with enormous industry, and under the constant menace of famine, the miserable patches of land which remain to-day as evidence of their labours. The others were forced to emigrate, and the sufferings of those who survived well-nigh baffle description. The horrors of the small emigrant sailing ships of these days, and particularly on these occasions when people were packed together regardless of comfort and the decencies of life, and without sufficient food, were equalled only by the terrible privations and struggle for existence that awaited those who landed on the frozen lands of the north of Canada, to be assailed by hostile Indians, the rigours of the weather, and the desolation of an unfriendly country. It is altogether a tale of barbarous action unequalled in the annals of agrarian crime.

And need I do more than add what one who will never be regarded other than as a typical Tory, has written: “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 one day be found to have been as shortsighted as it is selfish and unjust. Meantime, the Highlands may become the fairy ground for romance and poetry, or the subject of experiment for the professors of speculation, historical and economical. But, if the hour of need should come, the pibroch may sound through the deserted region, but the summons will remain unanswered.” These are the words of Sir Walter Scott.

J. I. Macpherson.

[Highland Clearances.]

[SUTHERLAND.]

ALEXANDER MACKENZIE ON THE CLEARANCES.[1]

To give a proper account of the Sutherland Clearances would take a bulky volume. Indeed, a large tome of 354 pages has been written and published in their defence by him who was mainly responsible for them, called “An Account of the Sutherland Improvements,” by James Loch, at that time Commissioner for the Marchioness of Stafford and heiress of Sutherland. This was the first account I ever read of these so-called improvements; and it was quite enough to convince me, and it will be sufficient to convince anyone who knows anything of the country, that the improvement of the people, by driving them in the most merciless and cruel manner from the homes of their fathers, was carried out on a huge scale and in the most inconsiderate and heartless manner by those in charge of the Sutherland estates. But when one reads the other side, Macleod’s “Gloomy Memories,” General Stewart of Garth’s “Sketches of the Highlanders,” and other contemporary publications, one wonders that such iniquities could ever have been permitted in any Christian country, much more so in Great Britain, which has done so much for the amelioration of subject races and the oppressed in every part of the world, while her own brave sons have been persecuted, oppressed and banished without compensation by greedy and cold-blooded proprietors, who owed their position and their lands to the ancestors of the very men they were now treating so cruelly.

The motives of the landlords, generally led by southern factors worse than themselves, were, in most cases, pure self-interest, and they pursued their policy of extermination with a recklessness and remorselessness unparalleled anywhere else where the Gospel of peace and charity was preached—except, perhaps, unhappy Ireland. Generally, law and justice, religion and humanity, were either totally disregarded, or, what was worse, in many cases converted into and applied as instruments of oppression. Every conceivable means, short of the musket and the sword, were used to drive the natives from the land they loved, and to force them to exchange their crofts and homes—brought originally into cultivation and built by themselves, or by their forefathers—for wretched patches among the barren rocks on the sea shore, and to depend, after losing their cattle and their sheep, and after having their houses burnt about their ears or razed to the ground, on the uncertain produce of the sea for subsistence, and that in the case of a people, who, in many instances, and especially in Sutherlandshire, were totally unacquainted with a seafaring life, and quite unfitted to contend with its perils.

What was true generally of the Highlands, was in the county of Sutherland carried to the greatest extreme. That unfortunate county, according to an eye-witness, was made another Moscow. The inhabitants were literally burnt out, and every contrivance and ingenious and unrelenting cruelty was eagerly adopted for extirpating the race. Many lives were sacrificed by famine and other hardships and privations; hundreds, stripped of their all, emigrated to the Canadas and other parts of America; great numbers, especially of the young and athletic, sought employment in the Lowlands and in England, where, few of them being skilled workmen, they were obliged—even farmers who had lived in comparative affluence in their own country—to compete with common labourers, in communities where their language and simple manners rendered them objects of derision and ridicule. The aged and infirm, the widows and orphans, with those of their families who could not think of leaving them alone in their helplessness, and a number, whose attachment to the soil which contained the ashes of their ancestors, were induced to accept of the wretched allotments offered them on the wild moors and barren rocks. The mild nature and religious training of the Highlanders prevented a resort to that determined resistance and revenge which has repeatedly set bounds to the rapacity of landlords in Ireland. Their ignorance of the English language, and the want of natural leaders, made it impossible for them to make their grievances known to the outside world. They were, therefore, maltreated with impunity. The ministers generally sided with the oppressing lairds, who had the Church patronage at their disposal for themselves and for their sons. The professed ministers of religion sanctioned the iniquity, “the foulest deeds were glossed over, and all the evil which could not be attributed to the natives themselves, such as severe seasons, famines, and consequent disease, was by these pious gentlemen ascribed to Providence, as a punishment for sin.”

The system of turning out the ancient inhabitants from their native soil throughout the Highlands during the first half of the nineteenth century has been carried into effect in the county of Sutherland with greater severity and revolting cruelty than in any other part of the Highlands, and that though the Countess-Marchioness and her husband, the Marquis of Stafford, were by no means devoid of humanity, however atrocious and devoid of human feeling were the acts carried out in their name by heartless underlings, who represented the ancient tenantry to their superiors as lazy and rebellious, though, they maintained, everything was being done for their advantage and improvement. How this was done will be seen in the sequel. South countrymen were introduced and the land given to them for sheep farms over the heads of the native tenantry. These strangers were made justices of the peace and armed with all sorts of authority in the county, and thus enabled to act in the most harsh and tyrannical fashion, none making them afraid; while the oppressed natives were placed completely at their mercy. They dare not even complain, for were not their oppressors also the administrators of the law? The seventeen parish ministers, with the single exception of the Rev. Mr. Sage, took the side of the powers that were, exhorting the people to submit and to stifle their cries of distress, telling them that all their sufferings came from the hand of their Heavenly Father as a punishment for their past transgressions. Most of these ministers have since rendered their account, and let us hope they have been forgiven for such cruel and blasphemous conduct. But one cannot help noting, to what horrid uses these men in Sutherlandshire and elsewhere prostituted their sacred office and high calling.

The Sutherland clearances were commenced in a comparatively mild way in 1807, by the ejection of ninety families from Farr and Lairg. These were provided for some fifteen or seventeen miles distant with smaller lots, to which they were permitted to remove their cattle and plenishing, leaving their crops unprotected, however, in the ground from which they were evicted. They had to pull down their old houses, remove the timber, and build new ones, during which period they had in many cases to sleep under the open canopy of heaven. In the autumn they carried away, with great difficulty, what remained of their crops, but the fatigue incurred cost a few of them their lives, while others contracted diseases which stuck to them during the remainder of their lives, and shortened their days.

In 1809 several hundred were evicted from the parishes of Dornoch, Rogart, Loth, Clyne, and Golspie, under circumstances of much greater severity than those already described. Several were driven by various means to leave the country altogether, and to those who could not be induced to do so, patches of moor and bog were offered on Dornoch Moor and Brora Links—quite unfit for cultivation. This process was carried on annually until, in 1811, the land from which the people were ejected was divided into large farms, and advertised as huge sheep runs. The country was overrun with strangers who came to look at these extensive tracts. Some of these gentlemen got up a cry that they were afraid of their lives among the evicted tenantry. A trumped-up story was manufactured that one of the interlopers was pursued by some of the natives of Kildonan, and put in bodily fear. The military were sent for from Fort George. The 21st Regiment was marched to Dunrobin Castle, with artillery and cartloads of ammunition. A great farce was performed; the people were sent for by the factors to the Castle at a certain hour. They came peaceably, but the farce must be gone through, the Riot Act was read; a few sheepish, innocent Highlanders were made prisoners, but nothing could be laid to their charge, and they were almost immediately set at liberty, while the soldiers were ordered back to Fort George. The demonstration, however, had the desired effect in cowing and frightening the people into the most absolute submission. They became dismayed and broken-hearted, and quietly submitted to their fate. The clergy all this time were assiduous in preaching that all the misfortunes of the people were “fore-ordained of God, and denouncing the vengeance of Heaven and eternal damnation on all those who would presume to make the slightest resistance.” At the May term of 1812 large districts of these parishes were cleared in the most peaceable manner, the poor creatures foolishly believing the false teaching of their selfish and dishonest spiritual guides—save the mark! The Earl of Selkirk, who went personally to the district, allured many of the evicted people to emigrate to his estates on the Red River in British North America, whither a whole ship-cargo of them went. After a long and otherwise disastrous passage they found themselves deceived and deserted by the Earl, left to their unhappy fate in an inclement wilderness, without any protection from the hordes of Red Indian savages by whom the district was infested, and who plundered them of their all on their arrival and finally massacred them, save a small remnant who managed to escape, and travelled, through immense difficulties, across trackless forests to Upper Canada.

The notorious Mr. Sellar was at this time sub-factor, and in the spring of 1814 he took a large portion of the parishes of Farr and Kildonan into his own hands. In the month of March the old tenantry received notices to quit at the ensuing May term, and a few days after the summonses were served the greater portion of the heath pasture was, by his orders, set on fire. By this cruel proceeding the cattle belonging to the old tenantry were left without food during the spring, and it was impossible to dispose of them at a fair price, the price having fallen after the war; for Napoleon was now a prisoner in Elba, and the demand for cattle became temporarily dull, and prices very much reduced. To make matters worse, fodder was unusually scarce this spring, and the poor people’s cattle depended for subsistence solely on the spring grass which sprouts out among the heather, but which this year had been burnt by the factor who would himself reap the benefit when he came into possession later on.

In May the work of ejectment was again commenced, accompanied by cruelties hitherto unknown even in the Highlands. Atrocities were perpetrated which I cannot trust myself to describe in my own words. I shall give what is much more valuable—a description by an eye-witness in his own language. He says:—In former removals the tenants had been allowed to carry away the timber of their old dwellings to erect houses on their new allotments, but now a more summary mode was adopted by setting fire to them. The able-bodied men were by this time away after their cattle or otherwise engaged at a distance, so that the immediate sufferers by the general house-burning that now commenced were the aged and infirm, the women and children. As the lands were now in the hands of the factor himself, and were to be occupied as sheep farms, and as the people made no resistance, they expected, at least, some indulgence in the way of permission to occupy their houses and other buildings till they could gradually remove, and meanwhile look after their growing crops. Their consternation was therefore greater, when immediately after the May term-day, a commencement was made to pull down and set fire to the houses over their heads. The old people, women and others, then began to preserve the timber which was their own; but the devastators proceeded with the greatest celerity, demolishing all before them, and when they had overthrown all the houses in a large tract of country they set fire to the wreck. Timber, furniture, and every other article that could not be instantly removed was consumed by fire or otherwise utterly destroyed. The proceedings were carried on with the greatest rapidity and the most reckless cruelty. The cries of the victims, the confusion, the despair and horror painted on the countenances of the one party, and the exulting ferocity of the other, beggar all description. At these scenes Mr. Sellar was present, and apparently, as sworn by several witnesses at his subsequent trial, ordering and directing the whole. Many deaths ensued from alarm, from fatigue, and cold, the people having been instantly deprived of shelter, and left to the mercies of the elements. Some old men took to the woods and to the rocks, wandering about in a state approaching to, or of absolute, insanity; and several of them in this situation lived only a few days. Pregnant women were taken in premature labour, and several children did not long survive their sufferings. “To these scenes,” says Donald Macleod[2], “I was an eye-witness, and am ready to substantiate the truth of my statements, not only by my own testimony, but by that of many others who were present at the time. In such a scene of general devastation, it is almost useless to particularise the cases of individuals; the suffering was great and universal. I shall, however, notice a very few of the extreme cases of which I was myself an eye-witness. John Mackay’s wife, Ravigill, in attempting to pull down her house, in the absence of her husband, to preserve the timber, fell through the roof. She was in consequence taken in premature labour, and in that state was exposed to the open air and to the view of all the by-standers. Donald Munro, Garvott, lying in a fever, was turned out of his house and exposed to the elements. Donald Macbeath, an infirm and bed-ridden old man, had the house unroofed over him, and was in that state exposed to the wind and rain until death put a period to his sufferings. I was present at the pulling down and burning of the house of William Chisholm, Badinloskin, in which was lying his wife’s mother, an old bed-ridden woman of nearly 100 years of age, none of the family being present. I informed the persons about to set fire to the house of this circumstance, and prevailed on them to wait until Mr. Sellar came. On his arrival, I told him of the poor old woman being in a condition unfit for removal, when he replied, ‘Damn her, the old witch, she has lived too long—let her burn.’ Fire was immediately set to the house, and the blankets in which she was carried out were in flames before she could be got out. She was placed in a little shed, and it was with great difficulty they were prevented from firing it also. The old woman’s daughter arrived while the house was on fire, and assisted the neighbours in removing her mother out of the flames and smoke, presenting a picture of horror which I shall never forget, but cannot attempt to describe.” Within five days she was a corpse.

In 1816 Sellar was charged at Inverness, before the Court of Justiciary, with culpable homicide and fire-raising in connection with these proceedings, and, considering all the circumstances, it is not at all surprising that he was “honourably” acquitted of the grave charges made against him. Almost immediately after, however, he ceased to be factor on the Sutherland estates, and Mr. Loch came into power. Evictions were carried out from 1814 down to 1819 and 1820, pretty much of the same character as those already described, but the removal of Mr. Young, the chief factor, and Mr. Sellar from power was hailed with delight by the whole remaining population. Their very names had become a terror. Their appearance in any part of the county caused such alarm as to make women fall into fits. One woman became so terrified that she became insane, and whenever she saw any one she did not recognise, she invariably cried out in a state of absolute terror—“Oh! sin Sellar”—“Oh! there’s Sellar.” The people, however, soon discovered that the new factors were not much better. Several leases which were current would not expire until 1819 and 1820, so that the evictions were necessarily only partial from 1814 down to that period. The people were reduced to such a state of poverty that even Mr. Loch himself, in his “Sutherland Improvements,” page 76, admits that—“Their wretchedness was so great that, after pawning everything they possessed to the fishermen on the coast, such as had no cattle were reduced to come down from the hills in hundreds for the purpose of gathering cockles on the shore. Those who lived in the more remote situations of the county were obliged to subsist upon broth made of nettles, thickened with a little oatmeal. Those who had cattle had recourse to the still more wretched expedient of bleeding them, and mixing the blood with oatmeal, which they afterwards cut into slices and fried. Those who had a little money came down and slept all night upon the beach, in order to watch the boats returning from the fishing, that they might be in time to obtain a part of what had been caught.” He, however, omitted to mention the share he and his predecessors had taken in reducing the people to such misery, and the fact that at this very time he had constables stationed at the Little Ferry to prevent the starved tenantry from collecting shellfish in the only place where they could find them.

He prevailed upon the people to sign documents consenting to remove at the next Whitsunday term, promising at the same time to make good provision for them elsewhere. In about a month after, the work of demolition and devastation again commenced, and parts of the parishes of Golspie, Rogart, Farr, and the whole of Kildonan were in a blaze. Strong parties with faggots and other combustible material were set to work; three hundred houses were given ruthlessly to the flames, and their occupants pushed out in the open air without food or shelter. Macleod, who was present, describes the horrible scene as follows:—

“The consternation and confusion were extreme; little or no time was given for the removal of persons or property; the people striving to remove the sick and the helpless before the fire should reach them; next, struggling to save the most valuable of their effects. The cries of the women and children, the roaring of the affrighted cattle, hunted at the same time by the yelling dogs of the shepherds amid the smoke and fire, altogether presented a scene that completely baffles description—it required to be seen to be believed. A dense cloud of smoke enveloped the whole country by day, and even extended far out to sea; at night an awfully grand but terrific scene presented itself—all the houses in an extensive district in flames at once. I myself ascended a height about eleven o’clock in the evening, and counted two hundred and fifty blazing houses, many of the owners of which were my relations, and all of whom I personally knew, but whose present condition—whether in or out of the flames—I could not tell. The conflagration lasted six days, till the whole of the dwellings were reduced to ashes or smoking ruins. During one of these days a boat actually lost her way in the dense smoke as she approached the shore, but at night was enabled to reach a landing-place by the lurid light of the flames.”

The whole of the inhabitants of Kildonan, numbering nearly 2000 souls, except three families, were utterly rooted and burnt out, and the whole parish converted into a solitary wilderness. The suffering was intense. Some lost their reason. Over a hundred souls took passage to Caithness in a small sloop, the master humanely agreeing to take them in the hold, from which he had just unloaded a cargo of quicklime. A head storm came on, and they were nine days at sea in the most miserable condition—men, women, and helpless children huddled up together, with barely any provisions. Several died in consequence, and others became invalids for the rest of their days. One man, Donald Mackay, whose family was suffering from a severe fever, carried two of his children a distance of twenty-five miles to this vessel. Another old man took shelter in a meal mill, where he was kept from starvation by licking the meal refuse scattered among the dust on the floor, and protected from the rats and other vermin by his faithful collie. George Munro, the miller at Farr, who had six of his family down with fever, had to remove them in that state to a damp kiln, while his home was given to the flames. And all this was done in the name of proprietors who could not be considered tyrants in the ordinary sense of the term.

General Stewart of Garth, about a year after the cruelties perpetrated in Sutherland, writes with regret of the unnatural proceedings as “the delusions practised (by his subordinates) on a generous and public-spirited proprietor, which have been so perseveringly applied, that it would appear as if all feeling of former kindness towards the native tenantry had ceased to exist. To them any uncultivated spot of moorland, however small, was considered sufficient for the support of a family; while the most lavish encouragement has been given to all the new tenants, on whom, with the erection of buildings, the improvement of lands, roads, bridges, &c., upwards of £210,000 had been expended since 1808 (in fourteen years). With this proof of unprecedented liberality, it cannot be sufficiently lamented that an estimate of the character of these poor people was taken from the misrepresentation of interested persons, instead of judging from the conduct of the same men when brought into the world, where they obtained a name and character which have secured the esteem and approbation of men high in honour and rank, and, from their talents and experience, perfectly capable of judging with correctness. With such proofs of capability, and with such materials for carrying on the improvements and maintaining the permanent prosperity of the county, when occupied by a hardy, abstemious race, easily led on to a full exertion of their faculties by a proper management, there cannot be a question but that if, instead of placing them, as has been done, in situations bearing too near a resemblance to the potato-gardens of Ireland, they had been permitted to remain as cultivators of the soil, receiving a moderate share of the vast sums lavished on their richer successors, such a humane and considerate regard to the prosperity of a whole people would undoubtedly have answered every good purpose.” He then goes on to show that when the valleys and higher grounds were let to the sheep-farmers, the whole native population was driven to the sea shore, where they were crowded on small lots of land to earn subsistence by labour and sea-fishing, the latter so little congenial to their former habits and experience. “And these one or two acre lots are represented as improvements!” He then asks how in a country, without regular employment or manufactories, a family is to be supported on one or two acres? The thing was impossible, and the consequence is that “over the whole of this district, where the sea-shore is accessible, the coast is thickly studded with thatched cottages, crowded with starving inhabitants,” while strangers, with capital, usurp the land and dispossess the swain. Ancient respectable tenants, who passed the greater part of their lives in the enjoyment of abundance, and in the exercise of hospitality and charity, possessing stocks 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 rents of their lots, not from the produce, but from the sea. When the herring fishery succeeds, they generally satisfy the landlords, whatever privations they may suffer; but when the fishing fails, they fall in arrears and are sequestrated and their stocks sold to pay the rents, their lots given to others, and they and their families turned adrift on the world; but in these trying circumstances, he concludes, “we cannot sufficiently admire their meek and patient spirit, supported by the powerful influence of moral and religious principle.”

The beautiful Strathnaver, containing a population equal to Kildonan, had been cleared in the same heartless manner.

In 1828, Donald Macleod, after a considerable absence, returned to his native Kildonan, where he attended divine service in the parish church, which he found attended by a congregation consisting of eight shepherds and their dogs—numbering between twenty and thirty—the minister, and three members of his family. Macleod came in too late for the first psalm, but at the conclusion of the service the fine old tune Bangor was given out, “when the four-footed hearers became excited, got up on the seats, and raised a most infernal chorus of howling. Their masters attacked them with their crooks, which only made matters worse; the yelping and howling continued to the end of the service.” And Donald Macleod retired to contemplate the painful and shameful scene, and contrast it with what he had previously experienced as a member, for many years, of the large and devout congregation that worshipped formerly in the parish church of his native valley.

The Parish Church of Farr was no longer in existence; the fine population of Strathnaver was rooted and burnt out during the general conflagration, and presented a similar aspect to his own native parish. The church, no longer found necessary, was razed to the ground, and its timbers conveyed to construct one of the Sutherland “improvements”—the Inn at Altnaharra, while the minister’s house was converted into a dwelling for a fox-hunter. A woman, well-known in the parish, travelling through the desolated Strath next year after the evictions, was asked on her return home for her news, when she replied—“O, chan eil ach sgiala bronach! sgiala bronach!” “Oh, only sad news, sad news! I have seen the timber of our well attended kirk covering the inn at Altnaharra; I have seen the kirk-yard where our friends are mouldering filled with tarry sheep, and Mr. Sage’s study turned into a kennel for Robert Gunn’s dogs, and I have seen a crow’s nest in James Gordon’s chimney head;” after which she fell into a paroxysm of grief.

THE REV. DONALD SAGE ON THE SUTHERLAND CLEARANCES.

I remained for about a year in the capacity of tutor in the family of Mr. Robert MacKid, Sheriff-Substitute of Sutherland, who lived at Kirkton, in the parish of Golspie. I shall briefly sum up what I remember of this period.

It was a very short time previous to my residence in Mr. MacKid’s family that the first “Sutherland Clearance” took place. This consisted in the ejection from their minutely-divided farms of several hundreds of the Sutherlandshire aborigines, who had from time immemorial been in possession of their mountain tenements. This sweeping desolation extended over many parishes, but it fell most heavily on the parish of Kildonan. It was the device of one William Young, a successful corn-dealer and land-improver. He rose from indigence, but was naturally a man of taste, of an ingenious turn of mind, and a shrewd calculator. After realising some hundreds of pounds by corn-dealing, he purchased from Sir Archibald Dunbar of Thundertown a small and valueless property in Morayshire called Inverugie. It lay upon the sea-shore, and, like many properties of more ancient date, it had been completely covered with sea-sand which had drifted upon its surface. For this small and worthless spot he paid a correspondingly small price—about £700—but, tasking his native and vigorous genius for improvement, he set himself at once to better his bargain. Making use of a plough of peculiar construction, he turned the sand down and the rich old soil up, and thus made it one of the most productive properties in the county. This, with other necessary improvements, however, involved him in debt; but, just as it became a question with him how to pay it, his praise in the north as a scientific improver of land reached the ears of the Stafford family, who, in connection with their immense wealth, were racked with the anxiety to improve their Highland estate. As William Young had been so successful on the estate of Inverugie they thought he could not but be equally so on the Sutherland estate. Young introduced the depopulating system into Sutherland.[3] This system, during his tenure of office as commissioner on the Sutherland property, was just at its commencement. It was first brought to bear on the parish of Kildonan. The whole north and south sides of the Strath, from Kildonan to Caen on the left bank of the river, and from Dalcharn to Marrel on the right bank, were, at one fell sweep, cleared of their inhabitants. The measures for their ejectment had been taken with such promptness, and were so suddenly and brutally carried out, as to excite a tumult among the people. Young had as his associate in the factorship a man of the name of Sellar, who acted in the subordinate capacity of legal agent and accountant on the estate, and who, by his unprincipled recklessness in conducting the process of ejectment, added fuel to the flame. It was said that the people rose almost en masse, that the constables and officials were resisted and their lives threatened, and the combination among the peasantry was represented as assuming at last so alarming an aspect that the Sheriff-Depute of the county was under the necessity of calling in the military to quell the riot. A detachment of soldiers was accordingly sent from Fort-George, a powder magazine was erected at Dornoch, and every preparation made as for the commencement of a civil war. But the chief magistrate of the county, shrewdly suspecting the origin of these reports, ordered back the military, came himself alone among the people, and instituted a cool and impartial enquiry into their proceedings. The result was that the formidable riot, which was reported to have for its objects the murder of Young and Sellar, the expulsion of the store-farmers, and the burning of Dunrobin Castle, amounted after all only to this, that a certain number of the people had congregated in different places and had given vent to their outraged feelings and sense of oppression in rash and unguarded terms. It could not be proved that a single act of violence was committed. Sellar laboured hard to involve my father and mother in the criminality of these proceedings, but he utterly failed. The peasantry, as fine as any in the world, were treated by the owners of the soil as “good for nothing but to be cast out and trodden under feet of men,” while the tract of country thus depopulated was divided into two large sheep farms, one of which was given in lease to William Cluness of Cracaig, and the other to a Mr. Reid from Northumberland.

The reckless lordly proprietors had resolved upon the expulsion of their long-standing and much-attached tenantry from their widely-extended estates, and the Sutherland Clearance of 1819 was not only the climax of their system of oppression for many years before, but the extinction of the last remnant of the ancient Highland peasantry in the north. As violent tempests send out before them many a deep and sullen roar, so did the advancing storm give notice of its approach by various single acts of oppression. I can yet recall to memory the deep and thrilling sensation which I experienced, as I sat at the fireside in my rude, little parlour at Achness, when the tidings of the meditated removal of my poor flock first reached me from headquarters. It might be about the beginning of October, 1818. A tenant from the middle of the Strath had been to Rhives, the residence of Mr. Young, the commissioner, paying his rent. He was informed, and authorised to tell his neighbours, that the rent for the half-year, ending in May, 1819, would not be demanded, as it was determined to lay the districts of Strathnaver and Upper Kildonan under sheep. This intelligence when first announced was indignantly discredited by the people. Notwithstanding their knowledge of former clearances they clung to the hope that the “Ban-mhorair Chataibh” (the Duchess of Sutherland) would not give her consent to the warning as issued by her subordinates, and thus deprive herself of her people, as truly a part of her noble inheritance as were her broad acres. But the course of a few weeks soon undeceived them. Summonses of ejectment were issued and despatched all over the district. These must have amounted to upwards of a thousand, as the population of the Mission alone was 1600 souls, and many more than those of the Mission were ejected. The summonses were distributed with the utmost preciseness. They were handed in at every house and hovel alike, be the occupiers of them who or what they might—minister, catechist, or elder, tenant, or sub-tenant, out-servant, or cottar—all were made to feel the irresponsible power of the proprietor. The enormous amount of citations might also be accounted for by the fact that Mr. Peter Sellar had a threefold personal interest in the whole matter. He was, in the first place, factor on the Sutherland estate at the time; then, he was law agent for the proprietors; and, lastly, the lessee or tacksman of more than a third of the county to be cleared of its inhabitants. It may easily be conceived how such a three-plied cord of worldly interest would bind him over to greater rigour, and even atrocity, in executing the orders of his superiors on the wretched people among whom he was thus let loose like a beast of prey. But the effects produced by these decided measures I now distinctly remember. Having myself, in common with the rest of my people, received one of these notices, I resolved that, at the ensuing term of Martinmas, I would remove from Achness, and go once more permanently to reside under my father’s roof, although I would at the same time continue the punctual discharge of my pastoral duties among the people till they also should be removed. I could not but regard the summoning of the minister as tantamount to the putting down of the ministration of the Word and ordinances of religion in that part of the country. And, indeed, it is a fact, that, although this desolate district is still occupied by shepherds, no provision has, since that time, been made for their spiritual wants. I left Achness, therefore, about the middle of November, 1818, sold my cow at the Ardgay market, and got my furniture conveyed to Kildonan by my father’s horses and my own. The people received the legal warning to leave for ever the homes of their fathers with a sort of stupor—that apparent indifference which is often the external aspect of intense feeling. As they began, however, to awaken from the stunning effects of this first intimation, their feelings found vent, and I was much struck with the different ways in which they expressed their sentiments. The truly pious acknowledged the mighty hand of God in the matter. In their prayers and religious conferences not a solitary expression could be heard indicative of anger or vindictiveness, but in the sight of God they humbled themselves, and received the chastisement at His hand. Those, however, who were strangers to such exalted and ennobling impressions of the Gospel breathed deep and muttered curses on the heads of the persons who subjected them to such treatment. The more reckless portion of them fully realised the character of the impenitent in all ages, and indulged in the most culpable excesses, even while this divine punishment was still suspended over them. These last, however, were very few in number—not more than a dozen. To my poor and defenceless flock the dark hour of trial came at last in right earnest. It was in the month of April, and about the middle of it, that they were all—man, woman, and child—from the heights of Farr to the mouth of the Naver, on one day, to quit their tenements and go—many of them knew not whither. For a few, some miserable patches of ground along the shores were doled out as lots, without aught in the shape of the poorest hut to shelter them. Upon these lots it was intended that they should build houses at their own expense, and cultivate the ground, at the same time occupying themselves as fishermen, although the great majority of them had never set foot on a boat in their lives. Thither, therefore, they were driven at a week’s warning. As for the rest most of them knew not whither to go, unless their neighbours on the shore provided them with a temporary shelter; for, on the day of their removal, they would not be allowed to remain, even on the bleakest moor, and in the open air, for a distance of twenty miles around.

On the Sabbath, a fortnight previous to the fated day, I preached my valedictory sermon in Achness, and the Sabbath thereafter at Ach-na-h-uaigh. Both occasions were felt by myself and by the people from the oldest to the youngest, to be among the bitterest and most overwhelming experiences of our lives. In Strathnaver we assembled, for the last time, at the place of Langdale, where I had frequently preached before, on a beautiful green sward overhung by Robert Gordon’s antique, romantic little cottage on an eminence close beside us. The still-flowing waters of the Naver swept past us a few yards to the eastward. The Sabbath morning was unusually fine, and mountain, hill, and dale, water and woodland, among which we had so long dwelt, and with which all our associations of “home” and “native land” were so fondly linked, appeared to unite their attractions to bid us farewell. My preparations for the pulpit had always cost me much anxiety, but in view of this sore scene of parting, they caused me pain almost beyond endurance. I selected a text which had a pointed reference to the peculiarity of our circumstances, but my difficulty was how to restrain my feelings till I should illustrate and enforce the great truths which it involved with reference to eternity. The service began. The very aspect of the congregation was of itself a sermon, and a most impressive one. Old Achoul sat right opposite to me. As my eye fell upon his venerable countenance, bearing the impress of eighty-seven winters, I was deeply affected, and could scarcely articulate the psalm. I preached and the people listened, but every sentence uttered and heard was in opposition to the tide of our natural feelings, which, setting in against us, mounted at every step of our progress higher and higher. At last all restraints were compelled to give way. The preacher ceased to speak, the people to listen. All lifted up their voices, and wept, mingling their tears together. It was indeed the place of parting, and the hour. The greater number parted never again to behold each other in the land of the living. My adieu to the people of Ach-na-h-uaighe was scarcely less affecting, although somewhat alleviated by the consideration that I had the prospect of ministering still to those among them who had leases of their farms, and whom Mr. Sellar, the factor and law agent, had no power to remove.

The middle of the week brought on the day of the Strathnaver Clearance (1819). It was a Tuesday. At an early hour of that day Mr. Sellar, accompanied by the Fiscal, and escorted by a strong body of constables, sheriff-officers and others, commenced work at Grummore, the first inhabited township to the west of the Achness district. Their plan of operations was to clear the cottages of their inmates, giving them about half-an-hour to pack up and carry off their furniture, and then set the cottages on fire. To this plan they ruthlessly adhered, without the slightest regard to any obstacle that might arise while carrying it into execution.

At Grumbeg lived a soldier’s widow, Henny Munro. She had followed her husband in all his campaigns, marches, and battles, in Sicily and in Spain. Whether his death was on the field of battle, or the result of fever or fatigue, I forget; but his faithful helpmeet attended him to his last hour, and, when his spirit fled, closed his eyes, and followed his remains to their last resting-place. After his death she returned to Grumbeg, the place of her nativity, and, as she was utterly destitute of any means of support, she was affectionately received by her friends, who built her a small cottage and gave her a cow and grass for it. The din of arms, orders, and counter-orders from headquarters, marchings and counter-marchings and pitched battles, retreats and advances, were the leading and nearly unceasing subjects of her winter evening conversations. She was a joyous, cheery old creature; so inoffensive, moreover, and so contented, and brimful of good-will that all who got acquainted with old Henny Munro could only desire to do her a good turn, were it merely for the warm and hearty expressions of gratitude with which it was received. Surely the factor and his followers did not personally know old Henny, or they could not have treated her as they did. After the cottages at Grummore were emptied of their inmates, and roofs and rafters had been lighted up into one red blaze, Mr. Sellar and his iron-hearted attendants approached the residence of the soldier’s widow. Henny stood up to plead for her furniture—the coarsest and most valueless that well could be, but still her earthly all. She first asked that, as her neighbours were so occupied with their own furniture, hers might be allowed to remain till they should be free to remove it for her. This request was curtly refused. She then besought them to allow a shepherd who was present and offered his services for that purpose, to remove the furniture to his own residence on the opposite shore of the loch, to remain there till she could carry it away. This also was refused, and she was told, with an oath, that if she did not take her trumpery off within half-an-hour it would be burned. The poor widow had only to task the remains of her bodily strength, and address herself to the work of dragging her chests, beds, presses, and stools out at the door, and placing them at the gable of her cottage. No sooner was her task accomplished than the torch was applied, the widow’s hut, built of very combustible material, speedily ignited, and there rose up rapidly, first a dense cloud of smoke, and soon thereafter a bright red flame. The wind unfortunately blew in the direction of the furniture, and the flame, lighting upon it, speedily reduced it to ashes.

In their progress down the Strath, Ceann-na-coille was the next township reached by the fire-raising evictors. An aged widow lived there who, by infirmity, had been reduced to such a state of bodily weakness that she could neither walk nor lie in bed. She could only, night and day, sit in her chair; and having been confined for many years in that posture, her limbs had become so stiff that any attempt to move her was attended with acute pain. She was the mother-in-law of Samuel Matheson, and had, with her family, been removed by Mr. Sellar from Rhimisdale some time before. His treatment of her and others on that occasion had brought Mr. Sellar into trouble, but now, in the Providence of God, she was once more in his power. “Bean Raomasdail,” or “the good wife of Rhimisdale,” as she was called, was much revered. In her house I have held diets of catechising and meetings for prayer, and been signally refreshed by her Christian converse. When the evicting party commenced their operations in her township, the aged widow’s house was among the very first that was to be consigned to the flames. Her family and neighbours represented the widow’s strong claims on their compassion, and the imminent danger to her life of removing her to such a distance as the lower end of the Strath, at least ten miles off, without suitable means of conveyance. They implored that she might be allowed to remain for only two days till a conveyance could be provided for her. They were told that they should have thought on that before, and that she must immediately be removed by her friends, or the constables would be ordered to do it. The good wife of Rhimisdale was, therefore, raised by her weeping family, from her chair and laid on a blanket, the corners of which were held up by four of the strongest youths in the place. All this she bore with meekness, and while the eyes of her attendants were streaming with tears, her pale and gentle countenance was suffused with a smile. The change of posture and the rapid motion of the bearers, however, awakened the most intense pain, and her cries never ceased till within a few miles of her destination, when she fell asleep. A burning fever supervened, of which she died a few months later.

During these proceedings, I was resident at my father’s house, but I had occasion on the week immediately ensuing to visit the manse of Tongue. On my way thither, I passed through the scene of the campaign of burning. The spectacle presented was hideous and ghastly! The banks of the lake and the river, formerly studded with cottages, now met the eye as a scene of desolation. Of all the houses, the thatched roofs were gone, but the walls, built of alternate layers of turf and stone, remained. The flames of the preceding week still slumbered in their ruins, and sent up into the air spiral columns of smoke; whilst here a gable, and there a long side-wall, undermined by the fire burning within them, might be seen tumbling to the ground, from which a cloud of smoke, and then a dusky flame, slowly sprang up. The sooty rafters of the cottages, as they were being consumed, filled the air with a heavy and most offensive odour. In short, nothing could more vividly represent the horrors of grinding oppression, and the extent to which one man, dressed up in a “little brief authority,” will exercise that power, without feeling or restraint, to the injury of his fellow-creatures.

GENERAL STEWART OF GARTH ON THE SUTHERLAND CLEARANCES.[4]

On the part of those who instituted similar improvements, in which so few of the people were to have a share, conciliatory measures, and a degree of tenderness, beyond what would have been shown to strangers, were to have been expected towards the hereditary supporters of their families. It was, however, unfortunately the natural consequences of the measures which were adopted, that few men of liberal feelings could be induced to undertake their execution. The respectable gentlemen, who, in so many cases, had formerly been entrusted with the management of Highland property, resigned, and their places were supplied by persons cast in a coarser mould, and, generally, strangers to the country, who, detesting the people, and ignorant of their character, capability, and language, quickly surmounted every obstacle, and hurried on the change, without reflecting on the distress of which it might be productive, or allowing the kindlier feelings of landlords to operate in favour of their ancient tenantry. To attempt a new system, and become acceptable tenants, required a little time and a little indulgence, two things which it was resolved should not be conceded them: they were immediately removed from the fertile and cultivated farms; some left the country, and others were offered limited portions of land on uncultivated moors, on which they were to form a settlement; and thus, while particular districts have been desolated, the gross numerical population has, in some manner, been preserved. Many judicious men, however, doubt the policy of these measures, and dread their consequences on the condition and habits of the people. The following account of their situation is from the respectable and intelligent clergyman of an extensive parish in the county:—

“When the valleys and higher grounds were let to the shepherds, the whole population was drawn down to the sea-shore, where they were crowded on small lots of land, to earn their subsistence by labour (where all are labourers and few employers) and by sea-fishing, the latter so little congenial to their former habits. This cutting down farms into lots was found so profitable, that over the whole of this district, the sea-coast, where the shore is accessible, is thickly studded with wretched cottages, crowded with starving inhabitants. Ancient respectable tenants, who passed the greater part of life in the enjoyment of abundance, and in the exercise of hospitality and charity, possessing stocks 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, which the land cannot afford. When the herring fishery (the only fishery prosecuted on this coast) succeeds, they generally satisfy the landlords, whatever privations they may suffer, but when the fishing fails, they fall in arrears, and are sequestrated, and their stock sold to pay the rents, their lots given to others, and they and their families turned adrift on the world. The herring fishery, 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. It is distressing to view the general poverty of this class of people, aggravated by their having once enjoyed abundance and independence; and we cannot sufficiently admire their meek and patient spirit, supported by the powerful influence of religious and moral principle. There are still a few small tenants on the old system, occupying the same farm jointly, but they are falling fast to decay, and sinking into the new class of cottars.”

This mode of sub-dividing small portions of inferior land is bad enough certainly, and to propose the establishment of villages, in a pastoral country, for the benefit of men who can neither betake themselves to the cultivation of the land nor to commerce for earning the means of subsistence, is doubtless a refinement in policy solely to be ascribed to the enlightened and enlarged views peculiar to the new system. But, leaving out of view the consideration that, from the prevalence of turning corn lands into pasture, the demand for labour is diminished, while the number of labourers is increased, it can scarcely be expected that a man who had once been in the condition of a farmer, possessed of land, and of considerable property in cattle, horses, sheep, and money, often employing servants himself, conscious of his independence, and proud of his ability to assist others, should, without the most poignant feelings, descend to the rank of a hired labourer, even where labour and payment can be obtained, more especially if he must serve on the farms or in the country where he formerly commanded as a master.

It is not easy for those who live in a country like England, where so many of the lower orders have nothing but what they acquire by the labour of the passing day, and possess no permanent property or share in the agricultural produce of the soil, to appreciate the nature of the spirit of independence which is generated in countries where the free cultivators of the soil constitute the major part of the population. It can scarcely be imagined how proudly a man feels, however small his property may be, when he has a spot of arable land and pasture, stocked with corn, horses, and cows, a species of property which, more than any other, binds him, by ties of interest and attachment, to the spot with which he is connected. He considers himself an independent person, placed in a station in society far above the day labourer, who has no stake in the permanency of existing circumstances, beyond the prospect of daily employment; his independence being founded on permanent property, he has an interest in the welfare of the state, by supporting which he renders his own property more secure, and, although the value of the property may not be great, it is every day in his view; his cattle and horses feed around him; his grass and corn he sees growing and ripening; his property is visible to all observers, which is calculated to raise the owner in general consideration; and when a passing friend or neighbour praises his thriving crops and his cattle, his heart swells with pleasure, and he exerts himself to support and to preserve that government and those laws which render it secure. Such is the case in many parts of the world; such was formerly the case in Scotland, and is still in many parts of the Highlands. Those who wish to see only the two castes of capitalists and day-labourers, may smile at this union of independence and poverty. But, that the opposite system is daily quenching the independent spirit of the Highlanders, is an undoubted fact, and gives additional strength to the arguments of those who object to the reduction of the agricultural population, and regret their removal to the great towns, and to the villages in preparation in some parts of the country.

It is painful to dwell on this subject, but as information communicated by men of honour, judgment, and perfect veracity, descriptive of what they daily witness, affords the best means of forming a correct judgment, and as these gentlemen, from their situations in life, have no immediate interest in the determination of the question, beyond what is dictated by humanity and a love of truth, their authority may be considered as undoubted.

The following extract of a letter from a friend, as well as the extract already quoted, is of this description. Speaking of the settlers on the new allotments, he says:—

“I scarcely need tell you that these wretched people exhibit every symptom of the most abject poverty, and the most helpless distress. Their miserable lots in the moors, notwithstanding their utmost labour and strictest economy, have not yielded them a sufficient crop for the support of their families for three months. The little money they were able to derive from the sale of their stock has, therefore, been expended in the purchase of necessaries, and is now wholly exhausted. Though they have now, therefore, overcome all their scruples about leaving their native land, and possess the most ardent desire to emigrate, in order to avoid more intolerable evils of starvation, and have been much encouraged by the favourable accounts they have received from their countrymen already in America, they cannot possibly pay the expense of transporting themselves and their families thither.”

It has been said that an old Highlander warned his countrymen “to take care of themselves, for the law had reached Ross-shire.” When his fears were excited by vague apprehensions of change, he could not well anticipate that the introduction of civil order, and the extension of legal authority, which in an enlightened age tend to advance the prosperity as well as promote the security of a nation, should have been to his countrymen either the signals of banishment from their native country, or the means of lowering the condition of those who were permitted to remain. With more reason it might have been expected that the principles of an enlightened age would have gradually introduced beneficial changes among the ancient race; that they would have softened down the harsher features of their character, and prepared them for habits better suited to the cultivation of the soil, than the indolent freedom of a pastoral life. Instead of this, the new system, whatever may be its intrinsic merits or defects, has, in too many cases, been carried into execution in a manner which has excited the strongest and most indignant sensations in the breasts of those who do not overlook the present inconvenience and distress of the many, in the eager pursuit of a prospective advantage to the few. The consequences which have resulted, and the contrast between the present and past condition of the people, and between their present and past disposition and feelings towards their superiors, show, in the most striking light, the impolicy of attempting, with such unnatural rapidity, innovations which it would require an age, instead of a few years, to accomplish in a salutary manner, and the impossibility of effecting them without inflicting great misery, endangering morals, and undermining loyalty to the king, and respect for constituted authority.

A love of change, proceeding from the actual possession of wealth, or from the desire of acquiring it, disturbs, by an ill-directed influence, the gradual and effectual progress of those improvements which, instead of benefiting the man of capital alone, should equally distribute their advantages to all. In the prosecution of recent changes in the north, it would appear that the original inhabitants were never thought of, nor included in the system which was to be productive of such wealth to the landlord, the man of capital, and the country at large,—and that no native could be intrusted with, or, perhaps, none was found hardy enough to act a part in the execution of plans which commenced with the ejectment of their unfortunate friends and neighbours. Strangers were, therefore, called in, and whole glens cleared of their inhabitants, who, in some instances, resisted these mandates (although legally executed), in the hope of preserving to their families their ancient homes, to which all were enthusiastically attached. These people, blameless in every respect, save their poverty and ignorance of modern agriculture, could not believe that such harsh measures proceeded from their honoured superiors, who had hitherto been kind, and to whom they themselves had ever been attached and faithful. The whole was attributed to the acting agents, and to them, therefore, their indignation was principally directed; and, in some instances, their resistance was so obstinate, that it became necessary to enforce the orders “vi et armis,” and to have recourse to a mode of ejectment, happily long obsolete, by setting their houses on fire. This last species of legal proceeding was so peculiarly conclusive and forcible that even the stubborn Highlanders, with all their attachment to the homes of their fathers, were compelled to yield.

In the first instances of this mode of removing refractory tenants, a small compensation (six shillings), in two separate sums, was allowed for the houses destroyed. Some of the ejected tenants were also allowed small allotments of land, on which they were to build houses at their own expense, no assistance being given for that purpose. Perhaps it was owing to this that they were the more reluctant to remove till they had built houses on their new stations. The compensations allowed in the more recent removals are stated to have been more liberal; and the improvements which have succeeded those summary ejectments of the ancient inhabitants are highly eulogised both in pamphlets and newspapers.

Some people may, however, be inclined to doubt the advantages of improvements which called for such frequent apologies; for, if more lenient measures had been pursued, vindication would have, perhaps, been unnecessary, and the trial of one of the acting agents might have been avoided.

This trial was brought forward at the instance of the Lord Advocate, in consequence of the loud cry of indignation raised in the country against proceedings characterised by the sheriff of the county as “conduct which has seldom disgraced any country.” But the trial ended (as was expected by every person who understood the circumstances) in the acquittal of the acting agent, the verdict of the jury proceeding on the principle that he acted under legal authority. This acquittal, however, did by no means diminish the general feeling of culpability; it only transferred the offence from the agent to a quarter too high and too distant to be directly affected by public indignation, if, indeed, there be any station so elevated, or so distant, that public indignation, justly excited, will not, sooner or later, reach, so as to touch the feelings, however obtuse, of the transgressor of that law of humanity written on every upright mind, and deeply engraved on every kind and generous heart.

It must, however, be a matter of deep regret, that such a line of proceeding was pursued with regard to these brave, unfortunate, and well-principled people, as excited a sensation of horror, and a conviction of culpability, so powerful as only to be removed by an appeal to a criminal court. It is no less to be deplored that any conduct sanctioned by authority, even although productive of ultimate advantage (and how it can produce any advantage beyond what might have been obtained by pursuing a scheme of conciliation and encouragement is a very questionable point), should have, in the first instance, inflicted such general misery. More humane measures would undoubtedly have answered every good purpose; and had such a course been pursued, as an enlightened humanity would have suggested, instead of depopulated glens and starving peasantry, alienated from their superiors, and, in the exacerbation of their feelings, too ready to imbibe opinions hostile to the best interests of their country, we should still have seen a high-spirited and loyal people, ready, at the nod of their respected chiefs, to embody themselves into regiments, with the same zeal as in former times; and when enrolled among the defenders of their country, to exhibit a conduct honourable to that country and to their profession. Such is the acknowledged character of the men of these districts as soldiers, when called forth in the service of their country, although they be now described as irregular in their habits, and a burthen on the lands which gave them birth, and on which their forefathers maintained the honour, and promoted the wealth and prosperity of the ancestors of those who now reject them.

But is it conceivable that the people at home should be so degraded, while their brothers and sons who become soldiers maintain an honourable character? The people ought not to be reproached with incapacity or immorality without better evidence than that of their prejudiced and unfeeling calumniators. If it be so, however, and if this virtuous and honourable race, which has contributed to raise and uphold the character of the British peasantry in the eyes of all Europe, are thus fallen, and so suddenly fallen, how great and powerful must be the cause, and how heavy the responsibility of its authors? But if at home they are thus low in character, how unparalleled must be the improvement which is produced by difference of profession, as for example, when they become soldiers, and associate in barracks with troops of all characters, or in quarters, or billets, with the lowest of the people, instead of mingling with such society as they left in their native homes? Why should these Highlanders be at home so degenerate as they are represented, and as in recent instances they would actually appear to be? And why, when they mount the cockade, are they found to be so virtuous and regular, that one thousand men of Sutherland have been embodied four and five years together, at different and distant periods, from 1759 to 1763, from 1779 to 1783, and from 1793 to 1798, without an instance of military punishment? These men performed all the duties of soldiers to the perfect satisfaction of their commanders, and continued so unexceptionable in their conduct down to the latest period, when embodied into the 93rd regiment, that, according to the words of a distinguished general officer, “Although the youngest regiment in the service, they might form an example to all:” and on general parades for punishment, the Sutherland Highlanders have been ordered to their quarters, as “examples of this kind were not necessary for such honourable soldiers.”

General Stewart adds the following in the third edition of his Sketches, published in 1825:—

The great changes which have taken place in the above parishes of Sutherland, and some others, have excited a warm and general interest. While the liberal expenditure of capital was applauded by all, many intelligent persons lamented that its application was so much in one direction; that the ancient tenantry were to have no share in this expenditure; and that so small a portion was allotted for the future settlement of the numerous population who had been removed from their farms, and were placed in situations so new, and in many respects so unsuitable,—certain that, in the first instance, great distress, disaffection, and hostility towards the landlords and government, with a diminution of that spirit of independence, and those proper principles which had hitherto distinguished them, would be the inevitable result. So sudden and universal a change of station, habits, and circumstances, and their being reduced from the state of independent tenants to that of cottagers and day-labourers, could not fail of arresting the notice of the public.

Anxious to obtain the best information on this interesting subject, I early made the most minute enquiry, careful, at the same time, to form no opinion on intelligence communicated by the people of the district, or by persons connected with them, and who would naturally be interested in, and prejudiced against, or in favour of those changes. I was the more desirous for the best information as the statements published with regard to the character, capability, and principles of the people, exhibited a perfect contrast to my own personal experience and knowledge of the admirable character and exemplary conduct of that portion of them that had left their native country; and I believe it improbable, nay impossible, that the sons of worthless parents, without religious or moral principle—as they have been described—could conduct themselves in such an honourable manner as to be held up as an example to the British army. But, indeed, as to information, so much publicity had been given by various statements explanatory of, and in vindication of these proceedings, that little more was necessary, beyond what these publications afforded, to show the nature of the plans, and the manner in which they were carried into execution.

Forming my opinions, therefore, from those statements, and from information communicated by persons not immediately connected with that part of the country, I drew the conclusions which appeared in the former editions of these Sketches. But, with a strong desire to be correct and well informed in all I state, and with an intention of correcting myself, in this edition, should I find that I had been misinformed, or had taken up mistaken views of the subject, in the different statements I had produced, I embraced the first spare time I could command, and in autumn, 1823, I travelled over the “improved” districts, and a large portion of those parts which had been depopulated and laid out in extensive pastoral farms, as well as the stations in which the people are placed. After as strict an examination as circumstances permitted, and a careful inquiry among those who, from their knowledge and judgment were enabled to form the best opinions, I do not find that I have one statement to alter, or one opinion to correct; though I am fully aware that many hold very different opinions.

But however much I may differ in some points, there is one in which I warmly and cordially join; and that is, in expressing my high satisfaction and admiration at the liberality displayed in the immense sums expended on buildings, in enclosing, clearing, and draining land, in forming roads and communications, and introducing the most improved agricultural implements. In all these, the generous distribution of such exemplary encouragement stands unparalleled and alone. Equally remarkable is the great abatement of rents given to the tenants of capital—abatements which it was not to be expected they would ask, considering the preference and encouragement given them, and the promises they had held out of great and unprecedented revenue, from their skill and exertions. But these promises seem to have been early forgotten; the tenants of capital were the first to call for relief; and so great and generous has this relief been that the rents are reduced so low as to be almost on a level with what they were when the great changes commenced. Thus while upwards of £210,000 have been expended on improvements, no return is to be looked for from this vast expenditure; and in the failure of their promised rents, the tenants have sufficiently proved the unstable and fallacious nature of the system which they, with so much plausibility and perseverance, got established by delusions, practised on a high-minded, honourable individual, not aware of the evils produced by so universal a movement of a whole people. Every friend to a brave and valuable race must rejoice that these evils are in progress of alleviation by a return of that kindness and protection which had formerly been so conspicuous towards that race of tenantry, and which could never have been interrupted had it not been for those delusions to which I have more than once alluded, and which have been prosecuted, within the last twenty years, in many parts of the Highlands, with a degree of assiduity and antipathy to the unfortunate inhabitants altogether remarkable.

HUGH MILLER ON THE SUTHERLAND CLEARANCES.[5]

So much has been already said about these disastrous Sutherland evictions that we greatly fear the reader is sickened with the horrid narrative, but as it is intended to make the present record of these atrocious proceedings, not only in Sutherland but throughout the whole Highlands, as complete as it is now possible to make it, we shall yet place before the reader at considerable length Hugh Miller’s observations on this National Crime—especially as his remarks largely embody the philosophical views and conclusions of the able and far-seeing French writer Sismondi, who in his great work declares:—“It is by a cruel use of legal power—it is by an unjust usurpation—that the tacksman and the tenant of Sutherland are considered as having no right to the land which they have occupied for so many ages.... A count or earl has no more right to expel from their homes the inhabitants of his county, than a king to expel from his country the inhabitants of his kingdom.” Hugh Miller introduces his remarks on Sutherland by a reference to the celebrated Frenchman’s work, and his opinion of the Sutherland Clearances, thus:—

There appeared at Paris, about five years ago, a singularly ingenious work on political economy, from the pen of the late M. de Sismondi, a writer of European reputation. The greater part of the first volume is taken up with discussions on territorial wealth, and the condition of the cultivators of the soil; and in this portion of the work there is a prominent place assigned to a subject which perhaps few Scotch readers would expect to see introduced through the medium of a foreign tongue to the people of a great continental state. We find this philosophic writer, whose works are known far beyond the limits of his language, devoting an entire essay to the case of the Duchess of Sutherland and her tenants, and forming a judgment on it very unlike the decision of political economists in our own country, who have not hesitated to characterise her great and singularly harsh experiment, whose worst effects we are but beginning to see, as at once justifiable in itself and happy in its results. It is curious to observe how deeds done as if in darkness and in a corner, are beginning, after the lapse of nearly thirty years, to be proclaimed on the house-tops. The experiment of the late Duchess was not intended to be made in the eye of Europe. Its details would ill bear the exposure. When Cobbett simply referred to it, only ten years ago, the noble proprietrix was startled, as if a rather delicate family secret was on the eve of being divulged; and yet nothing seems more evident now than that civilised man all over the world is to be made aware of how the experiment was accomplished, and what it is ultimately to produce.

In a time of quiet and good order, when law, whether in the right or the wrong, is all-potent in enforcing its findings, the argument which the philosophic Frenchman employs in behalf of the ejected tenantry of Sutherland is an argument at which proprietors may afford to smile. In a time of revolution, however, when lands change their owners, and old families give place to new ones, it might be found somewhat formidable,—sufficiently so, at least, to lead a wise proprietor in an unsettled age rather to conciliate than oppress and irritate the class who would be able in such circumstances to urge it with most effect. It is not easy doing justice in a few sentences to the facts and reasonings of an elaborate essay; but the line of argument runs thus:—

Under the old Celtic tenures—the only tenures, be it remembered through which the Lords of Sutherland derive their rights to their lands,—the Klaan, or children of the soil, were the proprietors of the soil—“the whole of Sutherland,” says Sismondi, belonged to “the men of Sutherland.” Their chief was their monarch, and a very absolute monarch he was. “He gave the different tacks of land to his officers, or took them away from them, according as they showed themselves more or less useful in war. But though he could thus, in a military sense, reward or punish the clan, he could not diminish in the least the property of the clan itself;”—he was a chief, not a proprietor, and had “no more right to expel from their homes the inhabitants of his county, than a king to expel from his country the inhabitants of his kingdom.” “Now, the Gaelic tenant,” continues the Frenchman, “has never been conquered; nor did he forfeit, on any after occasion, the rights which he originally possessed;” in point of right, he is still a co-proprietor with his captain. To a Scotchman acquainted with the law of property as it has existed among us, in even the Highlands, for the last century, and everywhere else for at least two centuries more, the view may seem extreme; not so, however, to a native of the Continent, in many parts of which prescription and custom are found ranged, not on the side of the chief, but on that of the vassal. “Switzerland,” says Sismondi, “which in so many respects resembles Scotland,—in its lakes, its mountains, its climate, and the character, manners, and habits of its children,—was likewise at the same period parcelled out among a small number of lords. If the Counts of Kyburgh, of Lentzburg, of Hapsburg, and of Gruyeres, had been protected by the English laws, they would find themselves at the present day precisely in the condition in which the Earls of Sutherland were twenty years ago. Some of them would perhaps have had the same taste for improvements, and several republics would have been expelled from the Alps, to make room for flocks of sheep. But while the law has given to the Swiss peasant a guarantee of perpetuity, it is to the Scottish laird that it has extended this guarantee in the British empire, leaving the peasant in a precarious situation. The clan,—recognised at first by the captain, whom they followed in war, and obeyed for their common advantage, as his friends and relations, then as his soldiers, then as his vassals, then as his farmers,—he has come finally to regard as hired labourers, whom he may perchance allow to remain on the soil of their common country for his own advantage, but whom he has the power to expel so soon as he no longer finds it for his interest to keep them.”

Arguments like those of Sismondi, however much their force may be felt on the Continent, would be formidable at home, as we have said, in only a time of revolution, when the very foundations of society would be unfixed, and opinions set loose, to pull down or re-construct at pleasure. But it is surely not uninteresting to mark how, in the course of events, that very law of England which, in the view of the Frenchman, has done the Highland peasant so much less, and the Highland chief so much more than justice, is bidding fair, in the case of Sutherland at least, to carry its rude equalising remedy along with it. Between the years 1811 and 1820, fifteen thousand inhabitants of this northern district were ejected from their snug inland farms, by means for which we would in vain seek a precedent, except, perchance, in the history of the Irish massacre.

But though the interior of the county was thus improved into a desert, in which there are many thousands of sheep, but few human habitations, let it not be supposed by the reader that its general population was in any degree lessened. So far was this from being the case, that the census of 1821 showed an increase over the census of 1811 of more than two hundred; and the present population of Sutherland exceeds, by a thousand, its population before the change. The county has not been depopulated—its population has been merely arranged after a new fashion. The late Duchess found it spread equally over the interior and the sea-coast, and in very comfortable circumstances;—she left it compressed into a wretched selvage of poverty and suffering that fringes the county on its eastern and western shores, and the law which enabled her to make such an arrangement, maugre the ancient rights of the poor Highlander, is now on the eve of stepping in, in its own clumsy way, to make her family pay the penalty. The southern kingdom must and will give us a poor-law; and then shall the selvage of deep poverty which fringes the sea-coasts of Sutherland avenge on the titled proprietor of the county both his mother’s error and his own. If our British laws, unlike those of Switzerland, failed miserably in her day in protecting the vassal, they will more than fail, in those of her successor, in protecting the lord. Our political economists shall have an opportunity of reducing their arguments regarding the improvements in Sutherland, into a few arithmetical terms, which the merest tyro will be able to grapple with.

There is but poor comfort, however, to know, when one sees a country ruined, that the perpetrators of the mischief have not ruined it to their own advantage. We purpose showing how signal in the case of Sutherland this ruin has been, and how very extreme the infatuation which continues to possess its hereditary lord. We are old enough to remember the county in its original state, when it was at once the happiest and one of the most exemplary districts in Scotland, and passed, at two several periods, a considerable time among its hills; we are not unacquainted with it now, nor with its melancholy and dejected people, that wear out life in their comfortless cottages on the sea-shore. The problem solved in this remote district of the kingdom is not at all unworthy the attention which it seems but beginning to draw, but which is already not restricted to one kingdom, or even one continent.

But what, asks the reader, was the economic condition—the condition with regard to circumstances and means of living—of these Sutherland Highlanders? How did they fare? The question has been variously answered: much must depend on the class selected from among them as specimens of the whole,—much, too, taking for granted the honesty of the party who replies, on his own condition in life, and his acquaintance with the circumstances of the poorer people of Scotland generally. The county had its less genial localities, in which, for a month or two in the summer season, when the stock of grain from the previous year was fast running out, and the crops on the ground not yet ripened for use, the people experienced a considerable degree of scarcity—such scarcity as a mechanic in the South feels when he has been a fortnight out of employment. But the Highlander had resources in these seasons which the mechanic has not. He had his cattle and his wild potherbs, such as the mug-wort and the nettle. It has been adduced by the advocates of the change which has ruined Sutherland, as a proof of the extreme hardship of the Highlander’s condition, that at such times he could have eaten as food broth made of nettles, mixed up with a little oatmeal, or have had recourse to the expedient of bleeding his cattle, and making the blood into a sort of pudding. And it is quite true that the Sutherlandshire Highlander was in the habit at such times, of having recourse to such food. It is not less true, however, that the statement is just as little conclusive regarding his condition, as if it were alleged that there must always be famine in France when the people eat the hind legs of frogs, or in Italy when they make dishes of snails. With regard to the general comfort of the people in their old condition, there are better tests than can be drawn from the kind of food they occasionally ate. The country hears often of dearth in Sutherland now. Every year in which the crop falls a little below average in other districts, is a year of famine there, but the country never heard of dearth in Sutherland then. There were very few among the holders of its small inland farms who had not saved a little money. Their circumstances were such, that their moral nature found full room to develop itself, and in a way the world has rarely witnessed. Never were there a happier or more contented people, or a people more strongly attached to the soil; and not one of them now lives in the altered circumstances on which they were so rudely precipitated by the landlord, who does not look back on this period of comfort and enjoyment with sad and hopeless regret.

But we have not yet said how this ruinous revolution was effected in Sutherland,—how the aggravations of the mode, if we may so speak, still fester in the recollections of the people,—or how thoroughly that policy of the lord of the soil, through which he now seems determined to complete the work of ruin which his predecessor began, harmonizes with its worst details. We must first relate, however, a disastrous change which took place, in the providence of God, in the noble family of Sutherland, and which, though it dates fully eighty years back, may be regarded as pregnant with the disasters which afterwards befell the county.

The marriage of the young countess into a noble English family was fraught with further disaster to the county. There are many Englishmen quite intelligent enough to perceive the difference between a smoky cottage of turf, and a whitewashed cottage of stone, whose judgments on their respective inhabitants would be of but little value. Sutherland, as a county of men, stood higher at this period than perhaps any other district in the British Empire; but, as our descriptions have shown, it by no means stood high as a county of farms and cottages. The marriage of the countess brought a new set of eyes upon it,—eyes accustomed to quite a different face of things. It seemed a wild, rude county, where all was wrong, and all had to be set right,—a sort of Russia on a small scale, that had just got another Peter the Great to civilize it,—or a sort of barbarous Egypt, with an energetic Ali Pasha at its head. Even the vast wealth and great liberality of the Stafford family militated against this hapless county! It enabled them to treat it as a mere subject of an interesting experiment, in which gain to themselves was really no object,—nearly as little so, as if they had resolved on dissecting a dog alive for the benefit of science. It was a still farther disadvantage, that they had to carry on their experiment by the hands, and to watch its first effects with the eyes, of others. The agonies of the dog might have had their softening influence on a dissecter who held the knife himself; but there could be no such influence exerted over him, did he merely issue orders to his footman that the dissection should be completed, remaining himself, meanwhile, out of sight and out of hearing. The plan of improvement sketched out by his English family was a plan exceedingly easy of conception. Here is a vast tract of land, furnished with two distinct sources of wealth. Its shores may be made the seats of extensive fisheries, and the whole of its interior parcelled out into productive sheep farms. All is waste in its present state; it has no fisheries, and two-thirds of its internal produce is consumed by the inhabitants. It had contributed, for the use of the community and the landlord, its large herds of black cattle; but the English family saw, and, we believe, saw truly, that for every one pound of beef which it produced, it could be made to produce two pounds of mutton, and perhaps a pound of fish in addition. And it was resolved, therefore, that the inhabitants of the central districts, who, as they were mere Celts, could not be transformed, it was held, into store farmers, should be marched down to the sea-side, there to convert themselves into fishermen, on the shortest possible notice, and that a few farmers of capital, of the industrious Lowland race, should be invited to occupy the new sub-divisions of the interior.

And, pray, what objections can be urged against so liberal and large-minded a scheme? The poor inhabitants of the interior had very serious objections to urge against it. Their humble dwellings were of their own rearing; it was they themselves who had broken in their little fields from the waste; from time immemorial, far beyond the reach of history, had they possessed their mountain holdings,—they had defended them so well of old that the soil was still virgin ground, in which the invader had found only a grave; and their young men were now in foreign lands fighting at the command of their chieftainess the battles of their country, not in the character of hired soldiers, but of men who regarded these very holdings as their stake in the quarrel. To them, then, the scheme seemed fraught with the most flagrant, the most monstrous injustice. Were it to be suggested by some Chartist convention in a time of revolution that Sutherland might be still further improved—that it was really a piece of great waste to suffer the revenues of so extensive a district to be squandered by one individual—that it would be better to appropriate them to the use of the community in general—that the community in general might be still further benefited by the removal of the said individual from Dunrobin to a roadside, where he might be profitably employed in breaking stones—and that this new arrangement could not be entered on too soon—the noble Duke would not be a whit more astonished, or rendered a whit more indignant by the scheme than were the Highlanders of Sutherland by the scheme of his predecessor.

The reader must keep in view, therefore, that if atrocities unexampled in Britain for at least a century were perpetrated in the clearing of Sutherland, there was a species of at least passive resistance on the part of the people (for active resistance there was none), which in some degree provoked them. Had the Highlanders, on receiving orders, marched down to the sea-coast and become fishermen with the readiness with which a regiment deploys on review day, the atrocities would, we doubt not, have been much fewer. But though the orders were very distinct, the Highlanders were very unwilling to obey; and the severities formed merely a part of the means through which the necessary obedience was ultimately secured. We shall instance a single case as illustrative of the process.

In the month of March, 1814, a large proportion of the Highlanders of Farr and Kildonan, two parishes in Sutherland, were summoned to quit their farms in the following May. In a few days after, the surrounding heath on which they pastured their cattle and from which, at that season, the sole supply of herbage is derived (for in those northern districts the grass springs late, and the cattle-feeder in the spring months depends chiefly on the heather), were set on fire and burnt up. There was that sort of policy in the stroke which men deem allowable in a state of war. The starving cattle went roaming over the burnt pastures, and found nothing to eat. Many of them perished, and the greater part of what remained, though in miserable condition, the Highlanders had to sell perforce. Most of the able-bodied men were engaged in this latter business at a distance from home, when the dreaded term-day came on. The pasturage had been destroyed before the legal term, and while in even the eye of the law it was still the property of the poor Highlanders; but ere disturbing them in their dwellings, term-day was suffered to pass. The work of demolition then began. A numerous party of men, with a factor at their head, entered the district, and commenced pulling down the houses over the heads of the inhabitants. In an extensive tract of country not a human dwelling was left standing, and then, the more effectually to prevent their temporary re-erection, the destroyers set fire to the wreck. In one day were the people deprived of home and shelter, and left exposed to the elements. Many deaths are said to have ensued from alarm, fatigue, and cold.

Our author then corroborates in detail the atrocities, cruelties, and personal hardships described by Donald MacLeod and proceeds:—But to employ the language of Southey,

“Things such as these, we know, must be

At 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.

After pointing out how at the Disruption sites for churches were refused, Hugh Miller proceeds:—We have exhibited to our readers, in the clearing of Sutherland a process of ruin so thoroughly disastrous, that it might be deemed scarcely 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 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 humanising influences; and, under the teachings of the gospel, the poor and the oppressed looked longingly forward to a future scene of being, in which there is no poverty or oppression. They still possessed, amid their misery, something positively good, of which it was impossible 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.

These harmonise 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 cotters 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 misinterpret them; 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-four miles outwards, and as much in return, and all this without taking shelter under 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 George Gunn 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. 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 the expense of 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 probably 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 proselytising 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 Scotland. It may not be his Grace’s interest that the population of the district should increase. The clearing of the sea-coast may seem as little prejudicial to his Grace’s welfare now as the clearing of 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 the clearing of the coast as the better and more important clearing of 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 accruing 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 be gnawing the vitals of Sutherland in a year a little less abundant than its predecessors, 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 woe, 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 a Free Church threatened to insert a tent into this wound and so keep it open. It has been said that the Gaelic language removes a district more effectually from 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 or 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 to translate her 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 characterised 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, but what Cobbett had not character enough to accomplish, and what did he 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 struggled hard to exclude the Free Church, and, though no member of the Establishment himself, declares 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 the case of toleration and freedom of conscience may be maintained in the extensive district which God, in his providence, has consigned to his stewardship? We 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 and 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 only on the arena of public opinion, and on that ground which the political field may be soon found to furnish.

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 bed-ridden 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 develop, 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 Mackay, whose family at the time of the greater conflagration referred to by Macleod, 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 bodyclothes, 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 more perilous 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.

MR JAMES LOCH ON SUTHERLAND IMPROVEMENTS.[6]

No country of Europe at any period of its history ever presented more formidable obstacles to the improvement of a people arising out of the prejudices and feelings of the people themselves. To the tacksman, it is clear, from what has already been stated, such a change could not be agreeable. Its effect being to alter his condition, and remove him from a state of idle independence, in habits almost of equality with his chief, to a situation, although fully, if not more respectable, yet one in which his livelihood was to be obtained by his exertions and industry, and in many instances by an application to pursuits, which were by him considered as beneath the occupation of a gentleman, although leading to real independence and wealth, to a degree he never could arrive at in his original condition. Nor could it be agreeable to him to lose that command and influence, which he had hitherto exercised without control, over his sub-tenants and dependants; while it was at variance with every feeling and prejudice in which he had been brought up and educated. It required minds of no ordinary cast to rise superior to these feelings: and men of no common understanding and vigour of intellect were required, to shake off habits so opposed to active industry and exertion. From a certain set of this class, therefore, a real and determined opposition to any change was to be looked for. This expectation has not been disappointed; and it is from individuals of this class, and persons connected with them, that those false and malignant representations have proceeded, which have been so loudly and extensively circulated. Actuated by motives of a mere personal nature, regardless of the happiness of the people, whose improvement it was the great object of the landlord to effect, they attempted to make an appeal in favour of a set of people who were never before the objects of their commiseration, in order that they might, if possible, reduce them, for their own selfish purposes, to that state of degradation from which they had been just emancipated. This was, however, by no means true of the whole, or of the greater part of this class of gentlemen; for the bulk of the most active improvers of Sutherland are natives, who, both as sheep farmers, and as skilful and enterprising agriculturists, are equal to any to be met with in the kingdom. They have, with an intelligence and liberality of feeling which reflects upon them the highest honour, embraced with alacrity the new scene of active exertion presented for their adoption; seconding the views of the landlords with the utmost zeal, marked with much foresight and prudence. Out of the twenty-nine principal tacksmen on the estate, seventeen are natives of Sutherland, four are Northumbrians, two are from the county of Moray, two from Roxburghshire, two from Caithness, one from Midlothian, and one from the Merse.

So strong, however, were the prejudices of the people, that, even to those who were subjected to the power and control of the tacksmen, this mode of life had charms which attached them strongly to it. He extended, in some degree, to the more respectable of those who were placed under him, the same familiarity which he received from the chief. The burden of the outdoor work was cast upon the females. The men deemed such an occupation unworthy of them, continued labour of any sort being most adverse to their habits. They were contented with the most simple and the poorest fare. Like all mountaineers, accustomed to a life of irregular exertion, with intervals of sloth, they were attached with a degree of enthusiasm, only felt by the natives of a poor country, to their own glen and mountainside, adhering in the strongest manner to the habits and homes of their fathers. They deemed no comfort worth the possessing, which was to be purchased at the price of regular industry; no improvement worthy of adoption, if it was to be obtained at the expense of sacrificing the customs, or leaving the homes of their ancestors. So strongly did these feelings operate, that it cost them nearly the same effort to remove from the spot in which they were born and brought up, though the place of their new dwelling was situated on the sea-shore at the mouth of their native strath, or even in a neighbouring glen, as it cost them to make an exertion equal to transporting themselves across the Atlantic.

The cattle which they reared on the mountains, and from the sale of which they depended for the payment of their rents, were of the poorest description. During summer they procured a scanty sustenance, with much toil and labour, by roaming over the mountains; while in winter they died in numbers for the want of support; notwithstanding a practice, which they universally adopted, of killing every second calf, on account of the want of winter keep. To such an extent did this calamity at times amount, that, in the spring of 1807, there died in the parish of Kildonan alone, two hundred cows, five hundred head of cattle, and more than two hundred small horses.

As soon as the works, undertaken under the direction of the Parliamentary Commissioners, opened a prospect of removing successfully the obstacles which stood in the way of the improvements of the people, steps were taken to new model and arrange these extensive possessions. The utmost caution and deliberation was used in doing so, and plans were never more maturely weighed, nor executed with more anxiety and tenderness. To aid the further arrangement of these matters, application was made to William Young, Esq., of Inverugie, in the county of Elgin, whose active mind and indefatigable industry had been exhibited in what he had done upon his own estate. This gentleman superintended the commencement of those vast improvements which were undertaken on the estate of Sutherland. The success of the measures carried into effect under his direction, combined with the difficulties he had to contend with, must always be the best proof of the ability and indefatigable zeal with which he executed the charge of which he had taken the direction, and which he performed so much to his own credit and the advantage of the country. It is only doing justice to his merits to say, that the rapidity of the earlier improvements was owing in a principal degree to the impulse and action inspired by his intelligent and enterprising mind. Mr. Young resigned his superintendence in 1816, when the local management of the estate of Sutherland was entrusted to the present factor, Mr. Francis Suther, whose good temper and judicious conduct in the immediate management at Trentham, recommended him to the situation he now holds. These expectations have been fully justified by the manner he has executed the details of the late arrangements, in which he received the most cordial and able assistance from Captain John Mackay, late of the 26th Foot, the factor of Strathnaver, and from Lieutenant George Gunn, of the Royal Marines, Chief of the clan Gunn, factor of Assynt.

These gentlemen deserve equal credit for the manner in which they have enforced and promoted the plans which were laid down for the extension of the fisheries and the cultivation of the coast side, as for their kind and careful conduct towards the people. Mr. Suther’s exertions in promoting and carrying into effect every arrangement which was made for the encouragement and the success of the fishing station and village of Helmsdale, requires particular commendation.

It is well known that the borders of the two kingdoms were inhabited by a numerous population, who, in their pursuits, manners, and general structure of society, bore a considerable resemblance to that which existed in the Highlands of Scotland. When the union of the crowns, and those subsequent transactions which arose out of that event, rendered the maintenance of that irregular population not only unnecessary, but a burden to the proprietor to whom the land belonged, the people were removed, and the mountains were covered with sheep. So that it had been for a length of time proved by the experience of the stock farmers of those mountain tracts, which comprise the northern districts of England, and the southern parts of Scotland, that such situations were peculiarly suited for the maintenance of this species of stock. Taking this example as their guide, experience had still further proved, that the central and western Highlands of Scotland were equally well calculated for the same end.

Reasoning from this success, and observing that the climate of Sutherland, owing to its vicinity to the ocean, and to its being considerably intersected by arms of the sea, was much more moderate than this latter district, it was fairly concluded that this county was even better fitted for this system of management, than the heights of Perthshire and Inverness-shire. The inferior elevation of its mountains contributed still further to this effect, and held out every encouragement to adopt the same course which had been pursued with such success in both parts of the kingdom.

The succession of those Alpine plants, which are common to the Cheviot Hills, when they are put under sheep, being also the natural herbage of the mountains of Sutherland, renders them still more suitable to this mode of occupation.

On the first melting of the snow, the cotton grass is found to have been growing rapidly; it forms a healthy and an abundant food for sheep, until about the beginning of May, at which time it is in seed; when, after a short interval, the deer hair takes its place, starting up almost instantaneously, and forming, in the course of one week (if the ground has been recently burnt, and the weather be favourable), a green cover to the mountains. This plant grows with several varieties of bents, until the end of July, when the cotton grass again begins to spring, and with the pry moss, comes a second time into flower, in September, after which the heather and more heating plants continue until the frosts of winter. Nor is there any part of these mountains, over which the sheep cannot roam with ease, in search of food, rendering the whole available and profitable.

As there was every reason therefore for concluding, that the mountainous parts of the estate and indeed of the county of Sutherland, were as much calculated for the maintenance of stock as they were unfit for the habitation of man, there could be no doubt as to the propriety of converting them into sheep walks, provided the people could be at the same time settled in situations, where, by the exercise of their honest industry, they could obtain a decent livelihood, and add to the general mass of national wealth, and where they should not be exposed to the recurrence of those privations, which so frequently and so terribly afflicted them, when situated among the mountains. It was a matter of important consideration, to determine how this was to be accomplished. The local peculiarities of the county presented none of those advantages in disposing of, and absorbing the surplus population, which the borders of the two kingdoms, and the southern and eastern highlands had enjoyed. Besides it had made no approximation to the state in which the rest of Scotland was placed, when those changes were carried into effect. It had stood still in the midst of that career of improvement which had so remarkably and so splendidly distinguished the rest of the kingdom; and remained separated by its habits, prejudices, and language, from all around.

It had long been known, that the coast of Sutherland abounded with many different kinds of fish, not only sufficient for the consumption of the country, but affording also a supply to any extent, for more distant markets or for exportation, when cured and salted. Besides the regular and continual supply of white fish, with which the shores thus abound, the coast of Sutherland is annually visited by one of those vast shoals of herrings, which frequent the coast of Scotland. It seemed as if it had been pointed out by Nature, that the system for this remote district, in order that it might bear its suitable importance in contributing its share to the general stock of the country, was, to convert the mountainous districts into sheep walks, and to remove the inhabitants to the coast, or to the valleys near the sea.

It will be seen, that the object to be obtained by this arrangement, was two-fold: it was, in the first place, to render this mountainous district contributory, as far as it was possible, to the general wealth and industry of the country, and in the manner most suitable to its situation and peculiar circumstances. This was to be effected by making it produce a large supply of wool, for the staple manufactory of England. While, at the same time, it should support as numerous, and a far more laborious and useful population, than it hitherto had done at home: and, in the second place, to convert the inhabitants of those districts to the habits of regular and continued industry, and to enable them to bring to market a very considerable surplus quantity of provisions, for the supply of the large towns in the southern parts of the island, or for the purpose of exportation.

A policy well calculated to raise the importance, and increase the happiness of the individuals themselves, who were the objects of the change, to benefit those to whom these extensive but hitherto unproductive possessions belonged, and to promote the general prosperity of the nation. Such was the system which was adopted. In carrying it into effect, every care was taken to explain the object proposed to be accomplished, to those who were to be removed, and to point out to them, the ultimate advantages that would necessarily accrue to them, from their completion.

These communications were made to the people by the factor personally, or by written statements, communicated to them by the ground officers. That nothing might be omitted in this respect, the different ministers, and the principal tacksmen connected with the districts which were to be newly arranged, were written to, explaining to them, fully and explicitly, the intentions of the proprietors in adopting them. It was particularly requested of these gentlemen, that they would impress upon the minds of the people, the propriety of agreeing to them, and of explaining, that the motives which dictated this step, arose out of a real regard for their interests and prosperity, as well as for the general improvement of the estate.

It was distinctly admitted, that it was not to be expected, that the people should be immediately reconciled to them. Such was to expect more than it was possible to hope for. But it was represented, that if this was so fully felt, and so clearly admitted, that the landlords must have been strongly and conscientiously impressed with the necessity and propriety of the measures adopted, as tending directly to the happiness of those placed under their protection. These representations had the desired effect, and nothing can be more praiseworthy, or deserve more to be applauded, than the conduct of the people on quitting their original habitations; for although they left them with much regret, they did so in the most quiet, orderly, and peaceable manner.

If, upon one occasion, in the earlier years of these arrangements, a momentary feeling of a contrary nature was exhibited, it arose entirely from the misconduct of persons whose duty it was to have recommended and enforced obedience to the laws, in place of infusing into the minds of the people, feelings of a contrary description. As soon, however, as the interference of these persons was withdrawn, the poor people returned to their usual state of quietness and repose. All the statements, giving a different account of their conduct, are absolutely false, and a libel upon their good conduct and peaceable character.

These arrangements commenced in 1807, and have been carried on from that period, as the different tacks expired, and afforded an opportunity of doing so. Bad years, and the failure of crops continuing to produce the same miserable effects they had constantly occasioned to that portion of the population, which still continued to reside among the mountains. This calamity fell with great severity upon them in the seasons of 1812-13 and 1816-17.

During the latter period they suffered the extremes of want and of human misery, notwithstanding every aid that could be given to them, through the bounty of their landlords. Their wretchedness was so great, that after pawning everything they were possessed of, to the fishermen on the coast, such as had no cattle were reduced to come down from the hills in hundreds, for the purpose of gathering cockles on the shore. Those who lived in the more remote situations of the country were obliged to subsist upon broth made of nettles, thickened with a little oatmeal. Those who had cattle had recourse to the still more wretched expedient of bleeding them, and mixing the blood with oatmeal, which they afterwards cut into slices and fried. Those who had a little money came down and slept all night upon the beach, in order to watch the boat returning from the fishing, that they might be in time to obtain a part of what had been caught.

In order to alleviate this misery, every exertion was made by Lord Stafford. To those who had cattle he advanced money to the amount of above three thousand pounds.

To supply those who had no cattle, he sent meal into the country to the amount of nearly nine thousand pounds. Besides which, Lady Stafford distributed money to each parish on the estate: in order that no pains nor consideration might be wanting, it was arranged that the gentleman who is at the head of his Lordship’s affairs, the writer of this statement, should go to Dunrobin to settle with the local management and the clergymen, what was the best and most effectual way of distributing his Lordship’s relief. Similar means were taken by Lord Reay, to alleviate the distresses of his people. While such was the distress of those who still remained among the hills, it was hardly felt by those who had been settled upon the coast. Their new occupation, as fishermen, rendered them not only independent of that which produced the misery of their neighbours, but enabled them at the same time, in some degree, to become contributors towards their support, both by the fish they were able to sell to them, and also by the regular payment of their rents. While it need hardly be stated, that these wretched sufferers not only required to be relieved, but failed entirely in the payment of what they owed the landlord.

MRS. HARRIET BEECHER STOWE ON THE SUTHERLAND CLEARANCES.[7]

As to those ridiculous stories about the Duchess of Sutherland, which have found their way into many of the prints in America, one has only to be here, moving in society, to see how excessively absurd they are.

All my way through Scotland, and through England, I was associating, from day to day, with people of every religious denomination, and every rank of life. I have been with dissenters and with churchmen; with the national Presbyterian church and the free Presbyterian; with Quakers and Baptists.

In all these circles I have heard the great and noble of the land freely spoken of and canvassed, and if there had been the least shadow of a foundation for any such accusations, I certainly should have heard it recognized in some manner. If in no other, such warm friends as I have heard speak would have alluded to the subject in the way of defence; but I have actually never heard any allusion of any sort, as if there was anything to be explained or accounted for.

As I have before intimated, the Howard family, to which the duchess belongs, is one which has always been on the side of popular rights and popular reform. Lord Carlisle, her brother, has been a leader of the people, particularly during the time of the corn-law reformation, and she has been known to take a wide and generous interest in all these subjects. Everywhere that I have moved through Scotland and England I have heard her kindness of heart, her affability of manner, and her attention to the feelings of others spoken of as marked characteristics.

Imagine, then, what people must think when they find in respectable American prints the absurd story of her turning her tenants out into the snow, and ordering the cottages to be set on fire over their heads because they would not go out.

But, if you ask how such an absurd story could ever have been made up, whether there is the least foundation to make it on, I answer that it is the exaggerated report of a movement made by the present Duke of Sutherland’s father, in the year 1811, and which was part of a great movement that passed through the Highlands of Scotland, when the advancing progress of civilisation began to make it necessary to change the estates from military to agricultural establishments.

Soon after the union of the crowns of England and Scotland, the border chiefs found it profitable to adopt upon their estates that system of agriculture to which their hills were adapted, rather than to continue the maintenence of military retainers. Instead of keeping garrisons, with small armies, in a district, they decided to keep only so many as could profitably cultivate the land. The effect of this, of course, was like disbanding an army. It threw many people out of employ, and forced them to seek for a home elsewhere. Like many other movements which, in their final results, are beneficial to society, this was at first vehemently resisted, and had to be carried into effect in some cases by force. As I have said, it began first in the southern counties of Scotland, soon after the union of the English and Scottish crowns, and gradually crept northward—one county after another yielding to the change. To a certain extent, as it progressed northward, the demand for labour in the great towns absorbed the surplus population; but when it came in to the extreme Highlands, this refuge was wanting. Emigration to America now became the resource; and the surplus population were induced to this by means such as the Colonization Society now recommends and approves for promoting emigration to Liberia.

The first farm that was so formed on the Sutherland estate was in 1806. The great change was made in 1811-12, and completed in 1819-20.

The Sutherland estates are in the most northern portion of Scotland. The distance of this district from the more advanced parts of the kingdom, the total want of roads, the unfrequent communication by sea, and the want of towns, made it necessary to adopt a different course in regard to the location of the Sutherland population from that which circumstances had provided in other parts of Scotland, where they had been removed from the bleak and uncultivable mountains. They had lots given them near the sea, or in more fertile spots, where, by labour and industry, they might maintain themselves. They had two years allowed them for preparing for the change, without payment of rent. Timber for their houses was given, and many other facilities for assisting their change.

The general agent of the Sutherland estate is Mr. Loch. In a speech of this gentleman in the House of Commons on the second reading of the Scotch Poor-Law Bill, June 12, 1845, he states the following fact with regard to the management of the Sutherland estate during this period, from 1811 to 1833, which certainly can speak for itself: “I can state as from fact that, from 1811 to 1833, not one sixpence of rent has been received from that county, but, on the contrary, there has been sent there, for the benefit and improvement of the people, a sum exceeding sixty thousand pounds.”

Mr. Loch goes on in the same speech to say: “There is no set of people more industrious than the people of Sutherland. Thirty years since they were engaged in illegal distillation to a very great extent; at the present moment there is not, I believe, an illegal still in the county. Their morals have improved as those habits have been abandoned; and they have added many hundreds, I believe thousands, of acres to the land in cultivation since they were placed upon the shore.

“Previous to the change to which I have referred, they exported very few cattle, and hardly anything else. They were also, every now and then, exposed to all the difficulties of extreme famine. In the years 1812-13, and 1816-17, so great was the misery that it was necessary to send down oatmeal for their supply to the amount of nine thousand pounds, and that was given to the people. But, since, industrious habits were introduced, and they were settled within reach of fishing, no such calamity has overtaken them. Their condition was then so low that they were obliged to bleed their cattle during the winter, and mix the blood with the remnant of meal they had, in order to save from them starvation.

“Since then the country has improved so much that the fish, in particular, which they exported, in 1815, from one village alone, Helmsdale (which, previous to 1811, did not exist), amounted to five thousand three hundred and eighteen barrels of herring, and in 1844 thirty-seven thousand five hundred and ninety-four barrels, giving employment to about three thousand nine hundred people. This extends over the whole of the county, in which fifty-six thousand barrels were cured.

“Do not let me be supposed to say that there are not cases requiring attention: it must be so in a large population; but there can be no means taken by a landlord, or by those under him, that are not bestowed upon that tenantry.

“It has been said that the contribution by the heritor (the duke) to one kirk session for the poor was but six pounds. Now, in the eight parishes which are called Sutherland proper, the amount of the contribution of the Duke of Sutherland to the kirk session is forty-two pounds a-year. That is a very small sum, but that sum merely is so given because the landlord thinks that he can distribute his charity in a more beneficial manner to the people; and the amount of charity which he gives—and which, I may say, is settled on them, for it is given regularly—is above four hundred and fifty pounds a-year.

“Therefore the statements that have been made, so far from being correct, are in every way an exaggeration of what is the fact. No portion of the kingdom has advanced in prosperity so much; and if the honourable member (Mr. S. Crawford) will go down there, I will give him every facility for seeing the state of the people, and he shall judge with his own eyes whether my representation be not correct. I could go through a great many other particulars, but I will not trouble the House now with them. The statements I have made are accurate, and I am quite ready to prove them in any way that is necessary.”

The same Mr. Loch has published a pamphlet, in which he has traced out the effects of the system pursued on the Sutherland estate, in many very important particulars. It appears from this that previously to 1811 the people were generally sub-tenants to middlemen, who exacted high rents, and also various perquisites, such as the delivery of poultry and eggs, giving so many days’ labour in harvest time, cutting and carrying peat and stones for building.

Since 1811 the people have become immediate tenants, at a greatly diminished rate of rent, and released from all these exactions. For instance, in two parishes, in 1812, the rents were one thousand five hundred and ninety-three pounds, and in 1823 they were only nine hundred and seventy-two pounds. In another parish the reduction of rents has amounted, on an average, to thirty-six per cent. Previous to 1811 the houses were turf huts of the poorest description, in many instances the cattle being kept under the same roof with the family. Since 1811 a large proportion of their houses have been rebuilt in a superior manner—the landlord having paid them for their old timber where it could not be moved, and having also contributed the new timber, with lime.

Before 1811 all the rents of the estates were used for the personal profit of the landlord; but since that time, both by the present duke and his father, all the rents have been expended on improvements in the county, besides sixty thousand pounds more which have been remitted from England for the purpose. This money has been spent on churches, school-houses, harbours, public inns, roads, and bridges.

In 1811 there was not a carriage-road in the county, and only two bridges. Since that time four hundred and thirty miles of road have been constructed on the estate, at the expense of the proprietor and tenants. There is not a turnpike-gate in the county, and yet the roads are kept perfect.

Before 1811 the mail was conveyed entirely by a foot runner, and there was but one post-office in the county; and there was no direct post across the county, but letters to the north and west were forwarded once a month. A mail-coach has since been established, to which the late Duke of Sutherland contributed more than two thousand six hundred pounds; and since 1834 mail-gigs have been established to convey letters to the north and west coast, towards which the Duke of Sutherland contributes three hundred pounds a year. There are sixteen post-offices and sub-offices in the county. Before 1811 there was no inn in the county fit for the reception of strangers. Since that time there have been fourteen inns either built or enlarged by the duke.

Before 1811 there was scarcely a cart on the estate; all the carriage was done on the backs of ponies. The cultivation of the interior was generally executed with a rude kind of spade, and there was not a gig in the county. In 1845 there were one thousand one hundred and thirty carts owned on the estate, and seven hundred and eight ploughs, also forty-one gigs.

Before 1812 there was no baker, and only two shops. In 1845 there were eight bakers and forty-six grocers’ shops, in nearly all of which shoe-blacking was sold to some extent, an unmistakable evidence of advancing civilization.

In 1808 the cultivation of the coast-side of Sutherland was so defective that it was necessary often, in a fall of snow, to cut down the young Scotch firs to feed the cattle on; and in 1808 hay had to be imported. Now the coast side of Sutherland exhibits an extensive district of land cultivated according to the best principles of modern agriculture; several thousand acres have been added to the arable land by these improvements.

Before 1811 there were no woodlands of any extent on the estate, and timber had to be obtained from a distance. Since that time many thousand acres of woodland have been planted, the thinnings of which, being sold to the people at a moderate rate, have greatly increased their comfort and improved their domestic arrangements.

Before 1811 there were only two blacksmiths in the county. In 1845 there were forty-two blacksmiths and sixty-three carpenters. Before 1829 the exports of the county consisted of black cattle of an inferior description, pickled salmon, and some ponies; but these were precarious sources of profit, as many died in winter for want of food; for example, in the spring of 1807, two hundred cows, five hundred cattle, and more than two hundred ponies died in the parish of Kildonan alone. Since that time the measures pursued by the Duke of Sutherland, in introducing improved breeds of cattle, pigs, and modes of agriculture, have produced results in exports which tell their own story. About forty thousand sheep and one hundred and eighty thousand fleece of wool are exported annually; also fifty thousand barrels of herring.

The whole fishing village of Helmsdale has been built since that time. It now contains from thirteen to fifteen curing yards covered with slate, and several streets with houses similarly built. The herring fishery, which has been mentioned as so productive, has been established since the change, and affords employment to three thousand nine hundred people.

Since 1811, also, a savings-bank has been established in every parish, of which the Duke of Sutherland is patron and treasurer, and the savings have been very considerable.

The education of the children of the people has been a subject of deep interest to the Duke of Sutherland. Besides the parochial schools (which answer, I suppose, to our district schools), of which the greater number have been rebuilt or repaired at an expense exceeding what is legally required for such purposes, the Duke of Sutherland contributes to the support of several schools for young females, at which sewing and other branches of education are taught; and in 1844 he agreed to establish twelve General Assembly schools, in such parts of the county as were without the sphere of the parochial schools, and to build schools and schoolmasters’ houses, which will, upon an average, cost two hundred pounds each; and to contribute annually two hundred pounds in aid of salaries to the teachers, besides a garden and cow’s grass; and in 1845 he made an arrangement with the education committee of the Free Church, whereby no child, of whatever persuasion, will be beyond the reach of moral and religious education.

There are five medical gentlemen on the estate, three of whom receive allowances from the Duke of Sutherland for attendance on the poor in the districts in which they reside.

An agricultural association, or farmers’ club, has been formed under the patronage of the Duke of Sutherland, of which the other proprietors in the county, and the larger tenantry, are members, which is in a very active and flourishing state. They have recently invited Professor Johnston to visit Sutherland and give lectures on agricultural chemistry.

The total population of the Sutherland estate is twenty-one thousand seven hundred and eighty-four. To have the charge and care of so large an estate, of course, must require very systematic arrangements; but a talent for system seems to be rather the forte of the English.

The estate is first divided into three districts, and each district is under the superintendence of a factor, who communicates with the duke through a general agent. Besides this, when the duke is on the estate, which is during a portion of every year, he receives on Monday whoever of his tenants wishes to see him. Their complaints or wishes are presented in writing; he takes them into consideration, and gives written replies.

Besides the three factors there is a ground officer, or sub-factor, in every parish, and an agriculturist in the Dunrobin district, who gives particular attention to instructing the people in the best methods of farming. The factors, the ground officers, and the agriculturists, all work to one common end. They teach the advantages of draining; of ploughing deep, and forming their ridges in straight lines; of constructing tanks for saving liquid manure. The young farmers also pick up a great deal of knowledge when working as ploughmen or labourers on the more immediate grounds of the estate.

The head agent, Mr. Loch, has been kind enough to put into my hands a general report of the condition of the estate, which he drew up for the inspection of the duke, May 12, 1853, and in which he goes minutely over the condition of every part of the estate.

One anecdote of the former Duke of Sutherland will show the spirit which has influenced the family in their management of the estate. In 1817, when there was much suffering on account of bad seasons, the Duke of Sutherland sent down his chief agent to look into the condition of the people, who desired the ministers of the parishes to send in their lists of poor. To his surprise it was found that there were located on the estate a number of people who had settled there without leave. They amounted to four hundred and eight families, or two thousand persons; and though they had no legal title to remain where they were, no hesitation was shown in supplying them with food in the same manner with those who were tenants, on the sole condition that on the first opportunity they should take cottages on the sea-shore, and become industrious people. It was the constant object of the duke to keep the rents of his poorer tenants at a nominal amount.

What led me more particularly to inquire into these facts was, that I received by mail, while in London, an account containing some of these stories, which had been industriously circulated in America. There were dreadful accounts of cruelties practised in the process of inducing the tenants to change their places of residence. The following is a specimen of these stories:—

“I was present at the pulling down and burning of the house of William Chisholm, Badinloskin, in which was lying his wife’s mother, an old, bed-ridden woman of near one hundred years of age, none of the family being present. I informed the persons about to set fire to the house of this circumstance, and prevailed on them to wait till Mr. Sellar came. On his arrival I told him of the poor old woman, being a condition unfit for removal. He replied, ‘The old witch! she has lived too long; let her burn.’ Fire was immediately set to the house, and the blankets in which she was carried were in flames before she could be got out. She was placed in a little shed, and it was with great difficulty they were prevented from firing that also. The old woman’s daughter arrived while the house was on fire, and assisted the neighbours in removing her mother out of the flames and smoke, presenting a picture of horror which I shall never forget but cannot attempt to describe. She died within five days.”

With regard to this story, Mr. Loch, the agent, says: “I must notice the only thing like a fact stated in the newspaper extract which you sent to me, wherein Mr. Sellar is accused of acts of cruelty towards some of the people. This Mr. Sellar tested, by bringing an action against the then Sheriff-substitute of the county. He obtained a verdict for heavy damages. The Sheriff, by whom the slander was propagated, left the county. Both are since dead.”

Having, through Lord Shaftesbury’s kindness, received the benefit of Mr. Loch’s corrections to this statement, I am permitted to make a little further extract from his reply. He says:—

“In addition to what I was able to say in my former paper, I can now state that the Duke of Sutherland has received from one of the most determined opposers of the measures, who travelled to the north of Scotland as editor of a newspaper, a letter regretting all he had written on the subject, being convinced that he was entirely misinformed. As you take so much interest in the subject, I will conclude by saying that nothing could exceed the prosperity of the county during the past year; their stock, sheep, and other things sold at high prices; their crops of grain and turnips were never so good, and the potatoes were free from all disease: rents have been paid better than was ever known. * * * As an instance of the improved habits of the farmers, no house is now built for them that they do not require a hot bath and water-closets.”

From this long epitome you can gather the following results. First, if the system were a bad one, the Duchess of Sutherland had nothing to do with it, since it was first introduced in 1806, the same year her grace was born; and the accusation against Mr. Sellar, dates in 1811, when her grace was five or six years old. The Sutherland arrangements were completed in 1819, and her grace was not married to the duke till 1823, so that, had the arrangement been the worst in the world, it is nothing to the purpose so far as she is concerned.

As to whether the arrangement is a bad one, the facts which have been stated speak for themselves. To my view it is an almost sublime instance of the benevolent employment of superior wealth and power in shortening the struggles of advancing civilization, and elevating in a few years a whole community to a point of education and material prosperity, which, unassisted, they might never have obtained.

REPLY TO MRS. BEECHER STOWE BY DONALD MACLEOD.[8]

From the year 1812 to 1820, the whole interior of the county of Sutherland—whose inhabitants were advancing rapidly in the science of agriculture and education, who by nature and exemplary training were the bravest, the most moral and patriotic people that ever existed—even admitting a few of them did violate the excise laws, the only sin which Mr. Loch and all the rest of their avowed enemies could bring against them—where a body of men could be raised on the shortest possible notice that kings and emperors might and would be proud of; and where the whole fertile valleys and straths which gave them birth were in due season waving with corn; their mountains and hill-sides studded with sheep and cattle; where rejoicing, felicity, happiness, and true piety prevailed; where the martial notes of the bagpipes sounded and reverberated from mountain to glen, from glen to mountain. I say, marvellous! in eight years converted to a solitary wilderness, where the voice of man praising God is not to be heard, nor the image of God upon man to be seen; where you can set a compass with twenty miles of a radius upon it, and go round with it full stretched, and not find one acre of land within the circumference which has come under the plough for the last thirty years, except a few in the parishes of Lairg and Tongue,—all under mute brute animals. This is the advancement of civilization, is it not, madam?

Return now with me to the beginning of your elaborate eulogy on the Duchess of Sutherland, and if you are open to conviction, I think you should be convinced that I never published nor circulated in the American, English, or Scotch public prints any ridiculous, absurd stories about her Grace of Sutherland. An abridgment of my lucubrations is now in the hands of the public, and you may peruse them. I stand by them as facts (stubborn chiels). I can prove them to be so even in this country (Canada), by a cloud of living witnesses, and my readers will find that, instead of bringing absurd accusations against her Grace, that I have endeavoured in some instances to screen her and her predecessors from the public odium their own policy and the doings of their servants merited. Moreover, there is thirty years since I began to expostulate with the House of Sutherland for their shortsighted policy in dealing with their people as they were doing, and it is twenty years since I began to expose them publicly, with my real name, Donald MacLeod, attached to each letter, sending a copy of the public paper where it appeared, directed by post, to the Duke of Sutherland. These exposing and remonstrating letters were published in the Edinburgh papers, where the Duke and his predecessors had their principal Scotch law agent, and you may easily believe that I was closely watched, with the view to find one false accusation in my letters, but they were baffled. I am well aware that each letter I have written on the subject would, if untrue, constitute a libel, and I knew the editors, printers, and publishers of these papers were as liable or responsible for libel as I was. But the House of Sutherland could never venture to raise an action of damages against either of us. In 1841, when I published my first pamphlet, I paid $4 50c., for binding one of them, in a splendid style, which I sent by mail to his Grace the present Duke of Sutherland, with a complimentary note requesting him to peruse it, and let me know if it contained anything offensive or untrue. I never received a reply, nor did I expect it; yet I am satisfied that his Grace did peruse it. I posted a copy of it to Mr. Loch, his chief commissioner; to Mr. W. Mackenzie, his chief lawyer in Edinburgh; to every one of their underlings, to sheep farmers, and ministers in the county of Sutherland, who abetted the depopulators, and I challenged the whole of them, and other literary scourges who aid and justified their unhallowed doings, to gainsay one statement I have made. Can you or any other believe that a poor sinner like Donald MacLeod would be allowed for so many years to escape with impunity, had he been circulating and publishing calumnious, absurd falsehoods against such personages as the House of Sutherland? No, I tell you, if money could secure my punishment, without establishing their own shame and guilt, that it would be considered well-spent long ere now,—they would eat me in penny pies if they could get me cooked for them.

I agree with you that the Duchess of Sutherland is a beautiful, accomplished lady, who would shudder at the idea of taking a faggot or a burning torch in her hand to set fire to the cottages of her tenants, and so would her predecessor, the first Duchess of Sutherland, her good mother; likewise would the late and present Dukes of Sutherland, at least I am willing to believe that they would. Yet it was done in their name, under their authority, to their knowledge, and with their sanction. The dukes and duchesses of Sutherland, and those of their depopulating order, had not, nor have they any call to defile their pure hands in milder work than to burn people’s houses; no, no, they had, and have plenty of willing tools at their beck to perform their dirty work. Whatever amount of humanity and purity of heart the late or the present Duke and Duchess may possess or be ascribed to them, we know the class of men from whom they selected their commissioners, factors, and underlings. I knew every one of the unrighteous servants who ruled the Sutherland estate for the last fifty years, and I am justified in saying that the most skilful phrenologist and physiognomist that ever existed could not discern one spark of humanity in the whole of them, from Mr. Loch down to Donald Sgrios, or Damnable Donald, the name by which the latter was known. The most of those cruel executors of the atrocities I have been describing are now dead, and to be feared but not lamented. But it seems their chief was left to give you all the information you required about British slavery and oppression. I have read from speeches delivered by Mr. Loch at public dinners among his own party, “that he would never be satisfied until the Gaelic language and the Gaelic people would be extirpated root and branch from the Sutherland estate; yes, from the Highlands of Scotland.” He published a book, where he stated as a positive fact, “that when he got the management of the Sutherland estate he found 408 families on the estate who never heard the name of Jesus,”—whereas I could make oath that there were not at that time, and for ages prior to it, above two families within the limits of the county who did not worship that Name and holy Being every morning and evening. I know there are hundreds in the Canadas who will bear me out in this assertion. I was at the pulling down and burning of the house of William Chisholm. I got my hands burnt taking out the poor old woman from amidst the flames of her once-comfortable though humble dwelling, and a more horrifying and lamentable scene could scarcely be witnessed. I may say the skeleton of a once tall, robust, high-cheek-boned, respectable woman, who had seen better days; who could neither hear, see, nor speak; without a tooth in her mouth, her cheek skin meeting in the centre, her eyes sunk out of sight in their sockets, her mouth wide open, her nose standing upright among smoke and flames, uttering piercing moans of distress and agony, in articulations from which could be only understood, “Oh, Dhia, Dhia, teine, teine—Oh God, God, fire, fire.” When she came to the pure air, her bosom heaved to a most extraordinary degree, accompanied by a deep hollow sound from her lungs, comparable to the sound of thunder at a distance. When laid down upon the bare, soft, moss floor of the roofless shed, I will never forget the foam of perspiration which emitted and covered the pallid death-looking countenance. This was a scene, madam, worthy of an artist’s pencil, and of a conspicuous place on the stages of tragedy. Yet you call this a specimen of the ridiculous stories which found their way into respectable prints, because Mr. Loch, the chief actor, told you that Sellar, the head executive, brought an action against the sheriff and obtained a verdict for heavy damages. What a subterfuge; but it will not answer the purpose, “the bed is too short to stretch yourself, and the covering too narrow and short to cover you.” If you took the information and evidence upon which you founded your Uncle Tom’s Cabin from such unreliable sources (as I said before), who can believe the one-tenth of your novel? I cannot. I have at my hand here the grandchild of the slaughtered old woman, who recollects well of the circumstance. I have not far from me a respectable man, an elder in the Free Church, who was examined as a witness at Sellar’s trial, at the Spring Assizes of Inverness, in 1816, which you will find narrated in letters four and five of my work. Had you the opportunity, madam, of seeing the scenes which I, and hundreds more, have seen—the wild ferocious appearance of the infamous gang who constituted the burning party, covered over face and hands with soot and ashes of the burning houses, cemented by torch-grease and their own sweat, kept continually drunk or half-drunk while at work; and to observe the hellish amusements some of them would get up for themselves and for an additional pleasure to their leaders! The people’s houses were generally built upon declivities, and in many cases not far from pretty steep precipices. They preserved their meal in tight-made boxes, or chests, as they were called, and when this fiendish party found any quantity of meal, they would carry it between them to the brink, and dispatch it down the precipice amidst shrieks and yells. It was considered grand sport to see the box breaking to atoms and the meal mixed with the air. When they would set fire to a house, they would watch any of the domestic animals making their escape from the flames, such as dogs, cats, hens, or any poultry; these were caught and thrown back to the flames—grand sport for demons in human form!

As to the vaunted letter which his “Grace received from one of the most determined opposers of the measures, who travelled in the north of Scotland as editor of a newspaper, regretting all that he had written on the subject, being convinced that he was misinformed,” I may tell you, madam, that this man did not travel to the north or in the north of Scotland, as editor; his name was Thomas Mulock; he came to Scotland a fanatic speculator in literature in search of money, or a lucrative situation, vainly thinking that he would be a dictator to every editor in Scotland. He first attacked the immortal Hugh Miller of the Witness, Edinburgh, but in him he met more than his match. He then went to the north, got hold of my first pamphlet, and by setting it up in a literary style, and in better English than I, he made a splendid and promising appearance in the northern papers for some time; but he found out that the money expected was not coming in, and that the hotels, head inns, and taverns would not keep him up any longer without the prospect of being paid for the past or for the future. I found out that he was hard up, and a few of the Highlanders in Edinburgh and myself sent him from twenty to thirty pounds sterling. When he saw that that was all he was to get, he at once turned tail upon us, and instead of expressing his gratitude, he abused us unsparingly, and regretted that ever he wrote in behalf of such a hungry, moneyless class. He smelled (like others we suspect) where the gold was hoarded up for hypocrites and flatterers, and that one apologising letter to his Grace would be worth ten times as much as he could expect from the Highlanders all his lifetime; and I doubt not it was, for his apology for the sin of misinformation got wide circulation.

He then went to France and started an English paper in Paris, and for the service he rendered Napoleon in crushing republicanism during the besieging of Rome, etc., the Emperor presented him with a gold pin, and in a few days afterwards sent a gendarme to him with a brief notice that his service was not any longer required, and a warning to quit France in a few days, which he had to do. What became of him after I know not, but very likely he is dictating to young Loch, or some other Metternich.

No feelings of hostile vindictiveness, no desire to inflict chastisement, no desire to make riches, influenced my mind, pourtraying the scenes of havoc and misery which in those past days darkened the annals of Sutherland. I write in my own humble style, with higher aims, wishing to prepare the way for demonstrating to the Dukes of Sutherland, and all other Highland proprietors, great and small, that the path of selfish aggrandisement and oppression leads by sure and inevitable results, yea to the ruin and destruction of the blind and misguided oppressors themselves. I consider the Duke himself victimised on a large scale by an incurably wrong system, and by being enthralled by wicked counsellors and servants. I have no hesitation in saying, had his Grace and his predecessors bestowed one-half of the encouragement they had bestowed upon strangers on the aborigines—a hardy, healthy, abstemious people, who lived peaceably in their primitive habitations, unaffected with the vices of a subtle civilization, possessing little, but enjoying much; a race devoted to their hereditary chief, ready to abide by his counsels; a race profitable in peace, and loyal, available in war; I say, his Grace, the present Duke of Sutherland, and his beautiful Duchess, would be without compeers in the British dominions, their rents, at least doubled; would be as secure from invasion and annoyance in Dunrobin Castle as Queen Victoria could, or can be, in her Highland residence, at Balmoral, and far safer than she is in her English home, Buckingham Palace; every man and son of Sutherland would be ready, as in the days of yore, to shed the last drop of their blood in defence of their chief, if required. Congratulations, rejoicings, dancing to the martial notes of the pipes, would meet them at the entrance to every glen and strath in Sutherlandshire, accompanied, surrounded, and greeted, as they proceeded, by the most grateful, devotedly attached, happy, and bravest peasantry that ever existed; yes, but alas! where there is nothing now, but desolation and the cries of famine and want, to meet the noble pair—the ruins of once comfortable dwellings—will be seen the landmarks of the furrows and ridges which yielded food to thousands, the footprints of the arch-enemy of human happiness, and ravager—before, after, and on each side, solitude, stillness, and the quiet of the grave, disturbed only at intervals by the yells of a shepherd, or fox-hunter, and the bark of a collie dog. Surely we must admit that the Marquises and Dukes of Sutherland have been duped and victimised to a most extraordinary and incredible extent; and we have Mr. Loch’s own words for it in his speech in the House of Commons, June 21st, 1845: “I can state, as from facts, that from 1811 to 1833, not one sixpence of rent has been received from that county; but, on the contrary, there has been sent there for the benefit and improvement of the people a sum exceeding sixty thousand pounds sterling.” Now think you of this immense wealth which has been expended. I am not certain, but I think the rental of the county would exceed £60,000 a year; you have then from 1811 to 1833, twenty-two years, leaving them at the above figures, and the sum total will amount to £1,320,000 expended upon the self-styled Sutherland improvements; add to this £60,000 sent down to preserve the lives of the victims of those improvements from death by famine, and the sum total will turn out in the shape of £1,380,000. It surely cost the heads of the house of Sutherland an immense sum of money to convert the county into the state I have described it in a former part of this work (and I challenge contradiction).

You should be surprised to hear and learn, madam, for what purposes most of the money drained from the Duke’s coffers yearly are expended since he became the Duke and proprietor of Sutherland, upholding the Loch policy. There are no fewer than seventeen who are known by the name of water bailiffs in the county, who receive yearly salaries, what doing, think you? Protecting the operations of the Loch policy, watching day and night the freshwater lakes, rivers, and creeks, teeming with the finest salmon and trout fish in the world, guarding from the famishing people, even during the years of famine and dire distress, when many had to subsist upon weeds, sea-ware, and shell-fish, yet guarded and preserved for the amusement of English anglers; and what is still more heartrending, to prevent the dying by hunger to pick up any of the dead fish left by the sporting anglers rotting on the lake, creek, and river sides, when the smallest of them, or a morsel, would be considered by hundreds, I may say thousands, of the needy natives, a treat; but they durst not touch them, or if they did and were found out to jail they were conducted, or removed summarily from his Grace’s domains; (let me be understood, these gentlemen had no use for the fish, killing them for amusement, only what they required for their own use, and complimented to the factors; they were not permitted to cure them).

You will find, madam, that about three miles from Dunrobin Castle there is a branch of the sea which extends up the county about six miles, where shell-fish, called mussels, abound. Here you will find two sturdy men, called mussel bailiffs, supplied with rifles and ammunition, and as many Newfoundland dogs as assistants, watching the mussel scalps, or beds, to preserve them from the people in the surrounding parishes of Dornoch, Rogart, and Golspie, and keep them, to supply the fishermen, on the opposite side of the Moray Firth, with bait, who come there every year and take away thousands of tons of this nutritive shell-fish, when many hundreds of the people would be thankful for a diet per day of them, to pacify the cravings of nature. You will find that the unfortunate native fishermen, who pay a yearly rent to his Grace for bait, are only permitted theirs from the refuse left by the strangers of the other side of the Moray Firth, and if they violate the iron rule laid down to them, they are entirely at the mercy of the underlings. There has been an instance of two of the fishermen’s wives going on a cold, snowy, frosty day to gather bait, but on account of the boisterous sea, could not reach the place appointed by the factors; one took what they required from the forbidden ground, and was observed by some of the bailiffs, in ambush, who pursued them like tigers. One came up to her unobserved, took out his knife, and cut the straps by which the basket or creel on her back was suspended; the weight on her back fell to the ground, and she, poor woman, big in the family way, fell her whole length forward in the snow and frost. Her companion turned round to see what had happened, when she was pushed back with such force that she fell; he then trampled their baskets and mussels to atoms, took them both prisoners, ordered one of them to call his superior bailiff to assist him, and kept the other for two hours standing, wet as she was, among frost and snow, until the superior came a distance of three miles. After a short consultation upon the enormity of the crime, the two poor women were led, like convicted criminals, to Golspie, to appear before Lycurgus Gunn, and in that deplorable condition were left standing before their own doors in the snow, until Marshall Gunn found it convenient to appear and pronounce judgment,—verdict: You are allowed to go into your houses this night; this day week you must leave this village for ever, and the whole of the fishermen of the village are strictly prohibited from taking bait from the Little Ferry until you leave; my bailiffs are requested to see this my decree strictly attended to. Being the middle of winter and heavy snow, they delayed a week longer: ultimately the villagers had to expel the two families from among them, so that they would get bait, having nothing to depend upon for subsistence but the fishing, and fish they could not without bait. This is a specimen of the injustice to and subjugation of the Golspie fishermen, and of the people at large; likewise of the purposes for which the Duke’s money is expended in that quarter. If you go, then, to the other side of the domain, you will find another Kyle, or a branch of the sea, which abounds in cockles and other shell-fish, fortunately for the poor people, not forbidden by a Loch ukase. But in the years of distress, when the people were principally living upon vegetables, sea-weeds, and shell-fish, various diseases made their appearance amongst them hitherto unknown. The absence of meal of any kind being considered the primary cause, some of the people thought they would be permitted to exchange shell-fish for meal with their more fortunate neighbours in Caithness, to whom such shell-fish were a rarity, and so far the understanding went between them, that the Caithness boats came up loaded with meal, but the Loch embargo, through his underling in Tongue, who was watching their movements, was at once placed upon it; the Caithness boats had to return home with the meal, and the Duke’s people might live or die, as they best could. Now, madam, you have steeped your brains, and ransacked the English language to find refined terms for your panegyric on the Duke, Duchess, and family of Sutherland. (I find no fault with you, knowing you have been well paid for it.) But I would briefly ask you (and others who devoted much of their time and talents in the same strain), would it not be more like a noble pair—if they did merit such noble praise as you have bestowed upon them—if they had, especially during years of famine and distress, freely opened up all these bountiful resources which God in His eternal wisdom and goodness prepared for His people, and which should never be intercepted nor restricted by man or men. You and others have composed hymns of praise, which it is questionable if there is a tune in heaven to sing them to.

So I returned, and considered all the oppressions that are done under the sun: and behold the tears of such as were oppressed, and they had no comforter: and on the side of their oppressors there was power; but they had no comforter.—Ecclesiastes iv. 1.

The wretch that works and weeps without relief

Has one that notices his silent grief.

He, from whose hands all pow’r proceeds

Ranks its abuse among the foulest deeds,

Considers all injustice with a frown,

But marks the man that treads his fellow down.

Remember Heav’n has an avenging rod—

To smite the poor is treason against God.—Cowper.

But you shall find the Duke’s money is expended for most astonishing purposes; not a little of it goes to hire hypocrites, and renowned literary flatterers, to vindicate the mal-administration of those to whom he entrusted the management of his affairs, and make his Grace (who is by nature a simple-minded man) believe his servants are innocent of all the charges brought against them, and doing justice to himself and to his people, when they are doing the greatest injustice to both; so that instead of calling his servants to account at any time, and enquiring into the broad charges brought against them—as every wise landlord should do—it seems the greater the enormities of foul deeds they commit, and the louder their accusations may sound through the land, the farther they are received into his favour. The fact is, that James Loch was Duke of Sutherland, and not the “tall, slender man with rather a thin face, light brown hair, and mild blue eyes,” who armed you up the extraordinary elegant staircase in Stafford House.

The Duchess of Sutherland pays a visit every year to Dunrobin Castle, and has seen and heard so many supplicating appeals presented to her husband by the poor fishermen of Golspie, soliciting liberty to take mussels from the Little Ferry Sands to bait their nets—a liberty of which they were deprived by his factors, though paying yearly rent for it; yet returned by his Grace with the brief deliverance, that he could do nothing for them. Can I believe that this is the same personage who can set out from Dunrobin Castle, her own Highland seat, and after travelling from it, then can ride in one direction over thirty miles, in another direction forty-four miles, in another, by taking the necessary circuitous route, sixty miles, and that over fertile glens, valleys, and straths, bursting with fatness, which gave birth to, and where were reared for ages, thousands of the bravest, the most moral, virtuous, and religious men that Europe could boast of; ready to a man, at a moment’s warning from their chiefs, to rise in defence of their king, queen, and country; animated with patriotism and love to their chief, and irresistible in the battle contest for victory? But these valiant men had then a country, a home, and a chief worth the fighting for. But I can tell her that she can now ride over these extensive tracts in the interior of the county without seeing the image of God upon a man travelling these roads, with the exception of a wandering Highland shepherd, wrapped up in a grey plaid to the eyes, with a collie dog behind him as a drill sergeant to train his ewes and to marshal his tups. There may happen to travel over the dreary tract a geologist, a tourist, or a lonely carrier, but these are as rare as a pelican in the wilderness, or a camel’s convoy caravan in the deserts of Arabia. Add to this a few English sportsmen, with their stag hounds, pointer dogs, and servants, and put themselves and their bravery together, and one company of French soldiers would put ten thousand of them to a disorderly flight, to save their own carcases, leaving their ewes and tups to feed the invaders!

The question may arise, where those people, who inhabited this country at one period, have gone? In America and Australia the most of them will be found. The Sutherland family and the nation had no need of their services; hence they did not regard their patriotism or loyalty, and disregarded their past services. Sheep, bullocks, deer, and game, became more valuable than men. Yet a remnant, or in other words a skeleton, of them is to be found along the sea shore, huddled together in motley groups upon barren moors, among cliffs and precipices, in the most impoverished, degraded, subjugated, slavish, spiritless, condition that human beings could exist in. If this is really the lady who has “Glory to God in the highest, peace on earth, and good will to men,” in view, and who is so religiously denouncing the American statute which “denies the slave the sanctity of marriage, with all its joys, rights, and obligations—which separates, at the will of the master, the wife from the husband, the children from the parents,” I would advise her in God’s name to take a tour round the sea-skirts of Sutherland, her own estate, beginning at Brora, then to Helmsdale, Portskerra, Strathy, Farr, Tongue, Durness, Eddrachillis, and Assynt, and learn the subjugated, degraded, impoverished, uneducated condition of the spiritless people of that sea-beaten coast, about two hundred miles in length, and let her with similar zeal remonstrate with her husband, that their condition is bettered; for the cure for all their misery and want is lying unmolested in the fertile valleys above, and all under his control; and to advise his Grace, her husband, to be no longer guided by his Ahitophel, Mr. Loch, but to discontinue his depopulating schemes, which have separated many a wife from her husband, never to meet—which caused many a premature death, and that separated many sons and daughters, never to see each other; and by all means to withdraw that mandate of Mr. Loch, which forbids marriage on the Sutherland estate, under pains and penalties of being banished from the county; for it has already augmented illegitimate connections and issues fifty per cent above what such were a few years ago—before this unnatural, ungodly law was put in force.

Let us see what the character of these ill-used people was! General Stewart of Garth, in his “Sketches of the Highlands” says: In the words of a general officer by whom the 93rd Sutherlanders were once reviewed, “They exhibit a perfect pattern of military discipline and moral rectitude. In the case of such men disgraceful punishment would be as unnecessary as it would be pernicious.” “Indeed,” says the General, “so remote was the idea of such a measure in regard to them, that when punishments were to be inflicted on others, and the troops in garrison assembled to witness their execution, the presence of the Sutherland Highlanders was dispensed with, the effects of terror as a check to crime being in their case uncalled for, as examples of that nature were not necessary for such honourable soldiers. When the Sutherland Highlanders were stationed at the Cape of Good Hope anxious to enjoy the advantages of religious instruction agreeably to the tenets of their national church, and there being no religious service in the garrison except the customary one of reading prayers to the soldiers on parade, the Sutherland men formed themselves into a congregation, appointed elders of their own number, engaged and paid a stipend (collected among themselves) to a clergyman of the Church of Scotland, and had divine service performed agreeably to the ritual of the Established Church every Sabbath, and prayer meetings through the week.” This reverend gentleman, Mr. Thom, in a letter which appeared in the Christian Herald of October, 1814, writes thus: “When the 93rd Highlanders left Cape Town last month, there were among them 156 members of the church, including three elders and three deacons, all of whom, so far as men can know the heart from the life, were pious men. The regiment was certainly a pattern of morality, and good behaviour to all other corps. They read their Bibles and observed the Sabbath. They saved their money to do good. 7000 rix dollars, a sum equal to £1200, the non-commissioned officers and privates saved for books, societies, and for the spread of the Gospel, a sum unparalleled in any other corps in the world, given in the short space of eighteen months. Their example had a general good effect on both the colonists and the heathen. If ever apostolic days were revived in modern times on earth, I certainly believe some of those to have been granted to us in Africa.” Another letter of a similar kind, addressed to the Committee of the Edinburgh Gaelic School Society (fourth annual report), says: “The 93rd Highlanders arrived in England, when they immediately received orders to proceed to North America; but before they re-embarked the sum collected for your society was made up and remitted to your treasurer, amounting to seventy-eight pounds, sterling.” “In addition to this,” says the noble-minded, immortal General, “such of them as had parents and friends in Sutherland did not forget their destitute condition, occasioned by the operation of the fire and faggot, mis-improved state of the county.” During the short period the regiment was quartered at Plymouth, upwards of £500 was lodged in one banking-house, to be remitted to Sutherland, exclusive of many sums sent through the Post Office and by officers; some of the sums exceeding £20 from an individual soldier. Men like these do credit to the peasantry of a country. “It must appear strange, and somewhat inconsistent,” continues the General, “when the same men who are so loud in their profession of an eager desire to promote and preserve the religious and moral virtues of the people, should so frequently take the lead in removing them from where they imbibed principles which have attracted the notice of Europe and of measures which lead to a deterioration, placing families on patches of potato ground as in Ireland, a system pregnant with degradation, poverty, and disaffection.” It is only when parents and heads of families in the Highlands are moral, happy, and contented, that they can instil sound principles into their children, who in their intercourse with the world may become what the men of Sutherland have already been, “an honourable example, worthy the imitation of all.”

I cannot help being grieved at my unavoidable abbreviation of these heart-stirring and heart-warming extracts, which should ornament every mantel-piece and library in the Highlands of Scotland; but I could refer to other authors of similar weight; among the last (though not the least), Mr. Hugh Millar of the Witness, in his “Sutherland as it was and is: or, How a country can be ruined;” a work which should silence and put to shame every vile, malignant calumniator of Highland religion and moral virtue in bygone years, who in their sophistical profession of a desire to promote the temporal and spiritual welfare of the people, had their own sordid cupidity and aggrandisement in view in all their unworthy lucubrations.

At the commencement of the Russian war a correspondent wrote as follows: “Your predictions are making their appearance at last, great demands are here for men to go to Russia, but they are not to be found. It seems that the Secretary of War has corresponded with all our Highland proprietors, to raise as many men as they could for the Crimean war, and ordered so many officers of rank to the Highlands to assist the proprietors in doing so—but it has been a complete failure as yet. The nobles advertised, by placards, meetings of the people; these proclamations were attended to, but when they came to understand what they were about, in most cases the recruiting proprietors and staff were saluted with the ominous cry of ‘Maa! maa! boo! boo!’ imitating sheep and bullocks, and, ‘Send your deer, your roes, your rams, dogs, shepherds, and gamekeepers to fight the Russians, they have never done us any harm.’ The success of his Grace the Duke of Sutherland was deplorable; I believe you would have pitied the poor old man had you seen him.

“In my last letter I told you that his head commissioner, Mr. Loch, and military officer, was in Sutherland for the last six weeks, and failed in getting one man to enlist; on getting these doleful tidings, the Duke himself left London for Sutherland, arriving at Dunrobin about ten days ago, and after presenting himself upon the streets of Golspie and Brora, he called a meeting of the male inhabitants of the parishes of Clyne, Rogart, and Golspie; the meeting was well attended; upwards of 400 were punctual at the hour; his Grace in his carriage, with his military staff and factors appeared shortly after; the people gave them a hearty cheer; his Grace took the chair. Three or four clerks took their seats at the table, and loosened down bulky packages of bank notes, and spread out platefuls of glittering gold. The Duke addressed the people very seriously, and entered upon the necessity of going to war with Russia, and the danger of allowing the Czar to have more power than what he holds already; of his cruel, despotic reign in Russia, etc.; likewise praising the Queen and her government, rulers and nobles of Great Britain, who stood so much in need of men to put and keep down the tyrant of Russia, and foil him in his wicked schemes to take possession of Turkey. In concluding his address, which was often cheered, the Duke told the young able-bodied men that his clerks were ready to take down the names of all those willing to enlist, and everyone who would enlist in the 93rd Highlanders, that the clerk would give him, there and then, £6 sterling; those who would rather enter any other corps, would get £3, all from his own private purse, independently of the government bounty. After advancing many silly flattering decoyments, he sat down to see the result, but there was no movement among the people; after sitting for a long time looking at the clerks, and they at him, at last his anxious looks at the people assumed a somewhat indignant appearance, when he suddenly rose up and asked what was the cause of their non-attention to the proposals he made, but no reply; it was the silence of the grave. Still standing, his Grace suddenly asked the cause; but no reply; at last an old man, leaning upon his staff, was observed moving towards the Duke, and when he approached near enough, he addressed his Grace something as follows: ‘I am sorry for the response your Grace’s proposals are meeting here to-day, so near the spot where your maternal grandmother, by giving forty-eight hours’ notice, marshalled fifteen hundred men to pick out of them the nine hundred she required, but there is a cause for it, and a grievous cause, and as your Grace demands to know it, I must tell you, as I see no one else are inclined in this assembly to do it. Your Grace’s mother and predecessors applied to our fathers for men upon former occasions, and our fathers responded to their call; they have made liberal promises, which neither them nor you performed; we are, we think, a little wiser than our fathers, and we estimate your promises of to-day at the value of theirs, besides you should bear in mind that your predecessors and yourself expelled us in a most cruel and unjust manner from the land which our fathers held in lien from your family, for their sons, brothers, cousins, and relations, which were handed over to your parents to keep up their dignity, and to kill the Americans, Turks, French, and the Irish; and these lands are devoted now to rear dumb brute animals, which you and your parents consider of far more value than men. I do assure your Grace that it is the prevailing opinion in this county, that should the Czar of Russia take possession of Dunrobin Castle and of Stafford House next term, that we could not expect worse treatment at his hands, than we have experienced at the hands of your family for the last fifty years. Your parents, yourself, and your commissioners, have desolated the glens and straths of Sutherland, where you should find hundreds, yea, thousands of men to meet you, and respond cheerfully to your call, had your parents and yourself kept faith with them. How could your Grace expect to find men where they are not, and the few of them which are to be found among the rubbish or ruins of the county, has more sense than to be decoyed by chaff to the field of slaughter; but one comfort you have, though you cannot find men to fight, you can supply those who will fight with plenty of mutton, beef, and venison.’ The Duke rose up, put on his hat, and left the field.”

Whether my correspondent added to the old man’s reply to his Grace or not, I cannot say, but one thing is evident, it was the very reply his Grace deserved.

I know for a certainty this to be the prevailing feeling throughout the whole Highlands of Scotland, and who should wonder at it? How many thousands of them who served out their 21, 22, 25, and 26 years, fighting for the British aristocracy, and on their return—wounded, maimed, or worn out—to their own country, promising themselves to spend the remainder of their days in peace, and enjoying the blessings and comfort their fathers enjoyed among their Highland, healthy, delightful hills, but found to their grief, that their parents were expelled from the country to make room for sheep, deer, and game, the glens where they were born, desolate, and the abodes which sheltered them at birth, and where they were reared to manhood, burnt to the ground; and instead of meeting the cheers, shaking-hands, hospitality, and affections of fathers, mothers, brothers, sisters, and relations, met with desolated glens, bleating of sheep, barking of dogs; and if they should happen to rest their worn-out frame upon the green sod which has grown upon their father’s hearth, and a gamekeeper, factor, or water bailiff, to come round, he would very unceremoniously tell them to absent themselves as smart as they could, and not to annoy the deer. No race on record has suffered so much at the hands of those who should be their patrons, and proved to be so tenacious of patriotism as the Celtic race, but I assure you it has found its level now, and will disappear soon altogether; and as soon as patriotism shall disappear in any nation, so sure that nation’s glory is tarnished, victories uncertain, her greatness diminished, and decaying consumptive death will be the result. If ever the old adage, which says, “Those whom the gods determine to destroy, they first deprive them of reason,” was verified, it was, and is, in the case of the British aristocracy, and Highland proprietors in particular. I am not so void of feeling as to blame the Duke of Sutherland, his parents, or any other Highland absentee proprietor for all the evil done in the land, but the evil was done in their name, and under the authority they have invested in wicked, cruel servants. For instance, the only silly man who enlisted from among the great assembly which his Grace addressed, was a married man, with three of a family and his wife; it was generally believed that his bread was baked for life, but no sooner was he away to Fort George to join his regiment, than his place of abode was pulled down, his wife and family turned out, and only permitted to live in a hut, from which an old female pauper was carried a few days before to the churchyard; there the young family were sheltered, and their names registered upon the poor roll for support; his Grace could not be guilty of such low rascality as this, yet he was told of it, but took no cognisance of those who did it in his name. It is likewise said that this man got a furlough of two weeks to see his wife and family before going abroad, and that when the factor heard he was coming, he ordered the ground officer of the parish of Rogart, named MacLeod, to watch the soldier, and not allow him to see nor speak to his wife, but in his (the officer’s) presence. We had at the same time, in the parish, an old bachelor of the name of John Macdonald, who had three idiot sisters, whom he upheld, independent of any source of relief; but a favourite of George, the notorious factor, envied this poor bachelor’s farm, and he was summoned to remove at next term. The poor fellow petitioned his Grace and Loch, but to no purpose; he was doomed to walk away on the term day, as the factor told him, “to America, Glasgow, or to the devil if he choosed.” Seeing he had no other alternative, two days before the day of his removal he yoked his cart, and got neighbours to help him to haul the three idiots into it, and drove away with them to Dunrobin Castle. When he came up to factor Gunn’s door, he capsized them out upon the green, and wheeled about and went away home. The three idiots finding themselves upon the top of one another so sudden, they raised an inhuman-like yell, fixed into one another to fight, and scratched, yelled, and screeched so terrific that Mr. Gunn, his lady, his daughters, and all the clerks and servants were soon about them; but they hearkened to no reason, for they had none themselves, but continued their fighting and inharmonious music. Messenger after messenger was sent after John, but of no use; at last the great Gunn himself followed and overtook him, asked him how did he come to leave his sisters in such a state? He replied, “I kept them while I had a piece of land to support them; you have taken that land from me, then take them along with the land, and make of them what you can; I must look out for myself, but I cannot carry them to the labour market.” Gunn was in a fix, and had to give John assurance that he would not be removed if he would take his sisters, so John took them home, and has not been molested as yet.

I have here beside me (in Canada) a respectable girl of the name of Ann Murray, whose father was removed during the time of the wholesale faggot removals, but got a lot of a barren moor to cultivate. However barren-like it was, he was raising a family of industrious young sons, and by dint of hard labour and perseverance, they made it a comfortable home; but the young sons one by one left the country (and four of them are within two miles of where I sit); the result was, that Ann was the only one who remained with the parents. The mother, who had an attack of palsy, was left entirely under Ann’s care after the family left; and she took it so much to heart that her daughter’s attention was required day and night, until death put an end to her afflictions, after twelve years’ suffering. Shortly after the mother’s death, the father took ill, and was confined to bed for nine months; and Ann’s labour re-commenced until his decease. Though Ann Murray could be numbered among the most dutiful of daughters, yet her incessant labour, for a period of more than thirteen years, made visible inroads upon her tender constitution; yet by the liberal assistance of her brothers, who did not loose sight of her and their parent (though upon a foreign strand), Ann Murray kept the farm in the best of order, no doubt expecting that she would be allowed to keep it after her parent’s decease, but this was not in store for her; the very day after her father’s funeral, the officer came to her and told her that she was to be removed in a few weeks, that the farm was let to another, and that Factor Gunn wished to see her. She was at that time afflicted with jaundice, and told the officer she could not undertake the journey, which was only ten miles. Next day the officer was at her again, more urgent than before, and made use of extraordinary threats; so she had to go. When she appeared before this Bashaw, he swore like a trooper, and damned her soul, why she disobeyed his first summons; she excused herself, trembling, that she was unwell; another volley of oaths and threats met her response, and told her to remove herself from the estate next week, for her conduct; and with a threat, which well becomes a Highland tyrant, not to take away, nor sell a single article of furniture, implements of husbandry, cattle, or crop; nothing was allowed but her own body clothes; everything was to be handed over to her brother, who was to have the farm. Seeing there was neither mercy nor justice for her, she told him the crop, house, and every other thing belonging to the farm, belonged to her and her brothers in America, and that the brother to whom he (the factor) intended to hand over the farm and effects never helped her father or mother while in trouble; and that she was determined that he should not enjoy what she laboured for, and what her other brothers paid for. She went and got the advice of a man of business, advertised a sale, and sold off, in the face of threats of interdict, and came to Canada, where she was warmly received by brothers, sisters, and friends, now in Woodstock, and can tell her tale better than I can. No one could think nor believe that his Grace would ever countenance such doings as these; but it was done in his name.

I have here within ten miles of me, Mr. William Ross, once taxman of Achtomleeny, Sutherlandshire, who occupied the most convenient farm to the principal deer-stalking hills in the county. Often have the English and Irish lords, connected in marriage with the Sutherlands, dined and took their lunch at William Ross’s table, and at his expense; and more than once passed the night under his roof. Mr. Ross being so well acquainted among the mountains and haunts of the deer, was often engaged as a guide and instructor to these noblemen on their deer-stalking and fishing excursions, and became a real favourite with the Sutherland family, which enabled him to erect superior buildings to the common rule, and improve his farm in a superior style; so that his mountain-side farm was nothing short of a Highland paradise. But unfortunately for William, his nearest neighbour, one Major Gilchrist, a sheep farmer, coveted Mr. Ross’s vineyard, and tried many underhand schemes to secure the place for himself, but in vain. Ross would hearken to none of his proposals. But Ahab was a chief friend of Factor Gunn; and William Ross got notice of removal. Ross prepared a memorial to the first and late Duchess of Sutherland, and placed it in her own hand. Her Grace read it, instantly went into the factor’s office, and told him that William Ross was not to be removed from Achtomleeny while he lived; and wrote the same on the petition, and handed it back to Ross, with a graceful smile, saying, “You are now out of the reach of factors; now, William, go home in peace.” William bowed, and departed cheerfully; but the factor and ground-officer followed close behind him, and while Ross was reading her Grace’s deliverance, the officer, David Ross, came and snapped the paper out of his hand, and ran to Factor Gunn with it. Ross followed, but Gunn put it in his pocket, saying, “William, you would need to give it to me afterwards, at any rate, and I will keep it till I read it, and then return it to you,” and with a tiger-like smile on his face, said, “I believe you came good speed to-day, and I am glad of it;” but William never got it in his hand again. However, he was not molested during her Grace’s life. Next year she paid a visit to Dunrobin Castle, when Factor William Gunn advised Ross to apply to her for a reduction of rent, under the mask of favouring him. He did so, and it was granted cheerfully. Her Grace left Dunrobin that year never to return; in the beginning of the next spring she was carried back to Dunrobin a corpse, and a few days after was interred in Dornoch. William Ross was served with a summons of removal from Achtomleeny, and he had nothing to show. He petitioned the present Duke, and his commissioner, Mr. Loch, and related the whole circumstances to them, but to no avail, only he was told that Factor Gunn was ordered to give him some other lot of land, which he did: and having no other resource, William accepted of it to his loss; for between loss of cattle, building and repairing houses, he was minus one hundred and fifty pounds sterling, of his means, and substance, from the time he was removed from Achtomleeny till he removed himself to Canada. Besides, he had a written agreement or promise for melioration or valuation for all the farm improvements and house building at Achtomleeny, which was valued by the family surveyor at £250. William was always promised to get it, until they came to learn that he was leaving for America, then they would not give him a cent. William Ross left them with it to join his family in Canada; but he can in his old age sit at as comfortable a table, and sleep on as comfortable a bed, with greater ease of mind and a clearer conscience, among his own dutiful and affectionate children, than the tyrant factor ever did, or ever will among his. I know as well as any one can tell me, that this is but one or two cases out of the thousand I could enumerate, where the liberality and benevolence of his Grace, and of his parents, were abused, and that to their patron’s loss. You see in the above case that William was advised to plead for a reduction of rent, so that the factor’s favourite, Ahab Gilchrist, would have the benefit of Naboth Ross’s improvement, and the reduction he got on his rent, which would not be obtained otherwise.

The unhallowed crew of factors and officials, from the highest to the lowest grade, employed by the family of Sutherland, got the corrupt portion of the public press on their side, to applaud their wicked doings and schemes, as the only mode of improvement and civilisation in the Highlands of Scotland. They have got what is still more to be lamented, all the Established ministers, with few exceptions, on their side; and in them they found faithful auxiliaries in crushing the people. Any of them could hold a whole congregation by the hair of their heads over hell-fire, if they offered to resist the powers that be, until they submitted. If a single individual resisted, he was denounced from the pulpit, and considered afterwards a dangerous man in the community; and he might depart as quick as he could. Any man, or men, may violate the laws of God, and violate the laws of heaven, as often as he chooses; he is never heeded, and has nothing to fear; but if he offends the Duke’s factor, the lowest of his minions, or violates the least of their laws and regulations, it is an unpardonable sin. The present Duke’s mother was no doubt a liberal lady of many good parts, and seemed to be much attached to the natives, but unfortunately for them, she employed for her factors a vile, unprincipled crew, who were their avowed enemies; she would hearken to the complaints of the people, and would write to the ministers of the Gospel to ascertain the correctness of complaints, and the factor was justified, however gross the outrage was that he committed—the minister dined with the factor, and could not refuse to favour him. The present Duke[9] is a simple, narrow-minded gentleman, who concerns himself very little even about his own pecuniary affairs; he entrusts his whole affairs to his factors, and the people are enslaved so much, that it is now considered the most foolish thing a man can do to petition his Grace, whatever is done to him, for it will go hard with the factor, or he will punish and make an example of him to deter others.

To detail what I knew myself personally, and what I have learned from others of their conduct, would, as I said before, fill a volume. For instance:—When a marriage in the family of Sutherland takes place, or the birth of an heir, a feast is ordered for the Sutherland people, consisting of whisky, porter, ale, and plenty of eatables. The day of feasting and rejoicing is appointed, and heralded throughout the country, and the people are enjoined in marshal terms to assemble—barrels of raw and adulterated whisky are forwarded to each parish, some raw adulterated sugar, and that is all. Bonfires are to be prepared on the tops of the highest mountains. The poorest of the poor are warned by family officers to carry the materials, consisting of peats and tar barrels, upon their backs; the scene is lamentable to see groups of these wretched, half-clad and ill-shod, climbing up these mountains with their loads; however, the work must be done, there is no denial, the evening of rejoicing is arrived, and the people are assembled at their different clachans. The barrels of whisky are taken out to the open field, poured into large tubs, a good amount of abominable-looking sugar is mixed with it, and a sturdy favourite is employed to stir it about with a flail handle, or some long cudgel—all sorts of drinking implements are produced, tumblers, bowls, ladles, and tin jugs. Bagpipers are set up with great glee. In the absence of the factor, the animal called the ground officer, and in some instances the parish minister, will open the jollification, and show an example to the people how to deal with this coarse beverage. After the first round, the respectable portion of the people will depart, or retire to an inn, where they can enjoy themselves; but the drouthies, and ignorant youthful, will keep the field of revelling until tearing of clothes and faces comes to be the rule; fists and cudgels supplant jugs and ladles, and this will continue until king Bacchus enters the field and hushes the most heroic brawlers and the most ferocious combatants to sound snoring on the field of rejoicing, where many of them enter into contracts with death, from which they could never extricate themselves. With the co-operation and assistance of factors, ministers, and editors, a most flourishing account is sent to the world, and to the absentee family in London, who knows nothing about how the affair was conducted. The world will say how happy must the people be who live under such good and noble, liberal-minded patrons; and the patrons themselves are so highly-pleased with the report that, however extraordinary the bill that comes to them on the rent day, in place of money, for roast beef and mutton, bread and cheese, London porter and Edinburgh ale, which was never bought, nor tasted by the people, they will consider their commissioners used great economy; no cognizance is taken, the bill is accepted, and discharged, the people are deceived, and the proprietors injured.

TRIAL OF PATRICK SELLAR.[10]

For his action in connection with the Sutherland Clearances, Patrick Sellar was placed on trial at a sitting of the Circuit Court at Inverness in 1816. The bench was occupied by Lord Pitmilly. We give the indictment, defences, judge’s summing up, and other particulars, but omit the evidence, as no authentic record thereof is available.

THE INDICTMENT.

PATRICK SELLAR, now or lately residing at Culmaily, in the parish of Golspie, and shire of Sutherland, and under factor for the Most Noble the Marquis and Marchioness of Stafford. You are indicted and accused, at the instance of Archibald Colquhoun of Killermont, his Majesty’s Advocate for his Majesty’s interest: That albeit, by the laws of this and of every other well-governed realm, culpable homicide, as also oppression and real injury, more particularly the wickedly and maliciously setting on fire and burning, or causing and procuring to be set on fire and burnt, a great extent of heath and pasture, on which a number of small tenants and other poor persons maintain their cattle, to the great injury and distress of the said persons; the violently turning, or causing and procuring to be turned out of their habitations, a number of the said tenants and other poor people, especially aged, infirm, and impotent persons and pregnant women, and cruelly depriving them of all cover or shelter, to their great distress, and the imminent danger of their lives; the wickedly and maliciously setting on fire, burning, pulling down, and demolishing, or causing and procuring to be set on fire, burnt, pulled down, and demolishing, the dwelling-houses, barns, kilns, mills, and other buildings, lawfully occupied by the said persons, whereby they themselves are turned out, without cover or shelter, as aforesaid, and the greater part of their different crops is lost and destroyed, from the want of the usual and necessary accommodation for securing and manufacturing the same; and the wantonly setting on fire, burning, and otherwise destroying, or causing and procuring to be set on fire, burnt, and otherwise destroyed, growing corn, timber, furniture, money, and other effects, the property, or in the lawful possession of the said tenants and other poor persons, are crimes of a heinous nature, and severely punishable. Yet true it is, and of verity, that you the said Patrick Sellar are guilty of the said crimes, or of one or more of them, actor, or art in part; in so far as you the said Patrick Sellar did, on the 15th day of March, 1814, or on one or other of the days of that month, or of April and May immediately following, and on many occasions during the said months of March, April and May, wickedly and maliciously set on fire and burn, or cause and procure John Dryden and John M’Kay, both at that time shepherds in your service, to set on fire and burn a great extent of heath and pasture, many miles in length and breadth, situate in the heights of the parishes of Farr and Kildonan, in the county of Sutherland, and in particular in the lands of Ravigill, Rhiphail, Rhiloisk, Rossal, Rhimsdale, Garvault, Truderskaig, and Dalcharrel, whereby many of the tenants and others in the lands aforesaid were deprived of pasturage for their cattle, and in consequence thereof reduced to great distress and poverty; and many of them were obliged to feed their cattle with the potatoes intended for the use of their families, and with their seed corn; particularly William Gordon, James M’Kay, Hugh Grant, and Donald M’Kay, all then tenants in Rhiloisk aforesaid; John Gordon and Hugh M’Beath, then tenants in Rhimsdale aforesaid; Donald M’Beath, then tenant in Rhiphail aforesaid; Murdo M’Kay and John M’Kay, then tenants in Truderskaig aforesaid. And further, you the said Patrick Sellar did, upon the 13th day of June, 1814, or on one or other of the days of that month, or of May immediately preceding, or of July immediately following, together with four or more persons, your assistants, proceed to the district of country above-mentioned, and did, then and there, violently turn, or cause or procure to be turned out of their habitations, a number of the tenants and poor people dwelling there; and particularly Donald M’Kay, a feeble old man of the age of four-score years or thereby, then residing in Rhiloisk aforesaid; who, upon being so turned out, not being able to travel to the nearest inhabited place, lay for several days and nights thereafter in the woods in the vicinity, without cover or shelter, to his great distress, and to the danger of his life. As also, Barbara M’Kay, wife of John M’Kay, then tenant in Ravigill aforesaid, who was at the time pregnant, and was moreover confined to her bed in consequence of being severely hurt and bruised by a fall; and you the said Patrick Sellar did, then and there, notwithstanding the entreaties of the said John M’Kay, give orders that the said Barbara M’Kay should be instantly turned out, whatever the consequences might be, saying, That you would have the house pulled about her ears; and the said John M’Kay was accordingly compelled, with the assistance of some women and neighbours to lift his said wife from her bed, and carry her nearly a mile across the country to the imminent danger of her life: As also, time last above-mentioned, you the said Patrick Sellar did forcibly turn out, or cause and procure your assistants aforesaid, to turn out, of his bed and dwelling, in Garvault aforesaid, Donald Munro, a young lad, who lay sick in bed at the time. And further, you the said Patrick Sellar, did time aforesaid, wickedly and maliciously set on fire, burn, pull down, and demolish, or cause and procure your assistants aforesaid to set on fire, burn, pull down, and demolish a great number of the dwelling-houses, barns, kilns, mills, and other buildings, lawfully occupied by the tenants and other inhabitants in the said district of country; and in particular, the houses, barns, kilns, mills, lawfully occupied by the above-mentioned William Gordon, James M’Kay, Hugh Grant, in Rhiloisk aforesaid; and John Gordon in Rhimsdale aforesaid; As also, the barns and kilns in Rhiphail aforesaid, lawfully occupied by Alexander Manson, John M’Kay, and others, then tenants or residenters there; the barns and kilns in Ravigill aforesaid, lawfully occupied by John M’Kay, Murdo M’Kay, and others, then tenants there; and the barns and kilns in Garvault aforesaid, lawfully occupied by William Nicol and John Monro, then tenants there; As also, the house and barn in Ravigill aforesaid, lawfully occupied by Barbara M’Kay, an infirm old widow, nearly fourscore years of age, and who was obliged to sell three of her five cattle at an under value, in order to support herself, her crop being destroyed from the want of her barn: As also, the greater part of the houses, barns, kilns, mills, and other buildings in the whole district of country above mentioned, was, time aforesaid, maliciously set on fire, burnt, pulled down, and demolished, by you, the said Patrick Sellar, or by your assistance or by your orders, whereby the inhabitants and lawful occupiers thereof were turned out, without cover or shelter; and the greater part of their different crops was lost and destroyed from want of the usual and necessary accommodation for securing and manufacturing the same; and especially the lawful occupiers of the barns, kilns, mills, and other buildings particularly above mentioned, to have been set on fire and destroyed as aforesaid, did sustain great loss in their crops, from being thus deprived of the means of securing and manufacturing the same. And further, you, the said Patrick Sellar, did, time aforesaid, culpably kill Donald M’Beath, father to Hugh M’Beath, then tenant in Rhimsdale aforesaid, by unroofing and pulling down, or causing to be unroofed and pulled down, the whole house in Rhimsdale aforesaid, where the said Donald M’Beath was then lying on his sick bed, saving only a small space of roof, to the extent of five or six yards, whereby the said Donald M’Beath was exposed, in a cold and comfortless situation, without cover or shelter, to the weather; and he, the said Donald M’Beath, in consequence of being so exposed, never spoke a word more, but languished and died about eight days thereafter, and was thereby culpably killed by you, the said Patrick Sellar: Or otherwise, you, the said Patrick Sellar, did, time and place aforesaid, cruelly expose the said Donald M’Beath to the weather, without cover or shelter, by pulling down and unroofing, or caused to be pulled down and unroofed, the greater part of the house where he then lay sick in bed, to his great distress, and the imminent danger of his life; and this you, the said Patrick Sellar, did, notwithstanding the entreaties of the said Hugh M’Beath, and others, you saying, in a rage, when it was proposed that the said Donald M’Beath should remain, “The devil a man of them, sick or well, shall be permitted to remain,” or words to that effect. And further, you, the said Patrick Sellar, did, time aforesaid, wickedly and maliciously set on fire, burn, and demolish, or cause and procure your assistants to set on fire, burn, and demolish, the dwelling-house, barn, kiln, sheep-cot, and other building then lawfully occupied by William Chisholm in Badinloskin, in the parish of Farr aforesaid, although you knew that Margaret M’Kay, a very old woman of the age of 90 years, less or more, and who had been bed-ridden for years, was at that time within the said house; and this you did, notwithstanding you were told that the said old woman could not be removed without imminent danger to her life; and the flames having approached the bed whereon the said Margaret M’Kay lay, she shrieked aloud in Gaelic, “O’n teine,” that is to say, “O the fire,” or words to that effect; and was forthwith carried out by her daughter, Janet M’Kay, and placed in a small bothy, and the blanket in which she was wrapped was burnt in several places, and the said Margaret M’Kay never spoke a word thereafter, but remained insensible from that hour, and died in about five days thereafter, in consequence of the fright and alarm; and, in particular, in consequence of her removal, as aforesaid, from her bed into a cold and uncomfortable place, unfit for the habitation of any human being; and the said Margaret M’Kay was thereby culpably killed by you, the said Patrick Sellar; or otherwise, you, the said Patrick Sellar, did, time and place aforesaid, cruelly turn, or cause to be turned, out of her bed and dwelling-place, the said Margaret Mackay, by setting on fire, burning, and demolishing, or causing and procuring to be set on fire, burnt, and demolished, the said house and other buildings, in manner above mentioned, to her great distress, and the imminent danger of her life. And farther, all the persons whose houses, barns, kilns, mills, and other buildings, were burnt and destroyed, or caused and procured to be burnt and destroyed by you, the said Patrick Sellar, all as above described, did sustain great loss in their moss wood, and other timber, which was broken and demolished, and destroyed by fire and otherwise, at the same time, and in the same manner, with the buildings as aforesaid; and also in their furniture and other effects, all their lawful property, or in their lawful possession at the time: And, in particular, the said Barbara M’Kay in Ravigill, aforesaid, lost her door and door-posts, and timber of her house and barn, her meal-chest, and several articles of furniture, all her property, or in her lawful possession, which were then and there destroyed, or caused to be destroyed, by you, the said Patrick Sellar, as aforesaid; and the greatest part of the furniture, and timber belonging to the said William Chisholm, together with three pounds in bank notes, and a ridge of growing corn, all the property, or in the lawful possession of the said William Chisholm, in Badinloskin, aforesaid, were then and there destroyed by fire, and otherwise, by you, the said Patrick Sellar. And you, the said Patrick Sellar, having been apprehended and taken before Mr. Robert Mackid, Sheriff-Substitute of Sutherland, did, in his presence, at Dornoch, on the 31st day of May, 1815, emit and subscribe a declaration; which declaration, together with a paper entitled “Notice given to the Strathnaver tenants, 15 Dec., 1813,” being to be used in evidence against you, at your trial, will be lodged in due time in the hands of the Clerk of the Circuit Court of Justiciary, before which you are to be tried, that you may have an opportunity of seeing the same: at least, time and places above-mentioned, the said heath and pasture, was wickedly and maliciously set on fire and burnt, or caused and procured to be set on fire and burnt, to the great injury and distress of the said tenants and others; and the said persons were violently turned, or caused and procured to be turned, out of their habitations, and deprived of all cover and shelter, to their great distress, and the imminent danger of their lives; and the said Donald M’Beath and Margaret M’Kay were culpably killed in manner above mentioned, or were cruelly turned out of their habitations as aforesaid; and the said dwelling-houses, barns, kilns, mills, and other buildings, lawfully inhabited and occupied by the said persons, were maliciously set on fire, burnt, pulled down, and demolished, or were caused and procured to be set on fire, burnt, pulled down, and demolished, and the inhabitants and lawful occupiers thereof turned out as aforesaid; and the greater part of their different crops was lost or destroyed, from want of the usual and necessary accommodation for securing and manufacturing the same; and the growing corn, timber, furniture, money, and other effects, the property, or in the lawful possession, of the said persons, were wantonly set on fire, burnt, and otherwise destroyed or caused and procured to be set on fire, burnt, and otherwise destroyed: And you, the said Patrick Sellar, are guilty of the said crimes, or of one or more of them, actor, or art and part. All which, or part thereof, being found proven by the verdict of an assize, before the Lord Justice-General, the Lord Justice-Clerk, and Lords Commissioners of Justiciary, in a Circuit Court of Justiciary to be holden by them, or by any one or more of their number, within the burgh of Inverness, in the month of April, in this present year, 1816, you, the said Patrick Sellar, ought to be punished with the pains of law, to deter others from committing the like crimes in all time coming.

H. HOME DRUMMOND, A.D.

Mr Sellar, having pleaded NOT GUILTY, the following defences were read:—“First, The panel objects to the relevancy of various parts of the libel. Second, In so far as the libel is relevant, the panel denies its truth; the whole of the charges are utterly false, in so much so, that the Prosecutor is not only unable to bring any sufficient evidence in support of his own accusations, but the panel will bring positive proof against them. The panel will prove, that the ejectments which have given rise to this trial, were done in due order of law, and, under the warrants of the proper Judge, issued on regular process. Farther, he will prove that great indulgence was shown to the tenants, even after they had resisted the regular decrees of the Judge; that nothing was done on his part, or with his knowledge or approval, either cruel, oppressive or illegal. That he committed no acts of homicide; and, on the whole, he will prove, that throughout every part of this affair, he (the panel) has been the victim, not only of the most unfounded local prejudices, but of long continued and active defamation, on the part of certain persons, who have made it their business to traduce the whole system of improvements introduced into the Sutherland estate, and to vilify the panel, by whom, they have been pleased to suppose, that these improvements have been partly conducted. He rejoices, however, in the first opportunity, which has now been afforded to him, of meeting these calumnies and prepossessions in a Court of Justice, and relying, as he does, with implicit confidence on the candour and dispassionate attention of a British jury, he has no doubt whatever of being able to establish his complete innocence of all the charges now brought against him.

“Under protestation to add and eik.
“J. GORDON.
“H. COCKBURN.
“PAT. ROBERTSON.”

Mr. Robertson opened the case on the part of the panel. The object of addressing the court at this time was to state such observations as occurred on the relevancy of the indictment, and to give a general view of the line of defence. On the former, he remarked, that various objections did occur to the relevancy of the charges, particularly to the second and fourth branches of the indictment. With these, however, he did not mean to trouble the Court, as Mr. Sellar was so conscious of his innocence, that he courted investigation, being unwilling that any part of his conduct should be left uninvestigated. No objection was, therefore, made to the relevancy of any part of the indictment, so far as it charged any specific crime against which the panel might be prepared to defend himself. But, certainly, he did object to those parts of it which contained general charges, of destroying “a number of houses,” injuring “a number of tenants,” &c., unless these were understood merely as introductory to the specific crimes mentioned. He also objected to the last charge, if meant as anything more than matter of mere aggravation.

On the merits, he gave a short sketch of the causes which gave rise to the present trial,—alluded to the clamour which had been raised in the country—the prejudices of the people,—the disgraceful publications in a newspaper called the Military Register, and the pains which had been taken to circulate these false and mischievous papers through Sutherland and the adjacent counties. The general line of defence he stated to be, That, as to the first charge, of heath-burning, this was done with the express consent of the tenantry, and, as could be proved, to their positive advantage. As to the removings, the defence was quite clear. The lands mentioned in the indictment were advertised to be set on the 5th of December, 1813, at the Inn of Golspie, and Mr. Sellar was preferred as the highest offerer. Before Whitsunday, 1814, he brought regular actions of removing, and it was not until after he had obtained decrees in these actions, charged the whole of the tenants to remove, and taken out precepts of ejection against them, that they were, in the month of June, actually removed from their lawless and violent possession. These facts were established by the decrees and precepts in the hands of the Clerk of Court. As to the demolition of the houses, no houses were pulled down till after the ejections had been completed, and the property had become Mr. Sellar’s. No furniture was destroyed by him, or by his orders,—no unnecessary violence was used, nor any cruelty exercised, but everything was done in due order of law, and without oppression of any kind. The charges of culpable homicide were quite out of the question, and Mr. Sellar defied the Public Prosecutor to prove them. Upon the whole, it was not doubted, that if truth and justice were to prevail over malice and conspiracy, Mr. Sellar would obtain an honourable and triumphant acquittal.

The Advocate-Depute having here stated that he did not mean to insist on any charges, excepting those which were specially and articulately mentioned in the indictment, Lord Pitmilly said:—

“It would be improper for me to enter at present into the origin of the prosecution, or the nature of the defences. Neither shall I say anything of the publications which have been alluded to, except that they appear to be of the most contemptible nature, and the only prejudice which I can entertain is the other way; that is, against the cause requiring such aid. I have no doubt as to the relevancy of the libel.”

The jury was composed of the following gentlemen:—

• James Fraser, of Belladrum.
• William Fraser, of Culbockie.
• William Mackintosh, of Balnaspeck.
• Duncan Fraser, of Fingask.
• Alexander Smith, merchant in Inverness.
• John Gillanders, of Highfield.
• William Reid, of Muirtown.
• William Mackenzie, of Strathgarve.
• George Falconer Mackenzie, of Allangrange.
• Robert Denham, tacksman of Dunglass.
• George Kay, residing at Tannachy.
• Bailie Robert Joss, merchant in Elgin.
• John Barclay, writer, Elgin.
• John Collie, farmer at Alvas.
• John Smith, tacksman of Greens.

Evidence for the prosecution and for the defence having been led at considerable length,

Mr. Drummond addressed the jury on the part of the Crown. He stated that he gave up all the charges except the one which regarded the ejections from the barns, and that of real injury in the case of the old woman at Badinloskin. He certainly did not think the evidence in this case last was sufficient to establish culpable homicide; but he argued, that the circumstances proved were sufficient to authorise the jury in finding a verdict of guilty to the extent of an injury, as she had been removed at the risk of her life, which he maintained to be contrary to law. As to the barns, he contended that the conduct of Mr. Sellar was irregular and illegal, and consequently oppressive, the outgoing tenants being entitled, by the custom of Sutherland, to retain them as long as the arable land.

Mr. Gordon addressed the jury on the part of the panel, and replied to the arguments used on behalf of the prosecution. He entered at great length into the history and objects of the prosecution; the preconcerted plan on which certain persons had instigated the people of Strathnaver to complain at first, and to persist afterwards; the views they entertained of successfully opposing the improvements of Sutherland, by affecting the noble persons to whom the property belonged, through the sides of Mr. Sellar, as a convenient medium of succeeding; the disgraceful measures to which these persons had resorted, with a view to affect the channels of justice, the impartiality of jurymen, and the purity of evidence. He attacked the measures and conduct of Mr. Mackid in the most pointed terms; exposed the characters of the evidence of Chisholm and others, and dwelt in the clear evidence of the total innocence of Mr. Sellar, and on the points of law which applied to the particular charges as criminal charges, at considerable length, and with reference to various law authorities; and finally, concluded by maintaining to the jury, that this was not merely the trial of Mr. Sellar, but, in truth, a conflict between the law of the land and a resistance to that law: That the question at issue involved the future fate and progress of agricultural, and even moral improvements, in the county of Sutherland; that (though certainly not so intended by the Public Prosecutor, whose conduct throughout has been candid, correct, and liberal), it was nevertheless, in substance, and in fact, a trial of strength between the abettors of anarchy and misrule, and the magistracy, as well as the laws of this country.

Lord Pitmilly, after having stated the law as applicable to this case, summed up the evidence in a very clear and able manner. His lordship stated, that it was unnecessary for the jury to consider any of the charges, excepting the one in regard to the old woman at Badinloskin. As to the first, there could be no doubt of the practice in the country, of retaining these barns till the crops would be threshed out; neither could it be doubted, that Mr. Sellar had not left the whole of the barns for the use of the outgoing tenants, and in consequence of this, the tenants suffered damage. But in point of law, as the Court of Session had decided in a similar question, Mr. Sellar was not bound by any such practice, but was entitled to proceed in the ejections. In regard to the injury charged to have been done to Margaret M’Kay, his Lordship directed the attention of the jury to the evidence of Chisholm. This witness, although contradicted in some particulars by his wife, was confirmed by John M’Kay, whose testimony his Lordship also laid before them. On the other hand, he brought under their view, the evidence of Sutherland, Fraser, and Burns, and stated that it was the duty of the Jury to balance betwixt these two sets of witnesses. His Lordship also said, that if the jury were at all at a loss on this part of the case, they ought to take into view the character of the accused; for this was always of importance in balancing contradictory testimony. Now here there was, in the first place, real evidence, from the conduct of Mr. Sellar, in regard to the sick, for this, in several instances, had been proved to be most humane. And secondly, there were the letters of Sir George Abercromby, Mr. Brodie, and Mr. Fenton, which, although not evidence,[11] must have some weight with the jury; and there were the testimonies of Mr. Gilzean and Sir Archibald Dunbar—all establishing Mr. Sellar’s humanity of disposition.

The jury having retired for a quarter of an hour, returned a viva voce verdict, unanimously finding Mr. Sellar NOT GUILTY.

Lord Pitmilly observed that his opinion completely concurred with that of the jury, and in dismissing them after so long a trial, he was happy to say they had paid the most patient attention to the case, and had returned a verdict satisfactory to the Court.

The verdict having been recorded,

The Advocate-Depute declared that he thought it fair to the panel, and that it would be satisfactory to the jury, to state his conviction, that if those witnesses who were rejected on account of errors in their designations, had been examined, the result of the trial would have been the same.

Lord Pitmilly then addressed Mr. Sellar.

His Lordship said, “Mr. Sellar, it is now my duty to dismiss you from the bar; and you have the satisfaction of thinking, that you are discharged by the unanimous opinion of the jury and the Court. I am sure that, although your feelings must have been agitated, you cannot regret that this trial took place, and I am hopeful it will have due effect on the minds of the country, which have been so much, and so improperly agitated.”

The Court then pronounced an interlocutor, in respect of the verdict of the assize, assoilzieing the panel simpliciter, and dismissing him from the bar.

The trial lasted from ten o’clock on Tuesday till one o’clock on Wednesday morning, and the Court-room was crowded to excess.

[ROSS-SHIRE.]

GLENCALVIE.

Great cruelties were perpetrated at Glencalvie, Ross-shire, where the evicted had to retire into the parish churchyard. There for more than a week they found the only shelter obtainable in their native land. No one dared to succour them, under a threat of receiving similar treatment to those whose hard fate had driven them thus among the tombs. Many of them, indeed, wished that their lot had landed them under the sod with their ancestors and friends, rather than be treated and driven out of house and home in such a ruthless manner. A special commissioner sent down by the London Times describes the circumstances as follows:—

Ardgay, near Tain, Ross-shire,
15th May, 1845.

Those who remember the misery and destitution to which large masses of the population were thrown by the systematic “Clearances” (as they are here called) carried on in Sutherlandshire some 20 years ago, under the direction and on the estate of the late Marchioness of Stafford—those who have not forgotten to what an extent the ancient ties which bound clansmen to their chiefs were then torn asunder—will regret to learn the heartless scourge with all its sequences of misery, of destitution, and of crime, is again being resorted to in Ross-shire. Amongst an imaginative people like the Highlanders, who, poetic from dwelling amongst wild and romantic scenery, shut out from the world and clinging to the traditions of the past, it requires little, with fair treatment, to make them almost idolise their heritor. They would spend the last drop of their blood in his service. But this feeling of respectful attachment to the landowners, which money cannot buy, is fast passing away. This change is not without cause; and perhaps if the dark deeds of calculating “feelosophy” transacted through the instrumentality of factors in some of these lonely glens; if the almost inconceivable misery and hopeless destitution in which, for the expected acquisition of a few pounds, hundreds of peaceable and generally industrious and contented peasants are driven out from the means of self-support, to become wanderers and starving beggars, and in which a brave and valuable population is destroyed—are exposed to the gaze of the world, general indignation and disgust may effect what moral obligations and humanity cannot. One of these clearances is about to take place in the parish of Kincardine, from which I now write; and throughout the whole district it has created the strongest feeling of indignation.

This parish is divided into two districts each of great extent; one is called the parliamentary district of Croick. The length of this district is about 20 miles, with a breadth of from 10 to 15 miles. It extends amongst the most remote and unfrequented parts of the country, consisting chiefly of hills of heather and rock, peopled only in a few straths and glens. This district was formerly thickly peopled; but one of those clearances many years ago nearly swept away the population, and now the whole number of its inhabitants amounts, I am told, to only 370 souls. These are divided into three straths or glens, and live in a strath called Amatnatua, another strath called Greenyard, and in Glencalvie. It is the inhabitants of Glencalvie, in number 90 people, whose turn it is now to be turned out of their homes, all at once, the aged and the helpless as well as the young and strong; nearly the whole of them without hope or prospect for the future. The proprietor of this glen is Major Charles Robertson of Kindeace, who is at present out with his regiment in Australia; and his factor or steward who acts for him in his absence is Mr. James Gillanders of Highfield Cottage, near Dingwall. Glencalvie is situated about 25 miles from Tain, eastward. Bleak rough hills, whose surface are almost all rock and heather, closed in on all sides, leaving in the valley a gentle declivity of arable land of a very poor description, dotted over by cairns of stone and rock, not, at the utmost computation, of more than 15 to 20 acres in extent. For this piece of indifferent land with a right of pasturage on the hills impinging upon it—and on which, if it were not a fact that sheep do live, you would not credit that they could live, so entirely does it seem void of vegetation, beyond the brown heather, whilst its rocky nature makes it dangerous and impossible even for a sheep walk—the almost increditable rent of £55 10s. has been paid. I am convinced that for the same land no farmer in England would give £15 at the utmost.

Even respectable farmers here say they do not know how the people raise the rent for it. Potatoes and barley were grown in the valley, and some sheep and a few black cattle find provender amongst the heather. Eighteen families have each a cottage in the valley; they have always paid their rent punctually, and they have contrived to support themselves in all ordinary seasons. They have no poor on the poor roll, and they help one another over the winter. I am told that not an inhabitant of this valley has been charged with any offence for years back. During the war it furnished many soldiers; and an old pensioner, 82 years of age, who has served in India, is now dying in one of these cottages, where he was born. For the convenience of the proprietor, some ten years ago, four of the principal tenants became bound for the rest, to collect all the rents and pay the whole in one sum.

The clearance of this valley, having attracted much notice, has been thoroughly enquired into, and a kind of defence has been entered upon respecting it, which I am told has been forwarded to the Lord Advocate. Through the politeness of Mr. Mackenzie, writer, Tain, I have been favoured with a copy of it. The only explanation or defence of the clearance, that I can find in it, is that shortly after Mr. Gillanders assumed the management of Major Robertson’s estate, he found that it became absolutely necessary to adopt a different system, in regard to the lands of Glencalvie, “from that hitherto pursued.”

The “different system” as it appears was to turn the barley and potato grounds into a sheep walk, and the “absolute necessity” for it is an alleged increase of rent.

It was accordingly, in 1843, attempted to serve summonses of removal upon the tenants. They were in no arrears of rent, they had no burdens in poor; for 500 years their fathers had peaceably occupied the glen, and the people were naturally indignant. Who can be surprised that, on the constables going amongst them with the summonses, they acted in a manner which, while it showed their excitement, not the less evinced their wish to avoid breaking the law? The women met the constables beyond the boundaries, over the river, and seized the hand of the one who held the notices; whilst some held it out by the wrist, others held a live coal to the papers and set fire to them. They were afraid of being charged with destroying the notices, and they sought thus to evade the consequences. This act of resistance on their part has been made the most of. One of the men told me, hearing they were to be turned out because they did not pay rent enough, that they offered to pay £15 a year more, and afterwards to pay as much rent as any other man would give for the place. The following year (1844), however, the four chief tenants were decoyed to Tain, under the assurance that Mr. Gillanders was going to settle with them, they believing that their holdings were to be continued to them. The notices were then, as they say, in a treacherous and tricky manner, served upon them, however. Having been served, “a decreet of removal” was obtained against them, under which, of course, if they refused to turn out they would be put out by force. Finding themselves in this position, they entered into an arrangement with Mr. Gillanders, in which after several propositions on either side, it was agreed that they should remain until the 12th of May, to give them time to provide themselves with holdings elsewhere, Mr. Gillanders agreeing to pay them £100 on quitting, and to take their stock on at a valuation. They were also to have liberty to carry away the timber of their houses, which was really worthless, except for firewood. On their part they agreed to leave peaceably, and not to lay down any crop. Beyond the excessive harshness of removing the people at all, it is but right to say that the mode of proceeding in the removal hitherto has been temperate and considerate.

Two respectable farmers became bound for the people that they would carry out their part of the agreement, and the time of removal has since been extended to the 25th of this month. In the defence got up for this proceeding it is stated that all have been provided for; this is not only not the case, but seems to be intentionally deceptive. In speaking of all, the four principal tenants only are meant; for, according to the factor, these were all he had to do with; but this is not the case even in regard to the four principal tenants. Two only, a father and son, have got a piece of black moor, near Tain, 25 miles off, without any house or shed on it, out of which they hope to obtain subsistence. For this they are to pay £1 rent for 7 acres the first year; £2 for the second year; and £3 for a continuation. Another old man with a family has got a house and a small lot of land in Edderton, about 20 miles off. These three, the whole who have obtained places where they may hope to make a living. The old pensioner, if removing does not kill him, has obtained for himself and family, and for his son’s family, a house at a rent of £3 or £4, some ten miles off, without any land or means of subsistence attached to it. This old soldier has been offered 2s. a week by the factor to support him while he lived. He was one of the four principal tenants bound for the rent; and he indignantly refused to be kept as a pauper.

A widow with four children, two imbecile, has obtained two small apartments in a bothy or turf hut near Bonar Bridge, for which she is to pay £2 rent, without any land or means of subsistence. Another, a man with a wife and four children, has got an apartment at Bonar Bridge, at £1 rent. He goes there quite destitute, without means of living. Six only of eighteen households, therefore, have been able to obtain places in which to put their heads; and of these, three only have any means of subsistence before them. The rest are hopeless and helpless. Two or three of the men told me they have been round to every factor and proprietor in the neighbourhood, and they could obtain no place, and nothing to do, and they did not know where to go to, or what to do to live.

And for what are all these people to be reduced from comfort to beggary? For what is this virtuous and contented community to be scattered? I confess I can find no answer. It is said that the factor would rather have one tenant than many, as it saves him trouble! But so long as the rent is punctually paid as this has been, it is contrary to all experience to suppose that one large tenant will pay more rent than many small ones, or that a sheep walk can pay more rent than cultivated land.

Let me add that so far from the clearance at Glencalvie being a solitary instance in this neighbourhood, it is one of many. The tenants of Newmore, near Tain, who I am told, amount to 16 families, are to be weeded out (as they express it here) on the 25th, by the same Mr. Gillanders. The same factor manages the Strathconon estate, about 30 miles from Newmore, from which during the last four years, some hundreds of families have been weeded. The Government Church of that district, built eighteen years ago, to meet the necessities of the population, is now almost unnecessary from the want of population. At Black Isle, near Dingwall, the same agent is pursuing the same course, and so strong is the feeling of the poor Highlanders at these outrageous proceedings, so far as they are concerned wholly unwarranted from any cause whatever, that I am informed on the best authority, and by those who go amongst them and hear what they say, that it is owing to the influence of religion alone that they refrain from breaking out into open and turbulent resistance of the law. I enclose you the defence of this proceeding, with a list of the names and numbers of each family in Glencalvie—in all 92 persons.[12]

THE EVICTION OF THE ROSSES.

In a “Sermon for the Times,” the Rev. Richard Hibbs of the Episcopal Church, Edinburgh, referring to these evictions, says:—“Take first, the awful proof how far in oppression men can go—men highly educated and largely gifted in every way—property, talents, all; for the most part indeed, they are so-called noblemen. What, then, are they doing in the Highland districts, according to the testimony of a learned professor in this city? Why, depopulating those districts in order to make room for red deer. And how? By buying off the cottars, and giving them money to emigrate? Not at all, but by starving them out; by rendering them absolutely incapable of procuring subsistence for themselves and families; for they first take away from them their apportionments of poor lands, although they may have paid their rents; and if that don’t suffice to eradicate from their hearts that love of the soil on which they have been born and bred—a love which the great Proprietor of all has manifestly implanted in our nature—why, then, these inhuman landlords, who are far more merciful to their very beasts, take away from these poor cottars the very roofs above their defenceless heads, and expose them, worn down with age and destitute of everything, to the inclemencies of a northern sky; and this, forsooth, because they must have plenty room for their dogs and deer. For plentiful instances of the most wanton barbarities under this head we need only point to the Knoydart evictions. Here were perpetrated such enormities as might well have caused the very sun to hide his face at noon-day.” Macleod, referring to this sermon, says:—

“It has been intimated to me by an individual who heard this discourse on the first occasion that the statements referring to the Highland landlords have been controverted. I was well aware, long before the receipt of this intimation, that some defence had appeared; and here I can truly say, that none would have rejoiced more than myself to find that a complete vindication had been made. But, unhappily, the case is far otherwise. In order to be fully acquainted with all that had passed on the subject, I have put myself during the week in communication with the learned professor to whose letter, which appeared some months ago in the Times, I referred. From him I learn that none of his statements were invalidated—nay, not even impugned; and he adds, that to do this was simply impossible, as he had been at great pains to verify the facts. All that could be called in question was the theory that he had based upon those facts—namely, that evictions were made for the purpose of making room for more deer. This, of course, was open to contradiction on the part of those landlords who had not openly avowed their object in evicting the poor Highland families. As to the evictions themselves—and this was the main point—no attempt at contradiction was made.”

In addition to all that the benevolent Professor [Black] has made known to the world under this head, who has not heard of “The Massacre of the Rosses,” and the clearing of the glens? “I hold in my hand,” Mr. Hibbs continued, “a little work thus entitled, which has passed into the second edition. The author, Mr. Donald Ross—a gentleman whom all who feel sympathy for the downtrodden and oppressed must highly esteem. What a humiliating picture of the barbarity and cruelty of fallen humanity does this little book present! The reader, utterly appalled by its horrifying statements, finds it difficult to retain the recollection that he is perusing the history of his own times, and country too. He would fain yield himself to the tempting illusion that the ruthless atrocities which are depicted were enacted in a fabulous period, in ages long past; or at all events, if it be contemporaneous history, that the scene of such heart-rending cruelties, the perpetrators of which were regardless alike of the innocency of infancy and the helplessness of old age, is some far distant, and as yet not merely unchristianized, but wholly savage and uncivilized region of our globe. But alas! it is Scotland, in the latter half of the nineteenth century, of which he treats. One feature of the heart-harrowing case is the shocking and barbarous cruelty that was practised on this occasion upon the female portion of the evicted clan. Mr. D. Ross, in a letter addressed to the Right Hon. the Lord Advocate, Edinburgh, dated April 19, 1854, thus writes in reference to one of those clearances and evictions which had just then taken place, under the authority of a certain Sheriff of the district, and by means of a body of policemen as executioners:—‘The feeling on this subject, not only in the district, but in Sutherlandshire and Ross-shire, is, among the great majority of the people, one of universal condemnation of the Sheriff’s reckless conduct, and of indignation and disgust at the brutality of the policemen. Such, indeed, was the sad havoc made on the females on the banks of the Carron, on the memorable 31st March last, that pools of blood were on the ground—that the grass and earth were dyed red with it—that the dogs of the district came and licked up the blood; and at last, such was the state of feeling of parties who went from a distance to see the field, that a party (it is understood by order or instructions from headquarters) actually harrowed the ground during the night to hide the blood!

“‘The affair at Greenyard, on the morning of the 31st March last, is not calculated to inspire much love of country, or rouse the martial spirit of the already ill-used Highlanders. The savage treatment of innocent females on that morning, by an enraged body of police, throws the Sinope butchery into the shade; for the Ross-shire Haynaus have shown themselves more cruel and more blood-thirsty than the Austrian women-floggers. What could these poor men and women—with their wounds and scars, and broken bones, and disjointed arms, stretched on beds of sickness, or moving on crutches, the result of the brutal treatment of them by the police at Greenyard—have to dread from the invasion of Scotland by Russia?’”

Commenting on this incredible atrocity, committed in the middle of the nineteenth century, Donald Macleod says truly that:—“It was so horrifying and so brutal that they did not wonder at the rev. gentleman’s delicacy in speaking of it, and directing his hearers to peruse Mr. Ross’s pamphlet for full information. Mr. Ross went from Glasgow to Greenyard, all the way to investigate the case upon the spot, and found that Mr. Taylor, a native of Sutherland, well educated in the evicting schemes and murderous cruelty of that county, and Sheriff-substitute of Ross-shire, marched from Tain upon the morning of the 31st March, at the head of a strong party of armed constables, with heavy bludgeons and fire-arms, conveyed in carts and other vehicles, allowing them as much ardent drink as they chose to take before leaving and on their march, so as to qualify them for the bloody work which they had to perform; fit for any outrage, fully equipped, and told by the Sheriff to show no mercy to any one who would oppose them, and not allow themselves to be called cowards, by allowing these mountaineers victory over them. In this excited, half-drunken state, they came in contact with the unfortunate women of Greenyard, who were determined to prevent the officers from serving the summonses of removal upon them, and keep their holding of small farms where they and their forefathers lived and died for generations. But no time was allowed for parley; the Sheriff gave the order to clear the way, and, be it said to his everlasting disgrace, he struck the first blow at a woman, the mother of a large family, and large in the family way at the time, who tried to keep him back; then a general slaughter commenced; the women made noble resistance, until the bravest of them got their arms broken; then they gave way. This did not allay the rage of the murderous brutes, they continued clubbing at the protectless creatures until every one of them was stretched on the field, weltering in their blood, or with broken arms, ribs, and bruised limbs. In this woeful condition many of them were hand-cuffed together, others tied with coarse ropes, huddled into carts, and carried prisoners to Tain. I have seen myself in the possession of Mr. Ross, Glasgow, patches or scalps of the skin with the long hair adhering to them, which was found upon the field a few days after this inhuman affray. I did not see the women, but I was told that gashes were found on the heads of two young female prisoners in Tain jail, which exactly corresponded with the slices of scalps which I have seen, so that Sutherland and Ross-shire may boast of having had the Nana Sahib and his chiefs some few years before India, and that in the persons of some whose education, training, and parental example should prepare their minds to perform and act differently. Mr. Donald Ross placed the whole affair before the Lord Advocate for Scotland, but no notice was taken of it by that functionary, further than that the majesty of the law would need to be observed and attended to.

“In this unfortunate country, the law of God and humanity may be violated and trampled under foot, but the law of wicked men which sanctions murder, rapine, and robbery must be observed. From the same estate (the estate of Robertson of Kindeace, if I am not mistaken in the date) in the year 1843 the whole inhabitants of Glencalvie were evicted in a similar manner, and so unprovided and unprepared were they for removal at such an inclement season of the year, that they had to shelter themselves in a Church and a burying-ground. I have seen myself nineteen families within this gloomy and solitary resting abode of the dead, they were there for months. The London Times sent a commissioner direct from London to investigate into this case, and he did his duty; but like the Sutherland cases, it was hushed up in order to maintain the majesty of the law, and in order to keep the right, the majesty of the people, and the laws of God in the dark.

“In the year 1819 or ’20, about the time when the depopulation of Sutherlandshire was completed, and the annual conflagration of burning the houses ceased, and when there was not a glen or strath in the county to let to a sheep farmer, one of these insatiable monsters of Sutherlandshire sheep farmers fixed his eyes upon a glen in Ross-shire, inhabited by a brave, hardy race for time immemorial. Summonses of removal were served upon them at once. The people resisted—a military force was brought against them—the military and the women of the glen met at the entrance to the glen, and a bloody conflict took place; without reading the riot act or taking any other precaution, the military fired (by the order of Sheriff MacLeod) ball cartridge upon the women; one young girl of the name of Mathieson was shot dead on the spot; many were wounded. When this murder was observed by the survivors, and some young men concealed in the background, they made a heroic sudden rush upon the military, when a hand-to-hand melee or fight took place. In a few minutes the military were put to disorder by flight; in their retreat they were unmercifully dealt with, only two of them escaping with whole heads. The Sheriff’s coach was smashed to atoms, and he made a narrow escape himself with a whole head. But no legal cognizance was taken of this affair, as the Sheriff and the military were the violators. However, for fear of prosecution, the Sheriff settled a pension of £6 sterling yearly upon the murdered girl’s father, and the case was hushed up likewise. The result was that the people kept possession of the glen, and that the proprietor and the oldest and most insatiable of Sutherlandshire scourges went to law, which ended in the ruination of the latter, who died a pauper.”

Hugh Miller, describing a “Highland Clearing,” in one of his able leading articles in the Witness, since published in volume form, quotes freely from an article by John Robertson, which appeared in the Glasgow National in August, 1844, on the evictions of the Rosses of Glencalvie. When the article from which Hugh Miller quotes was written, the inhabitants of the glen had just received notices of removal, but the evictions had not yet been carried out. Commenting on the proceedings Hugh Miller says:—

“In an adjacent glen (to Strathcarron), through which the Calvie works its headlong way to the Carron, that terror of the Highlanders, a summons of removal, has been served within the last few months on a whole community; and the graphic sketch of Mr. Robertson relates both the peculiar circumstances in which it has been issued, and the feelings which it has excited. We find from his testimony that the old state of things which is so immediately on the eve of being broken up in this locality, lacked not a few of those sources of terror to the proprietary of the county, that are becoming so very formidable to them in the newer states.”

The constitution of society in the Glens, says Mr. Robertson, is remarkably simple. Four heads of families are bound for the whole rental. The number of souls was about ninety, sixteen cottages paid rent; they supported a teacher for the education of their own children; they supported their own poor. “The laird has never lost a farthing of rent in bad years, such as 1836 and 1837, the people may have required the favour of a few weeks’ delay, but they are not now a single farthing in arrears;” that is, when they are in receipt of summonses of removal. “For a century,” Mr. Robertson continues, speaking of the Highlanders, “their privileges have been lessening; they dare not now hunt the deer, or shoot the grouse or the blackcock; they have no longer the range of the hills for their cattle and their sheep; they must not catch a salmon in the stream: in earth, air, and water, the rights of the laird are greater, and the rights of the people are smaller, than they were in the days of their forefathers.” The same writer eloquently concludes:—

“The father of the laird of Kindeace bought Glencalvie. It was sold by a Ross two short centuries ago. The swords of the Rosses of Glencalvie did their part in protecting this little glen, as well as the broad lands of Pitcalvie, from the ravages and the clutches of hostile septs. These clansmen bled and died in the belief that every principle of honour and morals secured their descendants a right to subsisting on the soil. The chiefs and their children had the same charter of the sword. Some Legislatures have made the right of the people superior to the right of the chief; British law-makers made the rights of the chief everything, and those of their followers nothing. The ideas of the morality of property are in most men the creatures of their interests and sympathies. Of this there cannot be a doubt, however, the chiefs would not have had the land at all, could the clansmen have foreseen the present state of the Highlands—their children in mournful groups going into exile—the faggot of legal myrmidons in the thatch of the feal cabin—the hearths of their homes and their lives the green sheep-walks of the stranger. Sad it is, that it is seemingly the will of our constituencies that our laws shall prefer the few to the many. Most mournful will it be, should the clansmen of the Highlands have been cleared away, ejected, exiled, in deference to a political, a moral, a social, and an economical mistake,—a suggestion not of philosophy, but of mammon,—a system in which the demon of sordidness assumed the shape of the angel of civilization and of light.”

That the Eviction of the Rosses was of a harsh character is amply corroborated by the following account, extracted from the Inverness Courier:—“We mentioned last week that considerable obstruction was anticipated in the execution of the summonses of removal upon the tenants of Major Robertson of Kindeace, on his property of Greenyards, near Bonar Bridge. The office turned out to be of a very formidable character. At six o’clock on the morning of Friday last, Sheriff Taylor proceeded from Tain, accompanied by several Sheriff’s officers, and a police force of about thirty more, partly belonging to the constabulary force of Ross-shire, and partly to that of Inverness-shire,—the latter under the charge of Mr. Mackay, inspector, Fort William. On arriving at Greenyards, which is nearly four miles from Bonar Bridge, it was found that about three hundred persons, fully two-thirds of whom were women, had assembled from the county round about, all apparently prepared to resist the execution of the law. The women stood in front, armed with stones, and the men occupied the background, all, or nearly all, furnished with sticks.

“The Sheriff attempted to reason with the crowd, and to show them the necessity of yielding to the law: but his efforts were fruitless; some of the women tried to lay hold of him and to strike him, and after a painful effort to effect the object in view by peaceable means—which was renewed in vain by Mr. Cumming, the superintendent of the Ross-shire police—the Sheriff was reluctantly obliged to employ force. The force was led by Mr. Cumming into the crowd, and, after a sharp resistance, which happily lasted only a few minutes, the people were dispersed, and the Sheriff was enabled to execute the summonses upon the four tenants. The women, as they bore the brunt of the battle, were the principal sufferers. A large number of them—fifteen or sixteen, we believe, were seriously hurt, and of these several are under medical treatment; one woman, we believe, still lies in a precarious condition. The policemen appear to have used their batons with great force, but they escaped themselves almost unhurt. Several correspondents from the district, who do not appear, however, to make sufficient allowance for the critical position of affairs, and the necessity of at once impressing so large a multitude with the serious nature of the case, complain that the policemen used their batons with wanton cruelty. Others state that they not only did their duty, but that less firmness might have proved fatal to themselves. The instances of violence are certainly, though very naturally, on the part of the attacking force; several batons were smashed in the melee; a great number of men and women were seriously hurt, especially about the head and face, while not one of the policemen, so far as we can learn, suffered any injury in consequence. As soon as the mob was fairly dispersed, the police made active pursuit, in the hope of catching some of the ringleaders. The men had, however, fled, and the only persons apprehended were some women, who had been active in the opposition, and who had been wounded. They were conveyed to the prison at Tain, but liberated on bail next day, through the intercession of a gallant friend, who became responsible for their appearance.”

“A correspondent writes,” continues the Courier, “ten young women were wounded in the back of the skull and other parts of their bodies.... The wounds on these women show plainly the severe manner in which they were dealt with by the police when they were retreating. It was currently reported last night that one of them was dead; and the feeling of indignation is so strong against the manner in which the constables have acted, that I fully believe the life of any stranger, if he were supposed to be an officer of the law, would not be worth twopence in the district.”

The Northern Ensign, referring to the same case, says:—“One day lately a preventive officer with two cutter men made their appearance on the boundaries of the estate and were taken for Tain Sheriff-officers. The signals were at once given, and in course of half-an-hour the poor gauger and his men were surrounded by 300 men and women, who would not be remonstrated with either in English or Gaelic; the poor fellows were taken and denuded of their clothing, all papers and documents were extracted and burnt, amongst which was a purse with a considerable quantity of money. In this state they were carried shoulder-high off the estate, and left at the braes of Downie, where the great Culrain riot took place thirty years ago.”

KINTAIL.

During the first years of the century a great many were cleared from Kintail by Seaforth at the instigation of his Kintail factor, Duncan Mor Macrae, and his father, who themselves added the land taken from the ancient tenantry to their own sheep farms, already far too extensive. In Glengarry, Canada, a few years ago, we met one man, 93 years of age, who was among the evicted. He was in excellent circumstances, his three sons having three valuable farms of their own, and considered wealthy in the district. In the same county there is a large colony of Kintail men, the descendants of those cleared from that district, all comfortable, many of them very well off, one of them being then member for his county in the dominion Parliament. While this has been the case with many of the evicted from Kintail and their descendants in Canada, the grasping sheep farmer who was the original cause of their eviction from their native land, died ruined and penniless; and the Seaforths, not long after, had to sell the last inch of their ancient inheritance in Lochalsh and Kintail. Shortly after these Glenelchaig evictions, about fifty families were banished in the same way and by the same people from the district of Letterfearn. This property has also changed hands since, and is now in possession of Sir Alexander Matheson, Baronet of Lochalsh. Letter of Lochalsh was cleared by Sir Hugh Innes, almost as soon as he came into possession by purchase of that portion of the ancient heritage of Seaforth and Kintail. The property has since passed into the hands of the Lillingstones.

COIGEACH.

The attempt to evict the Coigeach crofters must also be mentioned. Here the people made a stout resistance, the women disarming about twenty policemen and sheriff-officers, burning the summonses in a heap, throwing their batons into the sea, and ducking the representatives of the law in a neighbouring pool. The men formed the second line of defence, in case the women should receive any ill-treatment. They, however, never put a finger on the officers of law, all of whom returned home without serving a single summons or evicting a single crofter. The proceedings of her subordinates fortunately came to the ears of the noble proprietrix, with the result that the Coigeach tenants are still where they were, and are to-day among the most comfortable crofters in the north of Scotland.

STRATHCONON.[13]

From 1840 to 1848 Strathconon was almost entirely cleared of its ancient inhabitants to make room for sheep and deer, as in other places; and also for the purposes of extensive forest plantations. The property was under trustees when the harsh proceedings were commenced by the factor, Mr. Rose, a notorious Dingwall solicitor. He began by taking away, first, the extensive hill-pasture, for generations held as club-farms by the townships, thus reducing the people from a position of comfort and independence; and secondly, as we saw done elsewhere, finally evicting them from the arable portion of the strath, though they were not a single penny in arrear of rent. Coirre-Bhuic and Scard-Roy were first cleared, and given, respectively, as sheep-farms to Mr. Brown, from Morayshire, and Colin Munro, from Dingwall. Mr. Balfour, when he came of age, cleared Coire-Feola and Achadh-an-eas; Carnach was similarly treated, while no fewer than twenty-seven families were evicted from Glen-Meine alone. Baile-a-Mhuilinn and Baile-na-Creige were cleared in 1844, no fewer than twenty-four families from these townships removing to the neighbourhood of Knock-farrel and Loch Ussie, above Dingwall, where they were provided with holdings by the late John Hay Mackenzie of Cromartie, father of the present Duchess of Sutherland, and where a few of themselves and many of their descendants are now in fairly comfortable circumstances. A great many more found shelter on various properties in the Black Isle—some at Drynie Park, Maol-Bui; others at Kilcoy, Allangrange, Cromarty, and the Aird.

It is computed that from four to five hundred souls were thus driven from Strathconon, and cast adrift on the world, including a large number of persons quite helpless, from old age, blindness, and other infirmities. The scenes were much the same as we have described in connection with other places. There is, however, one aspect of the harshness and cruelty practised on the Strathconon people, not applicable in many other cases, namely, that in most instances where they settled down and reclaimed land, they were afterwards re-evicted, and the lands brought into cultivation by themselves, taken from them, without any compensation whatever, and given at enhanced rents to large farmers. This is specially true of those who settled down in the Black Isle, where they reclaimed a great deal of waste now making some of the best farms in that district. Next after Mr. Rose of Dingwall, the principal instrument in clearing Strathconon, was the late James Gillanders of Highfield, already so well and unfavourably known to the reader in connection with the evictions at Glencalvie and elsewhere.

It may be remarked that the Strathconon evictions are worthy of note for the forcible illustration they furnish of how, by these arbitrary and unexpected removals, hardships and ruin have frequently been brought on families and communities who were at the time in contented and comfortable circumstances. At one time, and previous to the earlier evictions, perhaps no glen of its size in the Highlands had a larger population than Strathconon. The club farm system, once so common in the North, seems to have been peculiarly successful here. Hence a large proportion of the people were well to do, but when suddenly called upon to give up their hill pasture, and afterwards their arable land, and in the absence of other suitable places to settle in, the means they had very soon disappeared, and the trials and difficulties of new conditions had to be encountered. As a rule, in most of these Highland evictions, the evicted were lost sight of, they having either emigrated to foreign lands or become absorbed in the ever-increasing unemployed population of the large towns. In the case of Strathconon it was different, as has been already stated; many of the families evicted were allowed to settle on some of the wildest unreclaimed land in the Black Isle. Their subsequent history there, and the excellent agricultural condition into which they in after years brought their small holdings, is a standing refutation of the charge so often made against the Highland people, that they are lazy and incapable of properly cultivating the land.

THE BLACK ISLE.

Respecting the estates of Drynie and Kilcoy, a correspondent, who says, “I well remember my excessive grief when my father had to leave the farm which his forefathers had farmed for five generations,” writes:—

“All the tenants to the east of Drynie, as far as Craigiehow, were turned out, one by one, to make room for one large tenant, Mr. Robertson, who had no less than four centres for stackyards. A most prosperous tenantry were turned out to make room for him, and what is the end of it all! Mr. Robertson has come to grief as a farmer, and now holds a very humble position in the town of Inverness. Drumderfit used to be occupied by fifteen or sixteen tenants who were gradually, and from time to time, evicted, during the last fifty years. Balnakyle was tenanted by five very comfortable and respectable farmers, four of whom were turned out within the last thirty years; Balnaguie was occupied by three; Torr by six; and Croft-cruive by five; the once famous names of Drum-na-marg and Moreton are now extinct, as well as the old tenantry whose forefathers farmed these places for generations. The present farm of Kilcoy includes a number of holdings whose tenants were evicted to make room for one large farmer;” and this is equally true of many others in the district. Nothing can better illustrate the cruel manner in which the ancient tenantry of the country have been treated than these facts; and special comment on the evictions from Strathconon and the Black Isle, after what has been said about others of a similar character, would be superfluous.