On the other hand, the presence of extreme poverty, of famines, by no means rare, of exactions which Lowlanders considered tyrannical, and the occurrence of evictions, before 1745, seem equally well established. Ignorance was one safeguard against discontent, and in the absence of schools, in the rarity of the Presbyterian clergy, with their innate democratic ideas, ignorance flourished. Over-population was encouraged, by minute subdivision of lands, for the purpose of increasing the Chief’s military following. Thus poverty was artificially fostered, and, with it, idleness and habits of plunder and of tippling.
This little picture of a Highland home is given in a book of 1747:[161] ‘I have seen in their Huts, when I have been walking, and forced to retreat thither for Shelter from the Rain, their Children, sometimes many in a Hut, full of the Small Pox and [at?] their Heighth, they having been lying and walking about in the Wet and Dirt, the Rain at the same time beating through the Thatch with Violence; so that I used to get from one End of the House to the other to keep dry; but it was all in vain, the Rain soon following me. These children at the same time seemed hearty, drinking Whey and Butter-milk, Wet and Cold with the Inclemency of the weather, and yet so well!’
This sketch was drawn somewhere in the country between Inverness and Fort William, after Culloden.
The raising of the early Highland regiments (1756-62) relieved the population, but also diffused knowledge, while the Chiefs’ power, as sanctioned by law, was destroyed. The soldiers, who had seen the New World, whether gentry and officers or privates, did not incline to stay at home when rents were raised. They emigrated to America, almost by clans, in years of famine, as in 1782. The Chiefs were alarmed and indignant; they were also needy. They screwed up rents, introduced sheep, moved populations to the coast, or evicted them. Voluntary emigration (the wisest policy) was succeeded by the removal of clansmen who were reluctant to go, or who could not afford to go, their poor goods not being marketable. Many even sold themselves into voluntary slavery for their passage fare.
Some chiefs became opulent for a generation; their families were ruined by their following of George, Prince Regent; their estates fell into English hands, and forests were made at the expense of new evictions.
This is a brief and gloomy account of what followed Culloden. An example may be given in the case of the great Glengarry family.
On the death of Glengarry, in 1761, his affairs were found, as was natural, in a lamentable condition. To study them and the later changes on his estate is to gain a view into the heart of Highland grievances. Fortunately materials for this examination exist, and have been published by Mr. Fraser Mackintosh in his ‘Antiquarian Notes’ (1897).
Perhaps it may be best to begin by giving a brief account of the way in which such estates as Glengarry’s were usually occupied by the clansmen. The Chief let to tacksmen, or leaseholders, gentlemen of his clan, part of the lands which he did not hold in his own hand. Part of his ‘tack,’ again, the tacksman cultivated; part he let out to cotters, ‘under which general term may be included various local denominations of crofters, mailers, &c.... Frequently they have the command only of a small share of their own time to cultivate the land allowed them for maintaining their families. Sometimes the Tacksman allows a portion of his own tillage field for his cotter; sometimes a small separate croft is laid off for him, and he is likewise allowed, in general, to pasture a cow, or perhaps two.’[162]
‘The Tacks,’ says Dr. Johnson, ‘were long considered as hereditary,’ but, in his time, strangers would make larger offers, and the hereditary tacksman was apt to be dispossessed, with cotters, crofters, and all. As to the tyrannical and oppressive conduct of the tacksmen, much will be reported later. According to Young Barisdale’s plea (1754), Old Barisdale held possession, from Glengarry, without a line of written paper. The tacksmen, in war, were officers of the Clan regiment, and led, or drove, the tenants to the field.
Apart from tacksmen and their cotters, were ‘small tenants’ holding direct from the Chief. They usually occupied, in townships, a farm in common: the shares may once have been equal, but, by 1738, one man might hold a fourth, another but a fifteenth. They dwelt in a hamlet near the arable crofts, of which the division might vary from year to year. They had also grazing, and, money being very scarce, their chief wealth was their cattle. Interest and part principal of his patrimony were paid, in cattle, to Glengarry’s younger brother Æneas.[163] Cotters, who acted as labourers, were scattered among the little communities of small tenants. Rents were mostly paid in kind, and in ‘services,’ little money passed.