Still the hardships which had to be endured by many of the ousted tenants, and the unfeeling rigour with which many of them were treated is sad indeed to read of. Many of them had to sleep in caves, or shelter themselves, parents and children, under the lee of a rock or a dyke, keeping as near as they could to the ruins of their burnt or fallen cottage, and living on what shell-fish they could gather on the shore, wild roots dug with their fingers, or on the scanty charity of their neighbours; for all who could had emigrated. Many of the proprietors, of course, did what they could to provide for the ousted tenants, believing that the driving of them out was a sad necessity. Houses, and a small piece of ground for each family, were provided by the shore, on some convenient spot, help was given to start the fishing, or employment in the manufacture of kelp, and as far as possible their new condition was made as bearable as possible. Indeed, we are inclined to believe, that but few of the landlords acted from mere wantonness, or were entirely dead to the interests of the old tenants; but that, their own interests naturally being of the greatest importance to them, and some radical change being necessary in the management of lands in the Highlands, the lairds thoughtlessly acted as many of them did. It was the natural rebound from the old system when the importance and wealth of a chief were rated at the number of men on his estate; and although the consequent suffering is to be deplored, still, perhaps, it was scarcely to be avoided. It is easy to say that had the chiefs done this or the government done the other thing, much suffering might have been spared, and much benefit accrued to the Highlanders; but all the suffering in the world might be spared did people know exactly when and how to interfere. It would be curious, indeed, if in the case of the Highlands the faults were all on one side. We believe that the proprietors acted frequently with harshness and selfishness, and did not seek to realise the misery they were causing. They were bound, more strongly bound perhaps than the proprietors of any other district, to show some consideration for the people on their estates, and not to act as if proprietors had the sole right to benefit by the land of a country, and that the people had no right whatever. Had they been more gentle, introduced the changes gradually and judiciously, and given the native Highlanders a chance to retrieve themselves, much permanent good might have been done, and much suffering and bitterness spared. But so long as the world is merely learning how to live, groping after what is best, so long as men act on blind unreasoning impulse, until all men learn to act according to the immutable laws of Nature, so long will scenes such as we have been referring to occur. The blame, however, should be laid rather to ignorance than to wanton intention.
Of all the Highland counties, perhaps Sutherland is better known than any other in connection with the commotions which agitated the Highlands during the early part of this century, and, according to all accounts, the depopulation is more marked there than anywhere else. The clearance of that county of the old tenants, their removal to the coast, and the conversion of the country into large sheep-farms commenced about 1810, under the Marquis of Stafford, who had married the heiress of the Sutherland estate. The clearing was, of course, carried out by Mr Sellar, the factor, who, on account of some of the proceedings to which he was a party, was tried before a Court of Justiciary, held at Inverness in 1816, for culpable homicide and oppression. Many witnesses were examined on both sides, and, after a long trial, the jury returned a verdict of “Not guilty,” in which the judge, Lord Pitmilly, completely concurred. This, we think, was the only verdict that could legally be given, not only in the case of the Sutherland clearings, but also in the case of most of the other estates where such measures were carried on. The tenants were all duly warned to remove a considerable number of weeks before the term, and as few of them had many chattels to take with them, this could easily have been done. Most of them generally obeyed the warning, although a few, generally the very poor and very old, refused to budge from the spot of their birth. The factor and his officers, acting quite according to law, compelled them, sometimes by force, to quit the houses, which were then either burnt or pulled to the ground. As a rule, these officers of the law seem to have done their duty as gently as law officers are accustomed to do; but however mildly such a duty had been performed, it could not but entail suffering to some extent, especially on such a people as many of the Highlanders were who knew not how to make a living beyond the bounds of their native glen. The pictures of suffering drawn, some of them we fear too true, are sometimes very harrowing, and any one who has been brought up among the hills, or has dwelt for a summer in a sweet Highland glen, can easily fancy with how sad a heart the Highlander must have taken his last long lingering look of the little cottage, however rude, where he passed his happiest years, nestled at the foot of a sunny brae, or guarded by some towering crag, and surrounded with the multitudinous beauties of wood and vale, heather and ferns, soft knoll and rugged mountain. The same result as has followed in the Highlands has likewise taken place in other parts of the country, without the same outcry about depopulation, suffering, emigration, &c., simply because it has been brought about gradually. The process commenced in the Highlands only about a hundred years since, was commenced in the lowlands and elsewhere centuries ago; the Highlanders have had improvements thrust upon them, while the lowlanders were allowed to develope themselves.
After the decline in the price of kelp (about 1820), when it ceased to be the interest of the proprietors to accumulate people on the shore, they did their best to induce them to emigrate, many proprietors helping to provide ships for those whom they had dispossessed of their lands and farms. Indeed, until well on in the present century, the Highlanders generally seem to have had no objections to emigrate, but, on the contrary, were eager to do so whenever they could, often going against the will of the lairds and of those who dreaded the utter depopulation of the country and a dearth of recruits for the army. But about 1840 and after, compulsion seems often to have been used to make the people go on board the ships provided for them by the lairds, who refused to give them shelter on any part of their property. But little compulsion, however, in the ordinary sense of the term, seems to have been necessary, as the Highlanders, besides having a hereditary tendency to obey their superiors, were dazed, bewildered, and dispirited by what seemed to them the cruel, heartless, and unjust proceedings of their lairds.
The earliest extensive clearing probably took place on the estate of Glengarry, the traditional cause of it being that the laird’s lady had taken umbrage at the clan. “Summonses of ejection were served over the whole property, even on families most closely connected with the chief.”[85] From that time down to the present day, the clearing off of the inhabitants of many parts of the Highlands has been steadily going on. We have already spoken of the Sutherland clearings, which were continued down to a comparatively recent time. All the Highland counties to a greater or less extent have been subjected to the same kind of thinning, and have contributed their share of emigrants to America, Australia, New Zealand, and elsewhere. It would serve no purpose to enter into details concerning the clearing of the several estates in the various Highland counties; much, as we have said, has been written on both sides, and if faith can be put in the host of pamphlets that have been issued during the present century on the side of the ejected Highlanders, some of the evictions were conducted with great cruelty;[86] much greater cruelty and disregard for the people’s feelings than we think there was any need for, however justifiable and necessary the evictions and clearings were.
We have already referred to the frequent occurrence of famines during the past and present centuries in the Highlands, arising from the failure of the crops, principally, latterly, through the failure of the potatoes. These frequent famines gave a stimulus to emigration, as, of course, the people were anxious to escape from their misery, and the proprietors were glad to get quit of the poor they would otherwise have had to support. Besides the failure of the crops, other causes operated, according to Mr Tregelles, in the pamphlet already referred to, to produce the frequent occurrence of distress in the Highlands; such as the relation of landlord and tenant, the defective character of the poor-law, the excessive division and subdivision of the land, the imprudence and ignorance of some of the peasantry, inertness, also consequent on chronic poverty, want of capital. Every few years, up even to the present time, a cry of distress comes from the Highlands. Besides the famines already referred to in 1837 and 1846, a still more severe and distressing one occurred in 1850, and seems, according to the many reports and pamphlets issued, to have continued for some years after. In the one of 1837, many Highland proprietors and private gentlemen, forming themselves into an association, did what they could to assist the Highlanders, mainly by way of emigration. Not only was it for the advantage of Highland proprietors, in respect of being able to let their lands at a better rent, to do what they could to enable the people to emigrate, but by doing so, and thus diminishing the number of poor on their estates, they considerably decreased the large tax they had to pay under the recent Scotch Poor-law Act. “Formerly the poor widows and orphans and destitute persons were relieved by the parish minister from the poors’ box, by voluntary subscriptions, which enabled the extremely needy to receive four or five shillings the quarter; and this small pittance was felt on all hands to be a liberal bounty. The landlord added his five or ten pound gift at the beginning of the year, and a laudatory announcement appeared in the newspaper. But the Act for the relief of the poor of Scotland now provides that a rate shall be levied on the tenant or occupier, and some of those who formerly paid £10 per annum, and were deemed worthy of much commendation, have now to pay £400 per annum without note or comment! Can we be surprised, then, that some of the landlords, with increased claims on their resources, and perhaps with diminished ability to meet such claims, should look round promptly and earnestly for a remedy? One of the most obvious and speedy remedies was emigration; hence the efforts to clear the ground of those who, with the lapse of time, might become heavy encumbrances. It need not be matter of surprise that the landlord should clear his ground of tenants who, for a series of years, had paid no rent; although perhaps a wiser and better course would have been to have sought for and found some good means of continued lucrative employment.... The lands are divided and subdivided until a family is found existing on a plot which is totally inadequate for their support; and here we see their imprudence and ignorance. Families are reared up in misery, struggling with impossibilities, producing at last that inertness and dimness of vision which result from a sick heart.”[87] Most of those who write, like Mr Tregelles, of the distress of the Highlands in 1850 and succeeding years, do so in the same strain. They declare there is no need for emigration, that the land and sea, if properly worked, are quite sufficient to support all the inhabitants that were ever on it at any time, and that the people only need to be helped on, encouraged and taught, to make them as prosperous and the land as productive as the people and land of any other part of the kingdom. While this may be true of many parts, we fear it will not hold with regard to most of the Western Islands, where until recently, in most places, especially in Skye, the land was so subdivided and the population so excessive, that under the most productive system of agriculture the people could not be kept in food for more than half the year. Even in some of the best off of the islands, it was the custom for one or more members of a family to go to the south during summer and harvest, and earn as much as would pay the rent and eke out the scanty income. “The fact is, that the working classes of Skye, for many years anterior to 1846, derived a considerable part of their means from the wages of labour in the south. Even before the manufacture of kelp had been abandoned, the crofters of some parts at least of Skye appear to have paid their rents chiefly in money earned by labour in other parts of the kingdom. When that manufacture ceased, the local employment was reduced to a small amount, and the number who went elsewhere for wages increased. The decline of the herring-fishery, which for several years had yielded little or no profit in Skye, had a similar effect. The failure of the potato crop in 1846 still further reduced the local means of subsistence and of employing labour, and forced a still greater number to work for wages in different parts of the country. From the Pentland Firth to the Tweed, from the Lewis to the Isle of Man, the Skye men sought the employment they could not find at home; and there are few families of cottars, or of crofters at rents not exceeding £10, from which at least one individual did not set out to earn by labour elsewhere the means of paying rent and buying meal for those who remained at home. Before 1846, only the younger members of the family left the district for that purpose; since that year, the crofter himself has often found it necessary to go. But young and old, crofters and cottars, to whatever distance they may have gone, return home for the winter, with rare exceptions, and remain there nearly altogether idle, consuming the produce of the croft, and the proceeds of their own labour, till the return of summer and the failure of their supplies warn them that it is time to set out again. Those whose means are insufficient to maintain them till the winter is past, and who cannot find employment at that season at home, are of course in distress, and, having exhausted their own means, are driven to various shifts, and forced to seek charitable aid.”
The above extract is from the Report by Sir John M’Neill, on the distress in Highlands and Islands in 1850–51, caused by the failure of the crops. He went through most of the western island and western mainland parishes examining into the condition of the people, and the conclusion he came to was, that the population was excessive, that no matter how the land might be divided, it could not support the inhabitants without extraneous aid, and that the only remedy was the removal of the surplus population by means of emigration. Whether the population was excessive or not, it appears to us, that when the sudden, deep, and extensive distresses occurred in the Highlands, it was merciful to help those who had no means of making a living, and who were half starving, to remove to a land where there was plenty of well-paid work. Sir John believes that even although no pressure had been used by landlords, and no distresses had occurred, the changes which have been rapidly introduced into the Highlands, extending farms and diminishing population, would have happened all the same, but would have been brought about more gradually and with less inconvenience and suffering to the population. “The change which then (end of last century) affected only the parishes bordering on the Lowlands, has now extended to the remotest parts of the Highlands, and, whether for good or for evil, is steadily advancing. Every movement is in that direction, because the tendency must necessarily be to assimilate the more remote districts to the rest of the country, and to carry into them, along with the instruction, industry, and capital, the agricultural and commercial economy of the wealthier, more intelligent, and influential majority of the nation. If it were desirable to resist this progress, it would probably be found impracticable. Every facility afforded to communication and intercourse must tend to hasten its march, and it is not to be conceived that any local organisation could resist, or even materially retard it. If nothing had occurred to disturb the ordinary course of events, this inevitable transition would probably have been effected without such an amount of suffering as to call for special intervention, though no such change is accomplished without suffering. The crofter would have yielded to the same power that has elsewhere converted the holdings of small tenants into farms for capitalists; but increased facilities of communication, and increased intercourse, might previously have done more to assimilate his language, habits, and modes of living and of thinking to those of men in that part of the country to which he is now a stranger, and in which he is a foreigner.
“There would thus have been opened up to him the same means of providing for his subsistence that were found by those of his class, who, during the last century, have ceased to cultivate land occupied by themselves. But the calamity that suddenly disabled him from producing his food by his own labour on his croft, has found him generally unprepared to provide by either means for his maintenance. All the various attempts that have yet been made in so many parishes to extricate the working classes from the difficulties against which they are unsuccessfully contending, have not only failed to accomplish that object, but have failed even to arrest the deterioration in their circumstances and condition that has been in progress for the last four years. In every parish, with one or two exceptions, men of all classes and denominations concur unanimously in declaring it to be impossible, by any application of the existing resources, or by any remunerative application of extraneous resources, to provide for the permanent subsistence of the whole of the present inhabitants; and state their conviction that the population cannot be made self-sustaining, unless a portion removes from the parish.... The working classes in many parishes are convinced that the emigration of a part of their number affords the only prospect of escape from a position otherwise hopeless; and in many cases individuals have earnestly prayed for aid to emigrate. Petitions numerously signed by persons desirous to go to the North American colonies, and praying for assistance to enable them to do so, have been transmitted for presentation to Parliament. In some of the parishes where no desire for emigration had been publicly expressed, or was supposed to exist, that desire began to be announced as soon as the expectation of extraneous aid was abandoned. It has rarely happened that so many persons, between whom there was or could have been no previous concert or intercourse, and whose opinions on many important subjects are so much at variance, have concurred in considering any one measure indispensable to the welfare of the community; and there does not appear to be any good reason for supposing that this almost unanimous opinion is not well founded.”[88]
These are the opinions of one who thoroughly examined into the matter, and are corroborated by nearly all the articles on the Highland parishes in the New Statistical Account. That it was and is still needful to take some plan to prevent the ever-recurring distress of the Western Highlands, and especially Islands, no one can doubt; that emigration is to some extent necessary, especially from the islands, we believe, but that it is the only remedy, we are inclined to doubt. There is no doubt that many proprietors, whose tenants though in possession of farms of no great size were yet very comfortable, have cleared their estate, and let it out in two or three large farms solely for sheep. Let emigration by all means be brought into play where it is necessary, but it is surely not necessary in all cases to go from one extreme to another, and replace thousands of men, women, and children by half-a-dozen shepherds and their dogs. Many districts may be suitable only for large farms, but many others, we think, could be divided into farms of moderate size, large enough to keep a farmer and his family comfortably after paying a fair rent. This system, we believe, has been pursued with success in some Highland districts, especially in that part of Inverness-shire occupied by the Grants.
In Sir John M’Neill’s report there are some interesting and curious statements which, we think, tend to show that when the Highlanders are allowed to have moderate-sized farms, and are left alone to make what they can of them, they can maintain themselves in tolerable comfort. In the island of Lewis, where the average rent of the farms was £2, 12s., the farmer was able to obtain from his farm only so much produce as kept himself and family for six months in the year; his living for the rest of the year, his rent and other necessary expenses, requiring to be obtained from other sources, such as fishing, labour in the south, &c. So long as things went well, the people generally managed to struggle through the year without any great hardship; but in 1846, and after, when the potato crops failed, but for the interference of the proprietor and others, many must have perished for want of food. In six years after 1846, the proprietor expended upwards of £100,000 in providing work and in charity, to enable the people to live. Various experiments were tried to provide work for the inhabitants, and more money expended than there was rent received, with apparently no good result whatever. In 1850, besides regular paupers, there were above 11,000 inhabitants receiving charitable relief. Yet, notwithstanding every encouragement from the proprietor, who offered to cancel all arrears, provide a ship, furnish them with all necessaries, few of the people cared to emigrate. In the same way in Harris, immense sums were expended to help the people to live, with as little success as in Lewis; the number of those seeking relief seemed only to increase. As this plan seemed to lead to no good results, an attempt was made to improve the condition of the people by increasing the size of their farms, which in the best seasons sufficed to keep them in provisions for only six months. The following is the account of the experiment given by Mr Macdonald, the resident factor:—“At Whitsunday 1848 forty crofters were removed from the island of Bernera, then occupied by eighty-one; and the lands thus vacated were divided among the forty-one who remained. Those who were removed, with two or three exceptions, were placed in crofts upon lands previously occupied by tacksmen. Six of the number who, with one exception, had occupied crofts of about five acres in Bernera, were settled in the Borves on crofts of ten acres of arable, and hill-grazing for four cows, and their followers till two years old, with forty sheep and a horse,—about double the amount of stock which, with one exception, they had in Bernera. The exceptional case referred to was that of a man who had a ten-acre croft in Bernera, with an amount of black cattle stock equal to that for which he got grazing in the Borves, but who had no sheep. They are all in arrear of rent, and, on an average, for upwards of two years. These six tenants were selected as the best in Bernera, in respect to their circumstances. I attribute their want of success to the depreciation in the price of black cattle, and to their not having sufficient capital to put upon their lands a full stock when they entered. Their stipulated rent in the Borves was, on an average, £12. Of the forty-one who remained, with enlarged crofts, in Bernera, the whole are now largely in arrear, and have increased their arrears since their holdings were enlarged. I attribute their want of success to the same causes as that of the people in the Borves. The result of his attempt to improve the condition of these crofters, by enlarging their crofts, while it has failed to accomplish that object, has at the same time entailed a considerable pecuniary loss upon the proprietor.
“An attempt was made, at the same time, to establish some unsuccessful agricultural crofters, practised in fishing, as fishermen, on lands previously occupied by tacksmen, where each fisherman got a croft of about two acres of arable land, with grazing for one or two cows, and from four to six sheep, at a rent of from £1 to £2 sterling. This experiment was equally unsuccessful. It is doubtful whether they were all adequately provided with suitable boats and tackle, or ‘gear;’ but many of them were; and some of those who were not originally well provided were supplied with what was wanted by the destitution fund. Of these fishermen Mr Macdonald says:—‘Not one of them, since entering on the fishing croft, has paid an amount equal to his rent. The attempt to improve the condition of those men, who had previously been unsuccessful as agricultural crofters, by placing them in a position favourable for fishing, has also failed; and this experiment also has entailed a considerable pecuniary loss upon the proprietor, who is not now receiving from these fishermen one-fourth of the rent he formerly received from tacksmen for the same lands. I therefore state confidently, that in Harris the proprietor cannot convert lands held by tacksmen into small holdings, either for the purposes of agriculture or fishing, without a great pecuniary sacrifice; and that this will continue to be the case, unless potatoes should again be successfully cultivated. I cannot estimate the loss that would be entailed upon the proprietor by such a change at less than two-thirds of the rental paid by the tacksmen. The results of the experiments that have been made on this property would, in every case, fully bear out this estimate. It is my conscientious belief and firm conviction, that if this property were all divided into small holdings amongst the present occupants of land, the result would be, that in a few years the rent recoverable would not be sufficient to pay the public burdens, if the potatoes continue to fail, and the price of black cattle does not materially improve.’”[89]