The History of the Highland Clearances 11

The History of the Highland Clearances 11

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]

 

[6] An Account of the Improvements on the Estates of the Marquis of

Stafford, by James Kinloch, General Agent of the Sutherland Estates.

London: Printed for Longman, Hurst, Rees, Orme & Brown, 1820.

 

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.