The History of the Highland Clearances 14

The History of the Highland Clearances 14

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]

 

[8] From enlarged edition of “Gloomy Memories,” published in Canada in

1857.

 

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.