The History of the Highland Clearances 17

The History of the Highland Clearances 17

“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?