The History of the Highland Clearances 3

The History of the Highland Clearances 3

The horrors of the small emigrant sailing ships of these days, and

particularly on these occasions when people were packed together

regardless of comfort and the decencies of life, and without sufficient

food, were equalled only by the terrible privations and struggle for

existence that awaited those who landed on the frozen lands of the

north of Canada, to be assailed by hostile Indians, the rigours of the

weather, and the desolation of an unfriendly country. It is altogether

a tale of barbarous action unequalled in the annals of agrarian crime.

 

And need I do more than add what one who will never be regarded

other than as a typical Tory, has written: “In too many instances

the Highlands have been drained, not of their superfluity of

population, but of the whole mass of the inhabitants, dispossessed

by an unrelenting avarice, which will one day be found to have been

as shortsighted as it is selfish and unjust. Meantime, the Highlands

may become the fairy ground for romance and poetry, or the subject

of experiment for the professors of speculation, historical and

economical. But, if the hour of need should come, the pibroch may sound

through the deserted region, but the summons will remain unanswered.”

These are the words of Sir Walter Scott.

 

J. I. MACPHERSON.

 

 

 

 

_Highland Clearances._

 

 

 

 

_SUTHERLAND._

 

 

ALEXANDER MACKENZIE ON THE CLEARANCES.[1]

 

[1] Mackenzie’s Pamphlet, 1881.

 

To give a proper account of the Sutherland Clearances would take a

bulky volume. Indeed, a large tome of 354 pages has been written and

published in their defence by him who was mainly responsible for them,

called “An Account of the Sutherland Improvements,” by James Loch, at

that time Commissioner for the Marchioness of Stafford and heiress of

Sutherland. This was the first account I ever read of these so-called

improvements; and it was quite enough to convince me, and it will be

sufficient to convince anyone who knows anything of the country, that

the improvement of the people, by driving them in the most merciless

and cruel manner from the homes of their fathers, was carried out on a

huge scale and in the most inconsiderate and heartless manner by those

in charge of the Sutherland estates. But when one reads the other side,

Macleod’s “Gloomy Memories,” General Stewart of Garth’s “Sketches of

the Highlanders,” and other contemporary publications, one wonders

that such iniquities could ever have been permitted in any Christian

country, much more so in Great Britain, which has done so much for the

amelioration of subject races and the oppressed in every part of the

world, while her own brave sons have been persecuted, oppressed and

banished without compensation by greedy and cold-blooded proprietors,

who owed their position and their lands to the ancestors of the very

men they were now treating so cruelly.

 

The motives of the landlords, generally led by southern factors

worse than themselves, were, in most cases, pure self-interest,

and they pursued their policy of extermination with a recklessness

and remorselessness unparalleled anywhere else where the Gospel of

peace and charity was preached--except, perhaps, unhappy Ireland.

Generally, law and justice, religion and humanity, were either totally

disregarded, or, what was worse, in many cases converted into and

applied as instruments of oppression. Every conceivable means, short

of the musket and the sword, were used to drive the natives from

the land they loved, and to force them to exchange their crofts and

homes--brought originally into cultivation and built by themselves,

or by their forefathers--for wretched patches among the barren rocks

on the sea shore, and to depend, after losing their cattle and their

sheep, and after having their houses burnt about their ears or razed to

the ground, on the uncertain produce of the sea for subsistence, and

that in the case of a people, who, in many instances, and especially in

Sutherlandshire, were totally unacquainted with a seafaring life, and

quite unfitted to contend with its perils.

 

What was true generally of the Highlands, was in the county of

Sutherland carried to the greatest extreme. That unfortunate county,

according to an eye-witness, was made another Moscow. The inhabitants

were literally burnt out, and every contrivance and ingenious and

unrelenting cruelty was eagerly adopted for extirpating the race. Many

lives were sacrificed by famine and other hardships and privations;

hundreds, stripped of their all, emigrated to the Canadas and other

parts of America; great numbers, especially of the young and athletic,

sought employment in the Lowlands and in England, where, few of them

being skilled workmen, they were obliged--even farmers who had lived

in comparative affluence in their own country--to compete with common

labourers, in communities where their language and simple manners

rendered them objects of derision and ridicule. The aged and infirm,

the widows and orphans, with those of their families who could not

think of leaving them alone in their helplessness, and a number, whose

attachment to the soil which contained the ashes of their ancestors,

were induced to accept of the wretched allotments offered them on the

wild moors and barren rocks. The mild nature and religious training of

the Highlanders prevented a resort to that determined resistance and

revenge which has repeatedly set bounds to the rapacity of landlords

in Ireland. Their ignorance of the English language, and the want of

natural leaders, made it impossible for them to make their grievances

known to the outside world. They were, therefore, maltreated with

impunity. The ministers generally sided with the oppressing lairds, who

had the Church patronage at their disposal for themselves and for their

sons. The professed ministers of religion sanctioned the iniquity,

“the foulest deeds were glossed over, and all the evil which could

not be attributed to the natives themselves, such as severe seasons,

famines, and consequent disease, was by these pious gentlemen ascribed

to Providence, as a punishment for sin.”

 

The system of turning out the ancient inhabitants from their native

soil throughout the Highlands during the first half of the nineteenth

century has been carried into effect in the county of Sutherland

with greater severity and revolting cruelty than in any other part

of the Highlands, and that though the Countess-Marchioness and her

husband, the Marquis of Stafford, were by no means devoid of humanity,

however atrocious and devoid of human feeling were the acts carried

out in their name by heartless underlings, who represented the

ancient tenantry to their superiors as lazy and rebellious, though,

they maintained, everything was being done for their advantage and

improvement. How this was done will be seen in the sequel. South

countrymen were introduced and the land given to them for sheep farms

over the heads of the native tenantry. These strangers were made

justices of the peace and armed with all sorts of authority in the

county, and thus enabled to act in the most harsh and tyrannical

fashion, none making them afraid; while the oppressed natives were

placed completely at their mercy. They dare not even complain, for were

not their oppressors also the administrators of the law? The seventeen

parish ministers, with the single exception of the Rev. Mr. Sage, took

the side of the powers that were, exhorting the people to submit and to

stifle their cries of distress, telling them that all their sufferings

came from the hand of their Heavenly Father as a punishment for their

past transgressions. Most of these ministers have since rendered their

account, and let us hope they have been forgiven for such cruel and

blasphemous conduct. But one cannot help noting, to what horrid uses

these men in Sutherlandshire and elsewhere prostituted their sacred

office and high calling.

 

The Sutherland clearances were commenced in a comparatively mild way

in 1807, by the ejection of ninety families from Farr and Lairg.

These were provided for some fifteen or seventeen miles distant with

smaller lots, to which they were permitted to remove their cattle and

plenishing, leaving their crops unprotected, however, in the ground

from which they were evicted. They had to pull down their old houses,

remove the timber, and build new ones, during which period they had

in many cases to sleep under the open canopy of heaven. In the autumn

they carried away, with great difficulty, what remained of their crops,

but the fatigue incurred cost a few of them their lives, while others

contracted diseases which stuck to them during the remainder of their

lives, and shortened their days.

 

In 1809 several hundred were evicted from the parishes of Dornoch,

Rogart, Loth, Clyne, and Golspie, under circumstances of much greater

severity than those already described. Several were driven by various

means to leave the country altogether, and to those who could not be

induced to do so, patches of moor and bog were offered on Dornoch

Moor and Brora Links--quite unfit for cultivation. This process was

carried on annually until, in 1811, the land from which the people were

ejected was divided into large farms, and advertised as huge sheep

runs. The country was overrun with strangers who came to look at these

extensive tracts. Some of these gentlemen got up a cry that they were

afraid of their lives among the evicted tenantry. A trumped-up story

was manufactured that one of the interlopers was pursued by some of

the natives of Kildonan, and put in bodily fear. The military were

sent for from Fort George. The 21st Regiment was marched to Dunrobin

Castle, with artillery and cartloads of ammunition. A great farce was

performed; the people were sent for by the factors to the Castle at a

certain hour. They came peaceably, but the farce must be gone through,

the Riot Act was read; a few sheepish, innocent Highlanders were made

prisoners, but nothing could be laid to their charge, and they were

almost immediately set at liberty, while the soldiers were ordered back

to Fort George. The demonstration, however, had the desired effect in

cowing and frightening the people into the most absolute submission.

They became dismayed and broken-hearted, and quietly submitted to their

fate. The clergy all this time were assiduous in preaching that all the

misfortunes of the people were “fore-ordained of God, and denouncing

the vengeance of Heaven and eternal damnation on all those who would

presume to make the slightest resistance.” At the May term of 1812

large districts of these parishes were cleared in the most peaceable

manner, the poor creatures foolishly believing the false teaching

of their selfish and dishonest spiritual guides--save the mark! The

Earl of Selkirk, who went personally to the district, allured many

of the evicted people to emigrate to his estates on the Red River

in British North America, whither a whole ship-cargo of them went.

After a long and otherwise disastrous passage they found themselves

deceived and deserted by the Earl, left to their unhappy fate in an

inclement wilderness, without any protection from the hordes of Red