The History of the Highland Clearances 8

The History of the Highland Clearances 8

But is it conceivable that the people at home should be so degraded,

while their brothers and sons who become soldiers maintain an

honourable character? The people ought not to be reproached with

incapacity or immorality without better evidence than that of their

prejudiced and unfeeling calumniators. If it be so, however, and if

this virtuous and honourable race, which has contributed to raise

and uphold the character of the British peasantry in the eyes of all

Europe, are thus fallen, and so suddenly fallen, how great and powerful

must be the cause, and how heavy the responsibility of its authors?

But if at home they are thus low in character, how unparalleled must

be the improvement which is produced by difference of profession, as

for example, when they become soldiers, and associate in barracks

with troops of all characters, or in quarters, or billets, with the

lowest of the people, instead of mingling with such society as they

left in their native homes? Why should these Highlanders be at home so

degenerate as they are represented, and as in recent instances they

would actually appear to be? And why, when they mount the cockade,

are they found to be so virtuous and regular, that one thousand men

of Sutherland have been embodied four and five years together, at

different and distant periods, from 1759 to 1763, from 1779 to 1783,

and from 1793 to 1798, without an instance of military punishment?

These men performed all the duties of soldiers to the perfect

satisfaction of their commanders, and continued so unexceptionable in

their conduct down to the latest period, when embodied into the 93rd

regiment, that, according to the words of a distinguished general

officer, “Although the youngest regiment in the service, they might

form an example to all:” and on general parades for punishment,

the Sutherland Highlanders have been ordered to their quarters, as

“examples of this kind were not necessary for such honourable soldiers.”

 

General Stewart adds the following in the third edition of his

_Sketches_, published in 1825:--

 

The great changes which have taken place in the above parishes of

Sutherland, and some others, have excited a warm and general interest.

While the liberal expenditure of capital was applauded by all, many

intelligent persons lamented that its application was so much in

one direction; that the ancient tenantry were to have no share in

this expenditure; and that so small a portion was allotted for the

future settlement of the numerous population who had been removed

from their farms, and were placed in situations so new, and in many

respects so unsuitable,--certain that, in the first instance, great

distress, disaffection, and hostility towards the landlords and

government, with a diminution of that spirit of independence, and

those proper principles which had hitherto distinguished them, would

be the inevitable result. So sudden and universal a change of station,

habits, and circumstances, and their being reduced from the state of

independent tenants to that of cottagers and day-labourers, could not

fail of arresting the notice of the public.

 

Anxious to obtain the best information on this interesting subject,

I early made the most minute enquiry, careful, at the same time, to

form no opinion on intelligence communicated by the people of the

district, or by persons connected with them, and who would naturally be

interested in, and prejudiced against, or in favour of those changes.

I was the more desirous for the best information as the statements

published with regard to the character, capability, and principles of

the people, exhibited a perfect contrast to my own personal experience

and knowledge of the admirable character and exemplary conduct of that

portion of them that had left their native country; and I believe it

improbable, nay impossible, that the sons of worthless parents, without

religious or moral principle--as they have been described--could

conduct themselves in such an honourable manner as to be held up as an

example to the British army. But, indeed, as to information, so much

publicity had been given by various statements explanatory of, and

in vindication of these proceedings, that little more was necessary,

beyond what these publications afforded, to show the nature of the

plans, and the manner in which they were carried into execution.

 

Forming my opinions, therefore, from those statements, and from

information communicated by persons not immediately connected with

that part of the country, I drew the conclusions which appeared in

the former editions of these _Sketches_. But, with a strong desire to

be correct and well informed in all I state, and with an intention

of correcting myself, in this edition, should I find that I had

been misinformed, or had taken up mistaken views of the subject, in

the different statements I had produced, I embraced the first spare

time I could command, and in autumn, 1823, I travelled over the

“improved” districts, and a large portion of those parts which had been

depopulated and laid out in extensive pastoral farms, as well as the

stations in which the people are placed. After as strict an examination

as circumstances permitted, and a careful inquiry among those who, from

their knowledge and judgment were enabled to form the best opinions,

I do not find that I have one statement to alter, or one opinion to

correct; though I am fully aware that many hold very different opinions.

 

But however much I may differ in some points, there is one in which

I warmly and cordially join; and that is, in expressing my high

satisfaction and admiration at the liberality displayed in the immense

sums expended on buildings, in enclosing, clearing, and draining land,

in forming roads and communications, and introducing the most improved

agricultural implements. In all these, the generous distribution of

such exemplary encouragement stands unparalleled and alone. Equally

remarkable is the great abatement of rents given to the tenants of

capital--abatements which it was not to be expected they would ask,

considering the preference and encouragement given them, and the

promises they had held out of great and unprecedented revenue, from

their skill and exertions. But these promises seem to have been early

forgotten; the tenants of capital were the first to call for relief;

and so great and generous has this relief been that the rents are

reduced so low as to be almost on a level with what they were when

the great changes commenced. Thus while upwards of £210,000 have been

expended on improvements, no return is to be looked for from this

vast expenditure; and in the failure of their promised rents, the

tenants have sufficiently proved the unstable and fallacious nature

of the system which they, with so much plausibility and perseverance,

got established by delusions, practised on a high-minded, honourable

individual, not aware of the evils produced by so universal a

movement of a whole people. Every friend to a brave and valuable

race must rejoice that these evils are in progress of alleviation

by a return of that kindness and protection which had formerly been

so conspicuous towards that race of tenantry, and which could never

have been interrupted had it not been for those delusions to which I

have more than once alluded, and which have been prosecuted, within

the last twenty years, in many parts of the Highlands, with a degree

of assiduity and antipathy to the unfortunate inhabitants altogether

remarkable.

 

 

HUGH MILLER ON THE SUTHERLAND CLEARANCES.[5]

 

[5] Leading articles on _Sutherland as it was and is_.

 

So much has been already said about these disastrous Sutherland

evictions that we greatly fear the reader is sickened with the horrid

narrative, but as it is intended to make the present record of these

atrocious proceedings, not only in Sutherland but throughout the whole

Highlands, as complete as it is now possible to make it, we shall

yet place before the reader at considerable length Hugh Miller’s

observations on this National Crime--especially as his remarks largely

embody the philosophical views and conclusions of the able and

far-seeing French writer Sismondi, who in his great work declares:--“It

is by a cruel use of legal power--it is by an unjust usurpation--that

the tacksman and the tenant of Sutherland are considered as having no

right to the land which they have occupied for so many ages.... A count

or earl has no more right to expel from their homes the inhabitants of

his county, than a king to expel from his country the inhabitants of

his kingdom.” Hugh Miller introduces his remarks on Sutherland by a

reference to the celebrated Frenchman’s work, and his opinion of the

Sutherland Clearances, thus:--

 

There appeared at Paris, about five years ago, a singularly ingenious

work on political economy, from the pen of the late M. de Sismondi, a

writer of European reputation. The greater part of the first volume is

taken up with discussions on territorial wealth, and the condition of

the cultivators of the soil; and in this portion of the work there is a

prominent place assigned to a subject which perhaps few Scotch readers

would expect to see introduced through the medium of a foreign tongue

to the people of a great continental state. We find this philosophic

writer, whose works are known far beyond the limits of his language,

devoting an entire essay to the case of the Duchess of Sutherland and

her tenants, and forming a judgment on it very unlike the decision of

political economists in our own country, who have not hesitated to

characterise her great and singularly harsh experiment, whose worst

effects we are but beginning to see, as at once justifiable in itself

and happy in its results. It is curious to observe how deeds done as if

in darkness and in a corner, are beginning, after the lapse of nearly

thirty years, to be proclaimed on the house-tops. The experiment of

the late Duchess was not intended to be made in the eye of Europe. Its

details would ill bear the exposure. When Cobbett simply referred to

it, only ten years ago, the noble proprietrix was startled, as if a

rather delicate family secret was on the eve of being divulged; and yet

nothing seems more evident now than that civilised man all over the

world is to be made aware of how the experiment was accomplished, and

what it is ultimately to produce.

 

In a time of quiet and good order, when law, whether in the right or

the wrong, is all-potent in enforcing its findings, the argument which

the philosophic Frenchman employs in behalf of the ejected tenantry of

Sutherland is an argument at which proprietors may afford to smile.

In a time of revolution, however, when lands change their owners,

and old families give place to new ones, it might be found somewhat

formidable,--sufficiently so, at least, to lead a wise proprietor in an

unsettled age rather to conciliate than oppress and irritate the class

who would be able in such circumstances to urge it with most effect.

It is not easy doing justice in a few sentences to the facts and

reasonings of an elaborate essay; but the line of argument runs thus:--

 

Under the old Celtic tenures--the only tenures, be it remembered

through which the Lords of Sutherland derive their rights to their

lands,--the _Klaan_, or children of the soil, were the proprietors of

the soil--“the whole of Sutherland,” says Sismondi, belonged to “the

men of Sutherland.” Their chief was their monarch, and a very absolute

monarch he was. “He gave the different _tacks_ of land to his officers,

or took them away from them, according as they showed themselves

more or less useful in war. But though he could thus, in a military

sense, reward or punish the clan, he could not diminish in the least

the property of the clan itself;”--he was a chief, not a proprietor,

and had “no more right to expel from their homes the inhabitants of

his county, than a king to expel from his country the inhabitants of

his kingdom.” “Now, the Gaelic tenant,” continues the Frenchman, “has

never been conquered; nor did he forfeit, on any after occasion, the

rights which he originally possessed;” in point of right, he is still a

co-proprietor with his captain. To a Scotchman acquainted with the law

of property as it has existed among us, in even the Highlands, for the

last century, and everywhere else for at least two centuries more, the

view may seem extreme; not so, however, to a native of the Continent,

in many parts of which prescription and custom are found ranged, not

on the side of the chief, but on that of the vassal. “Switzerland,”

says Sismondi, “which in so many respects resembles Scotland,--in its

lakes, its mountains, its climate, and the character, manners, and

habits of its children,--was likewise at the same period parcelled out

among a small number of lords. If the Counts of Kyburgh, of Lentzburg,

of Hapsburg, and of Gruyeres, had been protected by the English

laws, they would find themselves at the present day precisely in the

condition in which the Earls of Sutherland were twenty years ago.