There are three classes
of people in the Highlands, whose peculiar circumstance* must he
embraced in any remedial scheme intended to be applied to that
distressed portion of the country. The first is the pauper class,
consisting of the aged and infirm, widows with families of young
children, and persons disabled by disease or by some bodily or
mental defect. The second is the cottar class, or day-labourers, who
have been permitted to squat upon the large farms, and for the
privilege of growing a crop of potatoes, have become to a certain
extent affixed to these farms, to which they mast give their labour
in the first instance, and fill np the remainder of their time with
employment wherever they can find it. The third class are the
crofters, who hold a few acres of land, either directly from the
proprietor or as sub-tenants of the tacksmen, and who are also
dependent upon day-labour for part of their subsistence. The whole
of these classes have been vitally injured in their circumstances by
the loss of the potato as an article of food. The whole afflict are
more or loss exposed to famine; the whole of them an involved in
suffering# as painful and distressing as afflict any portion of her
Majesty’s subjects; and to exclude them from a share of the
legislative efforts so freely extended to the co-suffering classes
of Ireland, would be a narrow and discreditable policy, utterly
alien to every good quality of free and representative government.
We propose to glance at the condition of each of these classes, and
endeavour in few words to show what the Legislature may do for their
relief.
Respecting the first class there can be little difference of
opinion. Their allowances under the poor-law were insufficient to
maintain them, even when the potato made living cheap to the poor;
and since the disappearance of the potato, they are a great deal
more insufficient than ever. It has always been allowed that the
poor — those who can do nothing for themselves—should be fed,
clothed, and lodged, out of the common store of the society in which
they live. This is a nearly universal maxim. Christianity teaches
it. The voice of reason, of benevolence, and of justice, have made
it the law of nations. It is the law of England, and it is the law
in many parishes of Scotland. Why should it not also be the law in
the Highlands? The common objection, that the poor would eat up the
entire rental, is a bugbear, which vanishes on the first appeal to
figures. The annual value of real property in the four counties of
Sutherland, Ross, Inverness, and Argyle, is £597,490 18s. A pound of
rent in the Highlands is surely able to do as much for the poor as
in the Lowlands, or in England. Yet the whole sum expended annually
in these four Highland counties on the relief of the poor, including
expenses of management and litigation, amounts only to £12.534 7s.
8½d. Let this result be compared with the amount expended on the
poor in any Lowland district of equal rental, and it will be seen at
once to what an incredible extent Highland property evades its
obligations to the poor. An assessment of 2s. 6d. or 3s. per pound
is no unusual burden in English parishes, and until it rises above
2s.it is seldom a subject of either astonishment or complaint: in
these Highland counties, on the other hand, the burden of the poor
is only an insignificant fraction more than 5d. per pound ! The
number of paupers in the four Highland counties, including those
receiving merely occasional relief, is 8,751. This may be considered
a pretty accurate measure of the utmost limits of pauperism, for it
is seldom that any person entitled to relief does not find
admittance at least to the "occasional” list. The pittances usually
bestowed aro too insignificant to encourage absolute denials of aid,
and a small occasional relief is the pretence by which the poor’s
boards expect to fence off the poor from the more solid advantages
of the permanent roll. Supposing, therefore, that the right of the
whole 8,751 individuals to relief was fully admitted, the existing
allowances to the poor in these four counties might still be
doubled, trebled, and even quadrupled, without raising the
assessment upon real property above the limits which are reckoned
easy and moderate in other parts of the country. What becomes of the
alleged inability of Highland property to relieve the poor? It falls
entirely to the ground before these facts; and no such groundless
excuse can be accepted for the non-administration of a law which has
been found necessary to prevent famine in every part of the three
kingdoms, as well as in the Highlands.
What, then, are the obstacles which defeat the administration of the
poor-law in the Highlands? Let this question be clearly opened up,
and the course to be taken by the Legislature will become plain and
evident. Consider how the poor are situated. In the first instance,
they can only get relief with the consent of a poor’s board, which
has a direct pecuniary interest in withholding it, or in cutting it
down to the most inadequate limits. This is the first difficulty in
the pauper’s course ; and in contending with this one, other
difficulties multiply on every side. He is naturally weak, while his
antagonists are naturally strong. He may be equally ignorant of the
precise rights which the law allows him, and of the proper steps to
be taken to enforce these rights. And even if fully instructed on
these points, what means has he of prosecuting his interests? If in
the Highlands he may be living fifty or a hundred miles from any
seat of law, in solitary and unpeopled districts, where even public
opinion has no existence and no power. He may not be able so much as
to write a letter, or even to speak an intelligible language; and
yet the system of terrorism established in the Highlands is so
complete, that he may not have a single friend or neighbour who dare
discharge these simple duties for him. It is impossible to conceive
a more helpless position than that of Highland paupers. At once dumb
and blind, they can neither give utterance to their wrongs, nor
perceive an avenue of redressing them. Their opponents, on the
contrary, have every advantage—-wealth, power, information, official
prestige—every resource and appliance calculated either to mystify,
cajole, or frighten them. Such are the enormous disadvantages which
must beset the Highland pauper under the most favourable
circumstances. But these were not considered enough; and the
Legislature, fearful, forsooth, lest he might have too much power
and get too much his own way, proceeded to strew his path with all
manner of legal circuities and restrictions. As the first great
step, the courts of justice were closed against the poor. No pauper
is permitted, under the Act of 1845, to appeal to the Court of
Session when denied relief, or in anywise unjustly treated by the
parochial boards. Even the Sheriffs of counties are debarred from
giving the poor man justice, when he is deprived of adequate relief.
No appeal, in short, is allowed the pauper except to the Board of
Supervision, which sits in secret, hears only one side of a case,
refuses to take evidence or listen to pleadings, allows no expenses,
and gives no reasons for its decisions. What possible chance of
justice can remain to the pauper under such a system? Naturally
weak, the Act of 1845 laid him utterly prostrate at the feet of the
parochial boards; and the poor-law is consequently unadmi-nistered.
The Legislature truckled to the Highland lairds when it consented to
this bitter mockery of justice ; and the crime must noW be fully
expiated. Parliament must retrace its steps. The constitutional
control of the Court of Session as supreme court of review must be
restored ; the Sheriffs, who have all the means of information
peculiar to local judges, must be empowered to entertain and decide
questions of amount of relief; and the Board of Supervision must be
compelled to alter its Star Chamber form of procedure, and give a
fair and open hearing to the complaining pauper. Instead of
obstructing, legislative ingenuity must be exerted to facilitate the
obtainment of relief. Till these changes take place, the Highland
lairds will have absolute mastery, and Highland property continue to
evade its fundamental obligations. But let the poor have direct and
easy access to courts of justice, give them every facility of making
their wants known, and of having their claims impartially
investigated and determined by disinterested and unprejudiced
tribunals, and the tide will turn, the poor-law will be gradually
enforced, and a sure and effective remedy provided in every Highland
parish for the famine which threatens and afflicts the pauper class
of the population.
The second or cottar class forms a subject of much greater
difficulty. The condition of the Highland cottars must not be
confounded with that of the rural labourers who bear the same name
in the Lowlands. The Lowland cottar, like his Highland namesake, is
allowed a cottage, a piece of garden ground, and a planting of
potatoes; but in other respects his situation is totally different.
In addition to these perquisites, he1 receives constant employment
on his master’s farm at weekly or half-yearly wages. His daily
labour is indispensable to his employer, by whom he is consequently
valued, paid, maintained. He may be poor and humble, but he is
independent. He cannot be wanted, and therefore he must be fed. Let
potatoes or aught else fail, the Lowland cottar must no more be
famished than “the ox that tread-eth out the com.” But so different
is the value put upon the Highland cottars, that if a famine, a
pestilence, or a flood would come and sweep them all away, there
would be few to mourn their loss, and many, to a certainty, who
would think that pastoral concerns would move on all the better of
the clearance. The Highland cottars only live by sufferance on the
outskirts of the large sheep farms. They are barely tolerated.
Barren spots have been chosen out, and on these, more in contempt
than even in pity, they have been allowed to squat, to raise a
hovel, and plant potatoes. In return for these petty privileges, the
tacksman holds a mortgage over tbeir personal services. They must be
always ready at his call, to carry aeaware from the shore, or common
manure from the dung-heap, to sow his seed, to make his hay, to cut
his peats, to reap his corn, and in short to do every drudgery about
the farm. If he is a kind-hearted master he gives them a day’s food
for every day they work, but if he is a hard, illiberal man, the
hovel and the potato-patoh pay for all. The labour of the cottar is
openly decried as a drug, a nuisance, a thing which the tacksman
would as soon want as have, and the cottar himself suffers
degradation accordingly. . Serf, helot, slave—every epithet which
has been used to designate the multifarious forms of human bondage,
fail fully to express the reproach and wretchedness concentred in
the Highland cottar. There is something in his lot which, exceeds
the limits of all past or contemporaneous bondage. He is a slave,
and yet no man will condescend to be his master. If prosperity
shines upon him, the tacksman can interrupt it and exact his labour;
but if adversity settles down upon his path, the tacksman can
repudiate his connexion, and leave him to his fate: so that he has
neither the liberty of a freeman nor the certain maintenance of a
slave. The value of labour has been utterly confounded in his eyes.
He has never known what a day’s work is really and truly worth. One
day he gives his labour to the tacksman, which goes to pay some
indefinite fraction of certain unvalued and insignificant
privileges; and the next he runs an errand or hauls a net, for which
his remuneration may be as disproportioned as in the former case it
was unappreciable. Dangled between these two extremes, he loses
sight of the true use and dignity of labour, and contracts a hatred
of patient toil, a love of idleness, and a miserable dependence upon
chance, which nothing but long years of training can eradicate. Such
is the singular and deplorable position of a large class of the
Highland population, whom the failure of the potato has brought to
the very verge of famine. Every one will perceive what requires to
be done for their amelioration. Their labour must, in the first
place, be emancipated; and, in the second place, it must be fully
and constantly employed. The tetters which bind the cottars to the
car of the sheep farmers must be totally destroyed. The labour of
the one and the privileges granted by the other must be permitted to
find their proper value. If the one has a day’s work to sell, let it
be paid in money; and if the other has a cottage or a piece of land
to let, let a fair rent be put upon it. And along with this
definition and disentanglement of interests, let there be an opening
up of employment to give full scope and to secure fair remuneration
to the liberated energies of the cottars. These measures lie at the
foundation of all improvement of the condition of this class of the
population; but the means by which the Legislature may bring about
such desirable results, is a point which we postpone till the reader
glance with us for a moment at the position and circumstances of the
crofters.
The crofters, though not much less exposed to hardship and want than
the cottars, occupy a much higher position in the social scale. They
are holders of land; and though tenants-at-will, they pay rents, and
consequently are included in the circle of the landlord’s sympathy
and protection. Being their own masters, they are able to dispose of
their surplus labour more advantageously than the cottars. They are
also better versed in the art of managing the soil. Their experience
has not been confined to the cultivation of potatoes, but extends to
a rotation of crops and a proper system of manuring. They are owners
of two or three cows each, and in some instances, a few sheep. They
may also have a horse; perhaps a plough and some other implements of
husbandry. In short, by position, by experience, and by means, the
crofters are eminently adapted for becoming a substantial
small-farming class; while to the cottars must be assigned the more
humble position of day-labourers. In the meantime, however, the
crofter is entirely precluded from rising, and without immediate
measures for his relief, his course must be one of rapid
deterioration. His piece of land was in the most of cases too small,
even under potatoes, to afford a competent subsistence to his
family. The loss of that root has made the deficiency double or
treble what it was formerly, and his dependence upon day-labour is
proportionately increased. The opening up of employment, therefore,
is equally necessary to avert famine from the door of the crofter as
of the cottar. But there is this difference between the two, that
while constant employment at day-labour would be a positive advance
upon the cottar’s present condition, it would in the case of the
crofter be a positive retrogression; and consequently no measure of
amelioration can bo complete which, besides increasing employment,
does not aim at extending and strengthening the crofter’s position
as a holder and cultivator of land.
In considering by what means the Legislature^ may sate the Highland
cottars and crofters from impending famine, it is of the utmost
importance to i feel that this is a problem of very solemn and
unusual | urgency. If people come to this subject with the
expectation of proposing, or hearing proposed, remedies of the usual
Parliamentary cnt, we may despair of ever seeing the extraordinary
exigencies of the present crisis successfully grappled with. The
usual1 food of the population, to which their habits and their
industry have been accommodated for more than half century, has
suddenly disappeared. The loss can only be repaired by
revolutionising the system of society anew. Enthralled and idle
cottars have to be converted into free and independent labourers,
and supplied with constant and remunerative employment; while
crofters, starving upon two, three, or four acres of land, hare to
be placed on small farms of double and treble size. Such are the
formidable social changes essentially necessary to place the
population in a position of even ordinary safety. It is so far
promising, and may be regarded as indicative of the thorough man
agreableness of the crisis, that these. changes naturally lie within
the sphere of the land-owners, and might easily be introduced by
thorn without the extraneous aid of new acts of Parliament. Nothing
short, indeed, of the plastic hand of | proprietorship can
permanently mould the social j system of the Highlands into the new
form prescribed by famine and necessity ; and there cannot be a
doubt, that if the Highland lairds were to apply themselves to the
task, they might speedily by their own private measures accomplish
all that is required. The sheep-walks, if broken up into moderate
farms,1 would give ample employment to the cottars; while the waste
lands in every parish afford the means of' enlarging the small farms
of the crofters. The intention of the Duke of Sutherland to adopt
measures of this kind on the expiry of his present leases, is a
strong proof both of their advisability, and of the change which is
begging to take place in the views of the Highland proprietors. But
hunger cannot and will not wait upon the expiry of leases, or the
slow progress of conversions. An immediate remedy is required, and
hence the necessity of Parliamentary interference. Let a hill be
passed, giving every starving man a right to employment from his
parish ; and authorising a board of works to appropriate the waste
lands at a valuation, to set the people to work in reclaiming them,
and, in short, to carry out tho improvements as nearly as possible
as if they had been undertaken by the proprietors. Such a law would
still leave the proprietors the alternative of working out the
necessary changes themselves. It would only operate in parishes
where the proprietors display a culpable indifference to the
sufferings of their fellow-creatures, and the responsibilities of
their position. It would stimulate improvements; it would hasten the
introduction of the new system which is dawning on the Highlands;
while at the same time it would avert the pangs of hunger from the
able-bodied population, and carry them in safety over the dangers of
a trying and calamitous period of transition. Such is our
legislative prescription for the destitution of the Highland cottars
and crofters. We content ourselves with merely throwing out our
idea, rough and unpolished, without entering on details. Every man
will have his own opinion of the minor features of a parliamentary
bill, but we express our conviction that without such a measure in
its main elements as we have suggested, it will be impossible for
the Legislature to stand with a clear conscience before the
suffering population 6f the Highlands. |