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OUR "Gray Egyptians," who suspected that
more
evil than good would come out of emotional religious
revivalism, shook their old heads over the Reform
Bill likewise. They were local weather seers who
could read from signs in earth and sky, and the
blowing of the wind, the manners of birds and
animals, prophecies of coming weather, good and
evil. Gloom on Coir'n Dubhaich portended a storm
from the west. When the quickly circling shadow
of a mist, which they called the "Fuathas," or
Spirit of the Storm, was seen on the conical top of
the Cairn Gorm, then very bad weather was to come
from the east. As people of long personal experience
and depositaries of old traditions, they assumed a
modified right to make predictions in respect to the
effect which innovations in Church and State would
soon have on the welfare of Gaeldom. They were inconvincible Tories in their
way, although they would not call themselves so. While admitting that he
committed an error in making small holdings still smaller, they praised the
old Marquis to the skies. They deplored his son's cruel evictions, but at
the same time confessed the need for a thinning of the population on his
estates, and indeed in most parts of the Highlands, since the congestion was
daily increasing while the old sources of profit were daily diminishing. As
for religious and civil rule, they felt sure there could never be a better
one for Gaeldom than the one which had been in existence for
fifty years, through the cordial co-operation of
Church and State; the Church looking after morals,
education, and the poor; and the landlords, as
Justices of the Peace and Commissioners of Supply,
looking after the preservation of civil order, roads,
bridges, etc. But the Reform Bill brought Church
and landlords to a parting of the ways. The
harmonious co-operation was superseded by a separation which at first was reluctant and partial, but
which the Disruption widened and which grew into
completeness when household suffrage was extended
to the country.
Old friendship was turned into incipient
hostility
by causes of offence which arose on both sides. Sir
Walter Scott is credited with having been the
first man to reveal the Highlands to the English-
speaking public and the outer world. That revelation filled the heirs of Highland lords, chiefs, and
lairds, who had been sent to be educated in England,
with an exaggerated conceit of their own position
because they took no notice of an essential condition
which Scott had not overlooked, although he had
failed to emphasise it sufficiently. "Shoulder to
shoulder" union of Highland inhabitants of estates
held on feudal tenure, with the legal individual
proprietors, depended on proprietors' recognition of
reciprocal duty towards their people. The idea of
an unwritten compact older than and superior to
feudal charters had come down to the children of
the Gael from dim days of antiquity, and was the
basis of their clannish readiness to follow in war,
and obey in peace, the landlord who stood shoulder
to shoulder with them as they did to him. As long
as magnates were, through family councils of allied
lairds, kept well linked with those below them, and
as long as the lairds lived on their own estates most
of the year, and for a change thought Edinburgh
good enough for them, the idea of the unwritten
compact was well kept in mind by the land-owning
classes of all degrees. The new generation of land-owners in many cases lost sight of the old Celtic
idea, and with that lost all the hold their elders
had on the shoulder to shoulder fidelity of their
inferiors. The men of the latter generation had no
Gaelic, which their elders knew to be the "open
sesame" for reaching Highland hearts; and many
of those whose fathers were Church of Scotland
men joined other religious bodies. That desertion
was politically a mistake for them, whatever it
might be religiously. In short with exceptions
owners of Highland properties resolved after the
passing of the Reform Bill to assert their full feudal
rights and something more, to make their 50
tenants vote to order under the implied if not
always clearly emphasised threat that if they disobeyed they would lose their farms at the end of
their leases.
Throughout the long period of harmonious
co-operation Highland private patrons had been doing
their level best to select worthy men as presentees to
their vacant charges, and with an irreducible mini-
mum of inevitable mistakes their efforts were crowned
with eminent success. As a matter of fact congregations had almost always a say in the selection. If
there was a man they wished strongly to have for
their minister they made their wishes directly known
to the patron, or got some lairds or large tenants
who were elders or members to speak to the patron,
who generally acted on the request made to him.
Patrons and congregations had both a tendency to.
prefer, other things being equal, one who belonged
to their district, and whose character and whose
people were known to them. Local clannishness
operated in all directions. As long as reasonable
attention was paid to the wishes of the congregations, and patrons were fellow-worshippers, the
theoretical objectionableness of patronage was veiled
and almost forgotten by churchmen, and as the
compromise system worked well, feudalists felt
inclined to give up their fears of and hatred to the
representative and essentially democratic character
of Presbyterian organisation. Highland ministers
took scarcely any share in party politics since the
suppression of the '45 rebellion, but were great
patriots, and as far as preaching went, Army and
Navy recruiters at the time of the war with
America, and above all during the life-and-death
struggle with Napoleon. Shortly after the passing
of the Reform Bill, they were hauled by their
divided Lowland brethren and the hot-heads among
themselves into party strife within their Church
Courts ; and into fighting outside with feudalists,
who wished to drive instead of lead the new voters,
and with private patrons who now wished to stand
on the strict right of presentation without regard
to the wishes of congregations, with whom they no
longer deigned to associate themselves in public
worship. Blundering on the one side evoked
answering blundering on the other side. In a short
time the heather was on fire, and much of what
would have been of inestimable value to the future
welfare of Scotland perished. |
