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FARMERS' associations
preceded and set the example
of combination to crofter agitation. Classes and
castes, secular and religious, in all lands and
throughout all the ages, aimed at monopolies and
dominating influence. The masses also had
occasional outbursts of revolt when their burdens
and grievances were more than flesh and blood could
bear. Trade unionists learned from aristocracies,
Churches, and political parties in Constitutional
States how to put up cactus-hedges of separatism
in self-defence, and when household suffrage and the
ballot came, how to master their masters by strikes
or threats of strikes, without the least regard to
general interests and future trade and employment.
The country people, farmers and labourers, were
slow to imitate the town trades unions. In England and the Lowlands of Scotland the feudal system
had woven many connecting ties between landowners
and tenants, and in the Highlands clannishness
made these ties almost sacred when the chief of the
clan was the landlord. Although in not a single
instance known to me the people on such a chief's
land were all, or mostly attached of his own surname, yet
the non-clansmen were as much his faithful followers
as were his clansmen. They all looked up to him
as their natural leader in peace and war. Their
ancestors had followed his ancestors in days of old,
and many rattling Gaelic songs, and sad laments,
commemorated the triumphs and sorrows of their
conjoint legends and more recent histories. And
clannishness of a strong kind existed between old
landed families and their people where there was
little or no blood relationship at all. As long as
Highland landowners spent most of their time on
their estates, knew all their people, and their
circumstances, and worshipped with them in the
parish churches, their was no chance for the
agitator to stir up a war of classes. So deeply
rooted in Celtic minds is the habit of clannish
looking up to the landlord as natural leader, that
men who bought Highland estates and used them
for residential purposes, succeeded frequently to gain
the respect and influence which belonged, as of
right, to the extinct or superseded families whose
places they occupied. Evictions, sheep-runs, the
incoming of Lowland farmers and shepherds,
weakened, but did not wholly break, the kindly
ties. Highlanders did not fully realise, although
some of them did at the beginning of last century,
or later in between the war with- Napoleon and the
revolution which the railways brought in their trail,
that the old system of domestic industries and shealings, and small farms, had fallen under the
doom of economic causes. They understood well
enough that it was necessary for them to send out
swarms of their young people to seek their fortunes
in towns and colonies, or to serve in the army or
navy as had always been done; but they thought,
rightly or wrongly, that they had claims for
help, guidance, and sympathy on their landlords
to which many of them who could afford to do
so, did not generously respond. While they
grieved and murmured at being deserted, hustled,
and concussed by not a few of their natural
leaders, they did not think of breaking out into
lawlessness and forming secret leagues for perpetrating atrocities by night or by day. On the West
Coast and in the Islands, the potato famine produced
a crisis of distress equal to that in the worst parts of
Ireland. In that crisis landlords, upon the whole,
did their utmost to save their people from starvation.
Several of them mortgaged their estates to obtain
money for buying provisions for their people. Some
old families, who were struggling before, wrecked
themselves entirely for the sake of their people, and
not only endless gratitude is felt for them to this
day by all Highlanders, but the careers of their
representatives and offshoots are watched with the
affectionate respect due to unjustly-deposed royal
dynasties. With the potato famine set in the
determined full current of self-evictions, which the
Crofter Acts have done something, but not as much
as should be wished for, to stem.
When I came to Inverness in
December, 1880,
there was as yet no movement of any consequence
among the crofters. Farmers' associations, on the
contrary, had, by that time, spread themselves all
over Scotland. The movement first arose among
the Lowland arable farmers; and then it took hold
on the sheep farmers of the Borders and Highlands.
The agricultural farmers had suffered much from
the abolition of the Corn Laws, and were as yet only
very slowly recovering from losses incurred during
the currency of former long leases. It was, I believe,
in 1873 that I heard an English corn-miller, who
had until then been a rank Radical, denouncing, in
racy Yorkshire dialect, "Bob Lowe," the then
Chancellor of the Exchequer, for abolishing, when
nobody asked him, the shilling per quarter registration duty on imported grain, to which the Cobdenites
had not objected, and which by that time was producing a tidy revenue. The
angry miller prophesied that the causeless remission of that duty would go
far to destroy the cornmilling business in this country, because the
remission would throw the meal-making of imported cereals into the hands of
the foreign exporters. His prophesy turned out to be true, although it
seemed at the time like the exaggeration of a man who was looking through a
narrow and twisted self-interest chink. On returning to Scotland seven years later, I found that many
corn-mills on Highland streams and rivers, which
were at work in 1873, had already been closed ; and
since then many more of them have gone on the list
of the unemployed. But in the sheep - farming
regions, the letting-out under grass of former arable
land was not so much due to "Bob Lowe's" remission
of the shilling duty as to the pasturing, and especially the wintering requirements, of stock, and higher
servants' wages.
Lowland farmers also let out
under grass the
less valuable parts of their arable land, and, besides
other advantages, got higher and higher rents for
wintering sheep that came down to them at the
harvest end from the hill districts. Wheat cultivation, because made unprofitable, ceased alike in
Essex and Easter Ross; but Scotch agriculturists
learned much sooner than their English fellow-
sufferers how to recover themselves by labour-
saving implements, feeding cattle for the butchers,
the use of nitrates, and other artificial manures the
stimulating effect of which is visible, but the ultimate
consequences to soil, animal life, and human salubrity
must yet be held to be somewhat questionable.
Above all they set about fencing themselves by a
monopolistic class association to protect them against
outside bidders when leases had to be renewed,
and to place landlords in the position in which they
had placed their tenants, when the old relationship
had been changed into contracts on purely commercial
lines. The Hypothec Law was indefensible on
commercial and equitable principles, for when a
tenant became bankrupt it gave the landlord a
sweeping preference over the other creditors. But
for all its iniquity, it was the ladder by which many,
who now cried out against it, had climbed from small
beginnings into the position of large farmers.
Those climbers did not wish that others with
small capital and trust in themselves should climb
up after them, and, as bidders for farms, whistle
up rents which they, in possession, were working
strenuously and artfully to compel landlords
to reduce, far below open market obtainable
value. Hypothec they succeeded in reducing to
practical nullity. I must confess that I admire the
energy and skill with which the agricultural farmers
acted in most trying circumstances, and the readiness with which they adopted new methods for
retrieving losses and securing their class interests.
But neither sheep farmers nor arable land farmers,
when they formed their farmers' associations, took
crofters and working people into serious consideration.
They were both of them thoroughly convinced that
large farms could be more economically managed
than small ones; and all things being considered on
commercial principles, and from class interest point
of view, they had a good deal of reason for the
belief that was in them. The large farm involved a
large outlay of capital in stock and equipments.
How could the one plough farmer compete with the
many plough farmer who invested many hundreds
of pounds on new labour saving machines, and when
seeds and artificial manures required to be purchased,
or famous bulls and fancy price tups and splendid
horses, needed only to sign cheques on his banker?
While taking small or no account of crofter and
farm servant questions, farmers' associations aimed
at perpetuating large holdings, and at reducing the
rents of these holdings by excluding free competition,
and exercising a trade union pressure on landlords.
The crofter agitation
presented one aggressive
front against landlords, and another against the
large farmers. That agitation did not spring up
suddenly nor without forewarnings for many years.
The crofting townships, with one hand on the laud and the other on the sea,
were long incited by outside enthusiasts of their race and by Irish
object-lessons before they rose in revolt. They grumbled, but in fact they
did not attempt a combined movement until they got household suffrage with the
ballot, and the political magicians, with their bags
of tricks and promises, came among them. Among
these agitators were honest enthusiasts, who cared
less for political economy and actual facts than they
did for the race- interests of the children of the Gael.
But most of the politicians were self-seekers, who
would promise sun, moon, and planets for votes to
give them seats in the House of Commons, with such
social and other profits as might with proper care
result therefrom. The crofters were by no means so
simple as they chose to appear. With their better
knowledge of the real situation, they looked with
concealed contempt on the bagmen politicians, but
at the same time thought they could make use of
them as supple tools and loud-mouthed House of
Commons brayers. So it came about that landlord
and large farmer candidates were defeated at the
polls by outsiders. But it was a different affair
when County Councils and other local bodies had to
be elected. After crofter members got a single trial
turn they were set aside, and landed gentlemen and
men with good local standing were elected. Crofters
and household suffragists, while wanting many things
many of which were not attainable wished their
local affairs to be managed by men whom they knew
and trusted. The simplest among the crofters, how-
ever, were made to believe, and others of them who
knew better pretended to believe, that there was
"plenty of money in London," part of which could
be obtained by putting pressure, as the Irish did, on
a squeezable Government. It would be nice to get
extensions of grazing outruns from deer forests as
well as from sheep-runs, and so the crofters joined
heartily in the outcry of outsiders against deer
forests, although they knew very well that no crop-bearing use could be made of many acres of the large
area given up to the deer, the hunting of which
brought so much money into the country, and with
rents of moors and fishings, such relief to the rates
which would otherwise have been intolerable. Not-
withstanding incitements from without, and the folly
of a few hot-heads within, the Highland crofters, unlike the Irish, refused to be drawn into criminal acts.
The nearest approach to such acts were the farcical
raiding of a deer forest in the Lews, many years ago,
and the quite recent Vatersay seizure of land by
Barra men, which, after seeming by their action,
or rather non-action, to countenance, the Radical
Secretary for Scotland, Mr Sinclair, and his
colleague-blunderer, Mr Thomas Shaw, Lord-
Advocate, has since in a new form officially
denounced. As proprietors of the Kilmuir estate in
Skye, our public rulers were also placed in an object-
lesson difficulty.
Before the passing of the
Crofters' Acts, Highland crofters, whether on the sea coast or inland,
had real grievances to complain of, from which people
of their class did not suffer in the Lowlands. They
had to build their houses and byres and barns, and
to keep them in habitable repair. They had to pay
rents out of proportion with the rents paid for
similar land and acreage by their neighbours, the
large farmers, who, in the inland districts, although
not on the sea coast, added to their wintering old
parish clachan crofts left vacant by the departure
of weavers, shoemakers, smiths, and millers who,
under the new dispensation, had lost their trades.
They were subject to evictions at the will of the
landlord. If they added to their arable land by
trenching part of their grazings they were not fairly
compensated if evicted. There was, however, more
trenching and reclamation of wild land on the east
than on the west side of the water line. I believe
more of that work had been done in Sutherland
than in all the Highland counties put together, and
after the great upset of "Gloomy Memories," land-lord rule in Sutherland was not oppressive and
evictions were not capricious. In verity the old
dispensation farmers had pushed cultivation in most
Highland districts to its utmost limits, and tried to
raise black oats for fodder beyond the line where
they had any chance of ever ripening, unless in a
most exceptionally dry and hot season.
Fair rent, fixity of tenure,
and compensation on
disturbance for improvements effected, have infinitely
improved the condition of the crofters. And what
is the visible result of this bettering of conditions?
In almost all places new buildings of the stone and
lime and slated order, and, particularly on the east
side of the water line, better stock and better
farming of the arable land. Better gardening is in
its initial stage as yet, but I hope it is sure to follow
the other betterings. There is a wide scope for it,
and much pot and flower-beauty need for it. In
gardening Highlanders have always been as far
behind Lowlanders as the latter have, with some
exceptions in a few localities, been behind their
English fellow-subjects. Whoever knows the crofters
and their modes of thoughts and habits, however
adverse to some of their land-question views and
actions, cannot honestly refuse to admit that they
have extraordinarily good qualities, and that they
cherish higher ideals of duty, religion, and morality,
which they fairly try to act up to as a class, than
are to be found anywhere else among what are
called "the lower orders" because the poorer in
purse section of society.
I cannot say from personal
knowledge how the
crofters of Argyle and the Western Isles are using
their chances, but I can confidently say that since
the passing of the Crofters' Acts, the advance made
on the northern mainland from the Grampian divide
to Thurso, and also in Skye, has been most gratifying, and in particular districts almost marvellous.
Crofter townships are by no means up to the ideal
standard of what would be best for land settlement
if the land-settlers had no obstacles to encounter
when carrying out their scientific plans. But there
are not only possessory rights, which the State might remove by purchase if
it had boundless funds, and feared not to undertake boundless risks standing in the way of the theorists, but, likewise,
natural obstacles arising from the way in which the
scanty proportion of crop-bearing soil is distributed
among the uncultivable areas. The separate holding,
whether big or little, is doubtlessly far more desirable
than the township system of common grazings and
separate arable plots. And most desirable of all
would be the formation of many moderately-sized
farms, well fenced, which would have arable land
sufficient for the working of a pair of horses, and
grazings sufficient for a score of cattle and some
hundreds of sheep. Things are drifting towards the
formation of such a middle class of holdings, between
large farms which only men with thousands of
capital can venture to take and the usually small
holdings of township crofters. The separate holding,
be it a good-sized croft or a small farm, puts the
occupier on his mettle. With fair rent, fixity of
tenure, and compensation for improvements on disturbance, the energetic, thoughtful, frugal, and
diligent occupier is sure barring what are called
visitations of God, such as loss of crops by blight or
bad weather, and loss of stock by cattle and sheep
plagues to make more than ends meet, although he
may benefit his country by having many hardy,
healthy children, and training them up in the way
they should go straight in paths of well-doing
through life. On separate holdings the good and
diligent would be as sure, as anything is sure in this
world, of reaping the rewards of their merits; and
the slothful, foolish, or debauched would, sooner
than in township communities, fall under the
punishment of their demerits. In the crofter townships the wastrels are indeed much fewer than they
are proportionately among other sections of society,
high or low; but few as they are, thanks to the
influence of moral and religious public opinion among
the crofters, they can make themselves pests to their
neighbours, and some thorns in the flesh to their
blood relations. Such black sheep are loud-tongued
in public-houses, still more loud-tongued at local and
parliamentary elections, and, in their own opinion,
enlightened politicians of the predatory Socialistic
school to which all loafers who seek to be kept up at
honest people's cost, without being treated as self-
made paupers worthy of coercion and forced labour,
rightly belong. In the higher Socialism there is a
wild but pure enthusiasm which claims respect, notwithstanding its madness; in the lower or loafer and
criminal Socialism nothing of a redeeming character
is discernible.
While the formation of farms
of moderate size
and of fairly large separate crofts should be looked
upon as the best means for land settlement, it is a
plan which cannot be everywhere carried out in the
Highlands, although the building difficulty should
in some way be got over, and the mountain tops
and conies should be left to the deer as long as they
yield higher rents than sheep, and relieve rates, and
bring much money into the country. The township
community system will have to continue where people
have one hand on the sea and another on the land,
and also, I fear, in inland places where the small
areas of arable land are so situated among extensive
grazings, that divisions of holdings would leave some
without potato ground in their grazing stretches,
and give to others more than their share of arable,
and less of the better grazings, than their neighbours had. If introduced
where people had not been for untold generations accustomed to it, the
community system would be prolific in frictions and fractions, and produce
wholesale discontent. But the Highlanders of the crofting regions know how to work it
under time-honoured regulations, and settle any
quarrels which arise quietly among themselves.
Most of the faults of a theoretically bad system can
be covered up by equitable administration. The
crofting township is the remnant of what was once
the general land system of all the Highlands, and of
part of the Lowlands likewise. The crofting town-ships of to-day represent the immemorial order,
when foundations were undermined by the invasion
of sheep at the end of the eighteenth century, and
which was blown almost entirely to pieces in the
first half of the last century.
By twenty years' good
conduct, and very notable
material progress, the crofters have falsified many
prophesies of evil, disarmed many prejudices, and
gained the respect of former opponents. Landlords
excusably defended their property rights, and
thought, perhaps with some justification, that the
Highlands were on the verge of becoming as unruly
and criminally lawless as the worst parts of Ireland.
They know better now, and discover also that
without the crofter communities there would be a
dearth of honest and capable farm and domestic
servants, gamekeepers, foresters, gillies, and policemen, over all the Highland counties, whether under
or not under the Crofter Acts. And without them
where would have been the stalwart, trusty, and
easily trained Highlanders of the new Territorial
Force, and the brave recruits who serve in the Navy
or in the Regular Army? So thoroughly has the
temporary alienation been succeeded by renewed
friendship, that nobility and gentry spare no effort
to promote crofter material interests, and especially
to save and give new life to the spinning, weaving,
and dyeing domestic industries, which, after ceasing
elsewhere, were kept alive in a weak state by the
crofters' wives and daughters, with many other
useful, self-helping arts which have come down from
past ages.
In boyhood I saw in every
house wheels merrily
spinning flax and wool, much home-dyeing done, and
country weavers busy at their looms. In early
manhood I saw the profitable flax industry brought
to its end, and after that the woollen industry
brought to such a low state, step by step, that at
last it had not an abiding place except among the
crofter communities. These also were not sure cities
of refuge until renovation, under a new stimulus,
set in a few years ago. Welcome as it is, that
renovation is too artificial for being relied upon as
having an enduring commercial foundation. But it
saves the arts of domestic industries from being lost,
and it is possible that these arts may have yet a
great value. Coal, steam, and machinery concentrated manufacturing industries in favoured localities.
Division of labour robbed the workers of a great
deal of inherited skill. They became mechanical
adjuncts of division of labour and machinery, and,
before the Factory Acts, the women and children
were reduced to something like slavery, and the
men themselves were thirled to capital until they
organised themselves in trade unions, which do
good when wisely used for legitimate defence, but
are liable to be abused for the destruction of trade
and for the oppression of non-unionists. I now and
then indulge in a pleasant dream. I imagine that
centralisation of organised manufacturing industries
has reached its furthest limit; that decentralisation
which means the emancipation of individualism-
is about to begin, if it has not, in a small way,
began in some directions already. Lady Electra
throws her weird light of hope over this pleasant
dream of decentralisation and emancipation. The
Falls of Foyers are only one of the many places in
which electricity can be caught and stored in our
land of mountains and streams and lochs and arms
of the sea. The sight I dream of is the restoration
of the "calanas" to the coal-less Highlands by means
of electricity as a motive power, so harnessed
that in every house a woman can work a spinning
jenny and a loom. What is between us and the
realisation of that dream? Nothing which science
and inventors cannot overcome. I suspect that the
adaptation of machinery and the harnessing of
electricity for domestic industries would soon be
done if inventors and men of science turned their
attention to that object from other objects which
hold forth promises of higher fame and rewards. Is
there not among all the scientific and inventive
children of the Gael any who will solve the problem,
and give to the Highland women remunerative work
which will keep them at home to be wives and
mothers of Highlanders, instead of drifting away, as
too many of them now do, to seek service in cities
and towns, where many of them find neither happiness nor fortune, and some meet a worse fate than
all that.
In former days of town and
mining districts' growth and prosperity, there was excuse for the drifting
to these places of multitudes of single persons and of whole families from
the country. There is no such excuse now. The hoarse distress cries of the
unemployed, mingled in some instances with threats of riot and robbery,
should make all who have the slenderest means of decent living in the
country stick where they are, or, if move they will, let them go to Canada
or some other British colony, and keep there to the rural pursuits for which
they are so well qualified. The life of towns is not the natural life for
the children of the Gael. Crofter-bred boys and girls, with exceptional
talents and ambition to shoot out of their birth sphere into one or other of
the professions of this age, must be a rule to themselves. But they will
find most of the professions over-crowded, and the struggle upwards
correspondingly severe. There are in nearly all parts of Scotland three, or
perchance four or five, ministers of religion where one was before 1843, and
that one, with the assistance of his elders, did more than the batch can do
for practical religion and moral policing. Lawyers and doctors are so
numerous that nothing short of universal litigation and chronic plagues
could give them all the employment and fees they desire. The mania for education
of the sort now in vogue has probably reached its
climax, but the army of male and female teachers
will, no doubt, be very large and costly for a long
time yet ; and in colonies and other outside lands
the call for teachers perhaps may get yet much
stronger than it is at present. I may be a prejudiced
octogenarian "dominie," but I doubt very much
whether the present sort of popular education is as
sound in principle as was the old parochial school
system, which qualified the clever pupils for entering
the universities, and having furnished the less clever
ones with the reading, writing, and arithmetic keys
of knowledge, let them go back to the most useful
vocations for which they were fitted, without
attempting to drive them through the asses' bridges
of crams and exams. I think the pupils of the
parochial and humble side-schools were better-
taught to exercise their own thinking faculties on
matters of faith, morals, and patriotism, than are
the pupils of the new schools. The old class of
pupils had more reverence for God and man than
their successors of the present day, unless I happen
to be entirely mistaken. When so many who hoped
to forge ahead in lucrative trades or professions find
themselves disappointed, they become discontented,
and in their discontent take up the wildest views of
this unsettled and unsettling age. I have met
with many men of little learning, and very humble
positions, who seemed to me to think more deeply
and justly on questions, both of a public and private
nature, than learned pundits, literary stars, and
popular politicians are capable of doing, because
they are less experienced in the science of human
nature, or themselves bound to pander to the crafts
or party factions which are fashionable for the
moment, and promise them notoriety in literature,
or seats in the House of Commons with prospects
of offices or birthday honours.
The readiness with which
former opponents have
recognised their good qualities; the kindly consideration with which people of all classes and parties are
willing to deal with claims of theirs which are
reasonable in themselves, and can, with some State
help, be granted without injustice to others; the
world-wide fame gained by Highland soldiers in
many wars, and the honours and success acquired in
many lands by Highlanders in various callings, have
laid the crofters under a burden of obligation to
uphold by worthy conduct the high character of
their race for manly honesty, morality, and patriotic
loyalty. It is scarcely any exaggeration to say that,
from the beginning of the crofter movement to the
present day, all the dispersed Highlanders in all
parts of the world have been watching it with the
keenest interest and, at one time, with some fear lest
it should compromise race-fame by slipping down into
lawless Irish ways and methods. Irish and Clan-na-Gael incitements to enter into lawless and
criminal conspiracies were not wholly wanting.
Within the crofters' own ranks, foolish, blustering
voices were heard, but not listened to by many. As
a class the crofters could not let themselves down
from the religious and moral platform to which,
whether Presbyterians of divided communions, or
old-fashioned Roman Catholics, they had been raised
by ancestral training, and on which they were fixed
by inclination and habit to discriminate right from
wrong. I have the firm conviction that there will
be no descent from the high platform now. Politicians willing to make
unlimited promises for their own ends are seen through very clearly, and
used as convenient and only temporary tools. It would be no great surprise
if, on the next appeal to constituencies, the unlimited promise - givers found
themselves sent about their business, and their seats
given to native candidates. The crofters are not
over-fond of "coigrich" or strangers, and many of
them would like to fall back upon trusted native
representatives, who did not make promises which
could not be fulfilled, or, if fulfilled in some sort of
way, would ignore the eternal distinction between
right and wrong. In a certain sense we are all
Socialists. Society, rightly constituted, has number-
less mutual inter-connections for foundation corner
stones. The crofters are, by the township system
under which they live, compelled to be more
Socialistic than other people. They know better
than others how far Socialism, comparable with
justice and individual freedom, is workable ; and
their knowledge makes them determined enemies of
the Socialism which seeks to deprive the individual
of freedom, to confiscate property, and to level all to
an equality abhorred by natural laws, and denounced
and scorned by all communities which are not
falling into imbecility and the abyss of chaotic
destruction. Socialists have no chance for making-
converts in Ireland and Wales, and as for the
Highlanders, they are, outside the land question, as
conservative a people as can be met with in any
country.
Every State or incorporated
nation has the right to take possession, on just purchase from former
private owners, of all the land of its country, for redistribution, under
new conditions, should compelling national needs require it and the purchase
money be obtainable. State infringement on private
rights, without purchase or compensation, shakes
confidence and credit, and is a gross violation of
rules of equity and sound policy. Of the pleas
urged for State intervention on behalf of the
crofters, two at least were thoroughly well-founded
and so peculiar to the Highlands that Lowlanders
had no share whatever in them. These were the
building and maintenance of houses and premises by
the people themselves, and no compensation for
reclamation of land or any of/her improvement of
lettable value on eviction, whether just or capricious,
or on the tenant giving up his holding in a voluntary
manner. I do not believe that capricious evictions
were very numerous, but certainly they were not
altogether unknown. Nor were a few cases in
which, when a man had made improvements, his
rent was raised forthwith. Highlanders have
tremendously long memories. The tradition of tribal
possessorship, with, in every district, a toiseach at
the head of every locality, and a maormor at the
head of a province, with a king over all, is ignored
in feudal charters and records of the kingdom of
Scotland from the reign of King David downwards.
But this is mere tiegative disproof. The long-
cherished belief was at least a fiction based upon
facts. It was no stretch of the long Highland memory at all to recall the
events of comparatively near times, when nobles, chiefs, and other
proprietors resided almost constantly among their people in their Highland
castles and mansions, and when between them and their people there was
mutual knowledge baptised in clannish sympathy. In war and peace, and very
generally in parish church worship, there were strong ties of union and communion
between Highland landlords and people until Napoleon was finally crushed at
Waterloo. After that the unpreventable industrial revolution, the evictions,
and the introduction of the large-farm system, would not have wholly cut the
old ties if noble landlords with huge estates had not delegated their powers
to commissioners, chamberlains, and factors, and took to living away most of
their time from their Highland residences, and had not other chiefs and
proprietors got into financial difficulties, which left them no freedom to
act 011 kindly intentions. Nothing was more certain to alienate Highlanders
from those to whom they had been accustomed to look upon as their natural
leaders, than to be subjected to the delegated power of factors, some of
whom had ends of their own to carry out through acts of guile and insolent
tyranny, and others of whom had no knowledge of Highlanders and their language, or patience with their
fair claims of right. No doubt the honest Lowland
factors were doing what they thought right, and
which in law was justifiable. They were true to
their employers, and not designedly cruel to the
Highland people, with whom they had to deal on
strictly legal principles. But the factor rule good,
bad, or indifferent ran up a heavy score against
the invisible or, at least, unapproachable landlords.
Having been made into a
privileged class, and
having, on the whole, proved themselves by material
progress and sensible conduct, which disarms hostile
criticism, worthy of the privileges bestowed on them,
the crofters could have got in the first part of the
Parliamentary Session of 1908, by concurrence of
Lords and Commons, an Act to amend and extend
the Crofter Acts, if the Secretary for Scotland had
not resolved to roll up the cause of the crofters with
his scheme for the Lowlands, whose case is radically
different. Lord Lovat's Bill, and other moves and
declarations, indicated the willingness of Highland
landlords to remove reasonable grievances, and to
meet the wishes of the crofters as far as they seemed
to be just and practicable. How different is this
appreciation of and kindly feeling towards the
crofters by the landlords from the attitude most of
them assumed, excusably, it must be said, in the
early days of the crofter agitation? The use the
crofters are making of their privileges has been the
chief factor in this conversion, although other factors
have played their part in it, such as the scarcity
of upright and capable servant men and women,
and the shuttle cock and battledore game between
sheep runs and deer forests. Much has been won,
and more can be won, by the crofters' peaceful
behaviour, and their quiet persistence in making the
best use of their privileges. Let the crofters, by
continuing in well-doing, strive to keep and augment
the sympathy and respect which they have gained
far and wide from people who are not of their
race. Let them strenuously uphold "Cliu nan
Gaidheal."
Let my wild but pleasant
dream of the restoration of profitable "calanas," in a huge volume, to
our coal- less land of mountains and of streams, by
the reversing wave of Lady Electra's fairy wand, be
set aside in the limbo of vain imaginings for the
present; but yet in the ordinary developments of
changes which must proceed, with or without
legislation, prospects of recovery in their native
land are brightening for the children of the Gael,
and by patience and wise use of increasing opportunities, the crofters may
do more than other Highlanders towards turning these fair prospects into
fairer realities. Highlanders scattered abroad and at home, and the
descendants of Highlanders who left their country ages ago, look upon the
crofter townships as the centres from which chiefly the Highlands are in
time, and without noise or strife of any kind, to be again re-peopled by
Highlanders, who, while as able to use English as Oxford
and Cambridge professors, will retain along with it
the language of their ancestors. If they drop the
ancestral language, they will cut themselves off from
an ever-flowing fountain of refreshment of mind and
hereditary inspiration. It is really in the crofter
townships that Gaelic has just now its last place of
retiral and refuge; and even in them the security of
the refuge is far from being lastingly guaranteed. |
