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Situation and circumstances of the old tenantry; choice of resources
when dispossessed of their farms; Emigration preferred; for what
reasons; limited in extent.
THIS great change in the
system of management throughout the Highlands branches into various and
complicated effects. In order to give a clear view of its unavoidable
consequences, it will be proper first to enter into some details as to the
situation and mode of life of the people, such as we actually find them,
where the old system still remains. From this it will be easy to deduce
the immediate effects which the change must produce on their
circumstances; and it will thus appear that emigration is the line of
conduct which the occasion leads them most naturally to pursue. After
considering this consequence, as it affects the interest of the public,
the same details will enable us to appreciate how far it may be obviated
or modified by legislative wisdom; and this will lead to a discussion of
all the resources which have been proposed as remedies for preventing
emigration.
In consequence of the
extensive distribution of landed possessions arising from the feudal
manners, combined with the small progress that has been made in the arts
of life and division of labour, the people of the Highlands are not
separated into distinct classes of farmers, labourers, and mechanics: they
are all more or less engaged in agriculture. There are no markets where
provisions can be purchased, so that every man must be a farmer, at least
so far as to raise provisions for his own family. Whatever additional
employment a man may follow, he must occupy a small spot of land; and any
one who cannot procure such a possession, cannot live in the country.
The farms occupied by the
common tenantry, are hamlets or petty townships, held by six or eight
partners, sometimes by many more. The shares appear to have been
originally equal; but by the subdivision of some, and the accumulation, in
other cases, of several in the same hand, it is now frequently found that
one man has a third or a fourth part of a farm, while his neighbour has
but a fifteenth or a twentieth part.
These farms consist, in
general, of a portion of a valley, to which is annexed a tract of mountain
pasture, often stretching to the. distance of many miles. The habitations
are collected in a little village, in the midst of the richest and best:
of the arable lands, which are used as crofts in constant tillage.
The less fertile of the arable lands on the outskirts, termed outfield,
are only occasionally cultivated, and every part of them is in its
turn left in grass. The lands in tillage, are sometimes cultivated in
common, but are more usually distributed among the tenants in proportion
to their shares; seldom, however, in a permanent manner, but from year to
year. The produce of the tillage land rarely affords a superfluity beyond
the maintenance of the tenants and their families. Their riches consist of
cattle, chiefly breeding cows, and
the young stock produced from them, which are maintained on
the farm till of a proper age for the market; and by the sale of these the
tenants are enabled to pay their rent. The number which each farm or
toun is capable of maintaining, is ascertained by antient usage, and
may be, in general, from thirty to eighty cows, besides other cattle. The
total amount is divided among the occupiers according to their respective
shares, no one being allowed to keep more than his regulated proportion.
The joint occupiers of such
farms are termed small tenants, to distinguish them from the
tacksmen, who hold entire farms, and who are in general of the rank of
gentry, each of them tracing himself to some antient proprietor of the
estate, who has allotted the farm as a provision for a cadet of his
family.
Upon the farms of the
tacksrnen, are a number of subtenants or cotters, under which
general term may be included various local denominations of
crofters, mailers,
&c. &c. These people hold their possessions
under various conditions: sometimes they differ from the tenants in little
else than the diminutive scale of their possessions; but in general they
have a greater or less amount of labour to perform as a part of their
rent. Frequently they are absolute servants to their immediate superior,
having the command only of a small share of their own time to cultivate
the land allowed them for maintaining their families. Sometimes the
tacksman allows a portion of his own tillage field for his cotter;
sometimes a small separate croft is laid off for him; and he is likewise
allowed, in general, to pasture a cow, or perhaps two, along with the
cattle of the farm.
Cotters are not confined to
the farms of the tacksmen—they are also intermixed with the small tenants.
Two or three are generally employed on every farm, as servants of the
whole partnership, for herding their cattle, or preventing the trespasses
of others. There are also a few people who exercise the trades of
black-smiths, weavers, taylors, shoemakers, &c. and who bargain with one
or other of the tenants for a portion of his land. Sometimes persons who
have been dispossessed of their own farms, and are unable to procure a
share of one elsewhere, will secure a temporary residence in the country
by taking subsets of this kind: sometimes individuals, connected by
relationship with the tenants of a farm, and who have no other resource,.
are permitted, from mere charity, to occupy some corner of waste land,
where, by raising crops of potatoes, they contrive to work out a miserable
subsistence.
It may be easily conceived,
that the line between these two classes, the small tenants and the
cotters, is not always very accurately defined; some of the more opulent
of the cotters being as well provided as the lowest of the tenants. Upon
the whole, however, there is a great difference in the amount of. their
property, and in the views they may entertain, when, by the progress of
sheep-farming, they are dispossessed of their tenements. Among the more
opulent, it is not uncommon for one man to have twelve, fifteen, or even
twenty cows, but in general the small tenant, according to his share of
the farm, may have from three or four, to six or eight cows, and always
with a proportionate number of young cattle. He has also horses, a few
small sheep, implements of agriculture, and various household articles to
dispose of; and, from the sale of all these he is enabled to embark in
undertakings which cannot be thought of by the cotter, and which are not
within the reach of the peasantry even in the more improved and richer
parts of the kingdom.
There the labouring poor,
though earning very considerable wages, are seldom possessed of much
permanent property. Their daily or weekly wages are expended in the market
as fast as they arise, for the immediate supply of their families. In the
Highlands, there are few of the lower class who have the means of living
nearly so well as an English labourer, but many who have property of much
greater value. In the. Agricultural Survey of the Northern Counties,
details are given of the economy of a farmer of about 30 acres of arable
land, whose diet and habitation appear to be of the lowest kind, the total
value of his buildings not exceeding 10/-, and the annual consumption of
provisions for his own family and three servants amounting to about
15/-.; yet his capital is estimated at 116/-.; and by the
advance in the price of cattle since the date of that publication, it must
now be considerably more.
Of this description of
people it has often happened that 30 or 40 families have been dispossessed
all at once, to make way for a great sheep-farm :—and those who have
attended to the preceding details will easily understand the dilemma to
which every one of these people must be reduced. The country affords no
means of living without a possession of land, and how is that to be
procured? The farms that are not already in the hands of the graziers, are
all full of inhabitants, themselves perhaps in dread of the same fate, and
at any rate too crowded to make room for him. Should he, in spite of every
difficulty, resolve to earn his bread as a labourer, he can expect no
employment in a neighbourhood, where every spot is occupied by many more
people than are necessary for its own work; and if any casual opportunity
of employment occur, it is too uncertain to be depended upon. Let his
industrious dispositions be ever so great, he must, in the total want of
manufacturing employment in his own neighbourhood, quit his native spot;
and, if he does not leave the kingdom altogether, must resort to some of
those situations where the increasing demand for labour affords a prospect
of employment.
When a great number are
dispossessed at once, and the land is to be applied, to purposes that
afford little or no employment, as in a sheep-walk, the conclusion is so
evident as to require no illustration: but the case is not essentially
altered when these people are dismissed in a gradual and continued
progress one after another. In this way, indeed, the circumstance does not
excite so much attention; but the effects on the state of the country are
the same: and to the individual who is dispossessed, it makes no other
difference than that he has fewer companions to. share his misfortune. It
is equally impossible for him to find resources in his native spot, and he
is equally under the necessity of removing to a different situation.
Sheep-farming, though it is
the most prominent occasion, is not the radical cause of the difficulties
to which the peasantry of the Highlands are reduced, the disposition to
extend farms by throwing several possessions into one, in the manner that
has already been alluded to, must produce the same effect, in whatever
mode the land is afterwards to be managed.
To the dispossessed
tenantry, as well as to the cotters, who by the same progress of things
are deprived of their situation and livelihood, two different resources
present themselves. They know that in the, Low Country of Scotland, and
particularly in the manufacturing towns, labour will procure them good
wages, they know likewise that in America the wages of labour are still
higher, and that from the moderate price of land they may expect to
obtain, not only their possession of a farm, but an absolute property.
Of these alternatives,
every one who is acquainted with the country must admit that Emigration is
by far the most likely to suit the inclination and habits of the
Highlanders. It requires a great momentary effort; but holds out a speedy
prospect of a situation and mode of life similar to that in which they
have been educated. Accustomed to possess land, to derive from it all the
cornforts they enjoy, they naturally consider it as indispensable, and can
form no idea of happiness without such a possession. No prospect of an
accommodation of this kind can enter into the views of any one who seeks
for employment as a day labourer, still less of those who resort to a
manufacturing town.
The manners of a town, the
practice of sedentary labour under the roof of a manufactory, present to
the Highlander a most irksome contrast to his former life. The
independance and irregularity to which he is accustomed, approach to that
of the savage: his activity is occasionally called forth to the utmost
stretch, in conducting his boat through boisterous waves, or in traversing
the wildest mountains amidst the storms of winter. But these efforts are
succeeded by intervals of indolence equally extreme. He is accustomed to
occasional exertions of agricultural labour, but without any habits of
regular and steady industry; and he has not the least experience of
sedentary employrnents, for which, most frequently, the prejudices of his
infancy have taught him to entertain a contempt.
To a person of such habits,
the business of a manufactory can have no attraction except in a case of
necessity; it can never be his choice, when any resource can be found more
congenial to his native habits and disposition. The occupations of an
agricultural labourer, though very different, would not be so great a
contrast to his former life; but the limited demand for labour leaves him
little prospect of employment in this line. Both in this, and in
manufacturing establishments, every desirable situation is pre-occupied by
men of much greater skill than the untutored Highlander. He has therefore
little chance of finding employment; but in works of the lowest drudgery.
To this it is to be added,
that the situation of a mere day-labourer, is one which must appear
degrading to a person who has been accustomed to consider himself as in
the rank of a farmer, and has been the possessor even of a small portion
of land. In America, on the contrary, he has a prospect of superior rank;
of holding his land on a permanent tenure, instead of a temporary,
precarious, and dependant possession. It is not to be, forgotten, that
every motive of this nature has a peculiar degree of force on the minds of
the Highland peasantry. The pride, which formerly pervaded even the lowest
classes, has always been a prominent feature of their national character:
and this feeling is deeply wounded by the distant behaviour they now
experience from their chieftains—a mortifying contrast to the cordiality
that subsisted in the feudal times.
It has sometimes been
alleged, that these motives of preference have been enhanced by the
ignorance of the people, and their expectation of procuring in America
lands like those of Britain, fit for immediate cultivation. That such
ideas may have been entertained, and even that individuals who knew better
may have been unprincipled enough to circulate such falsehoods, is not
impossible: but certainly there is no need of recurring to delusions of
this kind, for an explanation of the universal preference of the
Highlanders for America. I know, indeed, from personal communication with
them, that they are aware of the laborious process that is necessary for
bringing the forest lands into a productive state. But this is not
sufficient to deter men of vigorous minds, when they are incited by such
powerful motives to encounter the difficulty.
It is indeed very probable,
that the fashion, being once set, may influence some who are under no
absolute necessity of emigrating. That this cause, however, has any very,
extensive operation, I can see no ground for
believing. Those who represent the ernigrations
as arising from capricious and inadequate motives, argue from the
circumstance of tenants having occasionally relinquished advantageous
leases several years before their expiration, in order to go to America.
This, I believe to be fact, though a very rare occurrence; but were it
ever so common, it would afford no proof in favour of the argument which
it is brought to support.
Do the gentlemen who urge
this argument, suppose the tenantry so blind as to perceive no danger till
they are overwhelmed? The fate of their friends and neighbours is a
sufficient warning of that which they must sooner or later expect. It is
surely with good reason they are convinced that they cannot long continue
to retain the possessions they now hold; and under this conviction the
simplest dictates of prudence would lead them to anticipate the evil day,
if they meet any uncommonly favourable opportunity for executing the plans
to which sooner or later they must have recourse.
The price of cattle has of
late years been so fluctuating, and at some periods so extremely high,
that opportunities have occurred for tenants to sell off their stock at
two or three times their usual and average value. Those who availed
themselves of this advantage have acquired so great an increase of
capital, that a few remaining years of an expiring lease could be no
object when put in comparison. Such instances, so far from implying
capricious levity in the people, are rather a proof of the deep impression
which the circumstances of the country have made on their minds, and of
the deliberate foresight with which their determinations are formed.
If there were no other
proof that emigration arises from radical and peculiar causes in the
circumstances of the country, it might be strongly presumed from the fact,
that while this spirit is so prevalent in the Highlands, it has made no
impression, or a very inconsiderable and transient impression, in the
adjoining Lowlands. The labourer in the South may occasionally feel the
stimulus of ambition; but this affects comparatively few the great mass of
people go on in the track to which they have been accustomed; none but
those of peculiarly ardent minds can bring themselves, for the sake of a
distant object, to make the exertion, which emigration requires.
The Highlander who is
dispossessed of his land is forced to this species of exertion: it is
utterly impossible for him to go on in the path he has been accustomed to
tread. Whether he emigrate to America, or remove to the Low Country of
Scotland, the scene is equally new to him; his habits are broken through;
he must in either case form himself to an entirely new mode of life.
Forced to a change, it is comparatively of little consequence whether he
undertake an exertion of greater or less amount. To move his family from
the Highlands to Glasgow or Paisley, is not to be done without an effort,
and, to a. poor man, a very considerable effort: and if the result is,
that, after all, he must enter upon a mode of life to which all his habits
render him averse, which all his prejudices teach him to consider as
degrading, it is surely to be expected that he will be ready to carry his
effort something further, in order to attain a more desirable situation.
Though the Highlanders are
certainly very inferior to their Southern neighbours in the habits of
regular and steady industry, yet, for a temporary effort, there are few
people equal to them; none who will submit to greater hardships and
privations, where there is a great object to be accomplished. Any one who
resolves on braving the difficulties of an American settlement, may look
forward to a situation so much superior to that of a day-labourer, and,
particularly, so much more consonant to his habits and former mode of
life, that no tenant, who loses his farm in the Highlands, can hesitate
between these resources, unless. overruling circumstances counteract his
preference.
Accordingly, with a very
few exceptions, we find the choice of the Highlanders has
been entirely regulated by their ability
or inability to afford the :expenses of their passage to America; and
among those whose poverty has forced them to go into the manufacturing
towns, some of the most remarkable exertions of industry have been
prompted, only by the desire of accumulating as much money as might enable
them to join their friends beyond the Atlantic.
From the peculiar
circumstances of the Highlands, the proportion of the peasantry whose
property is sufficient to carry them to America, is much greater than in
other parts of the kingdom.
The excessive division of land arising from the feudal
manners, has confounded and intermixed the characters of farmer and
labourer ;
and, while it has reduced to a very low
standard the rank of the individual farmer, has diffused the agricultural
capital of the Country among a great number of hands. The small tenants
form a very considerable proportion of the population of the Highlands.
Few, even of. the lowest of this class, are, in ordinary, times, unable to
pay their passage to America: in most instances they have carried with
them some money to begin with in their new situations.
The cotters, on the
contrary, have not, in general, had property adequate to the expense of
the passage, and few of them have ever been able to emigrate. There have
been instances of young unmarried men binding themselves by indenture to a
number of years service in return for their passage; but this has been
very rare. From Ireland, there has been a greater proportion of these
redemptioners (as they are called): they are generally, however, young
men who go to seek their fortunes, careless, perhaps, whether they ever
again meet their relations. The more social and systematic plan which the
Highlanders have always followed in going to America, is inconsistent with
the obligations of a redemptioner; and to men with families, this resource
is wholly inapplicable. The emigrants have, therefore, been almost
entirely of the class of tenants. while the cotters, whom the same change
of agricultural system has deprived of their situation and means of
livelihood, have in general removed into the manufacturing districts of
the South of ScotIand.
Sorne expectations have
been entertained, that the great public works which have lately been set
on foot in the North of Scotland, the Caledonjan canal, and the
improvement of the roads, may prevent emigration by the employment they
will afford. But this is,more than problematical. Their great and
permanent national utility is a sufficient ground of praise for these
noble undertakings, without ascribing to them effects to which they are
altogether inadequate.
These works may give a temporary relief to some of the
peasantry, but will not alter the essential circumstances of the Country.
They bring employment a. little nearer to the people, and prevent the
necessity of going so many
miles to procure it:
still,
however, any one who does not live in the immediate
vicinity must quit his present
residence to derive any advantage. In removing his family he cannot forget
that the employment will only be temporary, and this reflection will
strongly counteract the preference which the situation would otherwise
command. No one will be disposed to form permanent arrangements on such a
foundation.
Except in point of
situation, the employment afforded by these public works has no advantage
over that which the Highlanders have long been in the habit of seeking in
the Low Country of Scotland, The small tenant who is deprived of his land
has still the same question to ask himself as formerly,—whether he will
remove into a different part of the country to earn his subsistence as a
labourer, or go to America to obtain land:—and the motives which have
hitherto determined his preference for emigration will in no respect be
altered. |
