Part 25

But who can think of these early hardships and cruel existences without condemning--even hating--the memories of the harsh and heartless Highland and Scottish lairds, who made existence at home even almost as miserable for those noble fellows, and who then drove them in thousands out of their native land, not caring one iota whether they sank in the Atlantic, or were starved to death on a strange and uncongenial soil? Retributive justice demands that posterity should execrate the memories of the authors of such misery and horrid cruelty. It may seem uncharitable to write thus of the dead; but it is impossible to forget their inhuman conduct, though, no thanks to them--cruel tigers in human form--it has turned out for the better, for the descendants of those who were banished to what was then infinitely worse than transportation for the worst crimes. Such criminals were looked after and cared for; but those poor fellows, driven out of their homes by the Highland lairds, and sent across there, were left to starve, helpless, and uncared for. Their descendants are now a prosperous and thriving people, and retribution is at hand. The descendants of the evicted from Sutherland, Ross, Inverness-shires, and elsewhere, to Canada, are producing enormous quantities of food, and millions of cattle, to pour them into this country. What will be the consequence? The sheep farmer--the primary and original cause of the evictions--will be the first to suffer. The price of stock in Scotland must inevitably fall. Rents must follow, and the joint authors of the original iniquity will, as a class, then suffer the natural and just penalty of their past misconduct.

AN EVICTING AGENT.

Giving evidence before the Deer Forest Commission of 1892, the late Mr. Æneas R. Macdonell of Camusdarroch, Arisaig, made an interesting statement. After mentioning that he was a member of the Scottish Bar, and had previously been proprietor of Morar, he proceeded:--

I am able to speak generally as to the population there used to be in Arisaig in my young days,--in fact, the whole tract of country seemed to be populated and to have numerous houses on all parts of it; but I want to confine my evidence almost entirely to that portion of the district which is now under deer forest. It is now called Rhu-Arisaig, but 100 years ago it was called Dubh-chamus.

Although I am only seventy-two years of age, I am able to speak of thirty years beyond that, from 1794. My grandfather occupied the various places or townships in Dubh-chamus or Rudha. These were Dubh-chamus, Rhu, Tirnadrish, Torbae, Rhubrec, Tormor, Rhuemoch, Claggan, Portavullid, Bal-ur, Ardgaserie, and Achagarrailt. I am able to speak concerning that period from an old account-book belonging to my grandfather, to which I had access a good many years ago, and it was in connection with a very melancholy occasion in which I was unfortunately implicated, viz., an emigration from the estate of Loch Sheil in Moidart. In that account-book I found thirty-seven names of individuals in the various families who were paying rent, as sub-tenants to my grandfather, Archibald Macdonald, Rudha, Arisaig, who died, I think, in 1828 or 1829. I don’t know where that account-book now is. At that time it was in the possession of my uncle, Macdonald of Loch Sheil; and I may as well mention that it was in connection with Rudha that I came to examine the book.

First I should mention that these people occupied Rhu as cottars, and they had land for which apparently they paid no rent, but worked the land, of which Mr. Macdonald of Rudha cropped a portion. They paid rent for grazing,--a small nominal sum, and he himself paid a very small rent also to the then proprietor, Macdonald of Clanranald. In fact he, as well as Macdonald of Borrodale and Macdonald of Glen Alladale, came into possession of the various lands as being sons of the then Macdonald of Clanranald. They took these lands with the population on them, and occupied them.

The rents were paid to the tenants, to these Macdonalds, at a very small rate, because they themselves were not highly charged.

It so came to pass that in Lord Cranston’s time my uncle, Gregor Macdonald, who then occupied Rudha, had to give a large increase of rent, or be quit of it. Well, he could not under the old system on which he held it afford to give more rent. The consequence was that the farm was taken over him; and the cruel thing was, that he was obliged to remove all the sub-tenants upon it who had been there generations before him or his ancestors. The only thing that he could do was to get his brother Macdonald of Loch Sheil to take the people over to Loch Sheil in Moidart. Times grew black, and the potato famine occurred, and the consequence was that there was a redundant population, for Moidart had previously been well inhabitated, and the addition of so many families from Rudha, Arisaig, quite overwhelmed them when the potato famine occurred.

I was then puzzled to know how many came from Rhu, Arisaig, and I got access in that way to the old books from which I took an extract, and I have here a list of the names of the various people and the portions of Rudha that they occupied. In _Ardgaserich_ there were 12, viz., Lachlan Mackinnon, Donald Roy Macinnes, John Macintyre, John Mackinnon, Patrick Maccormack, Neil Mackinnon, Ronald Macdonald, Mrs. Macdonald, Donald Macvarish, Duncan Macinnes, John Macdonald, and Allan Mackinnon. In _Torbae_ there were 4, viz., Angus Smith, L. Mackinnon, J. Macdonald, John Maciasaac. In _Dubh-chamus_, ten, viz., John Kinnaird, John Macisaac, Finlay Mackellaig, Archibald Macfarlane, James Macdonald, Widow Maceachan, Patrick Grant, Allan Mackinnon, Dugald Macpherson, and Widow Maclean. In _Rudha_, 11, viz., Mrs. Donald Macdonald, Donald Macinnes, Roderick Mackinnon, John Maccormack, Rory Smith, Angus Bain Macdonald, Ewan Mackinnon, Peter Macfarlane, Dugald Gillies, Alexander Macleod, Angus Roy Maceachan. These are in all 37, and they are evidently of different families. The rents were given, and the payments made, and everything in connection with their holdings. The date of this is 1794.

I was going on to explain that these people, or rather the descendants of some of them, had to be removed to Moidart, and in the congested state of the estate it had to be considered what was best to be done. I was then a young man. I had just passed at the Bar, and I and the late respected James Macgregor of Fort William were appointed trustees to do what was best. We could see nothing for it,--it was impossible for the people to subsist,--but to assist them to emigrate, and we were assisted very materially in carrying out the emigration by the resident Catholic clergyman of that time, Rev. Ronald Rankine, who indeed followed them. So many of them went to Australia and a few of them to America. But never shall I forget until my dying day,--it is a source of grief to me that I had anything whatsoever to do with that emigration, although, at the same time, God knows I cannot understand how it could have been averted. Many of the people have succeeded well and are well-to-do, but if they had remained, they would have been impoverished themselves, and they would have impoverished the few that are still on the estate.

AN OCTOGENARIAN GAEL.

In his interesting volume entitled _Reminiscences and Reflections of an Octogenarian Gael_, Mr. Duncan Campbell, for over twenty-six years editor of the _Northern Chronicle_, writes as follows with regard to the Breadalbane Evictions:--

As second Marquis, “the son of his father,” contrary to all prognostications, became, as soon as expiring leases permitted it, an evicting landlord on a large scale, and he continued to pursue the policy of joining farm to farm, and turning out native people, to the end of his twenty-eight years’ reign. But like the first spout of the haggis, his first spout of evicting energy was the hottest. I saw with childish sorrow, impotent wrath, and awful wonder at man’s inhumanity to man, the harsh and sweeping Roro and Morenish clearances, and heard much talk about others which were said to be as bad if not worse. A comparison of the census returns for 1831 with those of 1861 will show how the second Marquis reduced the rural population on his large estates, while the inhabitants of certain villages were allowed, or, as at Aberfeldy, encouraged to increase. When such a loud and long-continued outcry took place about the Sutherland clearances, it seems at first sight strange that such small notice was taken by the Press, authors, and contemporary politicians, of the Breadalbane evictions, and that the only set attack on the Marquis should have been left to the vainglorious, blundering, Dunkeld coal merchant, who added the chief-like word “Dunalastair” to his designation. One reason--perchance the chief one--for the Marquis’s immunity was the prominent manner in which he associated himself with the Nonintrusionists, and his subsequently becoming an elder and a liberal benefactor of the Free Church. He had a Presbyterian upbringing, and lived in accordance with that upbringing. His Free Church zeal may, therefore, have been as genuine as he wished it to be believed; but whether simply real or partly simulated, it covered as with a saintly cloak his evictions proceedings in the eyes of those who would have been his loud denouncers and scourging critics had he been an Episcopalian or remained in the Church of Scotland. The people he evicted, and all of us, young and old, who were witnesses of the clearances, could not give him much credit for any good in what seemed to us the purely hard and commercial spirit of the policy which he carried out as the owner of a princely Highland property. Such of the witnesses of the clearances as have lived to see the present desolation of rural baronies on the Breadalbane estates can now charitably assume that, had he foreseen what his land-management policy was to lead up to, he would, at least, have gone about his thinning-out business in a more cautious, kindly, and considerate manner, and not rudely cut, as he did, the precious ties of hereditary mutual sympathy and reliance which had long existed between the lords and the native Highland people of Breadalbane.

It is quite true that in 1834 the population on the Breadalbane estate needed thinning. The old Marquis had made a great mistake in dividing holdings which were too small before, in order to make room for Fencible soldiers who were not, as eldest sons, heirs to existing holdings. In twenty years, congestion to an alarming extent was the natural result of the old man’s mistaken kindness. There was indeed a good deal of congestion before that mistake was committed, although migration and emigration helped to keep it within some limits. Emigration would have proceeded briskly from 1760 onwards had it not been discouraged by landlords who found the fighting manhood on their estates a valuable asset; and when not positively prohibited, emigration was impeded in various ways by the Government, now alive to the value of Highlands and Isles as a nursery of soldiers and sailors. Although discouraged and impeded, emigration was never wholly stopped, and after Waterloo Glenlyon, Fortingall, and Breadalbane, Rannoch, Strathearn and Balquhidder, sent off swarms to Canada, the United States, and the West Indies. A large swarm from Breadalbane, Lochearnhead, and Balquhidder went off to Nova Scotia about 1828, and got Gaelic-speaking ministers to follow them. In 1829 a great number of Skyemen from Lord Macdonald’s estate went to Cape Breton, where Gaelic is the language of the people and pulpit to this day. The second Marquis of Breadalbane would have won for himself lasting glory and honour, and done his race and country valuable service, if he had chosen to place himself at the head of an emigration scheme for his surplus people, instead of merely driving them away, and further trampling on their feelings by letting the big farms he made by clearing out the native population to strangers in race, language, and sympathies. He was rich, childless, and gifted, and he utterly missed his vocation, or grand chance for gaining lasting fame among the children of the Gael.

At a later period of my life than this of which I am now writing, I looked into many kirk session books, and found that those of the parishes of Kenmore and Killin indicated a worse state of matters in Breadalbane than existed in any of the neighbouring parishes. Pauperism was increasing at a rapid rate, although it was a notorious fact that rents there were lower than on other Highland estates. The old Marquis was never a rack-renter. Other proprietors, when leases terminated, took more advantage than he did of a chance to raise rents, and when once raised they strove ever afterwards to keep them up. But I do not wonder that his son thought that if things were allowed to go on as he found them on succeeding to titles and estates, a general bankruptcy would soon be the result. Without ceasing to regret and detest his methods, I learned to see the reasonableness of the second Marquis’s view of the alarming situation. The population had simply outgrown the means of decent subsistence from the carefully cultivated small holdings which were the general rule. Had it not been for the frugality and self-helpfulness of the people, the crisis of general poverty would have come when the inflated war prices ceased, or at least in the short-crop year of 1826, when the corn raised in Breadalbane, although the hillsides were cultivated as far up as any cereal crop could be expected to ripen in the most favourable season, did not supply meal enough for two-thirds of the people. But the “calanas” of the women, especially as long as flax-spinning continued in a flourishing condition, brought in a good deal of money; and for many years “Calum a Mhuilin” (Calum of the Mill), otherwise Malcolm Campbell, road contractor, Killin, led out a host of young men to make roads in various parts of the country, and these returned with their earnings to spend the winter at home. These sources of profit were beginning to dry up when the old Marquis died.

What came of the dispersed? The least adventurous or poorest of them slipped away into the nearest manufacturing town, or mining districts where there was a demand for unskilled labourers. There some of them flourished, but not a few of them foundered. The larger portion of them emigrated to Canada, mainly to the London district of Ontario, where they cleared forest farms, cherished their Gaelic language and traditions, prospered, and hated the Marquis more, perhaps, than he rightly deserved when things were looked at from his own hard political-economy point of view.

_STATISTICAL STATEMENT._

POPULATION IN 1831, 1841, 1851, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTY OF PERTHSHIRE.

1831 1841 1851 1881 1911

Aberdalgie 434 360 343 297 278 Aberfoyle 660 543 514 465 1102 Abernethy 1915 1920 2026 1714 1297 Abernyte 254 280 275 275 209 Arngask 712 750 685 547 652 Auchterarder 3182 3434 4160 3648 3175 Auchtergaven 3417 3366 3232 2195 1250 Balquhidder 1049 871 874 627 734 Bendochy 780 783 773 715 502 Blackford 1897 1782 2012 1595 1374 Blair-Athol 2495 2231 2084 1742 1342 Blairgowrie 2644 3471 2497 5162 ... Callander 1909 1665 1716 2167 1977 Caputh 2303 2317 2037 2096 1565 Cargill 1628 1642 1629 1348 1329 Clunie 944 763 723 582 474 Collace 730 702 581 409 324 Culross 1484 1444 1487 1130 1499 Comrie 2622 2471 2463 1858 1447 Dron 464 441 394 335 256 Dull 4590 3811 3342 2565 ... Dunbarney 1162 1104 1066 756 862 Dunkeld 2032 1752 1662 791 628 Dunning 2045 2128 2206 1639 1145 Errol 2992 2832 2796 2421 2083 Findo-Gask 428 436 405 364 357 Forgandenny 913 796 828 617 565 Forteviot 624 638 638 618 524 Fortingall 3067 2740 2486 1690 ... Fossoway and Tulliebole 1576 1724 1621 1267 805 Foulis-Wester 1681 1609 1483 412 704 Glendevon 620 157 128 147 111 Inchture 878 769 745 650 545 Kenmore 3126 2539 2257 1508 686 Killin 2002 1702 1608 1277 913 Kilmadock 3752 4055 3659 3012 2272 Kilspindie 760 709 684 693 498 Kincardine 2455 2232 1993 1351 ... Kinclaven 890 880 881 588 468 Kinfauns 732 720 650 583 558 Kinnaird 461 458 370 260 172 Kinnoull 2957 2879 3134 3461 4076 Kirkmichael 1568 1412 1280 849 421 Lethendy and Kinloch 708 662 556 404 327 Little Dunkeld 2867 2718 2155 2175 1945 Logierait 3138 2959 2875 2323 1371 Longforgan 1638 1660 1787 1854 1997 Madderty 713 634 593 527 438 Meigle 873 728 686 696 856 Methven 2714 2446 2454 1910 1843 Moneydie 300 315 321 233 232 Monzie 1195 1261 1199 753 428 Monievaird and Strowan 926 853 790 700 438 Moulin 2022 2019 2022 2066 2518 Muckhart 617 706 685 601 528 Muthill 3297 3067 2972 1702 1431 Redgorton 1866 1929 2047 1452 1086 Rhynd 400 402 338 297 205 St. Madoes 327 327 288 316 258 St. Martins 1135 1071 983 741 630 Scone 2268 2422 2381 2402 2389 Tibbermore 1223 1661 1495 1883 2443 Trinity-Gask 620 620 597 396 360 Tulliallan 3550 3196 3043 2207 2091 Weem 1209 890 740 474 391

POPULATION IN 1831, 1841, 1851, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTY OF ARGYLL.

Ardchattan and Muckairn 2420 2264 2313 2005 2047 Ardnamurchan 5669 5581 5446 4105 3172 Campbeltown 9472 9539 9381 9755 9497 Craignish 892 970 873 451 325 Dunoon and Kilmun 2416 2853 4518 8002 6107 Gigha and Cara 534 550 547 382 326 Glassary 4054 5369 4711 4348 ... Glenorchy and Inishail 1806 831 1450 1705 931 Inveraray 2233 2277 2229 946 919 Inverchaolain 596 699 474 407 371 Jura and Colonsay 2205 2291 1901 1343 843 Kilbrandon and Kilchattan 2833 2602 2375 1767 1370 Kilcalmonell and Kilberry 3488 2460 2859 2304 815 Kilchoman 4822 4505 4142 2547 1459 Kilchrenan and Dalavich 1096 894 776 504 357 Kildalton 3065 3315 3310 2271 1471 Kilfinan 2004 1816 1695 2153 928 Kilfinichen and Kilviceuen 3819 4102 3054 1982 1403 Killarrow and Kilmeny 7105 7341 4882 2756 2552 Killean and Kilchenzie 2866 2401 2219 1386 1019 Kilmartin 1475 1213 1144 811 582 Kilmodan 648 578 500 323 264 Kilmore and Kilbride 2836 4327 3131 5142 7154 Kilninian and Kilmore 4830 4322 3954 2540 1811 Kilniver and Kilmelford 1072 970 714 405 392 Knapdale, North 2583 2170 1666 927 656 Knapdale, South 2137 1537 2178 2536 2100 Lismore and Appin 4365 4193 4097 3433 3279 Lochgoilhead and Kilmorich 1196 1100 834 870 1023 Morvern 2036 1781 1547 828 635 Saddell and Skipness 2152 1798 1504 1163 964 Small Isles 1015 993 916 550 396 Southend 2120 1598 1406 955 767 Strachur and Stralachan 1083 1086 915 932 700 Tiree and Coll 5769 6096 4818 3376 2214 Torosay 1889 1616 1361 1102 959

POPULATION IN 1831, 1841, 1851, 1881, AND 1911, OF ALL THE PARISHES IN WHOLE OR IN PART IN THE COUNTY OF INVERNESS.