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EVICTIONS AND THE HIGHLAND CROFTER.
BY A PROPRIETOR.

I have just finished reading your pamphlet on the Highland Clearances, concluding with a description of the Highland crofter.

Your footnote at the end, saying you would be glad to have the views of those who had given the subject any attention, induces me to give you mine, such as they are, though I by no means pretend to solve the difficulty. Yet, I think discussion from all points of view will, if it does nothing else, at any rate, tend to throw some light on the question, and that ultimately it will be found that, like many other difficult problems, it will sooner or later right itself.

I read with melancholy interest your account of the evictions, and though I agree with you in the main, still I differ from you in some particulars.

In the first place I don't think the past evictions should all be placed in the same category of harshness and bad policy. That an eviction must smack of more or less harshness to the evicted is certain, but that such an eviction was necessarily a folly as well as a crime, may be an open question; and to decide on this, before arriving at a just conclusion, one would require to have the whole circumstances of each eviction before one, such as the position and prospects of the tenant previous to eviction, and what would have been the probable results had those evictions not been carried out.

Are we justified in concluding that in each and every instance of eviction the object of the proprietor of the day was to obtain an enhanced rental and to accomplish which the rights of property were strained to too great a length, and the duties of the same left quite out of sight. If such, indeed, were the motives that called for such harsh measures, then the very memory of the actors deserves to be execrated; but, taking a calm and perfectly impartial view of what the then position probably was, it is quite possible that some of the proprietors might have been actuated by the highest motives for the ultimate interests of the evicted, if they happened to have been at the time in a really miserable condition.

It is now probably impossible to arrive at the then actual existing state of affairs, and the only way to judge, even approximately, of what it was is by analogy, taking the present general position of the crofter as our basis in considering the matter, though it must be borne in mind that steam has greatly altered the circumstances since, and that an eviction that might have been justifiable in former days, might be the height of folly now-a-days; but before entering into a consideration of the question in this aspect, I must state a fact in connection with two of the sad instances you give, and though it may not throw a ray of light on the dark picture you have painted, will, at any rate, deprive it of one of its gloomy features. What I mean refers to the evictions of Boreraig and Suishinish, Isle of Skye, in 1853.

Though your account of those evictions may not distinctly say so, still it infers that the late Lord Godfrey Macdonald, though, as you say, he bitterly regretted the evictions afterwards, at the time apparently sanctioned

them. You are evidently conversant with the fact that he was in the hands of trustees when the evictions from the townships in question were carried out. What I have now to say is that those evictions were not carried out with Lord Macdonald's sanction, but in direct opposition to his wishes and in violation of his feelings, as testified by several Skye gentlemen who were with him at Armadale at the time, and to whom he expressed his annoyance and grief, his hatred of the business, and his sympathy for the evicted tenants, but he was powerless in the hands of his rapacious agent. It is quite true he occupied the position mentioned by Mr Donald Ross, but against this we must put the fact that he himself was not aware of the power he possessed at the time, and it is a satisfaction to know that no Skye man's hand is stained by this blot.

The real point at issue is, what really was the position of the crofter in those days? It seems to me it was very much the same as it is now, minus the advantage of steam of the present day, but it is apparent that, whether for weal or woe to the crofter, his position has attracted more or less sympathy or the reverse for a long time past, and all sorts of fates have been suspended over his unfortunate head, embracing schemes extending from proposals for his banishment altogether from the land of his forefathers, down to the replacing him in possession of his original glens, according to the notions of his enemies or friends, Some have recommended improvement of the crofter's holding, while others say he should be left alone. All these views may be equally worthy of consideration except the banishing theory, which happily is now impossible even should it be tried; so we may dismiss it as cruel in intent, and deserving of no further notice.

The general impression seems to be that the present crofts are too small, and if the minimum could be fixed at £10 of a yearly rental, that would be all right. This, no doubt, would work well in some localities, and during a limited period, but when we come to apply the rule to members and the existing state of affairs, like most other rules, it has its exceptions, such, for instance, as in the case of widows. It is well known, a widow, if she has not a strong and grown-up family, or some capital to fall back on, cannot, as a rule, continue to retain a holding of this size, though she might manage to keep up one paying £3 or £4 of a yearly rental, and presently we shall see the reason why. If capital had been the stock-in-trade that worked the croft during the husband's lifetime, the widow, no doubt, would be able to retain the holding, and continue to work it as the husband did during his lifetime, but labour being the real stock-in-trade, it ceased with the husband's life, hence the widow cannot continue to work or hold the croft in question. Yet she can hold a smaller one, as she has still a small command of labour, i.e., what she represents in her own person.

Take an average family of, say half-a-dozen, viz., husband, wife, and four children. To support this family in the present day requires the sum, say, in round figures, of from £30 to £40 a year, according to management, but I shall base it on the following calculation, supposing the family requirements to be £30 yearly:

Say a croft yields three rentals. A croft or any other piece of ground fairly rented should yield three returns. At this rate a croft paying £10 yearly rent and rates, should yield equal to £30; deduct rent, &c., £10;

balance, profit, £20; still leaving him a balance of £10 to make up from some other source to meet his requirements. Extend this calculation, and it is only when we reach the £15 holdings that they can be said to be self-supporting. Everything depends on the yearly expenditure. If £30 yearly, a fifteen pound holding would be sufficient; but if £40, then a twerty pound holding would be necessary, but to thoroughly understand it, let us look all round it, and suppose the said family requirements not to exceed £25 annually, even then a ten pound holding would leave a deficit of £5, and it is only when we reached the twelve pound holdings they could be said to be self-supporting.

The croft, if ever so small, requires a certain amount of capital invested in it to stock it. A croft paying a yearly rental of £10, would represent a capital of about £60 sterling in round figures,* viz.—

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and so on, till we reach the twenty pound holdings, which would represent a capital of, say, £120.

Now we are face to face with figures, and here is the difficulty and the real reason why we have not a small prosperous tenantry-simply the want of capital. Imagine the whole of the Highlands now laid out in lots of the yearly value of from £10 to £20, how many could be found willing and capable of taking up the same? The foregoing is theory, now what are the facts?

I have not the means at hand to enable me to judge as to the position of the whole of the crofting population of the Highlands, my knowledge. being limited to the position of the class in the Island of Skye, and I arrived at the following figures which may perhaps be taken as an index to other parts of the country; at any rate, they speak for matters as they stood in this Island.

The figures in question are taken from the Inverness County Roll for 1878-79, and since then the rent has not been increased or reduced to any such extent as would in any way affect the following calculation or conclusions, and refer entirely to the agricultural portion of the community, and I have been careful not to mix up with these figures such entries as "Croft and house," for, as a rule, such means that the house is a fairly good one, and that the rent is paid for it, the bit of ground being thrown in to the bargain, and has nothing to do with the subject under inquiry -the crofting system. The gross rental of the Island of Skye in

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Taking £60 as the average capital invested in holdings of a yearly rental of £10, gives £6 of invested capital for every £1 of rent paid, which may be considered fair for holdings of from £5 to £20, but may be slightly high for crofts of £3. I therefore estimate the capital invested in the latter at about £5 for every £1 of rent. This shows the capital now invested in land in the Island of Skye, which is not entirely self-supporting, to be upwards of £40,000, viz.—

610 Tenants at £15

935 do. at £35

1545

£9,150
32,725

£41,875

1878-79 amounted to £36,802, including Raasay, but the purely agricultural portion of the above collected from tenants amounted to only £27,812 8s 3d, to which may be added £3,145 13s 10d in the hands of proprietors, making a total of £30,958 2s ld. The remaining £5,844 includes rents derived from shootings, fishings, houses, &c., and subjects other than land.

One of the headings, and indeed the principal one, I only guess at, and though I enter the same in stated figures, still it is only an approximate estimate of the exact numbers. I mean the number of tenants' holdings under £4 per annum. The names of such tenants do not appear in the County Roll, but the sums paid by them are entered as paid by proprietor for tenants under £4-such and such an amount. It is therefore impossible to arrive at the exact numbers. On one estate, however,

and that estate is well known as being typical of what is fair in rent-the entries under this heading in the County Roll appear as such and such an amount of rent paid by the proprietor on account of so many rents under £4, and the average comes to exactly £3 for each. On another estate I am acquainted with the average rental of tenants paying under £4 comes to £3 10s each, but taking the Island all over I have put down the average at £3 each, and I don't think I can be far out. Since writing the above I have just seen Mr Walker's-the Commissioner on agriculturereport on the state of crofting in the Lewis, which appears in the Inverness Courier of the 7th July, showing the average rental of 2,790 crofts to be £2 18s all round. The average rental in Skye, it will be seen, is considerably higher :

610 Tenants, paying under £4 yearly, pay between them in all £1,832 17s 2d, or an average of £3 each.

935 Tenants, paying £4 and upwards, but under £10, pay £5,348 10s 11d, or an average of £5 16s 6d each.

178 Tenants, paying £10 but under £20, pay £2,154 11s 4d, or an average of £12 2s each.

25 Tenants, paying £20 but under £100 a year each, pay £993 9s 10d, or at an average of £39 14s 4d each.

Then come the gentlemen farmers,

33 of whom, paying over £100 a year each, swell the rental by £17,483, or an average of £529 15s 9d each,

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From the above it is seen that the vast majority pay under £10 of a yearly rental, and if we add to the above number, the third class, Lumbering 178, at £12 2s each, £2,154 11s 4d, we have a total of 1,723 tenants, paying £9,336 19s 5d, whose holdings are not self-supporting.

The land no doubt greatly, or, we may say, mostly, contributes to the support of the above, but, as a matter of fact, it only supports in entirety the small minority of 58, who pay between them the large sum of £18,476 9s 10d, or twice as much as the vast majority of 1,723. It is

therefore clearly apparent that now-a-days the land is not entirely selfsupporting to the vast majority. What then probably was the position of the majority of the crofter class in the days of the evictions? Making every allowance for the increased cost of living, and taking the then price of cattle into consideration, each of which would nearly balance the other, the probabilities are that the crofter's profit out of the land must have been then much about what it is now; but steam has altered the position for the better, as it enables the crofter to dispose of his labour in the Southern market, an opportunity which was not open to him in the eviction days. So his position on the whole must now be much better than in those days. Are we then justified in blaming proprietors for removing tenants, when the land they were in possession of would not maintain them, when they had not capital to enable them to increase their holdings, and when no other occupation was open to them? Under such circumstances I don't think the proprietors were to blame in all instances. So much for the past,

Now for the present. Having seen that the crofter has to depend on his labour as much as on his capital, the next question in importance to be considered is the locality best suited to his circumstances, and in which he will have most opportunities of employing his stock in trade; and here we come to the relative merits of the glen and sea-side situations. The glen has the romance of summer hanging about it, and the recollections that the glens were formerly inhabited. So why not let them be peopled again, and I interpret your own views from your article on the crofter to lean to this theory. It is quite true the glens were formerly inhabited, but circumstances have greatly altered since; the extra cost of living must be taken into consideration, and the isolation of the position makes it perfectly certain that the crofter can get no employment in such localities or their neighbourhood. Besides this, the glens possessed advantages in former days which they do not now possess, owing to the more practical restrictions and preservation of game; the glens also represent a money value now which was unheard of then. They are admirably situated for deer, so why not let them remain under those animals, at any rate for the present.

By this let me not be supposed to advocate the entire clearing of the glens, for my argument in no way applies to those inland situations through which railway lines run, for it is manifest such situations possess great advantages, as the inhabitants are in a position which makes the Southern markets easy of access. I refer simply to such localities as have no such advantages.

The sea-side resident is differently situated, and enjoys many opportunities of employing his labour, denied to the resident of such a glen.

The favourite and general means the crofter has of making up his deficit is by fishing, and here he often has it at hand; besides, the crofter who is not a fisherman, can often get other employment, for fishing, as a rule, creates more or less of a traffic in its neighbourhood; he has also sea-ware near at hand which he can use as manure, which of itself is a very great pull in his favour, but the glen man has nothing save the dry heather which he puts under his cows to use for this purpose.

In a small Island like Skye, surrounded by the sea, where even its most inland glen cannot be very remote from the sea air influence, it is

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