the Border clans were obliged to do, when their distracted country had ceased to be a border, and had become the middle of one united kingdom. But no such resource was open, or open in anything like the same degree, to the poorer classes in the Hebrides. The military ages, which had given them employment, were coming to an end, and the industrial ages had not yet begun. The sea, which had brought the vikings to them, and on which, under native leaders, they had for centuries been leading a viking life, was now as vacant for the galley as it was empty of the ships of commerce. Thus the isolation of the Hebrideans became more absolute and complete than it had ever been. Hence the difference, amounting to violent contrast, between them and those leaders of their own blood and race, who escaped from that isolation and mingled in the central currents of the national life. Wars did not cease, either in the century which saw the statutes of Iona, or in that which followed; on the contrary, they were frequent if not continual. But they were all wars waged for intelligible objects, and involving great issues, not only for Britons but for the world. In these wars men of Highland and Hebridean blood engaged as officers in numbers, and with a renown which made them widely and justly famous. Fontenoy, Quebec, Ticonderoga, spoke with trumpet tongue. Nor was this all, In every walk of science, of politics, and of literature; in the army, in the navy, in the Church, the MacLeods, and the Mackenzies, and the MacLeans, and the Macgregors, and the bearers of every other conceivable name that came from the sons of Somerled, were rising to the front ranks of eminence wherever and whenever they left their narrow glens, and joined in the steps of progress. It was, however, for a short time, and for a short time only, after the close of our civil wars, that the clansmen had enlisted as such in regiments which were attractive to them because they had a flavor of the old system. For a time- an invaluable time -they did something to lift the poorer classes in the Highlands to high ambitions and to wider aims. But this was a passing phase, and regular military service soon ceased to attract the islanders. The people remained to multiply. And assuredly they did not belie the reputation for fecundity which the Roman historian had given them more than fifteen hundred years before. They started with a scattered remnant and a desolated country. "The great misery unto which for the present their barren country was subject"— such is the confession signed by the chiefs in 1603, under the sanctities of Iona, as to the condition of the Hebrides. Never were the natural laws of population, under special and defined conditions, more strikingly and experimentally exhibited. They were now saved from the ravages of war by the growing power and civilization of a central government. They were saved. farther on, from the ravages of small-pox - not less destructive-by the introduction of inoculation. They were exempted from the necessity of exertion and of agricultural improvement by the abundant, but idle and demoralizing, provision of the potato. They were, at a critical time, powerfully stimulated to further increase by the sudden rise of a local manufacture in the products of seaweed. They were ringed off by distance, by the sea, by lethargy, and by increasing poverty, from the rising industries of the Low Country. For some years a sort of paroxysm of discouragement and of discomfort made them throw off swarms to the New World. But not even this, nor frequent famines, could keep down the rising tide of population. We have full and detailed accounts of their condition during the whole of the eighteenth, and for the early part of the present, century from competent, impartial, and scientific witnesses. We have the striking picture of two islands, typical of all, drawn by Duncan Forbes, of Culloden, in 1737. We have the testimony from personal observation of the famous naturalist Pennant, in 1769-1772. We have the testimony of Professor Walker, an eminent agriculturist, for the years between 1760-1790. We have the invaluable statistical accounts of Sir John Sinclair in 1792-5. We have the graphic and accurate description of MacCulloch in the excellent work already referred to. These, with arhost of other witnesses equally trustworthy, although less known, leave nothing to be desired as to the nature and origin of the chronic poverty which still survives in some of the Hebrides. Counting among these some southern islands near the Clyde which have long ceased to belong to the same category, simply because they have long escaped from the same conditions, there were ninety-five inhabited islands and islets, including the far St. Kilda. In 1755 the total population amounted to about fiftytwo thousand. In the short space of forty years they added to their numbers no less than twenty-three thousand two hundred and sixty-six, or not very far short of fifty | which burst upon Europe from the teemper cent. The distribution of this in- ing East, - is it possible that they could crease was as remarkable as its amount. have been bred upon an agriculture so In some of the smaller islands, the popu- rude and incapable of resource? I have lation had nearly doubled. These were heard officers of our Indian government in all cases islands in which not even the declare that the Indian ryot has nothing produce of the potato could support the to learn from the science or practice of increase. In the larger islands it was the West-that he knows how to take likewise along the wildest and most bar- full advantage of the soil, climate, and ren shores that the people were multiply-products with which he has to deal. It ing most. They were multiplying on a does almost look as if the Celtic and other resource purely external — the trade in tribes who moved westwards had never kelp a trade which hung by a thread on been sufficiently settled to master the new highly protective duties and a fiscal sys- conditions under which they came to live. tem rotten to the core. This was an ag. Explain them as we may, the facts are gravating cause of a special and a local certain, as regards Scotland generally, kind. But there was another cause far and especially as regards the Highlands older in its origin, wider and deeper in its and islands, in proportion as these were effects, which at that time was not local, most remote from the new centres of but affected the whole of Scotland, in all peaceful industry. In a country where districts in which the rising tide of inno- there is a heavy rainfall, its inhabitants vation and improvement did not reach never thought of artificial drainage. In a and did not submerge it. This cause was country where the one great natural prodthe profound and almost unfathomable uct was grass of exceptional richness and ignorance and barbarism of the native of comparatively long endurance, they agriculture, together with a traditional never thought of saving a morsel of it in system of occupation, which, as it were, the form of hay. In a country where even enshrined and encased every ancestral the poorest cereal could only grow by stupidity in an impenetrable panoply of most careful attention to early sowing, inveterate customs. This language may they never sowed till a season which postsound harsh, or even unjust. And so it poned the harvest to a wet and stormy might be, if such language were not used autumn. In a country where such crops in the strictest sense, and with a due ap- required every bit of nourishment which plication of the lesson to ourselves. We the soil could afford to sustain them, they are all stupid in our various degrees, and were allowed to be choked with weeds, so each generation of men wonders at the that the weed crop was greatly heavier blindness and stupidity of those who have than the corn. In a country where such gone before them. Man only opens his straw as could be grown would have been owlish eyes by gradual winks and blinks invaluable for winter fodder or for many to the opportunities of nature, and to his other purposes, the whole of it was deown powers in relation to them. Let us stroyed by deliberate burning, because just think, for example, of the case of pre- they did not know how otherwise to sepserving grass in "silos". -a resource only arate the grain. In a country where, condiscovered, or at least recognized, within sequently, the main subsistence of the the last few years, yet a resource which people was in cattle, they had no winter supplies one essential want of agriculture provender for them, so that they died in in wet climates, at no greater cost of inge- hundreds every winter, and those that surnuity or of trouble than digging a hole in vived became more and more degenerate. the ground, covering the fresh-cut and In a country where by far the largest area wet material with sticks, and weighting it of the whole was mountain and moor, this with stones. immense extent of fine natural pasture was used only in bits and patches during six weeks or two months of the year, and for the rest of it was abandoned to the wolf, the eagle, and the fox. Such is a literal abstract, and an abstract only, of the almost incredible barbarisms of the native agriculture. There is, however, something almost mysterious in the helpless ignorance of Scottish rural customs up to the middle of the last century. We are tempted to ask, Was it a case of degradation? of develop ment in a wrong direction, of the human mind given up so wholly to wars, and feuds, and plunder, that the most ancient of all arts had been neglected and forgotten? Is it possible that in the far home of the Aryan race, and of the other races But the worst of all the native customs was that one custom which agglutinated all the others into one impenetrable mass the system of township holdings. This is the system of which the so-called when he could do nothing exceptional, "crofter "townships are nothing but a sur-nothing out of the established routine, vival. It was not a system peculiar to the nothing individual. It is impossible to Highlands or to the Hebrides. Croft is not say anything worse of any system. For, a Celtic but rather an English word. Town- everything that "makes a man" is indiship holdings were universal in Britain vidual. Thrift is individual, ingenuity is during the Middle Ages, and not there individual, thoughtfulness is individual, only, but over a large part of Europe. It the open eye, the receptive mind - all was almost a necessity arising out of the these are individual, and without individconditions of society under the barbar-ual freedom to act on individual gifts, ism of universal predatory violence. Men everybody is kept down to one level, and could only live with even tolerable se- that the level of the stupidest. Nobody curity when they lived in communities. could rise out of the ruts of custom. The Excellent and even necessary for the township stood "four square to all the purposes of defence, it was fatal to the winds that blow," in every direction from entrance and beginnings of agricultural which a single breath of intelligence could improvement. Village communities, living approach, or find admittance. Hence it in communal customs, have now a flavor is that the breaking up of the township of sentiment and poetry about them to communities into separate farms or holdus, most of whom have forgotten what ings was the initial step in the agricultural they really were. It is a pure delusion to improvement and the moral civilization suppose that they represent our modern not of Scotland only, but of England also. interest in small farms, or in allotments. How late this change came is curiously Small farms may be excellent things, and forgotten now. I have found even highly so they certainly are excellent in many educated and distinguished men procases. Allotments also may be excellent foundly ignorant of the very recent ecothings, and so they, too, are excellent un-nomic history of their own country and der suitable conditions. Club-farms may even of their own estates. succeed, too, although they are still in an experimental stage. But township farms are not like any one of these. They may be truly defined as farms held in a muddle, and cultivated higgledy piggledy. The It is curious that two such men who have been prominent under the influence of sentiment, or of politics, or of diplomacy, in recommending to Parliament measures for arresting that great step in Another common delusion is that they the progress of agriculture which consists represented some peculiar and indepen- in the gradual dissolution of the township dent tenure. But tenure has nothing to system, are both of them men who are do with the matter. Township farms may themselves in the possession and enjoy. be, and have been, held under any and all ment of estates from which every single kinds of tenure. They may be held in a township has been swept away. sort of customary copyhold. They may chairman of the Crofter (or Highland be held under long leases. In the High Township) Commission lives in that fine lands they had no tenure at all, except pastoral district of the southern Highthat of tenants at will under the leasehold-lands which has been far more "cleared ers of large farms. What they paid was than any portion of the northern Highlands no fixed rent, but as much in dues and or the islands. Suspecting the probability services as could be extracted from them. of some similar results, I had the curiosity The statutes of Iona establish this in a to consult lately an excellent county hisstriking manner. The township system tory of Northumberland. I found that essentially consists, not in any particular Sir George Trevelyan is the happy owner tenure, but in the use to which the tenure, of a large estate-some eighteen thouwhatever it may be, is put. It is a habit sand acres - which has swallowed up, I of life, and a mode of occupation. The believe, not less than twelve old townevils of it were purely practical and eco-ships, and I should be much surprised to nomic. But these evils are enormous and learn that one single specimen remains of insuperable. There could be no advance the old "crofter" class of holding. In in agriculture when no one man could his speech on the Crofter Bill in the hold his patch of cornland for more than one or two seasons when even during those seasons it must remain undivided and unfenced from the other patches around him when he could not have his cattle separated from those of other men House of Commons, he seemed to try to make as moderate a use of popular delusions as was compatible with his case. But I think I recollect that he was eloquent to effusiveness on the cattle which he saw upon some Perthshire hills belong own country this change is now almost forgotten in the blaze and triumph of the new conditions. Yet it is everywhere very recent. In some districts it dates from the generation which was born after the union of the crowns. In many others it came, with a rush, on the immense development of industry after the union of the Parlia ments. ́ In yet a larger number it lasted for a hundred years longer, and was only effected in the beginning of the present century. In the old Hebridean area it survives to the present day, and is everywhere except under very special conditions of intelligent authority exerted by improving ownership-accompanied by chronic poverty, ignorance, idleness, desolating customs, and by periodical scarcity amounting almost to famine. ing to a happy township at its foot. I doubt whether a single communal beast could now be seen anywhere on the long skylines of Simonside, or on the nearer hills which fall down into the pleasant valley occupied by his own wide domain. The local historian is eloquent on the old village greens in that district which are deserted now, and on the touching remains of the old township or crofter communities, with their maypoles and archery meetings, which can still be traced on the banks and braes of the pleasant Wansbeck. And all this is no very old story. All over Northumberland the county is still divided into the old township areas; and until very lately, if not now, all local taxation was raised upon them. Far on in the last century the county was full of township holdings. I have good reason to believe that some of them held their Of this condition of things the Isle of place in the memory of living_men. I Lewis is the typical example. It simply doubt if one now survives. There, as represents, in our civilized and industrial elsewhere, the wealth and civilization and age, the barbarous ignorance and the improvement of the country have rested wasteful customs which made Scotland entirely on the substitution of individual the poorest country in the world some skill and knowledge and capital. It is the three centuries ago. It is a survival of same thing all over the lowlands of Scot- the unfittest caused by isolation, and by land. At dates so recent as to represent the inveteracy of old Celtic usages. The but yesterday in the national life, the only special condition affecting the people whole country round Edinburgh, Glasgow, of that island is one which imperatively and Greenock was crowded with crofters demands special and even exceptional - that is to say, with township holdings. industry to overcome the obstacles of Nor is this great economic change one which is confined to Britain. In Russia the "mir" is breaking up. In the Balkan Peninsula, among all its races, the simple village communities are in course of dissolution. Railways do it; steamboats do it; banks do it; new markets do it; above all, new aspirations do it. It begins with the family, in which patriarchal power breaks down. The girls want finer dresses, more costly ornaments. The boys want higher wages, and an earlier home than the village can afford. And so the subjects of the "Great White Czar" and the tenants on Bishop Strossmeyer's episcopal domain are equally affected by common causes.† Even in India, in the "unchanging East," Sir W. Hunter tells us that each civilizing act of the central government is a powerful solvent on the old village communities. It does for them something which of old they could only do by patriarchal combinations. In our nature. The whole of the outer Hebrides are mainly composed of the oldest, the hardest, the most obdurate rock existing in the world. It is the same rock which occupies a great area in Canada on the northern banks of the St. Lawrence. The soil which gathers on it is generally poor; but in the Lewis it is both very poor, and even what is comparatively good is often inaccessible. In its hollows stagnant waters have slowly given growth to a vegetation of mosses, reeds, and stunted willows. Gradually these have formed great masses and sheets of peat. Only along the margins of the sea, where calcareous and siliceous sands have mixed with local deposits of clay, are there any areas of soil which even skill and industry can make arable with success. The whole interior of the island is one vast sheet of black and dreary bog. So early as the twelfth century we hear of it as having been assigned by a Norse king to an inconvenient brother, whose absence, and, perhaps, whose starvation, was desirable. It seems to have been a short experiment. For a time he lived, we are told, "in great poverty," and then the poor banished viking Olave fled in despair and explained that the island could afford no living. In plus. Yes! if the hands will work, and the devastating ages of the clans the pop- if the brain is active, and if knowledge ulation was more than decimated by the exists, and if industry and capital and feuds and wars between the MacKenzies enterprise have materials to work upon and the MacLeods. Ever since, its re- and markets to work for. But none of moteness has walled it off from every these "ifs "are fulfilled in Lewis. Trenchrising tide which elsewhere gradually ing, draining, and fencing, so needful brought improvement. In vain in recent everywhere, and specially needful here, years did a great capitalist spend and sink are operations either wholly unknown or his thousands on its unreclaimable mo- rendered all but useless by the slovenly rasses. Yet this is the area on which the manner in which they are performed. natives have been multiplying at a rate The ancient township customs lie heavy which exceeds the rate of many thriving on every spirit. The question uppermost towns. At the beginning of this century in every Lewis crofter's mind is, Why the population was 9,168. By the last should he do differently from his fathers census of 1881 it was 25,487, an increase and his neighbors? There is no selection of one hundred and seventy-eight per cent. in the breeding of cattle. They are overAnd this increase rested entirely on one crowded in numbers, bred "in and in,” source which is extraneous and precari- and exposed to the feeding competition ous. It rested on fishing, and latterly on of a crowd of wretched horses, as useless a particular system of fishing which de- as they are numerous. Then the arable pended wholly on the enterprise and cap- land is managed with equal or even with ital of other men. The people were hired greater ignorance. The seed is not seto man and to work boats at the herring lected or, if selected at all, seems to be fishery of the east coast. It would be selected only on the old Hebridean idea, unjust not to recognize the fact that this that the worst seed is good enough to is an industry involving, very often, al- sow. There is a kind of insane plausibilthough for a short time, really hard work ity about this idea which we fail to appreand much exposure. The same may be ciate in these Darwinian days. If a seed said of the old local industry of the man- is good enough to germinate at all, what ufacture of kelp. For a short time in the more can we ask of it to do? Why waste year that work was also hard, in cutting the fat plump seeds, rich in meal, which and collecting seaweed from the rocks, are evidently meant for human consump and dragging it to the shore. Activity by tion, when the thin, lean, lanky grains will fits and starts-short seasons of exertion germinate quite as well? If the tradiwith long intervals of idleness and repose tional Lewisian reasons at all, this is -such are the hereditary conditions nat- probably the reasoning which he would ural to a people descended from a mixture express. The ministers and other edu of the Norsemen and the Celt. But never, cated men remonstrate in vain. "It is even for a moment, has there been one really wild oats that they sow in some step taken towards an improved cultiva- places," says the Free Church minister of tion of the soil. On the contrary, the Stornoway, in accents of despair. But continuous development of ruinous cus- then, by way of compensation, they pour toms has brought the continuous evolution in the wretched seed in such quantities of decline. The evidence given lately that the "struggle for existence " reduces before the Crofter Commission is almost the whole of it to increasing feebleness. unbelievable. Yet all the most striking" They sow corn as if they were feeding facts are related and emphasized by the independent testimony of the local clergy both of the Established and Free Church es. As usual, great ignorance and great poverty are accompanied with exceptional improvidence. A youth is scarcely twenty when it behoves him to take a wife. There being no other means of subsistence, the father or father-in-law lets the young couple occupy a bit of his own holding, and a few stones covered with turf constitute a new home. Some people say that over-population is impossible, because with every mouth born there are born also two hands to feed it, and to afford a sur hens, and plant potatoes as if they were dibbling beans." They think the more they put in the more they will take out. In short, we have here a survival of the wretched husbandry of the lowest period of the military ages staring at us in the fierce light of our own scientific and industrial times. And it must be confessed that there are some men who return the stare with a stupefaction almost as phenomenal. They suggest that the State is to undertake the duty of renovating this little world of ancient chaos. The State Crofter Report, 1884. App. A, p. 188. |