The Inwardness and Solution of the Scotch "Crofter" Question [pp. 283-288]

286 The Inwardness and Solution of the Scotch " Crofter" Question. [March,
however, live on mere scenery, assuage the
pangs of hunger on startling effects of light
and shade, or clip their winter's clothing
from the skirt of a mountain's mantle of
mist.
Is it possible to devise a better system of
land laws, such as would give the crofters of
Skye some little chance of becoming even as
independent as the general run of their compatriots in the east and south? I think not;
nor could more liberal landlords improve
their lot, unless, indeed, by subsidizing them
(which is, in other words, supporting them in
idleness) each year, as the American Government does its Indian "wards." I hope
to adduce such reasons for this my belief, as
shall satisfy the reader of its being well
founded, and, indeed, absolutely true.
Henry George makes the remark-a somewhat startling one,' I should think, to some
of the would-be land law reformers - that
neither in Ireland nor in Scotland, nor indeed, anywhere on the continent of Europe,
are the land laws so favorable to the landlord and so unjust to the tenant as they are
in America. He might have added, without
fear of contradiction, that the laws regulating
the letting of land are easier for the tenant
in Ireland than they are in Scotland. When,
in addition to this, it is considered that nowhere in the whole of Ireland, except, perhaps, in the very heart of her comparatively
few mountainous districts, are there such utterly sterile tracts as are found throughout
the west Highlands of Scotland; yet, until
lately there has been no discontent-at least
of the clamant, riotous description-in the
latter country, though the people there are
of the same blood as the malcontent Irish.
The reason is obvious. The spirit of the
race has been broken; not so much-indeed,
hardly at all-by oppression from the landlord, but by the hopeless struggle with an
unkindly soil, the dampening effects of a
weeping climate, and the almost utter absence of means of realizing what opportunities to better their position the outside world
offers. The Highland land-owners have not
been, as a rule, oppressors. Doubtless there
have been exceptional cases where a spend
thrift young laird made an effort to squeeze
out of his tenantry the means of ministering
to his dissipated tastes, and found willing instruments of his extortion in such men as that
wretch of a Skye (or Lews) factor, whose brutality struck the keynote of the present discord in that island. But I am glad to be
able, from personal and extensive experience,
to say that, as a general thing, the "lairds"
in the Highlands have met their tenants' demands in a fair and upright spirit, and the
result has been that comparatively unbroken
peace has reigned on their estates, a moderate
prosperity (where existence was at all possible) rewarding the work of the farmers.
But in Skye the state of the case was different. The best farmer in the world could
not raise a crop worthy of the name-and
still less a remunerative one-on the soil
and under the climatic conditions of Skye.
The attempt to do so on the part of the
miserable tenantry was simply a case of flying in the face of Providence; and nothing
could possibly excuse that attempt but the
gross ignorance of the crofters, and their
hopeless indifference to their own interests.
From the conditions of their life they necessarily give way to a gloomy despair, which
causes all the men to degenerate into a lot
of "constitutionally tired" loungers, and
makes all the women early victims of hypochondria, tinged with religious melancholia.
This is no exaggerated statement, but the
simple truth.
How could it be otherwise? In i871 the
writer had occasion to visit an outlying portion of the estates of Sir Kenneth MacKenzie, of Gairloch, in Ross-shire. I see no
reason why I should not give the name of
the particular place, especially as Sir Kenneth is the most generous, the most kindly,
and the most heartily "Highland" in feeling, manners, and policy, of all the landlords
of that country whom it has been my fortune
to meet. The place is known as Melvaig.
At this distance of time I cannot venture on
more than the merest guess at the number
of households that stood on the slope of that
bare hill by the stormy Minch, but I should
say there were at least forty. In each one