Skip to main content

Full text of "Scotland as it was and as it is"

See other formats 


SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 


SCOTLAND 


AS  IT  'WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS 


BY  THE 


DUKE     OF     ARGYLL 
[  (biff*  T?ov<(/9  I     Cam  pb*  1  1      , 

SECOND  EDITION 


T>u  fee? 


EDINBUEGH:    DAVID    DOUGLAS 

MDCCCLXXXVII 


reserved.] 


AT3 


i 


PREFACE. 

HISTORY  has  now  taken  its  place  among  the 
Sciences  which  must  be  studied  on  the  principle, 
and  according  to  the  methods,  of  the  Division  of 
Labour.  Its  larger  outlines  have  indeed  been  traced 
already,  and  some  of  them,  at  least,  by  master 
hands.  But  our  growing  knowledge  has  raised  a 
growing  sense  of  the  volume  that  we  have  yet  to 
learn.  The  problems  of  human  life  are  felt  to  be 
infinitely  complex,  and  the  facts  which  throw  real 
light  upon  them,  are  seen  to  be  of  a  corresponding 
character.  No  one  mind  can  recognise,  or  record, 
or  classify,  more  than  a  fraction  of  them.  Mere  out- 
lines, even  when  not  positively  misleading,  are  at 
the  least  wholly  insufficient.  It  is  the  work  of  our 
time  to  fill  up  such  outlines  by  the  careful  study  of 
particular  epochs, — of  some  particular  class  of  facts, 
— or  of  some  special  chain  of  causes.  The  field  is 
a  wide  one,  and  the  harvest  is  immense.  Many 
who  have  neither  the  leisure,  nor  the  learning,  to 
take  up  the  task  of  the  general  Historian,  may 
have  excellent  opportunities  of  knowing  thoroughly 
doings  and  transactions  which  have  a  deep  root 
and  a  wide  significance.  With  no  other  qualification 


VI  PREFACE. 

than  an  eye  habituated  to  the  perception  of  certain 
truths,  such  writers  may  render  invaluable  service. 
And  if  their  own  business  or  calling  has  been  of  a 
kind  which  is  connected  with  the  earliest  times, 
and  with  the  oldest  elements  in  human  civilisation, 
any  careful  analysis  of  that  business,  as  it  has  been 
conducted  in  the  past,  and  as  it  exists  at  the 
present  time,  cannot  fail  to  be,  at  least,  a  useful 
contribution  to  the  vast — the  yet  unaccomplished 
— work  of  History. 

In  the  following  pages  I  have  desired  to  offer 
such  a  contribution — and  nothing  more.  They 
deal  with  one  great  group  of  causes  in  our  national 
progress,  and  they  deal  with  that  group  alone. 
Other  causes  are  either  not  touched  at  all,  or  they 
are  alluded  to  only  by  the  way.  Nothing,  for  ex- 
ample, has  been  more  peculiar  in  Scotland  than  the 
direction  which  the  Reformation  took.  Few  causes 
have  affected  so  powerfully  the  national  character 
ever  since  1560.  But  except  as  connected  with 
the  Civil  Wars,  and  some  consequent  movements 
of  the  population,  I  have  left  it  out  of  the  account.1 
In  like  manner  the  immense  influences  of  Literature 
and  Science  are  passed  by,  except  in  so  far  as  both 
are  connected  with  the  progress  of  the  Arts,  and 
of  Mechanical  Invention.  Nevertheless,  the  special 
current  of  events,  and  the  special  group  of  causes 

1  Thirty  years    ago    I   dealt   with   this   subject   in  another   work, 

Presbytery  Examined, 


PREFACE.  vii 

which  have  been  followed  here,  are,  beyond  all  ques- 
tion, among  the  deepest  and  most  powerful  in  the 
History  of  Civilisation.  They  concern  the  amalga- 
mation of  Races,  the  consolidation  of  a  National 
Government,  the  beginnings  of  Law,  the  rise  of 
Industries,  the  origin,  the  growth,  and  the  working 
of  these  accepted  doctrines  of  Society  which  con- 
secrate and  establish  the  respective  rights,  and  the 
mutual  obligations,  of  Men. 

I  need  not  apologise  for  the  use  I  have  made  of 
Family  Papers.  The  value  of  such  documents  has 
long  been  universally  recognised  as  among  the  best 
materials  of  History.  Several  Literary  Clubs  did 
much,  in  the  earlier  part  of  this  century,  to  render 
them  more  accessible.  Increasing  interest  is  every- 
where being  taken  in  them.  The  sumptuous 
volumes  of  Family  History  published  under  the  care, 
and  edited  with  all  the  learning,  of  Sir  William 
Fraser,  K.C.B.,  LL.D.,  Deputy-Keeper  of  the 
Records  of  Scotland,  are  a  mine  of  information  on  the 
habits  and  manners  of  the  Military  Ages.  Yet,  un- 
fortunately, few  families  have  taken  care  to  preserve 
documents  giving  any  details  of  Estate  manage- 
ment. The  Black  Boole  of  Taymouih — often  referred 
to  in  the  following  pages — has  a  special  value  in  this 
point  of  view.  For  the  most  part,  each  generation 
worked,  in  these  matters,  unconsciously  —  not 
knowing,  or  even  dreaming  that  in  the  ordinary 
administration  of  Property,  they  were  making 


Vlll  PREFACE. 

History,  in  one  of  the  most  important  of  its 
branches.  It  so  happens  that  documents  of  this 
kind,  relating  to  critical  epochs,  have  been  pre- 
served in  unusual  abundance  by  some  of  my  pre- 
decessors. Yet  one  of  the  most  interesting  of 
these — the  Report  of  Duncan  Forbes  of  Culloden 
in  1737 — was  very  nearly  lost.  It  was  found 
among  the  papers  of  Lady  Mary  Coke,  youngest 
daughter  of  John  (second)  Duke  of  Argyll  and 
Greenwich,  and  was  returned  to  me  by  the  kind- 
ness of  the  present  Earl  of  Home,  into  whose  posses- 
sion it  had  passed.  Old  Leases  seem  everywhere 
to  have  been  very  generally  destroyed.  Yet  it  is 
needless  to  say  that  they  are  very  important  docu- 
ments, not  only  in  the  History  of  Tenures,  but  also 
in  tracing  the  advancing  practices  of  Husbandry. 
Of  these  I  am  fortunate  in  having  a  tolerably 
complete  series  from  the  beginning  of  the  Eigh- 
teenth Century,  as  well  as  whole  Volumes  of 
Instructions  in  all  the  details  of  administering 
Estates  much  larger  than  those  which  I  now  pos- 
sess, issued  by  my  grandfather,  John,  fifth  Duke 
of  Argyll,  during  the  most  critical  epoch  of  Agri- 
culture in  Scotland,  from  1770  to  1806.  He  was 
one  of  the  great  Improvers  of  his  time ;  and  I 
have  had  the  further  advantage  of  the  large  collec- 
tion which  he  has  left  of  Books  and  Pamphlets  on 
all  branches  of  Rural  Economy.  My  only  difficulty 
has  been  to  limit  within  any  reasonable  compass 


PREFACE.  ix 

the  superabundant  evidence  which  all  these  sources 
of  information  afford  in  illustration  of  the  narrative 
I  have  presented  of  a  memorable  History. 

The  Woodcuts  in  this  Work  have  been  taken 
from  drawings  of  my  own  which  pretend  to  no 
artistic  merit,  but  which,  from  having  been  made 
chiefly  for  geological  purposes,  are  scrupulously 
accurate  as  regards  the  outlines,  surfaces,  and  struc- 
ture, of  the  mountains.  In  such  scenes  as  those 
connected  with  the  view  of,  and  from,  lona,  I  have 
always  felt  it  a  great  pleasure  to  remember  that 
although  all  superficial  objects,  such  as  buildings, 
trees,  etc.,  are  of  comparatively  recent  date,  yet 
the  aspect  of  the  Hills  is  almost  unchanged,  and 
the  contours  of  Sea  and  Land  are  exactly  as  they 
were  when  the  great  Missionary  of  the  early  Celtic 
Church  landed  on  our  shores  in  the  Sixth  Century. 
In  like  manner  the  scene  of  Robert  Bruce's  en- 
counter with  the  Macdougals,  Lords  of  Lome,  at  the 
foot  of  Ben  Cruachan,  is  in  all  probability  almost 
exactly  what  it  was  at  that  time.  The  drawings 
of  the  Mountains  of  Soulvein,  and  of  Queenaig,  in 
Sutherland,  exhibit  some  of  the  most  remarkable 
hill-forms  in  Scotland.  These  mountains  are  also  of 
great  interest  in  Geology,  consisting  almost  entirely 
of  the  red  "  Cambrian  Sandstone,"  out  of  which  their 
precipitous  outlines  have  been  cut  or  broken,  by 
some  series  of  movements,  and  of  other  operations, 
which  Science  has  much  difficulty  in  explaining. 


x  PREFACE. 

The  lower  hills  and  rocks  from  which  these  curious 
mountains  rise,  are  all  of  a  totally  different  material, 
and  of  a  much  earlier  period  in  time.  I  may  add 
that  in  the  view  of  Queenaig,  the  summit  at  the 
right-hand  extremity  of  the  Range,  is  the  same 
summit  which  is  depicted,  from  a  different  point  of 
sight,  in  the  Frontispiece  of  the  later  editions  of 
Murchison's  celebrated  and  classical  Geological 
Work,  Siluria. 

The  view  on  page  484  represents  the  situation 
of  a  cottage  which  was  the  home  of  "Rob  Roy" 
during  many  years,  and  in  which  his  children  were 
born.  It  is  between  two  deep  ravines,  easily  de- 
fended. Very  lately  the  handle  of  his  "  Skian 
Dubh,"  or  stocking  knife,  was  found  imbedded  in 
the  turf,  near  the  walls.  It  is  made  of  a  sheep's 
horn,  and  bears,  roughly  cut  upon  it,  the  letters 
"  R.  MCG." 

ARGYLL. 
INVERARAY,  Jan.  1887. 


CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  I. 

CELTIC  FEUDALISM. 

mgings  after  primitive  conditions  of  Society — Delusions  as  to 
these — Life  always  a  battle — Labour  a  necessity  both  of  hand 
and  head — Inborn  inequalities  of  faculty — History  begins 
with  great  Personalities — Wars  for  the  possession  of  land — 
Possession  means  right  of  exclusive  use — Case  of  the  Jews — 
The  earliest  Land  Charter — Leadership  consolidated  by  the 
necessities  of  military  subordination — Becomes  hereditary — 
Feudal  System  not  artificial,  but  an  expression  of  fact — All 
possession  dependent  upon  power — Men  could  only  hold  under 
those  who  were  able  to  defend  them — Good  and  bad  develop- 
ment of  Leadership  and  Chiefery — Celtic  development  the 
worst — Prehistoric  races  reduced  to  servitude — Celts  them- 
selves specially  subservient  to  chiefs — Bondage  more  heredi- 
tary than  freedom — Tribal  stage  in  the  Highlands  prehistoric 
— Tribe  not  to  be  confounded  with  the  Clan — Chiefs  recruit 
"  broken  men  " — Clans  formed  of  them — Development  of  this 
system  in  Ireland — Chiefs  become  more  and  more  powerful 
and  arbitrary — Teutonic  feudalism  takes  higher  course — 
Defined  Rights  develop  into  Law — Miseries  of  Ireland  due 
to  native  customs  and  to  limitation  of  higher  feudalism  within 
the  Pale — Desire  of  the  Irish  to  enjoy  its  benefits — Causes 
of  their  exclusion — Evidence  of  Sir  John  Davis — Arbitrary 
and  oppressive  services  exacted  by  Celtic  customs — Similar 
development  of  Celtic  customs  in  Scotland — Feeble  influence 
of  the  early  Celtic  Church  on  civilisation — Higher  develop- 
ment in  Scotland  from  earlier  and  closer,  and  more  universal 
contact  with  Teutonic  Feudalism — No  "Pale"  ever  existed 
in  Scotland — Powerful  influence  in  the  same  direction  of  the 
Latin  Church — Ecclesiastical  grants  of  land  invariably  give 
special  exemption  from  Celtic  customs — Rapid  spread  in  Scot- 
land of  Teutonic  Feudalism — No  mystery  in  this — Due  to 
its  obvious  superiority  and  to  the  spread  of  the  Teutonic 
race  —  Ets  adaptation  to  pre-existing  and  purely  native  condi- 
tions— Complete  invasion  of  the  Highlands  by  Saxons  and 


xii  CONTENTS. 


Anglo-Normans — Fusion  of  races  and  assimilation  of  institu- 
tions— Influence  of  the  Norsemen  and  of  continual  wars 
in  breaking  up  the  ancient  tribes — Somerled  himself  of  Celtic 
blood — Norman  knights  become  Highland  Chiefs — Story  of 
the  Tournament  near  Haddington — Norman  origin  of  Scottish 
names — Mixture  of  Celtic  names — Instances  of  Cambel  and 
Cameron — Union  of  the  races  under  one  Monarchy, 


CHAPTER  II. 

THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS. 

Continuity  between  things  new  and  old  in  the  Feudal  System 
shown  in  the  earliest  extant  Land  Charters — Their  commence- 
ment in  Scotland — Their  brevity  a  consequence  of  their  being 
only  a  new  form  of  acknowledgment  for  ancient  and  familiar 
rights — Express  references  in  the  earliest  charters  to  previous 
possession — Examples — Their  object  was,  first,  simply  to  record, 
and,  secondly,  to  define — Held  by  all  ranks  and  orders  as  the 
only  guarantee  of  peaceful  ownership — Tended  to  the  abolition 
of  the  old  lawless  exactions  of  Celtic  Feudalism — Their  advance 
in  definite  ideas  and  expressions — Their  more  and  more  com- 
plete enumeration  of  the  rights  of  ownership  as  universally 
understood — Methods  of  using  land  not  to  be  confounded  with 
conditions  of  tenure — Common  use  subordinate  to  and  depend- 
ent on  individual  ownership  and  protection — Every  variety  of 
surface  within  area  of  estates  specifically  enumerated — Earliest 
Irish  Charters  exhibit  beginnings  of  the  same  work  of  record 
and  definition — Evidence  in  Scotland  of  minute  attention  to 
all  recorded  rights — Curious  details — Noble  work  done  in  the 
13th  Century — Failure  of  the  Old  Dynasty — Disputed  succes- 
sion— Charters  abound  from  the  War  of  Independence — Disap- 
pearance of  Bondmen — Identity  of  Highland  and  Lowland 
Charters  from  the  Tweed  to  the  Thurso — One  predominant 
idea  in  all — The  Abolition  of  indefinite  and  Arbitrary  Customs, 
and  the  Substitution  of  regulated  and  recorded  rights — Curious 
example  in  respect  to  Military  Service  from  Book  of  Grant — 
Commutation  of  Military  services — Feudal  vassals  were  full 
owners — Judicial  interpretation  the  best  foundation  of  popular 
rights — Perfect  continuity  with  Feu-Charters  of  the  present 
day — The  age  of  Land  Charters  the  age  of  Municipal  Charters 
— Universality  of  the  principle  of  Protection  and  Monopoly 
in  them — No  similar  principle  applied  to  Land — Ownership 
open  to  all  classes — Contrast  in  this  with  German  Feudalism 
— The  Reforms  of  Stein — No  such  evils  had  ever  arisen  in 
Scotland — Firm  foundation  of  National  Progress  laid  in  the 
age  of  the  First  Charters — Co-operation  of  all  classes  in  the 


CONTENTS.  xiii 

PAGE 

War  of  Independence — Battle  of  Bannockburn — Later  battle 
of  By  land — Distinguished  part  taken  in  both  by  Celtic  Corps 
— Complete  union  of  races  in  common  military  service  of  a 
united  Monarchy, 36 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS. 

The  age  of  Charters  is  also  the  age  of  Leases — Helped  like  Charters 
to  relieve  the  poorer  classes  from  barbarous  conditions  not  only 
of  Feudalism  but  of  servitude — Influence  of  the  Church — Of 
written  documents  instead  of  unwritten  usages— Substitution 
of  Definiteness  for  Indefiniteness — Steelbow  holdings — Serfs, 
and  the  disappearance  of  them — Rentals  of  the  13th  and 
14th  Centuries — Privileges  of  Ecclesiastical  Estates — Written 
Leases  almost  as  old  as  the  earliest  Charters  — Applied  to 
every  kind  of  property — Evidence  of  definite  rentals  in  the 
13th  Century — Earliest  recorded  Lease  in  1242 — Duration  of 
Leases  regulated  by  Canons  of  Provincial  ecclesiastical  councils 
towards  middle  of  same  Century — In  the  14th  Century  written 
Leases  fully  developed — The  Scone  Lease  the  oldest  extant, 
dated  1312 — Analysis  of  it — Exhibits  all  the  essential  features 
of  free  contracts — Repayment  for  improvements  by  length  of 
tenure — No  notice  in  early  Leases  of  any  class  having  rights 
of  occupancy  independent  of  the  Owner  and  the  Leaseholder 
— Express  conditions  for  removal  of  all  sub-tenants  or  culti- 
vators at  termination  of  Lease — Common  grazings — In  what 
sense  common — Leases,  like  Charters,  rested  on  the  acknow- 
ledged rights  of  Ownership — Derived  through  the  Latin  Clergy 
from  the  Roman  Law — Roman  Leases  under  Republic  and 
Empire — Growth  of  Slavery  develops  the  evil  referred  to  by 
Pliny  under  the  name  of  ' '  Latif undia " — Blunder  of  con- 
founding this  word  with  Estates  held  by  free  Tenants — The 
Roman  abuse — In  absolute  contrast  with  the  growth  of  feudal 
Christendom — Leases  under  later  Empire — Influence  of  the 
Clergy — Brehon  Laws  on  Faith  of  Contract — Early  evidence 
in  Scotland  of  Tenants  removing — Special  Acts  of  Parlia- 
ment respecting  them  as  a  well-known  class  of  Tenants 
"passing  away  "from  one  district  to  another — Proportion  of 
Rent  to  Produce — First  Legislation  on  subject  of  Leases — Act 
of  1449 — Thorough  soundness  of  its  principle — Further  Acts 
of  1469  and  1555 — "Kindly  Tenancies"  a  separate  class — 
Curious  survival  of  them  to  this  day  at  Lochniaben  from  the 
days  of  King  Robert  the  Bruce — The  History  of  their  preserva- 
tion proves  care  of  Scotch  legal  courts  in  protection  of  all  rights, 
whether  written  or  customary,  when  duly  proven — Wadsets  an 


XIV  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

extreme  case  of  adherence  to  contract — Their  nature,  principle, 
and  operation — Their  extinction — Substitution  of  Leases — A 
system  of  definite  Covenants  for  definite  terms  of  years  tended 
directly  to  the  growth  of  National  prosperity  and  wealth — 
Both  law  and  public  sentiment  held  that  Covenants  deliberately 
made  must  be  upheld — Leases  and  Wadsets  as  common  in  the 
Highlands  as  in  the  Lowlands — Validity  of  rights  constituted 
by  Contract  never  shaken  except  when  and  where  interrupted 
by  anarchy  of  the  Clans,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .79 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   EPOCH   OF  THE   CLANS. 

Danger  to  Scottish  Civilisation  from  traitorous  Highland  Chiefs 
foreseen  by  Robert  the  Bruce — Greatness  of  his  personal 
qualities  and  of  his  aims — The  value  of  loyalty  depends  on 
such  qualities  in  those  to  whom  it  is  given — Fidelity  to  men 
with  no  such  qualities  or  aims  may  lead  to  barbarism — Fore- 
sight of  Bruce  in  his  Treaty  with  England  on  mutual  alliances 
with  Celtic  Chief ery  —  Its  tendency  to  revert  to  pure 
barbarism — Its  dangerous  charm — The  Normans  and  Anglo- 
Saxons  in  Ireland  corrupted  by  it — Same  effects  in  Celtic 
Highlands — Love  of  a  wild  life — Excitement  of  predatory 
habits  by  sea  and  land — Curious  example  of  degradation  in 
Wolf  of  Badenoch — Invasion  of  the  Lowlands  by  his  son 
in  1392— The  Celtic  fight  on  the  North  Inch  of  Perth- 
Possible  explanation — First  awaking  of  Scotland  to  Clans  as 
a  great  danger — Practically  absolute  power  of  the  Chiefs 
— Their  use  of  Charters  in  sustaining  their  authority — That 
authority  based  upon  the  tremendous  power  of  Celtic 
Feudalism — Their  attempt  during  three  centuries  to  undo 
Bruce's  great  work  of  amalgamation — Their  systematic  dis- 
loyalty to  the  Scottish  Monarchy  —  Their  Treaty  with 
Edward  iv.  of  England  for  subjection  of  a  portion  of  the  King- 
dom— Their  mutual  treachery — Examples  given — Act  of  1496 
passed  to  check  the  Clans — Further  Act  of  1502 — Aims  at 
removal  of  people  and  replantation  of  Country — Evidence  that 
this  operation  was  familiar  to  the  Clans  in  their  mutual  wars — 
Story  of  Huntly  and  the  Chief  of  Grant — Clansmen  recruited 
or  brought  in  by  Chiefs — Their  continued  intrigues  against  the 
Monarchy,  and  with  rebellious  Irish  against  Queen  Elizabeth — 
Chiefs  and  Clans  who  were  loyal  to  Monarchy  of  Bruce — Their 
contests  with  the  disloyal  Clans  —  Culture  and  savagery 
strangely  mixed — Character  of  "  Macsorlie  "—Defeated  Chiefs 
agree  to  remove  all  their  people  from  certain  Districts — 
Devastation  of  the  Country,  and  abject  condition  of  the 


CONTENTS.  XV 

PAGE 

people — Attempts  of  James  i.  to  civilise  the  Western  High- 
lands and  Islands — Statutes  of  lona  form  an  epoch — Their 
nature  and  significance — Distinction  and  difference  between 
Chiefs  and  Owners — Two  great  sources  of  power — Ownership 
identified  with  interests  of  progress  and  civilisation — The 
Parliament  of  1587  denounces  Chiefery — Great  historical 
importance  of  this  Act — Its  list  of  Clans  and  Chiefs  embraces 
equally  the  Border  Highlands  and  the  Celtic  Highlands — 
Clan  system  identical  in  both — Gradual  mergence  of  Chiefery 
in  Ownership  due  to  same  causes,  though  at  different  dates — 
High  value  of  this  combination  as  an  agency  of  improve- 
ment— Clan  organisation  never  had  any  existence  recognised 
by  law — Decision  of  Court  of  Session  in  1852 — Gallantry  of 
the  Jacobite  Clans  equalled  by  that  of  the  Clans  loyal  to  the 
cause  of  Constitutional  Law,  and  of  the  Old  Monarchy,  .  139 


CHAPTER  V. 

THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO   OWNERS. 

The  appeal  to  the  power  of  Ownership  made  by  the  Parliament  of 
1578  in  strict  accordance  with  the  historical  development  of 
Scotland  from  dawn  of  the  civilisation — That  power  was  in- 
voked both  for  the  establishment  of  Law,  and  for  agricultural 
improvement — Tenants  bound  by  Covenants  of  Lease  to  take 
their  part  in  both — Act  of  1449 — Later  Act  of  1454  passed  for 
the  encouragement  of  Enclosures — Form  of  words  used  to 
express  directions  to  Tenants,  "Statutes  and  ordains" — Ex- 
planation— Baronial  Courts — These  indispensable  in  the  High- 
lands— A  thoroughly  popular  institution— Obligation  of  Tenants 
to  serve  upon  them — Forms  of  enactment — Illustration  of  its 
working  from  the  Glenurchy  Estate — Long  period  embraced  in 
records  of  Black  Book  of  Taymouth — Great  historical  import- 
ance of  them — Habits  of  cultivation — Pasturage  of  summer 
shealings— Immense  areas  of  mountain  useless — Prevalent 
ignorance  on  this  subject — Poverty  of  breeds  of  sheep — Deer 
Forests  highly  valued — Tenants  bound  to  preserve  them — 
Leases  granted  on  this  condition — Admission  of  strangers  into 
lands  proves  freedom  in  disposal  of  them — Removal  of  Tenants 
— Conditions  of  admission — Bonds  of  manrent — Meaning  of 
Clansmen  "  electing  "  a  Chief — Criminal  jurisdiction — Clan 
Feuds — The  Clan  Gregour — Murder  of  Drummond  of  Drum- 
monderocht — The  chartered  rights  of  Ownership  could  alone 
mitigate  the  evils  developed  under  the  lawless  powers  of  Celtic 
Chiefs,  and  the  only  means  of  introducing  with  authority  agri- 
cultural improvements — Important  change  worked  by  removals 
of  population  and  by  replantations — Illustrated  in  the  History 


xvi  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

of  the  Kintyre  Settlement — Peculiar  Geographical  position  and 
history  of  Kintyre — The  Macdonalds  leave  it  ravaged  and 
largely  waste — Marquis  of  Argyll  invites  the  persecuted  Pres- 
byterians of  Ayrshire — Settlement  of  Covenanters  on  his 
lands — Mixture  of  these  with  Highland  families  remaining — 
Farms  let  on  lease,  definite  conditions  supplanting  the  old 
Celtic  services— Rapid  progress — Covenanting  Families  survive 
as  Tenants  to  present  day — An  example,  and  an  anecdote — 
Last  exhibition  of  Celtic  Feudalism  in  war  upon  the  Lowlands 
— Resistance  of  chartered  Ownership  to  the  arbitrary  measures 
of  the  Government  of  Charles  n. — Dispersion  of  the  Highland 
Host,  and  extinction  of  Celtic  Feudalism — Conversion  and 
elevation  of  fighting  Clansmen  into  farming  Tenants — The  new 
conditions  of  Leases  granted  in  Kintyre — Careful  definition  of 
these — Special  covenants  of  removal  and  surrender— In  strict 
accordance  with  terms  of  Scone  Lease — Showing  continuity  of 
nearly  400  years — Relations  between  Leaseholders  and  their 
Subtenants  were  the  last  survival  of  Celtic  Feudalism — These 
remain  to  be  considered,  .  .  .  .  .  .  .186 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP. 

Last  Jacobite  Rebellion  of  1745  marks  no  epoch  in  Highland  Land 
Tenure — Popular  error  on  the  subject — Sources  of  delusion  on 
this  point — Permanent  causes  of  improvement  at  work  for 
centuries  before — Change  from  indefinite  services  to  definite 
rents  dates  from  foundation  of  Monarchy — Union  of  Crowns 
in  1603,  and  Statutes  of  lona  in  1609,  much  more  of  an  epoch 
— Gradual  decay  of  Military  Feudalism — Illustrations  of  the 
continuity  of  Scottish  History  in  the  intervals  between  the 
Union  of  the  Crowns  and  Jacobite  risings  of  '15  and  '45 — The 
Earl  of  Argyll's  rebellion — The  Massacre  of  Glencoe — Its  true 
significance,  and  of  the  horror  it  excited — Authentic  informa- 
tion on  condition  of  Hebridean  Estates  of  Argyll  family  during 
that  interval — Report  by  Sheriff  Campbell  of  Stonefield  in  1732 
— His  Account  of  the  condition  of  the  Subtenants  under  Lease- 
holders— Their  complete  dependence — The  Sheriff's  advice  for 
their  improvement — Their  wretched  husbandry — Evidence  of 
its  decline  since  the  8th  century — Leases  granted  to  Sub- 
tenants— Tacksmen  obliged  to  agree  to  entirely  new  condi- 
tions— Removals  and  replantations  of  people  both  for  political 
and  economic  reasons — Power  of  Ownership  the  only  engine 
for  reclaiming  country  from  anarchy  of  clans,  and  for  redeeming 
the  poorer  classes  from  the  oppression  of  Celtic  feudalism,  and 
from  their  own  ignorant  and  barbarous  usages — Under  protec- 


CONTENTS.  xvii 

PAGE 

tion  of  Leases  Subtenants  freely  offered  rent — Rents  expressly 
determined  so  early  as  1732  by  competition  as  the  only  means 
of  determining  value — This  test  not  taken  from  any  theory 
but  from  necessity — The  mission  of  President  Duncan  Forbes 
of  Culloden  to  the  Islands  in  1737 — His  great  character  and 
authority — His  remarkable  account  and  conduct — His  evidence 
of  absolute  subjection  of  sub-tenants  under  "Tacksmen" — 
Oppression  exercised  by  them  the  genuine  survival  of  Celtic 
Feudalism — How  Culloden  dealt  with  them — Clause  in  New 
Leases  abolishing  old  Celtic  services — Sir  J.  Sinclair's  account 
of  the  nature  of  these  all  over  the  Highlands — Every  step  in 
path  of  progress  taken  by  and  due  to  the  power  of  Owners — 
Persistent  opposition  by  all  classes  from  ignorance  and  preju- 
dice— Culloden's  account  of  their  husbandry  in  Tyree — Right 
of  free  disposal  of  all  land  within  Estate  universally  assumed 
—  The  only  possible  instrument  of  improvement — Subtenants 
relieved  by  Leases  from  the  oppression  of  the  Tacksmen — 
Celtic  Feudalism  in  principle  was  dead  before  the  Rebellion  of 
'45 — Consternation  caused  by  Jacobite  victories — Its  results 
on  legislation — Abolition  of  the  Heritable  Jurisdictions  after 
that  Rebellion — Historical  mistake  of  their  power  being  con- 
founded with  the  power  of  Clanship — Abolition  of  Casualties — 
Abolition  by  law  of  all  undefined  Services — Settlement  of 
substitute  for  these  left  free  to  definite  contract — This  reform 
due  to  President  Forbes  of  Culloden — Abolition  of  Heritable 
Jurisdictions  not  opposed  by  Scotch  Peers,  but  only  by 
English, .  .  .  235 


CHAPTER  VII. 

BEFORE    THE    DAWN. 

Identity  of  Clan  system  in  the  Border  Counties  and  in  the  Celtic 
Highlands — The  same  destructive  effects  on  industry — Denun- 
ciation of  it  as  the  same  in  Act  of  1587 — Testimony  of  Sir 
Walter  Scott — Effect  of  Union  of  Crowns  in  effacing  the 
Borders — Emigration  of  the  Clansmen — Immediate  rise  of 
agricultural  improvement — Care  of  the  "Marches"  merged 
in  care  of  Estates — No  barrier  in  the  Borders  arising  from 
differences  of  race  or  language — The  exodus  of  the  old  fighting 
Clans  and  the  opening  of  channels  of  peaceful  industry  that 
helped  in  the  extinction  of  Border  Clanship  wanting  in  the 
Highlands — Antipathies  of  race  and  difference  of  language 
helped  to  make  the  Highlanders  lead  a  life  of  plunder  for  a 
century  and  a  half  after  the  Union  of  the  Crowns — Increasing 
poverty  as  each  Clan  multiplied  beyond  the  means  of  subsist- 
ence— General  poverty  of  the  Country  even  in  Lowlands — En- 


xviii  CONTENTS. 

PAGE 

couragement  of  imports— Sumptuary  Laws — Special  pressure  of 
population  on  means  of  subsistence  in  the  Highlands — Account 
given  by  Sir  Walter  Scott — Outlet  found  at  last  in  lawful  mili- 
tary service — Earl  of  Chatham  not  the  first  to  enlist  High- 
landers in  regular  Army — nor  the  first  to  employ  them  in 
foreign  wars — This  system  begun  by  two  Statesmen,  both 
Highlanders — Highlanders  in  this  way  made  acquainted  with 
other  countries  and  pursuits,  and  with  higher  standards  of 
living — Operation  of  these  external  influences  rendered  still 
more  powerful  in  consequence  of  the  overcrowding  produced 
at  home  by  the  diminished  death-rate  that  followed  on  the 
practice  of  Inoculation,  by  the  introduction  of  the  Potato,  and 
by  the  manufacture  of  Kelp — Account  and  dates  of  each  of 
these  great  causes  of  change — Immense  increase  of  popula- 
tion between  1755  and  the  close  of  the  century — Popular 
ignorance  of  this  fact — Authorities  and  figures — Extreme 
poverty  that  followed  this  rapid  increase  of  population — 
Frequent  famines  dating  from  still  earlier  years  —  These 
facts  reveal  a  principle  and  a  law — Conditions  of  progress 
and  of  retrogression — Inveterateness  of  traditional  customs 
—  Extraordinary  ignorance  and  prejudices  of  Highland 
population  —  Their  barbarous  agricultural  usages — Increas- 
ing deficit  of  food  for  support  of  population — Relieved  by 
Emigration — This  movement  purely  spontaneous  and  instinc- 
tive— A  mistake  to  suppose  that  Emigration  was  promoted 
or  approved  of  by  the  Landowners,  or  that  they  compre- 
hended its  meaning  or  cause — Quite  as  great  from  the  Low- 
lands as  from  the  Highlands — Instances  given  of  it  in  Low- 
land Parishes — Irrational  panic  about  it  confined  to  the  Celtic 
emigration — Report  of  Highland  Society — The  real  explana- 
tion— A  great  Hive  was  swarming — Men  wondering  at  the 
instinct  of  the  Bees, 281 


CHAPTER  VIII. 

THE  BURST  OF   INDUSTRY. 

One  scene  on  the  Clyde  typical  of  Scottish  history  and  progress — 
The  British  Kingdom  of  Strathclyde — The  Roman  Conquest 
and  Occupation — Tacitus  and  Galgacus — The  Wall  of  Anto- 
nine — Dumbarton  Rock — King  Robert  the  Bruce's  Palace  at 
Cardross — Southern  escarpment  of  Highland  Mountains — 
Last  bloody  battle  of  the  Clans  in  Glenfruin — The  Clan 
Gregor,  its  modern  development  typical  of  the  work  of  Celtic 
civilisation — James  Watt  and  Henry  Bell — Legislative  Union 
with  England  the  beginning  and  foundation  of  the  later  Pro- 
gress of  Scotland  in  industry  and  in  wealth — Agriculture,  as 
well  as  Trade  and  Navigation,  received  a  new  impetus — 


CONTENTS.  xix 

PAGE 

Previous  exclusion  of  Scotland  from  commerce  of  Colonies  and 
Plantations  beyond  Sea — She  offers  Free  Trade  to  England — 
English  Parliament  rejects  it  angrily — The  Darien  Scheme — 
Passiona  e  resentment  in  England — Narrow  and  odious  spirit 
of  commercial  monopoly — Complete  Union  or  Complete  Separa- 
tion the  only  alternative — Narrow  escape  from  the  worst  re- 
sult— Danger  of  international  jealousies — Bitter  feelings  in 
Scotland — Alarm  of  the  English  Government — Letter  of 
Queen  Anne  in  1704 — Act  for  Separation  of  Crowns  passed  in 
Scotland — Patriotism  and  its  various  conditions — Fletcher  of 
Saltoun — True  patriotism  of  the  men  who  worked  for  the 
Union — New  life  to  Trade  and  Navigation — Not  less  powerful 
in  reform  of  Agriculture — Reclamation  of  Land — Reclaimed 
Land  really  made,  not  merely  inherited  or  bought — An  ex- 
ample, and  personal  recollections — A  Vignette  from  a  great 
Picture — The  large  Landowners  the  Pioneers  in  the  work  of 
Reclamation — Specimens  of  the  Class — Lord  Frederick  Camp- 
bell— John,  5th  Duke  of  Argyll — Rise  of  Capitalist  Tenant 
Farmers — Their  introduction  into  the  Western  Counties — Ex- 
treme poverty  of  the  smaller  Landowners — Relations  of 
Labour  and  Capital — The  true  Wages  Fund  is  that  con- 
fidence which  encourages  enterprise — Poverty  of  Scotland  due 
to'temporary  causes,  chiefly  to  mere  ignorance — Definitions  of 
Wealth,  and  of  its  sources — All  traceable  to  Mind,  Matter, 
and  Opportunity — Scotland  rich  in  two  of  these,  and  daily 
becoming  richer  in  the  third — Her  Minerals  and  her  Pastures 
— Her  legal  system — The  security  it  inspired  gave  boundless 
value  to  every  new  opportunity — New  arrangement  of  new 
Leases — Disappearance  of  Township  Farms — Incompatibility 
of  these  with  any  improvement — Perpetuate  the  worst  stupidi- 
ties of  custom — Fatal  to  individual  effort — Enormous  increase 
of  produce  immediate  on  establishment  of  single  Tenancies — 
Improvement  of  Cattle,  Grasses,  and  Cereals — Progress  of 
Enclosures — Benefit  of  free  choice  of  Tenants  permitted  by 
private  ownership — Rapid  rise  in  all  Values — Disappearance 
of  Commonties — Evidence  on  the  evils  of  these  on  the  Borders 
and  elsewhere — Estates  belonging  to  Royal  Burghs — Jobbery 
— Enforcement  by  Parliament  of  rents  determined  by  competi- 
tion— Contrast  between  conditions  of  success  in  Scotland  with 
the  conditions  of  Cottier  Tenants  in  Ireland — Tendency  to 
degradation  there — Misuse  of  the  word  "  Custom  " — Its  rela- 
tion to  Covenant  or  Contract — It  may  become  the  cover  of 
every  abuse  and  the  impediment  to  all  reform — Failure  that 
followed  the  letting  of  Land  to  men  without  knowledge  or 
capital — The  "ill  years"  of  famine  towards  close  of  17th 
Century  gave  great  stimulus  to  the  new  system — Successive 
scarcities  of  1740  and  1794 — Migration  to  Towns  and  Emigra- 
tion to  Colonies— Rapid  stream  of  national  advance,  .  .  345 

b 


xx  CONTENTS. 

CHAPTER  IX. 
THE  FRUITS   OF  MIND. 

The  principle  of  free  scope  to  individual  mind,  as  conspicuous  in 
Trade  and  Commerce  as  in  Agriculture — Extravagant  extent 
to  which  Monopolies  were  given  to  old  Burghs  in  Scotland — 
Submission  of  agricultural  classes  to  these,  although  most  in- 
jurious to  them— General  belief  in  virtue  of  the  system — 
Gradual  invasion  of  this  system  by  rise  of  new  Towns  not 
having  Charters  of  Monopoly — Landowners  found,  encourage, 
and  protect  those  new  communities — Burghs  of  Barony  and 
Royalty — Contest  of  these  with  the  old  Royal  Burghs — Con- 
cessions of  1672  —  Great  breach  in  old  system — Gradual 
removal  of  the  old  Burghal  Monopolies — Individual  liberty 
and  enterprise  of  their  Tenants  fostered  by  Landowners — 
Monopolies  not  formally  and  finally  abolished  till  1846 — Decay 
of  older  Towns  in  spite  of  Monopoly — Case  of  Glasgow  and 
Ayr— Energy  and  success  of  free  Towns — Cromwell's  Policy — 
Case  of  Greenock— Opposition  to  James  Watt  by  Hammer- 
men of  Glasgow — Same  inducements  lead  Landowners  to  en- 
encourage  individual  Holdings — Feus  not  applicable  to  Farms 
— Failure  of  experiment  in  Dumbartonshire — Similar  failure  of 
very  long  Leases  in  Hebrides — Evils  of  a  very  long  term  of 
Leases — More  enlightened  stipulation  in  Leases  the  true 
remedy — New  stipulations  for  improving  and  forbidding 
various  abuses— Case  of  Island  of  Tyree — Extreme  tenacity  of 
people  in  wasteful  habits — Abolition  of  Runrig  by  fifth  Duke  of 
Argyll — Farms  broken  up  into  separate  crofts  in  1803 — Resist- 
ance of  people  to  every  reform — Consequences  of  death  of  fifth 
Duke — Authority  suspended — Sub-division — Rapid  increase  of 
population,  and  starvation — Account  of  the  Hebrides  in  1838 — 
State  of  Skye — Potato  Disease  and  Famine — Emigration  from 
Tyree  in  1847 — New  ideas  long  neglected  even  by  educated  men 
— Lavish  increase  of  fruits  of  Nature  under  awakened  Mind — 
But  severe  distress  and  danger  of  Famine  wherever  the  old 
usages  remained— Slow  appreciation  of  value  of  Hill  Grazings 
for  Sheep — Nature  of  surfaces  on  Highland  mountains — Their 
steepness  and  extent — Examples — Figures  showing  enormous 
increase  of  produce  from  Sheep-farming — Displacement  of 
population  not  greater  than  in  the  Lowlands,  and  not  so 
great  as  in  the  Border  Highlands— Small  farms  not  abolished 
— Number  of  these  far  greater  in  Highlands  than  in  Low- 
lands—Phenomenon of  old  stupidities  reviving— Develop- 
ments often  retrograde — Poetical  sentiment  one  source  of 
corruption — Picturesqueness  of  old  Celtic  customs — Analogy 
with  the  character  of  Macsorlie — The  true  modern  analogue  of 
the  Anarchy  of  the  Clans— How  Sir  Walter  Scott  deals  with 


CONTENTS.  XXI 


the  past  —  True  poetry  the  transformation  of  the  Military 
Ages  into  the  Ages  of  Industry  and  Peace — Our  kings  our  only 
chiefs,  our  country  our  only  clan — Confidence  in  Law  the 
foundation  of  our  National  Institutions — Banking  System  of 
Scotland — Rent  and  its  Definitions — Fallacies  of  Ricardo — Rent 
simply  the  price  of  Hire — Definition  of  Ownership — The  right  of 
Exclusive  Use — Acquisition  and  transmission  of  it — Definition 
of  Labour — False  classification  of  sources  of  Wealth — Mind 
not  Muscle  the  true  source  in  all  departments  of  exertion — 
Its  supreme  influence — Its  variety — General  Gordon — Meagre- 
ness  of  received  system  of  Political  Economy — Evidence  of 
Cosmo  Innes  on  blessedness  of  changes  effected  in  Scotland  by 
improving  Landowners — Increase  of  Wealth  in  Scotland  widely 
distributed  over  the  bulk  of  the  population — No  element  in 
Celtic  Customs  which,  if  it  had  been  left  alone,  could  have 
built  up  any  Polity  better  for  the  mass  of  the  People — Proofs 
in  the  history  of  Celtic  Ireland — Melancholy  picture  presented 
by  Annals  of  the  Four  Masters — Long  reign  of  intertribal  bar- 
barism leading  to  no  result — Happy  effects  of  Conquest  in 
England,  and  of  mixed  races — Fruitful  branch  of  the  National 
Life  in  the  labours  of  Celts  who  have  moved  from  their  native 
hills  and  glens — Illustrious  examples — The  Gregories — David 
Livingstone — How  Scotland  rose  after  the  Union — Her  own 
Institutions  a  rich  contribution  to  one  United  Empire,  .  .411 


ILLUSTRATIONS. 

CAWDOR  CASTLE  (AFTER  A  SKETCH  BY  GEORGE  REID,  R.S.A.),  Vignette 
THE  CATHEDRAL,  AND  POSITION  OF  THE  OLD  MONASTIC  SITES  ON 

IONA, 9 

BEN  CRUACHAN  AND  RAVINE.  SITE  OF  BATTLE  BETWEEN  BRUCE 

AND  LORDS  OF  LORNE  IN  1308, 56 

THE  VIEW  COLUMBA  SAW  FROM  HIS  MONASTERY  ON  IONA,        .        .  170 

LOCH  KlLKIARAN.  CAMPBELLTOWN  HARBOUR,  ....  216 
DUNAVERTY,  AND  MULL  OF  KlNTYRE.  STRONGHOLD  OF  CLAN 

DONNEL.     RED  CONGLOMERATE  ROCK, 218 

"QUEENAIG"  (RANGE  OF  MOUNTAINS,  SUTHERLAND),      .        .        .  320 

"SOULVEIN"  (SUTHERLAND), 336 

BEN  MORE,  MULL  (VOLCANIC  MOUNTAIN),       • 438 

LOCH  MAREE  (ROSS-SHIRE), 440 

ROB  ROY'S  HOUSE,  GLENSHIRA,  INVERARAY, 484 


CHAPTER   I. 

CELTIC   FEUDALISM. 

THE  full  and  fast  river  of  our  time  has  many  curious 
eddies  in  its  course,  and  none  are  more  curious  than 
those  which  carry  the  looks  and  the  longings  of  men 
back  to  primitive  conditions  of  society.  Such  long- 
ings are,  moreover,  always  accompanied  by  the  most 
strange  assumptions  as  to  what  primitive  condi- 
tions really  were.  The  causes  of  this  tendency  are 
clear  enough.  The  Battle  of  Life  is  sore  on  many, 
and  it  is  only  natural  that  they  should  envy  a  time 
when,  as  they  imagine,  there  was  no  such  battle,  or 
when  victory  was  equally  easy  to  all  the  com- 
batants. Yet  nothing  can  be  more  certain  than 
there  never  has  been  such  a  time  since  the  gates  of 
Eden  closed.  Of  the  condition  of  Man  in  the  days 
which  were  really  primeval  we  are  absolutely 
ignorant.  But  as  we  see  him  in  the  light  of  the 
very  earliest  traditions,  we  see  him,  as  he  is  now,  a 
Being  bound  to  labour  with  hand  and  brain,  and  a 
Being  fitted  for  both  these  kinds  of  labour,  with 
great  varieties  of  faculty  in  each,  and  with  deep- 
seated  inequalities  of  power.  In  the  very  earliest 
narratives  and  traditions  of  the  Jews  we  see  men 
already  divided  into  tillers  of  the  ground  and  into 
keepers  of  herds  and  flocks.  Both  of  these  esta- 
blished avocations  pre- suppose  a  long  course  of 
effort,  and  of  all  the  needs  under  which  effort  is 
evoked.  Moreover,  when  individual  Personalities 
are  dimly  seen,  we  see  them  divided,  as  they  are 

A 


2  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

divided  now,  not  only  according  to  inequalities  of 
mental  aptitude,  but  according  to  inequalities,  cut- 
ting deeper  still,  between  the  good  and  the  bad, 
between  the  virtuous  and  the  vicious.  Moral 
qualities,  even  more  than  intellectual  gifts,  have 
in  all  ages  been  the  great  secret  of  individual 
success.  From  the  first  the  sacrifices  of  some  men 
have  been  rejected,  because  of  "  sin  lying  at  the 
door."  And  when  real  History  begins  it  is  always 
the  figures  of  Great  Men  that  first  appear  upon 
the  stage.  They  are  the  centre  of  every  group. 
They  are  the  reason  and  the  cause  of  every  move- 
ment. The  personal  qualities  which  had  secured 
to  Abraham  his  great  pastoral  wealth  in  Ur  of  the 
Chaldees,  were,  we  may  be  sure,  the  same  qualities 
on  account  of  which  the  exclusive  possession  of  a 
whole  country  was  promised  to  him  and  to  his 
children.  That  was  the  earliest  Land  Charter  of 
which  we  have  any  knowledge.  But  it  was  a 
Charter  which  could  not  be,  and  was  not  fulfilled, 
except  by  battle.  Without  the  sword  of  Joshua, 
neither  the  faith  of  Abraham  nor  the  lawgiving  of 
Moses  would  have  placed  the  chosen  People  in 
possession  of  the  Promised  Land. 

And  so  it  has  been  ever  since.  In  all  the 
early  movements  of  Mankind  the  great  qualities  of 
individual  men  have  been  the  cause  of  every  success, 
the  foundation  of  all  authority,  and  the  indispens- 
able condition  of  all  secure  enjoyment.  With  the 
single  exception  of  the  glimpse  presented  to  us  of 
the  condition  of  Palestine  between  the  arrival  of 
the  great  Patriarch  at  Mamre,  and  the  migration 
of  his  children  into  Egypt,  we  have  no  knowledge 
of  any  ancient  people  who  were  able  to  occupy  a 
land  so  comparatively  empty  that  they  could  live  in 
it  without  fighting.  The  beautiful  story  of  the  part- 
ing of  Abraham  and  of  Lot l  is  the  earliest  account 
we  have  of  a  dispute  about  the  possession  of  land, 
and  contains  within  itself  almost  the  whole  philo- 

1  Gen.  xiii.  5-9. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  3 

sophy  of  the  dispersion  of  Mankind.  But  it  was  a 
case  of  dispersion  under  conditions  which  were  not 
and  could  not  be  lasting — conditions,  namely, 
under  which  vast  tracts  of  country  were  as  yet 
unappropriated.  Even  then,  strange  to  say,  we  are 
told  that  there  were  many  native  Tribes  already 
established  in  the  land,  and  that  famines  were  occa- 
sionally sore  among  them.  It  can  only  have  been 
an  occupation  on  sufferance  that  was  then  enjoyed 
by  the  Hebrew  brethren  when  they  had  as  yet  no- 
thing of  their  own — "  no,  not  so  much  as  to  set  their 
foot  on."  This  is  clearly  expressed  in  the  speech  of 
Abimelech  to  the  Patriarch  :  "  Behold,  my  land  is 
before  thee,  dwell  where  it  pleaseth  thee."  1  The 
assertion  of  an  exclusive  right  of  possession  is  here 
distinct,  as  well  as  the  right  of  granting  a  per- 
missive occupation  to  the  Hebrews. 

But  this  was  not  "possessing  the  land,"  as  they 
hoped  to  possess  it,  and  as  the  promise  was  that 
they  should  possess  it.  Exclusive  ownership  was 
the  promise,  and  with  that  exclusive  ownership  in 
the  hands  of  strangers  there  could  be  no  security 
for  the  chosen  People.  God,  indeed,  had  made 
that  land  of  Canaan  in  the  same  sense  in  which  He 
has  made  "  all  the  corners  of  the  earth."  But  He 
had  not  made  it  for  all  men,  but  for  that  particular 
family  of  men  whom  He  made  strong  to  take  it,  and 
who  continued  to  hold  it — until  by  unfaith  they 
lost  it,  and  its  sceptre  departed  from  them.  No 
other  conquering  Tribe,  indeed,  has  ever  been 
charged  with  the  same  mission,  or  has  brought  the 
same  gifts  to  men.  But  it  may  be  said  with  truth 
that,  generally  speaking,  every  conquering  Tribe  has 
had  some  mission,  and  has  added  something  above 
its  fellows,  and  above  its  enemies,  to  the  progress  of 
the  world.  And  although  we  know  little — curiously 
little — of  those  great  migrations  westward  from 
Central  Asia,  which,  during  several  centuries, 
covered  the  ground  of  Europe  with  fresh  and  ever 

1  Gen.  xx.  15. 


4  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

fresher  deposits  of  human  character,  this  at  least 
we  do  know,  that  they  were  always  movements 
of  fighting  men,  continually  reducing  to  bondage 
those  whom  they  overcame,  and  themselves  passing 
under  service  to  the  Leaders  whom  inborn  in- 
equalities of  mind  had  raised  to  positions  of  com- 
mand. 

The  famous  and  powerful  sketch  which  has  been 
left  by  Ta,citus  of  the  German  Tribes,  as  they  were 
known  by  him,  does  indeed  present  a  picture  of  social 
equality,  in  which  personal  pre-eminence  found  only 
a  personal  and  temporary  recognition.  And,  no 
doubt,  so  long  as  they  remained  in  their  own  woods 
and  marshes,  fighting  with  none  but  inferior  races, 
living  only  on  cattle  and  on  the  chase,  neither 
having  nor  desiring  a  settled  life  with  peaceful  and 
agricultural  pursuits,  the  Polity  described  by  Tacitus 
might  be  strong  enough.  But  we  know  what 
followed.  Even  in  his  description  we  see  that  the 
hereditary  principle  had  begun  to  work.  Mere 
youths  were  admitted  to  the  dignity  of  Chiefs  if 
their  fathers  had  been  illustrious.1  Nothing  more 
was  needed.  A  root  which  is  deeply  rooted  in  human 
nature  had  begun  to  sprout.  During  the  dim  cen- 
turies when  the  Barbarian  nations  were  gathering 
behind  the  forests  of  Germany  and  the  marshes  of 
the  Danube,  coming,  as  Tacitus  ignorantly  supposed 
that  no  migratory  nations  could  come — not  by  sea, 
but  overland  from  distant  centres  of  origin  and 
overflow — during  those  dim  centuries  the  Germans 
and  all  the  swarms  a-bove  them  to  the  North,  and 
behind  them  to  the  East,  were  closing  their  ranks, 
and  consolidating  their  strength  under  that  one 
great  Polity  which  by  its  inherent  strength  sur- 
vived every  other— the  Polity  of  military  subor- 
dination, and  of  Power  regulated  and  transmitted 
through  hereditary  succession. 

There  is  no  greater  mistake  than  to  suppose 

1  Insignia  nobilitas  aut  magna  patrura  merita,  principio  dignationem 
etiam  adolescentulis  adsignaiit. — (Tacit.,  Germ.,  c.  13.) 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM. 


f;hat  this  Polity,  which  culminated  in  the  code 
)f  law  and  usages  since  grouped  under  the  name 
)f  the  Feudal  System,  was  founded  on  any  un- 
mtural  usurpation,  or  that  the  authority  which 
same  to  be  vested  under  it  in  Chiefs  and  Kings, 
was  anything  more  than  an  embodiment  of  the 
facts  of  Nature,  and  an  expression  of  the  insuper- 
able necessities  of  the  case.  Under  such  condi- 
tions of  fierce  competition,  determined  always  by 
the  arbitrament  of  arms — conditions  of  perpetual 
and  chronic  war — it  was  not  possible  that  success 
could  be  attained,  or  civilisation  could  be  establi shed, 
except  by  resting  upon  those  through  whom,  and  by 
whom,  Power  could  be  wielded  best.  Thus,  for  ex- 
ample, the  feudal  principle  that  every  holder  of  land 
must  hold  it  under  tenure  from  some  Superior  in  whom 
the  dominion  lay — this  principle  did  not  grow  out  of 
any  theory,  but  was  the  simple  recognition  of  the 
facts  of  life.  It  had  come  to  be  true  as  one  of  the 
necessities  of  the  age,  long  before  it  was  formally 
recognised  as  one  of  the  doctrines  of  the  law.  There 
is  no  value  in  land  except  when  it  can  be  held  in 
peace.  But  in  times  when  there  was  a  universal 
scramble  for  the  possession  of  it  by  rival  Tribes,  it 
never  could  be  held  in  peace  except  under  the  pro- 
tection of  those  who  were  strong  enough  to  defend 
it.  And  no  man  could  have  this  strength  except 
by  leaning  on  the  existing  organisation  of  society, 
and  on  the  personal  authority  of  those  who  were  at 
its  head.  Nor  is  there  any  truth  in  the  idea  which 
has  been  sedulously  spread  that  those  among 
northern  races — the  Celts — who  were  the  last  to 
accept  the  Feudal  System  in  its  final  form,  were 
races  who  lost  by  that  acceptance  any  individual 
freedom  or  any  social  equality  which  they  had 
enjoyed  before.  The  truth  is  all  the  other  way. 
Amongst  the  Celtic  Tribes  the  same  general  causes 
had  not  only  established  the  same  dependence  of 
the  body  of  the  people  on  the  authority  of  Kings 
and  Chiefs,  but  had  made  this  dependence  much 


6  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

more  arbitrary  and  oppressive  than  amongst  the 
Saxon  and  other  Teutonic  Tribes,  or  under  the  per- 
fected forms  of  Feudalism. 

The  usages  which  spring  up  in  a  rude  condition 
of  society  are  subject  to  development,  like  other 
things,  in  two  very  different  directions.  When  the 
conditions  are  favourable  to  the  establishment  of  a 
settled  government  and  of  an  advancing  civilisation, 
these  usages  become  more  and  more  subject  to 
reason  and  to  judicial  definition  ;  whatever  elements 
there  were  in  them  of  mere  despotism  and  injustice 
are  dropped  out  or  softened  down  ;  and  finally,  all 
the  elements  which  remain  become  built  up  into  a 
well-ordered  system  of  Government  and  of  Law. 
When,  on  the  contrary,  the  conditions  of  society  are 
not  favourable — among  Tribes  which  are  never 
destined  to  grow  into  great  Nations — such  usages 
become  subject  to  a  development  very  different 
indeed.  It  is  the  development  of  corruption.  The 
grosser  elements  assert  themselves  more  and  more  ; 
they  become  not  only  stereotyped,  but  enlarged 
and  strengthened.  What  began  in  mere  violence 
becomes  still  more  violent,  what  was  always  unde- 
fined becomes  more  and  more  purely  arbitrary. 
What  was  due  originally  to  natural  power  and  to 
just  authority  becomes  yielded  up  to  the  purest 
tyranny — until  the  whole  system  may  grow  into 
one  of  chronic  rapine  fatal  to  any  progress  in 
wealth,  or  in  government,  or  in  law. 

Of  all  these  processes  there  never  has  been  a  more 
conspicuous  example  than  in  the  customs  and  usages 
of  that  branch  of  the  Celtic  race  which,  pushing  far- 
thest west,  possessed  itself  of  Ireland.  There — in 
that  remotest  region  of  Europe — it  became  secluded 
from  the  movements  and  the  life  of  the  continental 
world.  It  may  be  true  that  in  the  Brehon  Laws 
we  have  traces  and  relics  of  a  time  when  Celtic 
usages  and  ideas  were  the  same  as  those  of  all  their 
Aryan  brethren — and  which  in  the  hands  of  one 
great  nation  led  on  to  the  glorious  history  of  the 


I 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM. 


Twelve  Tables.1  But  all  the  germs  of  good  had 
been  well-nigh  wholly  killed,  and  the  absence  of  any 
central  authority  had  allowed  every  weed  to  grow. 
The  elaborate,  learned,  and  conscientious  Work 
of  Mr.  Skene,2  gives  us  probably  as  much  as  we 
shall  ever  know  of  the  earliest  organisation  of 
society — if  organisation  it  can  be  called — among  the 
Scoto-Irish  Celts.  It  began  with  all  the  elements 
of  inequality  which  we  find  at  the  foundations  of 
every  society.  In  the  first  place,  it  began  with  the 
conquest  of  some  so-called  aboriginal  race  which 
was  reduced  to  bondage.  In  the  second  place,  it 
began  in  the  leadership  of  Chiefs,  who  from  the 
first  seem  to  have  enjoyed  greater  ascendency  than 
among  the  Teutonic  Tribes.  In  the  third  place, 
among  the  men  who  were  nominally  equal  in  re- 
spect to  freedom,  there  was  a  very  early  develop- 
ment of  those  differences  in  wealth  which  spring 
directly  from  the  ineradicable  distinctions  of  per- 
sonal gifts.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the 
word  "  capital "  as  denoting  a  form  or  condition  of 
wealth  which  belongs  to  later  stages  of  human 
society.  But  this  is  a  complete  mistake.  Both 
the  word  and  the  thing  come  down  to  us  from 
archaic  times.  When  flocks  and  herds  were  almost 
the  only  embodiments  of  wealth,  all  the  power 
which  riches  can  ever  give  was  vested  in  the  man 
who  by  strength  or  skill  had  become  possessed  of 
more  sheep  and  oxen  than  his  neighbours.  When 
tillage  hardly  existed,  and  when  land  had  all  its 
value  from  the  cattle  it  would  feed,  no  man  could 
possess  land  except  by  having  stock  to  eat  its 
grass.  These  were  the  "  capital"-—  the  Heads  or 
Capita — which  alone  constituted  wealth,  and  he  who 
had  none  of  these  could  only  hire  them  from  the 
stronger  and  the  abler  men  who  had  them.  Then, 
as  money  was  hardly  known,  the  hire  must  consist 
mainly  in  services  of  some  kind  in  addition  to  some 

1  Maine's  Early  History  of  Institutions,  p.  19. 

2  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  c.  iv. 


8  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

share  of  produce.  This,  therefore,  was  another 
door,  besides  Tribal  allegiance  or  military  sub- 
ordination, through  which  the  ranks  of  Bondsmen 
were  recruited,  and  the  authority  of  Chiefs  became 
more  and  more  firmly  established.  It  is  not  a 
little  remarkable  that  the  earliest  title  in  Celtic 
society  which  practically  corresponds  to  the  modern 
idea  of  "  landlord"  was  a  word  signifying  "  cattle- 
lord."  This  was  the  Bo-aire — the  Cow-lord.  It 
was  by  paying  service  to  him  that  poorer  men 
could  alone  secure  the  enjoyment  of  that  which  was 
then  the  prime  necessity  of  life.1 

Nor  was  this  direct  form  of  hire  the  only  form  in 
which  the  weaker  members  of  a  Tribe  came  to  owe 
and  to  render  service  to  its  Chiefs.  When  wars  of 
conquest  ceased,  intertribal  wars  began.  These 
were  continual  and  fierce.  The  earliest  records  of 
Irish  Celtic  society  show  it  to  have  been  a  society 
torn  by  continual  cont'ests  in  which  every  victory 
was  followed  by  plunder  and  devastation.  The  one 
great  necessity,  therefore,  of  even  the  beginnings  of 
peaceful  and  agricultural  life  was  the  necessity  of 
protection.  And  this  protection  could  only  be 
secured  from  those  who  wielded  the  authority  of 
arms.  To  get  this  protection  service  would  be 
rendered  as  its  price.  And  besides  the  services 
rendered  always,  even  in  the  intervals  of  peace, 
special  and  extraordinary  services  would  be  will- 
ingly rendered  in  times  of  actual  danger,  or  under 
any  circumstances  demanding  the  special  action  of 
the  Chiefs.  Thus  on  a  multitude  of  occasions,  and 
under  a  great  variety  of  circumstances,  customs 
and  usages  would  establish  a  corresponding  variety 
of  dues  and  of  services  from  the  ordinary  members 
of  the  Tribe  towards  those  who  ruled  it  and 
defended  it.  No  less  than  seven  different  causes 
have  been  enumerated  on  account  of  which  free 

1  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  pp.  143,  144.  Curiously  enough, 
"  Booer"  is  the  word  now  used  in  the  West  of  Scotland  for  the  man  to 
whom  farmers  let  their  dairy  cows  by  contract,  and  who  sells  the 
produce. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  9 

men  willingly  came  under  terms  of  servitude  to 
Chiefs.  And  then  when  servitude  had  once  been 
accepted,  it  became  permanent.  Bondage  was 
even  more  hereditary  than  freedom.  Then,  again, 
as  the  earliest  Tribal  organisation  broke  up  into 
the  later  organisation  of  Septs  or  Clans,  every 
step  of  the  change  involved  some  increase  to  the 
natural  and  necessary  pre-eminence  of  those  who 
led.  Their  power  of  inviting  and  accepting  the 
adoption  and  amalgamation  of  "  broken  men"  from 
other  Tribes — men  who  necessarily  became  direct 
dependants  on  themselves — was  a  power  which,  in 
being  necessary  to  the  growth  and  to  the  strength 
of  the  Clan  as  a  whole,  was  at  the  same  time 
specially  conducive  to  the  concentration  of  that 
power  in  the  hands  of  its  Chief. 

During  more  than  600  years  from  the  time  when 
Tacitus  described  the  German  Tribes,  these  changes 
were  working  themselves  out  among  the  Celts  in 
the  profound  obscurity  of  Ireland.  The  first  dis- 
tinct glimpse  we  have  of  them  is  in  the  strange 
way  in  which  they  affected  even  the  organisation 
of  the  early  Christian  Church,  which  to  a  very 
large  extent  was  shaped  in  Ireland  after  the  habits 
and  ideas  of  the  Celtic  Tribes  and  Septs.  Its  great 
Monastic  Institutions  were  essentially  Tribal.  The 
Abbots  were  rulers  in  virtue  of  their  birth,  after 
the  manner  of  succession  which  prevailed  among 
their  Chiefs  and  Kings.  But  Christianity  supplied 
rules  and  imposed  restraints  to  which  there  was 
nothing  comparable  outside  the  Church.  There  is 
a  horrible  but  picturesque  story  of  the  end  of  the 
Seventh  Century,  which  illustrates  both  how  this 
influence  was  used,  and  the  utter  barbarism  of  the 
people  which  called  for  its  interference.  The  cele- 
brated Monastery  of  lona  was,  as  is  well  known,  a 
colony  of  the  Scoto-Irish  Church,  founded  by 
Columba  in  the  Sixth  Century.  One  of  his  succes- 
sors was  Adamnan,  who  was  Abbot  of  lona  about 
one  hundred  years  later,  and  died  in  704.  The 


10  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

mother  of  this  Abbot,  living  in  Ireland,  is  said  to 
have  been   greatly  shocked  by  seeing  a   battle  in 
which  women   were   engaged    on   both    sides,   and 
especially  by  the   sight  of  one  woman  transfixing 
her  opponent,   also  a  woman,  through    the   breast 
with    a    reaping-hook.       Urged     by    his    mother, 
Adamnan  undertook  a  journey  to  Ireland  in  order 
that  he  might  obtain  from  an  Assembly  of  Chiefs 
and  Abbots  an  abolition  of  such  practices.     This  he 
succeeded  in  doing.     But  it  appears  that  the  exist- 
ence of  fighting  women  had  arisen  from  the  native 
Celtic  usages  of  a  Tribal  Feudalism.     Even  if  this 
story  be  legendary  in  some  of  its  details,  it  is  at 
least  a   genuine   Irish  legend.      The    Celtic   Book 
of    Lecan    fortifies     its    tale    by    this     emphatic 
parenthesis — "for  men  and  women  went  .equally  to 
battle   at  that   time."      The   Tribal  obligation   of 
"Hosting"   included  women.      It   seems   to   have 
been  regularly  exacted  among  the  Scoto-Irish  Celts, 
and  the  reform  which  the  Christian  Abbot  succeeded 
in  obtaining  was  simply  the  exemption  of  women 
from  a  custom  which  must  have  had  most  savage 
and  demoralising  effects.     The  name  given  in  Irish 
annals  to  this  reform  marks  its  extraneous  origin — 
which  was  no  other  than  that  one  abounding  foun- 
tain from  which  so  much  has  flowed  that  we  value 
most — the  high  instincts  of  the  Latin  Church  seek- 
ing their  expression  in  the  noble  forms  of  Roman 
Law.      Thus   the   new  exemption   of  women   was 
called  the  "Lex  Innocentium." l 

But  the  Irish  Church  was  at  this  time  too  Tribal 
in  its  own  constitution  to  enable  it  to  be  an 
effective  leader  in  further  secular  reforms,  and  so 
the  old  Irish  Celtic  customs  respecting  land,  in 
contact  with  no  higher  civilisation,  became  more 
and  more  arbitrary  and  oppressive,  and  culminated 
in  a  system  of  tenure,  of  dues  and  of  exactions, 
which  was  the  most  barbarous  in  the  world.  They 
were  indeed  utterly  incompatible  with  any  progress 

1  Reeves'  Adamnan,  ed.  1854,  p.  179 ;  and  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  ii.  p.  173. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  1 1 

in  the  arts  of  peace.  And  all  this  was  of  purely 
native  and  purely  Celtic  growth.  There  is  no 
clearer  misrepresentation  of  history  than  to  pre- 
tend that  the  miseries  of  the  Irish  people  in  respect 
to  the  tenure  of  their  land  were  due  to  the  English 
conquest,  or  to  the  introduction  at  that  time  of 
foreign  laws  overriding  the  native  liberties  and  cus- 
toms of  the  country.  They  were  due,  on  the  con- 
trary, to  the  refusal  of  the  English  invaders  to 
impart  to  the  people  they  conquered  the  benefit  of 
the  higher  and  better  laws  which  had  been  built  up 
in  England  under  legal  modifications  and  interpre- 
tations of  the  Feudal  System.  It  was  the  great 
shame  of  England  and  the  great  curse  of  Ireland 
that  for  many  centuries  the  benefits  of  English  law 
were  rigidly  confined  to  a  few  districts  of  the 
country ;  that  beyond  those  districts  the  native  laws 
were  considered  good  enough  for  the  people,  and 
that  even  the  English  settlers  were  often  eager  to 
adopt  the  barbarous  customs  which  liberated  them 
from  the  restraints  of  law,  and  left  them  free  to 
turn  the  arbitrary  character  of  native  usages  to 
their  own  account.  "  Hibernicis  ipsis  Hiberniores  " 
was  the  boast  of  some  of  the  Anglo-Norman  settlers  ; 
and  if  this  meant,  as  in  some  cases  it  did,  that  they 
conceived  a  warm  sympathy  and  affection  for  the 
Irish  people,  it  was  a  worthy  boast.  But  if  it 
meant,  as  in  fact  it  did  really  mean  in  a  great 
majority  of  cases,  that  strangers  who  had  known 
and  enjoyed  in  their  own  country  a  higher  code  of 
laws,  nevertheless  gave  up  these  laws  when  they 
landed  in  Ireland,  and  adopted,  and  even  aggra- 
vated, all  that  was  rude  and  uncivilised  in  native 
customs — then  it  hid,  under  a  plausible  phrase, 
one  of  the  greatest  evils  which  afflicted  Ireland, 
and  one  of  the  greatest  derelictions  of  duty  with 
which  the  English  settlers  can  be  charged. 

This  is  all  the  more  curious,  since  we  have  the 
most  certain  historical  evidence  that  long  before 
the  Anglo-Norman  invasion  of  Ireland  the  native 


12  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Feudalism  of  the  Celts  had  at  least  begun  the  same 
course  of  legal  development  which  became  the 
strength  of  England  and  of  Scotland.  There  are 
extant  some  four  or  five  genuine  old  Celtic  Charters 
of  land,  written  in  the  Irish  language,  connected 
with  the  property  of  the  famous  Monastic  establish- 
ment of  Kelts  in  county  Meath.  These  documents 
are  of  the  highest  interest  and  importance,  because 
of  the  evidence  they  afford,  from  a  purely  native 
source,  touching  a  subject  on  which  English  testi- 
mony might  be  suspected  of  prejudice.  One  of 
them  is  specially  remarkable  on  account  of  the  fact 
that  in  conveying  an  exemption  from  the  arbitrary 
dues  and  customs  which  were  everywhere  levied 
by  the  Chiefs,  under  the  Celtic  Feudalism,  it 
supplies  us  with  at  least  a  partial  enumeration  of 
these  exactions.  It  sets  forth  that  in  atonement 
for  a  great  crime  a  certain  Chief  grants  to  the 
Monks  of  Gill  Delga  "the  territory  and  lands"  of 
that  name,  with  this  privilege  or  exemption,  that 
"  no  King  or  Chieftain  should  have  rent,  tribute, 
coigny,  or  any  other  claim  upon  it  as  before."  This 
Charter  was  given  about  A.D.  10501 — or  sixteen 
years  before  William  the  Conqueror  invaded  Eng- 
land, and  more  than  120  years  before  Henry  n. 
invaded  Ireland.  It  indicates  very  clearly  that 
the  worst  oppressions  of  Feudalism  had  been  long 
established  among  the  Celts.  Incidentally  these 
old  Celtic  Charters  prove  that  land  had  become 
commonly  possessed  by  individuals,  and  was  bought 
and  sold  for  definite  sums  in  gold.  One  of  these 
purchases  must  have  been  extensive,  for  it  is 
described  as  including  "  meadows  and  bogs/'  The 
price  was  30  ounces  of  gold,  a  considerable  sum 
in  those  days  ;  and  lest  any  doubt  should  be  cast 
on  the  validity  of  the  tenure,  it  is  further  speci- 
fied that  the  man  who  sold  it  had  held  it  as  "  his 
own  lawful  land."2  It  would  almost  seem  that 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Ireland.  Part  ii.  Introd.,  p.  45. 

2  Ibid.  No.  LIX. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  13 

the  Anglo-Norman  invasion  had  thrown  things 
back  in  Ireland  by  the  mere  force  of  antagonism 
and  opposition  between  the  races.  Certain  it  is 
that  the  exemption  of  lands  by  Charter  from  arbi- 
trary feudal  exactions,  which  Ecclesiastics  took 
care  to  secure  even  from  the  native  Celtic  Kings 
and  Chiefs,  was  not  enjoyed  by  the  bulk  of  the 
people. 

The  truth  is,  that  nothing  was  or  could  be 
enjoyed  by  the  bulk  of  the  people  under  the  desper- 
ate corruption  of  their  native  Chiefs.  As  regards 
the  condition  of  the  poorer  classes  no  change  could 
possibly  be  a  change  for  the  worse  to  them.  They 
were  equally  the  victims  of  most  oppressive  usages 
in  times  of  peace,  and  of  the  most  barbarous  ferocity 
in  time  of  war.  It  must  always  be  remembered 
that  the  first  foreign  invasion  came  at  the  express 
invitation  of  one  of  the  Irish  Celtic  Chiefs — Dermot, 
King  of  Leinster — and  that  this  invitation  was 
addressed  to  Welshmen,  another  branch  of  the  same 
Celtic  stock.  It  must  be  remembered,  too,  that  in 
the  contests  wrhich  followed,  this  same  Dermot 
exhibited  an  almost  incredible  barbarity  towards 
those  of  his  own  countrymen  to  whom  he  had  been 
opposed.  It  is  not  a  Protestant  but  a  Catholic 
historian  who  gives  us  the  most  terrible  account  of 
the  conduct  of  this  native  Irish  Chief.  We  are 
told  that  when  the  men  of  Ossory  had  been  borne 
to  the  ground  by  a  charge  of  the  English  cavalry, 
"the  fallen  were  immediately  despatched  by  the 
natives  under  the  banner  of  Dermot.  A  trophy  of 
two  hundred  heads  was  erected  at  the  feet  of  that 
Savage,  who  testified  his  joy  by  clapping  his  hands, 
leaping  in  the  air,  and  pouring  out  thanksgiving  to 
the  Almighty.  As  he  turned  over  the  heap  he  dis- 
covered the  head  of  a  former  enemy.  His  hatred 
was  rekindled  at  the  sight,  and  seizing  it  by  the 
ears  in  a  paroxysm  of  fury,  he  tore  off  the  nose  with 
his  teeth."1 

1  Lingard,  ed.  1883,  vol,  ii.  p.  180. 


14  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

In  the  most  interesting  and  instructive  Histori- 
cal Tracts  of  Sir  John  Davies,  who  was  Attorney- 
General  and  Speaker  of  the  Irish  House  of  Commons 
in  the  reign  of  James  i. ,  we  find  conclusive  evidence 
of  the  barbarous  and  oppressive  nature  of  the  old 
Celtic  customs,  and  of  the  desire  of  the  people  to 
escape  from  them.  Whenever  they  had  the  know- 
ledge requisite  to  enable  them  to  understand  the 
difference,  u  they  were  humble  suitors  to  have  the 
benefit  and  protection  of  the  English  Laws."  The 
most  valuable  clause  in  an  Irish  Charter  from  the 
Crown  was  always  that  which  promised  to  the 
holder  that  he  should  be  "ab  omni  servitute  Hiber- 
nica  liber  et  quietus."  It  was  through  the  use  of 
purely  native  and  old  Celtic  customs  that  the  great 
Anglo-Irish  Chiefs  exercised  their  greatest  oppres- 
sion. "  The  English  lords,"  says  Davies,  "  finding 
the  Irish  exactions  to  be  more  profitable  than  the 
English  rents  and  services,  and  loving  the  Irish 
tyranny,  which  was  tied  to  no  rules  of  law  or 
honour,  better  than  a  just  and  lawful  superiority, 
did  reject  and  cast  off  the  English  law  and  govern- 
ment, received  the  Irish  laws  and  customs,  took 
Irish  surnames,  etc.  etc."  2  Nor  does  Davies  speak 
without  a  definite  meaning  in  all  this  denunciation 
of  the  old  Celtic  customs.  He  had  too  vivid  a 
picture  before  him  of  the  results  of  these  customs 
to  be  deceived  by  words  which  have  a  popular 
sound,  and  by  usages  which  look  as  if  they  had  a 
popular  origin  and  effect.  He  saw  around  him 
the  inevitable  effects  of  so-called  Tribal  rights  in 
the  Ownership  of  the  soil.  He  knew  that  the 
individual  appropriation  of  land  was  the  first  step 
from  barbarism  to  civilisation,  from  widespread 
waste  to  cultivation  and  adequate  production.  He, 
therefore,  specially  denounces  those  usages  which 
made  the  improvement  of  land  difficult  or  impossible 
— usages  which  were  not  unsuitable  to  a  primitive 
and  semi-barbarous  condition,  but  were  also  specially 

1  Davies's  Tracts,  p.  89.  2  Ibid.  p.  116. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  15 

suited  to  keep  men  down  to  that  level  and  to  pre- 
vent them  from  ever  emerging  from  it.  He  had 
before  him  their  ruinous  effects  : — 


"  Again,"  he  says,  "  in  England,  and  all  well-ordered  common- 
wealths, men  have  certain  estates  in  their  lands  and  possessions, 
and  their  inheritances  descend  from  father  to  son,  which  doth 
give  them  encouragement  to  plant  and  build  and  to  improve 
their  lands,  and  to  make  them  better  for  their  posterities. 
But  by  the  Irish  custom  of  Tanistry,  the  chieftains  of  every 
country,  and  the  chief  of  every  Sept,  had  no  longer  estate 
than  for  life  in  their  chiefries,  the  inheritance  whereof  did 
rest  in  no  man.  And  these  chiefries,  though  they  had 
some  portions  of  land  allotted  unto  them,  did  consist  chiefly  in 
*  cuttings '  and  '  cosheries,'  and  other  Irish  exactions  whereby 
they  did  spoil  and  impoverish  the  people  at  their  pleasure.  And 
when  their  chieftains  were  dead,  their  sons  or  next  heirs  did  not 
succeed  them,  but  their  Tanistres,  who  were  elective,  and  pur- 
chased their  election  by  strong  hand ;  and  by  the  Irish  custom 
of  gavelkind,  the  inferior  tenantries  were  partable  amongst  all 
the  males  of  the  Sept,  both  bastards  and  legitimate,  and  after 
partition  made,  if  any  one  of  the  Sept  had  died,  his  portion  was 
not  divided  amongst  his  sons,  but  the  chief  of  the  Sept  made  a 
new  partition  of  all  the  lands  belonging  to  that  Sept,  and  gave 
every  one  his  part  according  to  his  antiquity. 

"These  two  Irish  customs  made  all  their  possessions  uncertain, 
being  shuffled  and  changed,  and  removed  so  often  from  one  to 
another,  by  new  elections  and  partitions,  which  uncertainty  of 
estates  hath  been  the  true  cause  of  such  desolation  and  barbarism 
in  this  land  as  the  like  was  never  seen  in  any  country  that 
professed  the  name  of  Christ ;  for,  though  the  Irish  be  a  nation 
of  great  antiquity,  and  wanted  neither  wit  nor  valour,  and 
though  they  had  received  the  Christian  faith  above  1200  years 
since ;  and  were  lovers  of  music,  poetry,  and  all  kind  of  learning ; 
and  possessed  a  land  abounding  with  all  things  necessary  for  the 
civil  life  of  man  ;  yet  (which  is  strange  to  be  related)  they  never 
did  build  any  houses  of  brick  or  stone,  some  few  religious  houses 
excepted,  before  the  reign  of  King  Henry  II.,  though  they  were 
lords  of  this  island  for  many  hundred  years  before  and  since  the 
conquest  attempted  by  the  English  :  albeit,  when  they  saw  us 
build  castles  upon  their  borders,  they  have  only,  in  imitation  of 
us,  erected  some  few  piles  for  the  captains  of  the  country  :  yet, 
I  dare  boldly  say,  that  never  any  particular  person,  either  before 
or  since,  did  build  any  stone  or  brick  house  for  his  private 
habitation,  but  such  as  have  lately  obtained  estates,  according 


16  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

to  the  course  of  the  law  of  England.  Neither  did  any  of  them 
in  all  this  time  plant  any  gardens  or  orchards,  inclose  or  improve 
their  lands,  live  together  in  settled  villages  or  towns  :  nor  make 
any  provision  for  posterity :  which  being  against  all  common 
sense  and  reason  must  be  needs  imputed  to  those  unreasonable 
customs  which  made  their  estates  so  uncertain  and  transitory  in 
their  possession. 

"  For  who  would  plant,  or  improve,  or  build  upon  that  land 
which  a  stranger  whom  he  knew  not  should  possess  after  his 
death  1  for  that  (as  Solomon  noteth)  is  one  of  the  strangest 
vanities  under  the  sun.  And  this  is  the  true  reason  why  Ulster 
and  all  the  Irish  counties  are  found  so  waste  and  desolate  at  this 
day,  and  so  would  they  continue  to  the  world's  end  if  those 
customs  were  not  abolished  by  the  law  of  England." 

But  the  most  destructive  custom  of  all  was 
that  which  passed  under  the  name  of  "  Coin  and 
Livery."  It  consisted  in  what  we  should  now  call 
military  requisitions — but  with  this  aggravation, 
that  as  feuds  and  fighting  were  chronic  and  per- 
petual, the  Chiefs  were  perpetually  quartering  them- 
selves and  their  retainers  upon  their  tenants.  This 
celebrated  phrase  "coin  and  livery"  bulks  largely 
in  the  enumeration  of  old  Irish  grievances,  as  if 
it  had  been  invented  by  the  English  invaders. 
But  it  was,  on  the  contrary,  a  genuine  old 
Irish  custom.  It  was  known  under  the  name 
of  "Bonacht" — the  Chiefs  never  giving  to  their 
armed  retainers  any  other  pay  than  this  right  of 
living  at  free  quarters  upon  the  unhappy  tenants. 
Nor  was  this  all : — among  the  Celts  of  Ireland  it 
may  be  said  with  truth  that  Peace  had  its  exactions 
not  less  devastating  than  those  of  War.  When 
"  coin  and  livery"  were  not  available,  other  genuine 
native  customs  gave  to  the  Chieftains  the  most 
ample  compensation.  First  there  was  "  Coshering," 
which  were  visitations  arid  progresses  made  by  the 
Lord  and  his  followers  among  his  tenants,  eating 
them  out  of  house  and  home.  Next,  there  were 
"  Sessings  of  the  Kerne,"  or  support  for  his  horses, 
dogs,  and  attendants.  Lastly,  there  were  "Tallages" 
or  "  Spendings," — exactions  not  capable  of  defini- 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  17 

tion — in  all  which  modes  the  Celtic  Chiefs  were 
absolute  Tyrants,  and  the  tenants  were  slaves  and 
villeins.1 

One  other  curious  illustration  may  be  given  of 
the  real  relation  between  ancient  Celtic  customs 
and  the  more  civilised  Feudalism  of  the  Anglo- 
Normans.  We  have  seen  that  more  than  120  years 
before  the  English  invasion  of  Ireland  the  Celtic 
Kings  and  Chiefs  had  begun  to  give  formal  grants 
of  land  to  the  Monastic  Bodies,  binding  on  them- 
selves and  their  successors.  The  earliest  specimens 
extant  are  written  in  the  Celtic  tongue,  and  are 
drawn  upon  the  same  model  as  the  Latin  Charters 
of  a  corresponding  date  in  England.  But  it  is  per- 
haps still  more  remarkable  that  there  are  also  extant 
two  regular  Charters  in  the  Latin  language  granted 
by  native  Irish  Kings  just  before  the  English 
invasion.  As  usual,  they  are  grants  of  land  to 
Churchmen  for  ecclesiastical  foundations.  One  of 
them  indicates  very  clearly  the  conditions  of  society, 
and  the  nature  of  Celtic  customs  against  which  it 
was  the  object  of  those  early  Instruments  to  pro- 
mise immunity  and  protection.  It  is  from  lawless 
violence  and  rapine — from  fire,  from  plunder  and 
from  theft — that  Dermod,  King  of  the  Leinstermen, 
engages  to  secure  the  Abbot  of  Ossory  and  his  suc- 
cessors in  the  quiet  possession  of  the  lands  and 
granges  of  the  new  Monastery  of  Duisk.  The  other 
of  the  two  Latin  Charters  given  at  the  same  period 
by  another  Irish  King  to  another  Monastery  is  only 
remarkable  in  this  respect,  that  we  have  in  it  the 
full  adoption  of  the  regular  feudal  description  and 
catalogue  of  the  things  possessed  by  virtue  of 
Ownership  in  land.  To  this  I  shall  advert  more 
particularly  again — mentioning  it  here  only  in  con- 
nection with  the  great  subject  of  the  passage  and 
transition  from  semi-barbarous  customs,  and  un- 
written usages,  into  legally  defined  covenants  and 
obligations.  This  transition  is  shown  with  striking 

1  Davies,  pp.  134-5. 
B 


18  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

clearness  by  the  very  first  Charters  granted  by  the 
Anglo-Norman  invaders  under  Henry  n.  only  one 
year  later  than  the  last-mentioned  Charter  of  an 
Irish  King.  One  of  these  was  granted  by  Earl 
Fitz  Giselbert,  the  famous  Strongbow.  In  the  first 
place,  this  new  Charter  was  given  to  a  layman. 
This  at  once  breaks  the  absolute  monopoly  of  the 
Church  in  those  "  Freedoms  "  and  immunities  which 
piety  or  superstition  had  hitherto  confined  to 
ecclesiastics.  In  the  second  place,  we  see  here  the 
great  step  made  of  a  strict  specification  and  limita- 
tion upon  the  services  which  the  grantee  (or  vassal) 
of  the  land  could  be  called  upon  to  render,  and  an 
absolute  guarantee  given  against  the  oppressive 
exactions  of  Celtic  customs.  Five  Knights'  service 
was  the  amount  required  under  this  Charter,  and  for 
this  amount  the  holder  of  the  lands  so  granted  was 
specially  declared  to  be  free  from  "all  the  evil 
customs  "  of  the  Irish.1 

If  now  we  turn  from  the  Celts  of  Ireland  to  the 
Celts  of  Scotland,  the  Picts  and  Scots,  we  find 
evidences,  as  abundant  as  a  much  more  obscure 
history  can  afford,  of  a  social  condition  which  began 
in  substantially  the  same  system.  We  ought  to 
know  more  about  it  than  we  do.  We  have  one 
authentic  work  of  the  end  of  the  Seventh  Cen- 
tury, written  by  a  man  who  could  have  told  us 
much,  if  he  had  had  it  in  his  mind  to  do  so.  This 
is  the  same  Abbot  Adamnan,  whose  interference 
on  behalf  of  women  in  Ireland  has  been  before  men- 
tioned, and  who  is  the  author  of  the  Life  of  Columba. 
For  a  good  deal  more  than  a  hundred  years  he  and 
his  predecessors  had  been  in  constant  and  familiar 
communication  with  the  Pictish  Celts.  If  any 
abuses  had  prevailed  among  them  so  gross  as  those 
which  had  arisen  in  Ireland,  we  may,  perhaps, 
assume  that  he  would  have  made  some  allusion  to 
them.  But  the  literature  of  that  age  and  race, 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Ireland,  Part  ii.  No.   LXIII.      "  Absque 
omnibus  mails  consuetudmibus." 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  19 

though  undoubtedly  authentic,  is  extremely  meagre. 
The  truth  is  that  the  high  but  very  special  civilisa- 
tion of  the  early  Scoto-Irish  Celts  is  one  of  the  most 
singular  in  the  history  of  the  world.  It  shines  across 
the  ages  with  a  pure  and  brilliant  light.  But  it 
shines  only  from,  and  upon,  the  Altar.  It  spent 
itself  wholly  in  the  great  work  of  spreading  Chris- 
tianity among  the  Heathen.  This  indeed  is  glory 
enough  for  any  Church.  But  it  did  not  indicate  in 
the  races  among  whom  it  arose,  nor  did  it  impart  to 
them,  any  aptitude  for  political  institutions.  Beyond 
the  sphere  of  its  spiritual  operations  it  has  left  no 
memorials  of  itself,  except  some  fine  work  in  gold 
and  jewels  lavished  upon  crosiers,  upon  the  covering 
of  Psalters,  upon  missals,  upon  shrines,  and  upon 
other  insignia  of  the  Church.  It  gave  rise  also  to  a 
peculiar  style  of  ornament  for  parchment  pages,  for 
crosses,  and  for  tombstones,  which  lasted  for  many 
centuries,  and  which  was  undoubtedly  founded  on 
the  primitive  idea  of  the  many  articles  which  in 
early  ages  had  been  made  of  wattles.  But  with  all 
its  religious  devotion,  and  all  its  efflorescence  in  Art, 
the  Clergy,  who  were  its  apostles  and  prophets,  seem 
to  have  taken  little  heed  of  the  social  condition  or 
of  the  secular  affairs  of  the  people  among  whom 
they  laboured.  There  are  few  things  in  all  litera- 
ture more  curious  or  more  provoking  than  the 
contrast  between  the  minute  information  which 
Adamnan  gives  to  us  respecting  many  details  of 
Columba's  life,  and  the  absolute  silence  of  the 
biographer  on  everything  we  most  desire  to  know 
respecting  the  Pictish  people  in  the  west  and  north 
of  Scotland  during  the  Sixth  and  Seventh  Centuries. 
It  is  like  the  contrast  between  the  narrow  field  of  a 
powerful  microscopic  lens  and  the  surfaces  which  are 
close  beside  it,  but  on  which  nothing  is  distinguish- 
able. On  the  one  hand  we  seem  almost  to  hear 
Columba's  voice,  and  to  see  his  gestures.  On  the 
other  hand,  we  hardly  see  or  hear  anything  of  those 
to  whom  he  spoke  the  Word,  and  to  whom  he  sang 


20  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  Psalms,  and  over  whom  he  signed  the  sign  of 
the  Cross. 

But  although  we  are  told  little  at  this  particular 
time,  yet  from  events  which  followed  at  no  distant 
date,  and  from  the  general  course  of  history,  we 
know  pretty  nearly  how  matters  really  stood. 

All  the  races  which  occupied  Europe  before  the 
Roman  conquests,  had  this  in  common — that  they 
had  not  then  emerged  from  the  rude  Tribal  organisa- 
tion through  which,  probably,  the  whole  human  race 
has  passed.  During  long  centuries  the  Roman  people 
itself  had  travelled  far  from  the  condition  of  being 
one  only  of  the  Tribes  of  Latium.  Yet  this  they  had 
been  once, — and  nothing  more.  From  their  own  little 
settlement  on  the  Tiber  they  had  seen  and  hated 
the  rival  walls  of  Alba  Longa.  But  now  this  small 
Tribe  had  grown  into  an  Empire  which  stretched 
from  the  Euphrates  to  the  Clyde.  Great  in  Arms, 

freat  in  Arts,  but  greatest  of  all  in  Law,  the  Romans 
ad  left  little  trace  in  their  stately  jurisprudence  of 
the  remote  and  archaic  time  when  it  was  tolerated 
that  men  should  look  for  the  security  of  their  pos- 
sessions to  any  other  protection  than  that  of  an 
Imperial  power  enforcing  and  sustaining  an  Imperial 
code.  In  all  these  respects  the  invasion  of  the 
Northern  Tribes  was  indeed  what  the  Romans 
called  it,  an  invasion  of  Barbarians.  Among  them 
there  was  no  central  authority,  no  Common  Law 
built  upon  scientific  reasoning  and  accurate  defini- 
tions of  the  rights  and  duties  of  mankind.  There 
was  nothing  but  customs  and  traditions  in  a  state 
of  perpetual  flux,  and  therefore  always  at  the 
mercy  of  those  who  led  and  ruled. 

The  Celts  were  in  all  these  customs  the  least 
developed  and  the  least  advanced.  The  Chiefs 
seem  always  to  have  had,  from  the  earliest  times, 
a  much  more  arbitrary  power  than  among  the 
Teutonic  Tribes,  as  described  by  Tacitus;  and,  as 
in  the  earliest  authentic  accounts  we  have  of  the 
Highlands,  the  Tribal  stage  had  long  passed  into  the 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  21 

stage  of  Clanship,  we  find  fully  developed  all  those 
powers  of  adoption,  of  leadership,  and  of  hereditary 
authority  which  constituted  practically  unlimited 
rule. 

We  must  beware,  therefore,  of  a  mistake  which 
is  so  common  as  to  be  almost  universal — and  that 
is  the  mistake  of  confounding  the  Tribe  with  the 
Clan.  They  were  wholly  distinct  in  their  nature 
and  widely  separated  in  point  of  time.  The  Tribal 
stage  among  the  Picts  and  Scots  is,  properly  speak- 
ing, prehistoric.  We  know  of  it  only  from  the 
very  superficial  information,  and  the  passing  allusions 
of  a  few  Greek  and  Roman  writers.  Rome,  as  is 
well  known,  came  into  sharp  military  conflict  with 
the  Celtic  Tribes,  and  the  few  facts  which  her  his- 
torians mention  do  much  to  raise  and  very  little  to 
satisfy  our  curiosity.  That  a  people  so  far  civilised 
as  to  use  the  beautiful  leaf-shaped  swords  of  bronze, 
which  are  still  often  found  as  sharp  and  as  well 
moulded  as  the  day  they  were  cast — and  who 
could  meet  the  Roman  Legions  with  armed 
chariots — should  in  other  respects  have  been  so 
barbarous  as  they  are  described,  is  indeed  not  a 
little  perplexing.  The  holding  of  land  in  common 
is  mentioned  by  Latin  authors  along  with  the  same 
practice  in  respect  to  wives.1  If  this  be  correct  the 
Picts  and  Scots  must  have  differed  widely  from  the 
Teutonic  Tribes.  But  the  truth  is,  that  no  great 
reliance  can  be  placed  on  these  accounts.  The  most 
careful  and  laborious  diggers  in  the  mine  of  Celtic 
legend  and  tradition  are  obliged  to  confess  that  all 
the  details  connected  with  the  Tribal  stage  of  Celtic 
society  are  beyond  the  reach  of  history.  What  we 
do  know  with  certainty  is  that  during  some  dark 
centuries,  which  are  destitute  of  contemporary 
records,  the  Tribal  system  had  been  developed  into 
the  very  different  organisation  of  the  Clan;  and 
that  the  customs  and  usages  of  the  Clan  in  respect 
to  the  tenure  of  land  were  the  customs  and 

1  Skene,  vol.  iii.  p.  210. 


22  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

usages  of  Feudalism  in  the  rudest  and  most  violent 
form. 

We  know  this  from  the  long  survival  within 
the  Celtic  area  in  Scotland  of  customary  exactions 
the  same  in  origin  and  the  same  in  character  with 
those  which,  as  we  have  seen,  were  the  ruin  of  Ire- 
land. We  know  it  by  the  fact  that  after  the  union 
of  the  Picts  and  Scots  under  one  Crown  in  the 
middle  of  the  Ninth  Century,  it  is  specially  recorded 
of  a  certain  King  Girig,  who  reigned  from  878  to 
889,  that  he  relieved  the  lands  held  by  the  newly 
constituted  Scottish  Church  from  the  servitudes 
under  which  they  were  held  "  according  to  the  law 
and  customs  of  the  Picts." :  We  know  it.  too,  by 
the  fact  that  these  exactions  were  only  gradually 
extinguished  on  other  lands  by  that  one  great 
remedy  which,  as  Sir  J.  Davies  complained,  was  so 
grudgingly  given  to,  or  so  unfortunately  withheld 
from,  Ireland,  namely,  the  substitution  of  the  higher 
and  purified  Feudalism  of  the  Anglo-Norman  Law. 
It  will,  perhaps,  surprise  many  to  be  brought  face 
to  face  with  the  historical  evidence  that  Celtic 
Scotland  had  the  narrowest  escape  from  the  same 
development  of  corruption  which  proved  so  fatal 
to  the  prosperity  of  Celtic  Ireland.  But  that 
evidence  is  abundant  and  conclusive.  All  those 
Irish  exactions  with  barbarous  titles  which  are 
familiar  in  the  dreary  history  of  Irish  grievances, 
appear  in  counterpart  in  the  customs  of  the  Scoto- 
Celts.  The  names  by  which  they  are  designated 
have  a  close  family  resemWance.  The  occupants  of 
land  under  the  Chiefs  were  subject  to  at  least  four 
great  burdens,  which  were  called  respectively  Cain, 
Conveth,  Feacht,  and  Sluaged.  The  two  first  were 
not  necessarily  oppressive,  for  the  one  great  reason 
that  they  were  at  least  by  way  of  being  fixed  and 
definite  portions  of  the  produce.  But  the  two  last 
were  in  their  nature  purely  arbitrary,  answering  to 
the  opprobrious  "  Coin  and  Livery "  of  the  Irish. 

1  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  ii.  p.  320. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  23 

They  put  it  in  the  power  of  the  Chief  himself  and  all 
his  avowed  followers  to  live  upon  the  tenants  at  his 
pleasure. 

It  is  very  significant  that  our  knowledge  of  these 
old  Celtic  exactions  under  the  Clan  system  in  Scot- 
land is  derived  from  those  Latin  Charters  of  Anglo- 
Saxon  origin,  which  are  often  popularly  represented 
as  having  suppressed  the  ancient  liberties  of  the 
Celts,  but  which  in  reality,  so  far  from  imposing 
new  exactions,  were  the  great  instruments  whereby 
old  exactions  came  gradually  to  be  abolished  or  re- 
formed. The  Clergy,  as  usual,  continued  to  seek  and 
to  obtain  the  limitation  and  regulation  of  arbitrary 
exactions,  and  it  is  from  the  grants  given  to  them 
that  we  learn  how  heavily  and  how  universally  they 
were  levied  in  the  Highlands  upon  all  lands  which 
were  not  held  "  feudally" — that  is  to  say,  not  under 
the  new  Latin  and  Anglo-Norman  type  of  Charter. 
In  the  two  great  ancient  Provinces  of  Argyll  and 
Moray  we  have  examples  of  such  special  exemptions 
given  in  the  13th  century.  The  Celtic  exactions  of 
"  Sluaged  "  and  "  Feacht,"  and  others,  which  seem  to 
have  been  nameless,  are  specified  in  Latin  by  such 
words  as  these :  "ab  exercitu  et  expeditione,  et  opera- 
tione  et  auxilio,  et  ab  omnibus  consuetudinibus,  et 
omni  servicio  et  exactione  " — words  which  by  their 
very  variety  and  sweep  indicate  clearly  the  number 
and  the  unfixed  character  and  extent  of  the  "  exac- 
tions "  to  which  the  people  were  exposed  under  the 
native  Feudalism  of  the  Celts.1  In  respect  to  some 
of  these  exactions  we  have  specific  information  of 
the  quantities  of  produce  which  continued  to  be,  or 
came  to  be  levied  under  them.  One  of  these  was 
called  "Conveth,"  which  answers  to  the  Irish 
"  Coigny,"  and  represented  that  most  ancient  of 
" Tribal  rights,"  namely,  "the  original  right  which 
the  leaders  in  the  Tribe  had  to  be  supported  by  their 
followers."2  Locally,  in  the  Western  Highlands, 
this  particular  exaction  acquired  the  name  of  "  Cud- 

1  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  pp.  228-9.  2  Ibid.  p.  232. 


24  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

diche,"  and  it  seems  to  have  often  mounted  up  to 
quantities  of  produce  far  greater  than  any  regular 
rent.  Three  hundred  years  and  more  after  we  first 
hear  of  them  from  the  exempting  Feudal  Charters 
of  the  13th  century,  we  find  them  prevailing  in 
Argyllshire  and  in  the  Western  Isles,  and  we  find 
them  amounting  to  such  heavy  payments  as  1 8  score 
of  chalders  of  grain,  58  score  of  cows,  32  score  of 
sheep,  and  a  great  quantity  of  fish,  poultry,  and 
cloth  plaiding, — all  by  way  of  feasting  their  master 
when  he  pleased  to  visit  the  country.  In  Uist  each 
"  merk-land  "  paid  20  bolls  of  grain ;  and  in  Mull  each 
merk-land  paid  13  bolls  of  grain  and  meal,  20  stones 
of  cheese,  4  stones  of  butter,  4  oxen,  8  sheep,  2  merks 
of  silver,  and  2  dozen  of  poultry,  all  as  "  Cuddiehe  " 
whenever  their  master  comes  to  them.  And  this 
was  close  to  the  end  of  the  16th  century — in  1595. 
The  Monks  of  lona  do  not  seem  to  have  been 
much  impressed  by  the  advantages  of  these  relics  of 
the  Old  Celtic  Tribal  system,  and  like  other  wise 
men  they  took  refuge  in  the  more  lenient,  and  less 
lawless  Feudalism  represented  by  the  Latin  Char- 
ters. And  so  in  1580  their  successors  secured  from 
the  Chief  near  whom  they  lived,  M'Lean  of  Dowart, 
a  grant  of  their  lands  under  the  promise  of  being 
protected  from  these  genuine  old  Celtic  liberties  the 
true  character  of  which  is  very  frankly  described. 
The  Chief  was  to  "  suffer  no  manner  of  person  or 
persons  to  oppress  the  said  lands  of  lona  and  Ross, 
or  tenants  thereof,  or  trouble  or  molest  them  in  any 
sort  with  either  '  stenting '  or  conyow,  gerig  service 
or  any  manner  of  exaction. " 1  In  Athol  some  of  these 
old  Celtic  exactions  were  levied  so  late  as  1719-20. 
These  instances,  and  numberless  others  which 
might  be  given  from  similar  records,  show,  as  Mr. 
Skene  observes,  "  that  these  Celtic  burdens  on  land 
prevailed  over  the  whole  country  north  of  the  Firths 
(of  Clyde  and  Forth)  on  all  lands  which  had  not 
become  the  subject  of  feudal  grants."2  The  one 

1  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  p.  233.  2  Ibid.  p.  230. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  25 

essential  feature  which  distinguished  them  from 
Rent  properly  so  called,  or  from  the  legal  forms  of 
Feu-duty,  was  the  uncertainty  of  their  amount,  and 
the  consequent  liability  to  unlimited  extension  at 
the  hands  of  those  who  were  practically  possessed  of 
supreme  power.1 

But  in  Scotland  all  the  later  developments  of 
time  were  in  the  direction  of  modification,  of  ame- 
lioration, of  wise  and  temperate  legislation,  in  direct 
proportion  as  the  Provinces  became  united  under 
one  Crown,  and  subject  to  one  Parliament.  In  this 
civilising  process,  beyond  all  question,  the  introduc- 
tion and  establishment  of  the  Feudal  System,  as 
developed  among  the  Teutonic  races,  played  a  most 
important  part.  Historians  speak  of  the  silence,  of 
the  comparative  rapidity,  and  of  the  completeness  of 
this  great  legal  conquest — as  if  it  were  a  profound 
mystery.  But,  in  truth,  there  is  no  mystery  at  all. 
The  Feudal  System  spread  because  it  was  the  best 
possible  embodiment  and  expression  of  ideas  which 
had  been  long  familiar,  and  of  facts  which  had  long 
come  to  be  of  universal  prevalence.  The  ruinous 
customs  and  usages  which  we  have  seen  established 
among  the  Celts  were  feudal  in  their  root,  in  their 
origin,  and  in  their  essence.  But  they  represented 
Feudalism  in  its  most  barbarous  form — unrestrained 
by  any  sense  of  justice  or  of  law.  Cognate  ideas, — 
analogous  rights  and  duties, — were  embodied  in 
the  Anglo-Norman  Feudal  System ;  but  they  were 
moulded  and  governed  by  more  civilised  conceptions 
of  an  orderly  and  settled  jurisprudence.  All  ranks 
and  conditions  of  men  found  their  personal  interest 
in  accepting  that  system — because  it  gave  legal 
definition  to  customs  which  had  previously  been 
undefined,  and  held  out  to  a  growing  civilisation 
that  which  is  its  first  condition,  and  which  has 
always  an  irresistible  attraction  to  the  minds  of 
men — a  logical  and  reasonable  system  of  defined 
rights  and  duties,  under  which  all  classes  knew 

1  Ireland  in  the  17 th  Century,  by  M.  Dickson,  Introd.  pp.  4-5. 


26  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

what  they  might  and  what  they  might  not  do. 
This  was  the  real  strength  of  the  Feudal  System, 
and  this  strength  it  drew  from  the  silent  but  in- 
superable influence  of  that  great  agent  of  civilisa- 
tion— the  Roman  Law.  Even  in  Ireland,  as  we 
have  seen,  the  power  of  that  Law  had  begun  to 
work  through  the  ubiquitous  agency  of  the  Latin 
Church.  In  Scotland  the  perfected  combination  of 
Imperial  Law  with  Teutonic  Custom  was  greatly 
helped  by  the  actual  spread  of  a  kindred  population 
over  large  portions  of  the  country — by  the  mar- 
riage of  a  Saxon  Princess  to  Malcolm  Canmore,  a 
contemporary  of  the  Conqueror — and  by  the  sub- 
sequent close  alliances  of  the  Celtic  Chiefs  with  the 
Norman  and  Anglo-Saxon  aristocracy. 

These  were  indeed  adventitious  advantages,  and 
causes  of  diffusion,  which  were  of  inestimable  value  ; 
but  nothing  marks  more  strikingly  the  natural 
adaptation  and  fittingness  of  the  Feudal  System 
into  pre-existing  and  purely  native  conditions,  than 
the  fact  that  the  old  Celtic  titles,  derived  originally 
from  the  language  of  Tribes  and  Clans,  became 
universally  translated,  without  any  sense  of  break 
or  change,  into  the  titles  which  were  known  and 
established  over  the  rest  of  feudal  Europe.  The 
Celtic  "Mormaers"  took  their  natural  place  as 
Saxon  "  Earls"  holding  under  the  King;  whilst 
under  the  Earls  again  the  Celtic  "  Toisechs  "  took 
their  corresponding  place  as  Chiefs  of  Clans.  Thus, 
in  the  organisation  of  the  Celtic  parts  of  Scotland, 
"  we  find,"  as  Mr.  Skene  has  said,  "  a  gradation 
of  persons  possessing  territorial  rights  within  them, 
consisting  of  the  Ardri,  or  supreme  King,  the  Mor- 
maer,  and  the  Toisech,  and  the  latter  of  these  as 
not  only  possessing  rights  in  connection  with  the 
land,  but  also  standing  in  a  relation  to  the  Tribe 
or ^  Clan  which  occupied  them,  as  leader."1  All 
this  was  essentially  allied  to  the  Feudal  System, 
and  so  when  that  System  in  its  higher  form  came 

1  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  pp.  57-8. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  27 

into  contact  with  the  vaguer,  less  definite,  but 
fundamentally  analogous  customs  which  had  arisen 
out  of  the  necessities  of  life  among  the  Celtic  as 
well  as  among  the  Teutonic  Tribes,  it  naturally 
absorbed  these  customs  into  itself,  and  gave  to 
them  a  legal  and  well-regulated  definition. 

Among  the  Celtic  population,  indeed,  in  exact 
proportion  as  the  remoteness  of  the  country  withheld 
them  longer  from  the  benefits  of  this  System,  we 
find  their  own  more  ancient  usages  tending  not  to 
greater  freedom  among  the  mass  of  the  people,  but 
to  more  absolute  and  arbitrary  power  in  the  hands 
of  those  who  were  their  Chiefs  and  rulers.  Accord- 
ingly, the  civilisation  of  Scotland  began  in  the 
Lowlands,  where  the  Feudal  System  was  earliest 
established,  and  along  the  whole  eastern  districts 
which  were  outside  the  Highland  barrier.  Just  in 
proportion  as  they  were  outside  that  barrier  of  rough 
hills  and  mountains,  they  were  inside  the  advancing 
line  of  mixed  races,  and  of  laws  becoming  more  just 
and  settled — through  all  those  processes  of  natural 
selection  which  mark  the  history  of  an  advancing 
people. 

All  historians  of  Scotland  are  agreed  that  the 
two  centuries  which  elapsed  between  Malcolm  Can- 
more,  with  his  wife  Queen  Margaret,  and  the  death 
of  Alexander  in.  in  1286,  constitute  the  epoch 
during  which  Scotland  made  herself  a  Nation,  and 
advanced  most  rapidly  in  civilisation  and  in  wealth. 
During  the  whole  of  it  the  direct  descendants  of 
that  illustrious  union  of  the  Celt  and  Saxon  con- 
tinued to  occupy  the  throne,  and  during  the  whole 
of  it  there  was  constant  progress  made  in  that  amal- 
gamation of  races  to  which  our  Island  owes  so  much. 
I  have  spoken  of  the  line  of  mountains — the  Gram- 
pian Range — which  rises  like  a  wall  from  the  low 
grounds  of  the  Valley  of  Strathmore,  and  from  the 
Firth  of  Clyde — as  the  Highland  Barrier.  But  it 
must  not  be  supposed  that  it  remained  long  a  barrier 
after  the  union  of  the  Picts  and  Scots,  still  less  after 


28  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  Saxon  and  Norman  stream  set  in  under  Queen 
Margaret  and  her  descendants.  The  broad  belt  of 
country,  comparatively  low,  which  flanks  that  line  of 
mountains  to  the  east,  and  stretches  from  the  Forth 
and  the  Tay  round  the  whole  coast  of  Scotland  to  the 
Beauly  Firth,  was  gradually  but  surely  occupied  by 
an  Anglo-Saxon  population,  and  one  of  the  Kings  of 
this  period — Malcolm  the  Fourth — drove  out  the 
Celts  from  the  rich  province  of  Moray,  and  resettled 
it  with  the  mixed  races  of  the  South.1 

From  many  points  of  all  this  low  country,  the 
central  Highlands  were  accessible  along  the  banks 
of  rivers  rising  on  the  hills  of  watershed,  between 
the  west  and  east.  The  Teith,  the  Earn,  the  Tay, 
the  Dee,  the  Deveron,  the  Don,  the  Findhorn,  and 
the  Spey,  were  all  more  or  less  easy  lines  of  access 
to  the  strongholds  of  the  Celt,  whilst  the  great 
diagonal  Valley  which  cuts  right  across  Scotland 
from  Inverness  to  the  Isle  of  Mull, — Glenmore — 
constituted  another  line  of  penetration.  On  the 
southern  flank,  the  beautiful  Province,  and  ancient 
Earldom,  of  the  Lennox,  was  open  from  the  branches 
of  the  Firth  of  Clyde,  and  from  the  fertile  Strath 
through  which  Loch  Lomond  sends  its  waters  to 
the  tidal  estuary  at  Dumbarton.  It  is  this  gently 
flowing  stream  the  Leven,  in  Celtic  tongue  "  Leven- 
achs,"  from  which  the  whole  district  takes  its  name. 
Embracing  the  whole  of  the  present  county  of 
Dumbarton  and  a  great  part  of  Stirling,  the  country 
of  the  Leven, — the  Lennox — remained,  almost  up 
to  our  own  day,  half  Lowland  and  half  Highland 
— half  Saxon,  and  half  almost  purely  Celtic. 

Under  such  a  combination  of  geographical  and 
of  political  conditions,  it  is  not  surprising  to  find 
that  the  fusion  of  races  and  the  assimilation  of 
institutions  had  made  immense  progress,  when  the 
light  of  history  first  becomes  clear  in  the  Eleventh 
Century.  The  way  had  been  prepared  beforehand, 
not  only  for  the  Saxon  or  the  Norman  Knight,  but 

1  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  p.  27. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  29 

for  any  Chief  or  any  leader  of  kindred  blood  who 
could  combine  courage  with  knowledge  and  with 
conduct  in  the  pursuit  of  arms.  It  must  always  be 
remembered  that  the  Celts  had  been  successfully 
invaded  by  the  Teutonic  races  from  the  North  and 
West,  long  before  they  came  to  be  invaded  by  the 
Saxons  and  Normans  from  the  South  and  East. 
For  several  hundred  years,  after  the  union  of  the 
Picts  and  Scots,  in  the  middle  of  the  Ninth  Cen- 
tury, a  very  large  part  of  the  country,  what  we  now 
call  the  Highlands  of  Scotland,  was  ruled  by  an 
alien  Gothic  race.1  Over  the  whole  of  the  Hebri- 
dean  Islands,  and  over  the  whole  of  the  Northern 
Highlands  down  to  the  chain  of  Lakes  now  occupied 
by  the  Caledonian  Canal,  petty  Kingdoms  were 
established  under  Chieftains  who  were  Norsemen. 
The  native  Celts  became  their  Clansmen  rather 
than  their  subjects — or  their  subjects  only  in  the 
same  sense  and  measure  as  all  Clansmen  had  be- 
come subject  to  their  Chiefs.  The  Celts  must  have 
clustered  round  the  standard  of  those  hardy  war- 
riors, just  as  they  had  before  clustered  under 
leaders  of  their  own.  Of  course  this  Norse 
dominion  had  not  been  achieved  without  endless 
fighting.  But  it  was  achieved  without  any  exter- 
mination, and  apparently  without  even  much  dis- 
placement of  the  native  Celtic  population.  The  Celts 
were  enlisted  rather  than  subdued,  and  incorporated 
in  the  rough  Feudalism  of  a  great  military  race. 

There  was  constant  intermarriage  between  the 
Teutonic  and  the  Celtic  Chiefs,  so  much  so,  that 
it  is  often  difficult  to  determine  clearly  to  which  of 
the  two  bloods  the  most  celebrated  men  belonged. 
There  is  no  name  more  familiar  to  our  ears,  in 
the  history  of  that  dark  time,  than  the  name  of 
Somerled,  and  none  more  associated  with  our  very 
idea  of  the  northern  race,  whose  dominion  was 
founded  on  the  Galley  and  the  Sea,  and  from  whose 

1  Burton's  History  of  Scotland,  vol.   i.  chap,  ix.,  and  Skene's  Celtic 
Scotland,  vol.  iii.  chap.  i. 


30  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

language  the  sound  of  that  name  unquestionably 
comes.1  Yet  it  seems  now  certain  that  on  the 
father's  side,  at  least,  his  origin  was  Celtic,  whilst 
his  Norwegian  name  probably  indicates  some  near 
family  relationship  with  those  whose  rule  he  fought 
against  and,  at  least,  locally  overthrew.  But  that  a 
Chief  who  championed  the  cause  of  the  old  native 
population  of  Argyll  and  its  Isles  should  have 
borne  this  Norwegian  name,  although  in  the  male 
line  his  parentage  was  Celtic,  is  a  sufficient  indica- 
tion how  purely  personal  were  the  qualifications 
which  then  determined  leadership ;  and  how 
thoroughly  mixed  in  origin  the  great  leading 
families  had  become.  Whether  the  population  had 
become  equally  mixed,  is  very  doubtful.  Probably 
they  had  not,  because,  except  in  Caithness,  and  in 
some  other  parts  of  the  lower  margins  of  land  most 
accessible  to  the  sea,  it  does  not  appear  that  the 
Norsemen  settled  in  large  numbers  upon  the  country 
as  colonists.  But  it  is  clear  that  the  native  Celtic 
population  had  come  to  serve  under  whatever  rulers 
were  able  to  establish  their  authority,  and  had  been 
absorbed  into  the  military  system  by  which  that 
authority  was  maintained.  This  system  was  purely 
feudal  in  its  root  and  essence, — consisting  in  sub- 
ordination and  fidelity  to  Chiefs,  on  whose  capacity 
the  followers  depended,  and  to  whom  they  in  turn 
contributed  only  that  which  Muscle  must  ever  yield 
to  Mind. 

When  we  consider  that  these  contests  with  the 
Norsemen,  and  between  rival  Chieftains  who  were 
half  Norse  and  half  Celtic,  and  between  Clans 
formed  by  the  followers  of  these  Chiefs,  but  who 
were  predominantly  of  one  race, — went  on  in  the 
Highlands  and  Islands  for  the  long  period  of  more 
than  400  years — that  is  to  say,  from  about  860 
to  1266, — when  we  consider  further  that  at  one 
time — about  the  middle  of  the  Eleventh  Century 
— the  battle  rolled  through  all  the  mountains  to 

1  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  pp.  32-3. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  31 

the  eastern  shores,  and  southwards  as  far  as  the 
valley  of  the  Tay,  so  that  the  whole  of  Scotland 
north  of  that  river  was  for  a  season  under  the 
Norse  power1 — we  can  imagine  how  thoroughly  and 
minutely  the  individuality  of  Clans  must  have 
been  broken  up,  and  every  fragment  of  the  Archaic 
Tribal  organisation  must  have  been  ground  to 
powder.  The  dream  of  any  simple  patriarchal  system 
in  the  Highlands,  within  historic  memory,  bound 
together  in  peaceful  Village  Communities  like  those 
of  the  mild  Hindu,  is  a  dream  indeed.  It  is  true 
that  the  people  lived  in  villages,  partly  from  im- 
memorial habit,  but  still  more  for  the  excellent 
reason  that  men  must  cluster  together  when  they 
live  in  perpetual  danger.  It  is  true  that  they  pas- 
tured great  extents  of  land  promiscuously,  because 
the  scientific  agriculture  which  requires  inclosures 
and  the  application  of  individual  skill,  was  entirely 
unknown,  whether  as  regards  the  production  of 
corn,  or  as  regards  the  breeding  of  animals  by 
careful  and  artificial  selection.  It  is  true  also  that 
in  name  at  least  the  hereditary  principle  lingered 
on,  for  this  was  common  to  the  Saxon  and  to  the 
Norman  as  well  as  to  the  Celt,  and  was  provided  for 
in  the  better  and  stronger  form  by  the  higher 
Feudalism  of  those  races  than  by  the  ruder 
Feudalism  of  the  Clans.  But  the  organisation  of 
society  throughout  the  Highlands  had  become  mili- 
tary from  the  apex  to  the  base,  and  all  the  power 
of  Mind,  and  of  supreme  Authority,  had  been 
concentrated  in  Chiefs,  who  represented  a  mixture 
of  races,  and  who  brought  in  the  elements  of  a 
higher  civilisation.  The  tie  of  common  blood  had 
through  the  fierce  work  of  centuries  been  universally 
superseded  by  the  tie  of  fidelity  to  men  who  could 
lead  others  to  victory,  and  who  could  protect  them 
during  intervals  of  peace  in  the  complete  devolu- 
tion of  all  labour  upon  their  women,  in  the  enjoy- 
ment of  their  turf  huts,  of  their  thin  cattle,  of 

1  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  Hi.  p.  31. 


32  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

their  little  hairy  sheep,  and  of  their  strong  cakes 
of  meal. 

It  is  only  when  we  remember  all  this  tremendous 
history  of  fighting  and  of  rapine, — when  the  only 
bond  between  man  and  Chief  was  not  blood  in- 
herited, but  blood  shed  in  common, — that  we  can 
fully  understand  the  significance  of  the  very  earliest 
facts  which  reveal  to  us  the  condition  of  the  High- 
lands, when  the  light  of  history  first  shines  clearly 
upon  it.  Thus  more  than  forty  years  before  the 
close  of  the  Celtic  dynasty  of  Malcolm  Canmore, 
we  are  startled  by  finding  that  a  Knight  of  purely 
Norman  name  and  race  was  the  feudal  leader  of  a 
powerful  Highland  Clan,  and  the  possessor  of  a 
great  tract  of  country  in  the  very  heart  of  the 
Highlands.  This  comes  out  in  the  curious  story  of 
the  Byssets  which  well  illustrates  how  the  High- 
landers of  that  day  thoroughly  understood  Feu- 
dalism in  its  rude  and  archaic  principle  of  persona] 
and  military  fidelity,  but  did  not  understand  it  in 
the  modifications  and  refinements  which  had  arisen 
among  races  more  advanced  in  civilisation,  in 
courtesy,  and  in  law.  In  the  year  1242,  in  the 
reign  of  Alexander  n.  (1214-1249),  a  great  tourna- 
ment was  held  in  Lothian,  near  Haddington.  The 
Byssets  came  to  it  from  the  mountains  and  glens 
of  Lochness  with  their  Highland  Clan.  One  of  the 
Byssets  was  unhorsed  by  the  young  Lord  of  Atholl. 
In  the  high  code  of  chivalry  this  involved  no  feud, 
nor  even  any  offence.  But  the  Celts  of  Lochness 
understanding  only  that  part  of  Feudalism — noble 
in  itself, — which  consisted  in  fidelity  to  their  Lord, 
and  understanding  nothing  of  the  chivalry  which 
was  of  Norman  birth,  vented  their  anger  in  the 
murder  of  Atholl  and  the  burning  of  his  house. 
For  an  outrage  so  hideous  against  all  the  laws  and 
feelings  of  chivalry  the  Byssets  were  justly  out 
lawed,  and  it  shows  how  powerful  the  Scottish 
Monarchy  had  then  become  even  in  that  remote 
region  of  the  Highlands,  that  this  great  Norman 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  33 

family  were  deprived  of  their  lands,  and  their  some- 
what incongruous  name  disappears  from  the  history 
of  the  Highlands. l 

But  it  is  equally  significant  both  of  the  state  of 
the  country  at  that  time,  and  of  the  course  which 
subsequent  history  has  taken,  that  part  of  the  same 
lands  in  the  heart  of  the  Highlands  were  transferred 
not  very  long  after,  in  the  Thirteenth  Century,  to 
another  family  of  blood  as  purely  Norman  as  the 
Byssets,  but  whose  name,  by  phonetic  decay  or 
assimilation,  has  become  one  of  the  most  familiar, 
and  one  of  the  most  Highland,  of  all  names  con- 
nected with  the  Clans.  This  is  the  name  of  Fraser. 
The  evidence  seems  complete  that  this  name  appears 
first  in  Norman-French  under  the  form  of  Frezeau, 
from  which  it  passed  through  the  forms  of  Fiezel 
and  the  English  Fresel,  until  fully  a  hundred  years 
before  this  Lothian  tournament  the  family  was 
firmly  established  in  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland,  with 
extensive  possessions,  under  the  name  of  Fraser.2 
From  this  position  they  passed  on  by  alliances  and 
military  services  until,  under  Robert  the  Bruce, 
they  became  lords  of  great  possessions  in  the  central 
Highlands,  where,  as  is  well  known,  under  the  title 
of  Lovat,  they  founded  and  maintained  for  centuries 
one  of  the  most  powerful  of  the  Highland  Clans.  It 
is  needless  to  say  that  Bruce  himself  was  the  .im- 
mediate descendant  of  a  Norman  Knight,  De  Brus, 
that  his  family  was  first  settled  in  Yorkshire,3  where 
it  was  cherished  by  the  successors  of  the  Conqueror, 
— and  that  its  first  possessions  were  in  the  Border 
counties  of  Scotland,  the  great  districts  of  Annan- 
dale  and  Carrick.4  Yet  from  the  moment  that  the 
standard  of  national  independence  was  raised  by 

1  Burton's  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  ii.  p.  889. 

2  The  Erasers  of  Philorth.     By  Lord  Saltoun,  vol.  i. 

3  Lochmaben,  etc.,  by  Rev.  William  Graham  (1865),  p.  7. 

4  Mr.  Cosmo  In  ties  has  reminded  us  of  the  great  number  of  the 
greatest  names  in  Scotland  which  represented  Anglo-Saxon  and  Anglo- 
Norman  colonists — such  as  Cumin,  Douglas,  Dunbar,  Gordon,  Hamilton, 
Lindsay,   Maule,  Stewart,   Sinclair,  and  Wallace. — Origines  Parocliiales 
Scotice,  Preface,  p.  xxvi. 

C 


34  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Bruce,  he  had  no  more  devoted  adherents  than 
among  the  purest  Celts,  whilst  some  of  his  bitterest 
and  most  dangerous  opponents  were  the  descend- 
ants and  representatives  of  western  and  northern 
Clans  who  had  collected  under  Norseman  Chieftains. 
Among  the  earliest  of  his  followers,  and  among  the 
most  constant,  was  the  purely  Celtic  family  from 
which  I  am  descended — a  family  of  Scoto-Irish 
origin — that  is  to  say,  belonging  to  that  Celtic 
colony  from  Ireland  which  founded  the  Dalriadic 
Kingdom,  and  to  whom  the  name  of  Scots  originally 
and  exclusively  belonged.  The  name  when  it  first 
appears  in  writing  is  always  Cambel,  and  never 
Campbell,  the  letter  p  having  been  subsequently 
introduced  in  connection  with  the  fashion  which  set 
in  at  one  time  to  claim  Norman  lineage  as  more 
honourable  than  the  Celtic.  But  the  name  as  uni- 
versally written  for  many  generations  is  a  purely 
Celtic  word,  conceived  in  the  ancient  Celtic  spirit 
of  connecting  personal  peculiarities  with  personal 
appellatives.  "  Cam  "is  "  curved,"  and  is  habitu- 
ally applied  to  the  curvature  of  a  bay  of  the  sea. 
The  other  syllable  "  bel "  is  merely  a  corruption 
of  the  Celtic  word  "  beul,"  meaning  "  mouth."  So, 
in  like  manner,  the  purely  Celtic  name  of  another 
Highland  family,  Cameron,  is  derived  from  the 
same  word  "  Cam,"  and  "  srbn  "  the  nose.  But  that 
portion  of  the  Celtic  race  which  first  owned  the 
name  of  Scots  must  have  had  in  its  character  and 
development  something  which  made  it  predomi- 
nant, so  that  its  name  came  to  be  that  of  the  whole 
united  Monarchy.  Probably  all  its  Chiefs  had  a 
memory  and  traditions  which  predisposed  them  to 
fight  for  that  Monarchy  as  their  own.  Certain  it  is 
that  Sir  Nigel  Cambel  fought  with,  and  for,  the 
Bruce  in  all  his  battles  from  Methven  Bridge 
to  Bannockburn,  and  was  finally  rewarded  by 
the  hand  of  the  Lady  Mary,  sister  of  the  heroic 
King,  who  achieved  the  final  independence  of  his 
Country. 


CELTIC  FEUDALISM.  35 

But  though  King  Robert  the  Bruce  had  the 
advantage  of  loyal  help  from  Chiefs  who  were  of 
purely  Celtic  blood,  he  does  not  seem  to  have  had 
the  smallest  difficulty  in  granting  complete  dominion 
over  large  tracts  in  the  Highlands  to  followers  who 
had  no  hereditary  connection  with  them.  To  his 
own  nephew,  one  of  the  noblest  and  bravest  of  all 
his  little  conquering  band,  Randolph,  he  gave  the 
great  Earldom  of  Moray, — one  of  the  most  extensive 
of  all  the  Highland  territories  which  had  been  long- 
held  by  Celtic  Chiefs,  under  the  ancient  title  of  the 
Mormaers  of  Moray.  This  territory  stretched  from 
the  line  of  the  river  Spey,  on  the  east,  right  across 
the  whole  Highlands  to  the  western  coast  opposite 
to  Skye,  and  included  the  whole  modern  county  of 
Inverness  from  the  marches  of  Ross  on  the  north  to 
those  of  Argyll  on  the  south. l  We  have  seen  that 
Norman  Knights  had  long  before  been  established 
in  this  Celtic  country,  and  that  the  Celts  had  served 
them  with  a  rude  and  fierce  fidelity.  There  was  no 
reason  why  they  should  not  serve  with  equal 
fidelity  under  the  Ownership  and  the  lead  of  a  Chief 
who  was  a  leader  of  men  indeed, — whose  name  had 
become  famous  in  the  world, — and  in  whom  the 
strong  Norman  blood  had  been  quickened  by  Celtic 
descent  from  Malcolm  Canmore,  and  refined  by 
Saxon  inheritance  from  the  saintly  Margaret. 

1  Douglas's  Peerage,  vol.  i.,  Earldom  of  Moray. 


CHAPTER    II. 

THE  AGE    OF  CHARTERS. 

THERE  is  no  more  striking  illustration  of  the  per- 
fect continuity  between  things  new  and  old  in  the 
establishment  of  the  Feudal  System  than  is  to  be 
found  in  the  earliest  extant  feudal  Charters  con- 
ferring grants  of  land.  In  Scotland  they  begin  with 
the  Eleventh  Century.  For  an  excellent  reason 
those  who  have  written  about  them  are  obliged  to 
begin  with  at  least  one  much  older  document.  In 
the  end  of  the  Sixth  Century  Columba,  coming  from 
far  lona,  seems  to  have  established  a  Religious 
House  among  the  north-eastern  Picts  in  that  district 
of  Scotland  between  the  Dee  and  the  Spey  which 
was  called  Buchan.  There  for  several  hundred  years 
the  little  Abbey  of  Deer  continued  to  carry  on  the 
succession  of  the  Old  Columbite  Church.  Some- 
where about  the  close  of  the  Ninth  Century,  after 
the  union  of  the  Picts  and  Scots,  one  of  the  Monks 
of  this  Abbey  employed  his  time  and  his  skill,  as 
so  many  of  his  brethren  did  all  over  the  Christian 
world,  in  making  an  embellished  copy  of  the  Gospels 
on  fair  vellum.  It  seems  to  have  been  kept  in  the 
Monastery  as  one  of  its  treasures,  because  nearly 
two  hundred  years  later  than  this  Latin  writing, 
another  Monk  could  find  no  more  safe  and  lasting 
method  of  recording  the  benefactions  of  their  ancient 
House,  and  the  titles  by  which  they  held  their  lands, 
than  by  writing  the  history  of  them  on  the  broad 
margins,  and  on  the  vacant  half-pages,  of  this  old 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  37 

manuscript  of  the  Gospels.  This,  accordingly,  he 
did  in  the  Celtic  tongue,  which  appears  to  have 
been  a  spoken  language  in  Buchan  down  to  a  much 
later  date.  Tradition  is  perhaps  nowhere  safer  than 
when  it  is  transmitted  through  the  quiet  memories 
of  the  Cloister,  and  when  these  are  not  distorted  by 
the  atmosphere  of  religious  marvel.  On  secular 
affairs  such  memoranda  of  the  donations  and  grants 
of  Kings  and  Chiefs,  appear  to  have  been  accepted 
in  the  earlier  Middle  Ages  as  the  truest  evidence 
to  be  had  respecting  the  promises  of  the  dead  and 
the  obligations  of  the  living.  And  so  it  comes  to 

Siss  that  the  Celtic  jottings  in  this  old  Book  of 
eir  acquaint  us  with  a  long  succession  of  grants 
of  land  made  by  Celtic  ' '  Mormaers  "  and  "  Toisechs" 
to  the  Abbey  during  several  Centuries,  when  written 
Charters  were  unknown.  It  is  the  old  story. 
Lands  expressly  including  "  both  mountain  and 
field,"  were  given,  in  exclusive  possession,  to  the 
Columbite  Brethren,  sometimes  simply  named, 
sometimes  still  more  simply  described  by  childlike 
indications  such  as  these — "  as  far  as  the  Birch  tree 
is  between  the  two  Alterins."  But  one  essential 
feature  of  the  gift  or  grant  always  is,  that  the  land 
is  to  be  free  from  the  old  Celtic  Feudalism — the 
"  exactions  "  of  Mormaer  and  of  Toiseach.1 

It  is  impossible  to  understand  the  early  Charters 
— their  true  place  in  history,  in  usage,  and  in  law — 
without  reference  to  those  much  earlier  transactions 
which  had  been  going  on  for  niore  than  500  years. 
Under  these,  land  had  been  conveyed  by  and  to  the 
same  ranks  and  conditions  of  men — from  the  same 
motives — in  exercise  of  the  same  powers — and  with 
the  same  promises  and  effects.  There  was  no 
change  whatever,  except  that  earliest  step  in  civili- 
sation which  comes  with  the  more  familiar  know- 
ledge of  the  art  of  writing,  and  which  substitutes 
the  sure  evidence  of  documents  that  can  be  read, 
for  the  memories  of  intention  transmitted  only 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  p.  3. 


38  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

through  the  ear,  and  recorded  only  by  the  breath. 
That  there  was  no  consciousness  of  any  novelty 
as  regarded  the  nature  of  the  transaction  in  the 
minds  of  those  who  gave  the  first  Charters  in  Scot- 
land, is  clear  from  the  very  form  and  nature  of  the 
Instruments  themselves.  For  in  this  lies  the  full 
explanation  of  one  great  peculiarity  about  them 
which  has  often  been  observed,  but  the  true  signifi- 
cance of  which  has  not  been  always  as  clearly  seen. 
This  peculiarity  is  the  extreme  shortness  and  sim- 
plicity of  the  earlier  Charters.  For  brevity  and 
conciseness  they  have  been  always  the  wonder  and 
admiration  of  modern  lawyers.  But  the  cause  and 
the  meaning  of  their  shortness  and  simplicity  have 
too  much  escaped  attention .  If  they  had  purported 
to  give  or  to  secure  anything  which  had  not  been 
well  known  before,  this  striking  brevity  would  have 
been  impossible.  If  they  had  conveyed  new  rights 
and  imposed  new  duties,  it  would  have  been  neces- 
sary to  describe  these,  and  to  explain  them.  But 
as  they  neither  did  nor  professed  to  do  anything  of 
the  sort — as  they  were  nothing  more  than  a  new 
Form  of  acknowledgment  and  security  for  ancient 
rights  which  had  been  familiar  in  the  actual  trans- 
actions of  life  for  centuries  before — it  was  not  neces- 
sary to  explain  anything.  Dominion  over,  and 
exclusive  possession  of,  property  in  land,  with  all  its 
incidents,  had  been  vested  in  Kings  and  Chiefs,  and 
in  others  under  them,  in  Scotland,  as  in  all  other 
countries,  time  out  of  mind.  Hence,  the  earliest 
feudal  Charters  could  be,  and  were,  actually  con- 
fined to  a  few  lines  on  parchment,  expressing  nothing 
but  the  promise  and  the  faith  of  those  who  had  the 
actual  power  to  grant,  and  the  name  and  designa- 
tion of  those  who  were  in  a  position  to  accept,  all 
the  well-known  powers  and  obligations  of  Ownership 
in  land. 

A  very  clear  proof  of  the  great  antiquity  of  all 
these  possessory  rights  and  powers  comes  out  in  the 
result  of  a  formal  inquiry  or  "  inquest  "  held  in  the 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  39 

year  1116  respecting  the  landed  property  of  the 
ancient  See  of  Glasgow  founded  by  St.  Kentigern 
in  the  Seventh  Century.  That  property,  as  ascer- 
tained upon  oath  before  "  good  men  of  the  country," 
who  conducted  the  inquest,  must  have  consisted  in 
grants  and  donations  to  the  first  Bishop  and  his 
early  followers  which  were  then  nearly  500  years 
old.  Yet  the  evidence  was  so  consecutive  and  con- 
clusive, that  the  verdict  was  accepted  by  numerous 
and  powerful  men  who  had  the  strongest  personal 
interest  in  testing  it  to  the  last.  Possession  fol- 
lowed upon  it.  And  this  possession  did  not  consist 
in  mere  Tithes  or  in  mere  Church-dues,  but  in  broad 
lands,  and  numerous  Manors  scattered  all  over  the 
south  of  Scotland.1  It  was  not  the  nature  of  the 
thing  done,  but  only  the  method  of  recording  it  that 
underwent  a  change  in  the  dawning  light  of  a  rising 
civilisation.  The  earliest  extant  Charter  of  lands 
in  Scotland  is  by  King  Duncan,  son  of  Malcolm 
Canmore,  and  of  the  Saxon  Queen  Margaret  (1094-7). 
It  is  a  grant  to  a  Religious  House,  the  Monks  of 
St.  Cuthbert.  It  specifies  the  lands  by  name,  and 
refers  to  the  "  service  "  due  therefrom  as  the  essence 
of  their  value.  The  extent  and  nature  of  that 
service  is  simply  described  as  the  service  previously 
possessed  by  a  certain  Bishop  Fodan.  All  rents 
and  dues  at  that  time  necessarily  took  principally 
the  form  of  "service,"  and  it  was  the  right  of 
receiving  "  service "  from  any  given  lands  that 
mainly  in  that  age  constituted  their  value.  There 
was  no  attempt  or  need  to  specify  what  they  were, 
further  than  by  reference  to  the  continuity  of  enjoy- 
ment from  a  former  Owner.  It  is  this  definite  refer- 
ence to  well-known  pre-existing  rights  that  is  one 
of  the  most  striking  features  of  the  early  Charters, 
and  it  was  this  alone  which  made  it  possible  for 
them  to  be  so  concise.  But  no  general  description 
of  these  early  Charters  of  the  Eleventh  Century 
oan  be  so  striking  as  the  documents  themselves. 

1  Origines  Parochiales  Scotia,  Preface,  pp.  xxiii-iv. 


40  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Here,  therefore,  I  give,  in  extenso,  a  literal  transla- 
tion of  this  oldest  of  Scottish  Charters  :— 

CHARTER  OF  KING  DUNCAN  TO  THE  MONKS  OF 
ST.  CUTHBERT.   A.D.  1094. 

I  Dunecan,  Son  of  King  Malcolumb,by  hereditary 
right  King  of  Scotland,  have  given  in  alms  to  Saint 
Cuthbert  and  to  his  servants,  Tiningeham,  Aldeham, 
Scuchale,  Cnolle  Hatheruuich,  and  of  Broccesmuthe, 
all  the  service  which  Fodan  the  Bishop  thence  had. 
And  these  I  give  in  such  quittance,  with  sac  and 
soc  (Jurisdiction),  as  ever  St.  Cuthbert  has  had  best 
from  those  from  whom  he  holds  his  alms.  And  this 
I  have  given  for  myself,  and  for  the  soul  of  my 
father,  for  my  brothers  and  for  my  wife,  and  for  my 
children.  And  because  I  would  that  this  gift  should 
be  firm  to  Saint  Cuthbert,  I  have  made  my  brothers 
join  in  the  grant.  But  whosoever  would  destroy 
this,  or  take  from  the  servants  of  Saint  Cuthbert 
any  thing  of  it,  let  him  bear  the  curse  of  GOD,  and 
of  Saint  Cuthbert  and  mine.  AMEN. 

Then  follow  the  rude  crosses  which  the  greatest 
laymen  of  that  age  could  alone  make  to  indicate 
their  signature — one  cross  for  the  King — nine  for 
as  many  witnesses,  and  one  for  the  learned  Scribe 
who  wrote  the  Deed,  and  who  added  across  the 
uncultured  but  sacred  symbols  such  syllables  as 
these — "Crux  Duncani."1 

The  same  general  character  belongs  to  all  the 
Charters  given  by  the  Scottish  Sovereigns  during 
the  Eleventh,  Twelfth,  and  Thirteenth  Centuries— 
that  is,  from  the  death  of  Malcolm  Canmore,  in 
1093,  to  the  death  of  Alexander  m.,  in  1286. 
Nor  must  it  be  supposed  that  these  things  were 
done  in  a  corner — that  they  were  the  individual 
acts  of  Kings,  executed  without  warrant  from  the 
universal  sentiment  of  the  nation.  In  the  reign  of 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  II.  p.  4. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  41 

ivid  i.  (1124-1153)  Charters  of  land  were  expressly 
jiven  with  what  may  be  called  in  modern  language 
:he  consent  of  Parliament  or  Great  Council  of  the 
nation.  In  the  old  Celtic  "  Scotland  "  proper,  which 
lay  north  of  the  Forth,  they  had  been  given  in  the 
true  Celtic  spirit,  with  the  formal  assent  and  con- 
currence of  the  Seven  Earls,  the  Chiefs  of  the  Seven 
great  Provinces  of  the  North.  But  in  King  David's 
time,  when  the  Southern  Provinces  had  been  added 
to  the  Monarchy,  they  were  given  "with  confir- 
mation of  Bishops,  Earls  and  Barons  " — to  which  is 
sometimes  added  "  with  consent  of  the  clergy  and 
people." 1  All  ranks  and  orders  were  not  only 
familiar  with  the  nature  of  such  grants  in  all  parts 
of  the  Kingdom,  but  were  familiar  with  nothing 
else  as  the  only  guarantee  of  peaceful  Ownership. 
And  so,  no  elaboration  was  required.  The  Clergy 
were  the  only  lawyers  and  the  only  conveyancers. 
They  wrote  concisely,  and  to  the  point.  Bits  of 
parchment  one  inch  in  breadth,  and  a  very  few 
inches  in  length,  were  enough  to  convey  great 
Earldoms  and  Baronies  in  the  days  of  David  I. 
Eleven  lines  on  a  small  parchment  conferred  the 
whole  of  Annandale  upon  an  ancestor  of  King 
Robert  the  Bruce.  This  Charter  is  so  typical,  and 
stands  so  early  among  those  conveying  lands — not 
to  Churches  but  to  laymen — that  I  give  it  also 
in  full  translation  : — 

CHARTER  OF  AN  AND  ALE  TO  ROBERT  DE  BRUS, 

A.D.  1124-1130. 

David  by  the  Grace  of  God,  King  of  Scots,  to 
all  his  Barons  and  men  and  friends,  French  and 
English,  greeting.  Know  that  I  have  given  and 
granted  to  Egbert  de  Brus,  Estrahanent,  and  all  the 
land  from  the  march  of  Dunegal  of  Stranit,  even  to 
the  march  of  Handulph  Meschin.  And  I  will  and  grant 

1  "  Clero  etiain  acquiescente   et  populo."      Skene's    Celtic  Scotland, 
vol.  i.  p.  459. 


42  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

that  he  hold  and  have  that  land  and  its  castle,  well 
and  honourably,  with  all  its  customs,  to  wit,  with 
whatever  customs  Randulph  Meschin  had  in  Carduill 
and  in  his  land  of  Cumberland,  on  whatever  day  he 
had  them  best  and  most  freely.  Witnesses.  .  .  . 

It  will  be  observed  that  in  this  Charter  there  is 
not  one  word  of  definition  except  by  explicit  refer- 
ence to  previous  well-known  and  established  rights. 
The  lands  are  described  by  marches  which  are 
assumed  to  admit  of  no  dispute.  But  all ' '  customs ' '  or 
services  are  simply  referred  to  as  those  which  a  for- 
mer Proprietor  had  enjoyed,  at  whatever  time  and 
under  whatever  circumstances  he  had  them  "  best 
and  most  freely."  No  feudal  service  whatever  is 
provided  for  in  the  Charter.  Probably  this  also  was 
left  to  usage  and  to  the  general  duties  of  allegiance. 

These  earliest,  and  almost  archaic  forms  of  Charter 
are  of  the  highest  interest  and  importance,  because, 
rude  and  simple  as  they  are,  they  contain  not  only 
the  germs,  but  the  main  provisions,  and  even  some 
of  the  very  words  out  of  which  the  latest  and  most 
elaborate  Charters  were  naturally  evolved.  First  it 
was  their  object  simply  to  record  ;  and  then, 
secondly,  it  became  of  necessity  their  object  to 
define.  It  is  impossible  to  record  clearly  anything 
which  cannot  be  defined  distinctly.  But  nothing 
can  be  defined  distinctly  respecting  which  our  own 
conceptions  are  vague  and  hazy,  or  which  is  in  itself 
variable — in  the  sense  of  depending  wholly  on  arbit- 
rary Will.  Hence  it  was  that  in  the  very  nature  of 
things  Charters  tended  to  the  abolition  of  the  old 
lawless  exactions  of  Celtic  Feudalism.  They  effected 
this  as  regards  all  lands  given  to  the  Church  by  ex- 
pressly forbidding  these  exactions  altogether.  They 
effected  the  same  object  as  regards  lands  granted  to 
laymen  by  substituting  definite  and  fixed  amounts  of 
payment  or  of  service. 

But  the  same  necessity  for  deliberate  thought 
which  is  one  of  the  great  causes,  and  at  the  same 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  43 

time  one  of  the  great  consequences  of  civilisa- 
tion, called  for  another  definition  in  the  Charters. 
What  was  it  that  they  gave?  What,  and  how 
much  were  they  intended  to  secure?  When  no 
technical  phrases  had  been  yet  established,  how  was 
property  in  land  to  be  described  ?  The  very  simple 
and  childlike  expedient  of  describing  the  things  given 
as  the  same  with  those  previously  enjoyed  by  the 
last  Owner,  and  of  adding  by  way  of  emphasis  that 
this  equality  was  to  be  maintained  up  to  the  highest 
level  of  that  enjoyment  at  its  best  and  fullest — this 
expedient  obviously  could  not  be  lasting.  It  is 
indeed  very  curious  how  long  it  did  survive  in 
various  forms  of  expression,  which  are  easily  recog- 
nised as  relics  of  the  infantile  conception  which  we 
have  seen  expressed  in  the  two  Charters  already 
given.  But  the  needful  definition  soon  began  to 
grow.  It  was  purely  an  instinctive  and  not  at  all 
a  formal  or  scientific  process.  It  came  in  the  simple 
effort  to  record  what  was  meant  by  the  great 
Manors  and  Lordships  as  well  as  the  smaller  estates 
which  had  been  enjoyed  for  centuries.  Did  they 
mean  nothing  but  the  possession  of  some  small 
area  of  ground  which  had  been  roughly  inclosed 
and  brought  into  cultivation  ?  Did  all  the  rest  of 
the  land,  which  in  those  early  days  must  have  been 
by  far  the  greater  part  of  the  country — wild  ground, 
bogs,  woods,  natural  opens  of  rough  grass,  hills, 
mountains — did  all  these  great  areas  of  country 
belong  to  everybody  in  general  and  to  nobody  in 
particular?  Did  the  fact  that  these  spaces  were 
used — in  the  only  way  in  which  they  could  be  used 
—as  pasture  for  the  cattle  and  sheep  of  Bondmen 
and  of  followers,  and  of  retainers — of  all  in  fact 
who  lived  upon  or  near  the  land — did  this  scattered 
and  indefinite  use  prevent,  preclude  or  limit  the 
full  Ownership  of  the  Chief,  or  Lord,  or  Owner  1  ^ 
Had  any  great  break  or  change  occurred  since  the  ' 
old  centuries  when  the  Celtic  Book  of  Deir  had 
recorded  that  grants  of  land  included  "  both  Moun- 


44  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

tain  and  Field "  ?  Not  at  all  as  definite  legal 
problems  to  be  solved,  or  as  questions  even  con- 
sciously propounded,  but  as  a  necessity  of  thought 
in  the  mere  act  of  recording  that  which  Charters 
were  intended  to  convey,  these  alternative  concep- 
tions would  be  naturally  and  inevitably  encountered. 

Accordingly  when  we  look  into  the  Charters  the 
growth  of  definite  ideas,  and  of  definite  expressions, 
is  most  curious  and  instructive.  In  the  first  extant 
Charter  from  King  Duncan,  as  we  have  seen,  there  is 
nothing  whatever  to  express  Possession  except  the 
words,  "  have  given  in  alms  "  the  lands  whose  names 
follow — with  the  explanation  added, "  all  the  service" 
which  a  preceding  Owner  "  thence  had."  The  second 
Charter  to  Eobert  de  Brus  amplifies  these  ex- 
pressions a  little.  Here  it  is  "  all  the  land  "  within 
certain  known  boundaries  which  is  "given  and 
granted,"  with  a  further  explanation  that  it  is  to  be 
"  held  and  had"  with  its  Castle  and  "  all  its  customs" 
as  held  by  a  predecessor.  This  is  a  step  in  advance, 
because  "all  the  land"  is  clearly  intended  to  cover 
the  whole  area  whether  cultivated  or  waste.  But  a 
few  years  later  than  King  Duncan's  Charter,  in  the 
reign  of  King  Edgar  (1097-1107)  we  have  another 
Charter  even  shorter  than  the  first,  but  in  which  we 
see  still  further  progress  in  explicit  definition.  It  is 
a  grant  to  the  same  religious  Brotherhood  which  was 
specially  favoured  by  the  descendants  of  Queen 
Margaret,  the  Monks  of  St.  Cuthbert.  Here  the 
words  are  fuller,  although  still  marvellously  concise. 
The  estate  is  designated  by  its  name,  with  these 
words  following  :  "  both  in  lands  and  in  waters,  and 
with  all  that  is  adjacent  to  it — namely,  that  land 
which  lies  between  Horverdene  and  Cnapdene — to 
have  and  to  hold  freely  and  quietly,  and  to  be  dis- 
posed of  at  the  will  of  the  Monks  of  St.  Cuthbert."1 

The  absence  of  formality — the  perfect  simplicity 
with  which  these  expressions  are  used,  indicate  clearly 
that  they  were  nothing  more  than  a  mere  putting 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  III. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  45 

ito  words  of  the  common  understanding  of  the  age, 
respecting  all  that  was  carried  in  a  gift  of  lands. 
In  this  case  the  waters  appertaining  to  the  land  are 
mentioned  incidentally  as  included  in  the  gift.  And 
so  in  yet  another  Charter  of  the  same  Reign,  which 
is  the  shortest  of  all,  we  have  one  item  specified — 
which  speedily  disappeared  for  ever — namely,  the 
"men"  or  Bondmen  who  were  resident  on  the  pro- 
perty conveyed.1  The  words  are,  "  with  men,  with 
lands,  and  waters."  And  then  in  another  Charter 
we  have  light  cast — through  the  same  little  lattice- 
windows  of  expression — on  those  most  interesting 
of  all  points  connected  with  the  history  of  the 
occupation  and  improvement  of  land — namely,  the 
condition  of  the  Bondmen,  and  the  conditions  under 
which  the  reclamation  of  wilds  and  wastes  was  then 
deliberately  undertaken.  In  this  document2  the 
King  adds  these  words  : — "  I  have  also  given  to 
the  Monks  twenty-four  beasts  for  reclaiming  the 
same  land,"  and  goes  on  further  to  explain  that 
by  express  agreement  with  the  "  men  "  of  a  certain 
district  he  had  ordained  that  they  should  pay  to 
the  Monks  half  a  silver  merk  yearly  for  every 
plough.  This  is  clearly  a  case  of  commuted  service. 
If  it  refers  to  Bondmen  it  shows  how  light  that 
bondage  had  become  when  they  were  consulted  and 
made  parties  to  the  arrangement.  If  they  were 
Freemen  it  shows  the  permeating  effect  of  Charters 
in  substituting  fixed  payments  for  old  but  arbitrary 
exactions. 

As  we  come  down  in  time,  during  the  reign  of 
David  I.,  there  is  a  rapid  development  of  form,  and 
of  expression,  especially  when  that  Sovereign  had 
to  deal  with  the  great  Religious  Houses  of  Melros, 
Kelso,  and  Holyrood.  Probably  among  the  Monks 
in  those  parts  of  the  Low  Country  there  were 
writers  of  greater  skill.  There  is  nothing,  however, 
in  those  Charters  which  indicates  any  novelty  what- 
ever in  the  benefits  conferred.  On  the  contrary, 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  V.  2  Ibid.  No.  IV. 


46  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

there  are  the  same  allusions  to  previous  Owners, 
and  to  accustomed  powers.  But  there  is  a  steady 
growth  in  the  direction  of  greater  precision,  and  of 
a  more  complete  enumeration  of  the  rights  which 
were  universally  understood  to  be  involved  in  Owner- 
ship. Some  of  these  depended  on  local  position, 
such  as  rights  over  the  wrecks  of  ships.  Fishings 
assume  from  the  beginning  a  very  definite  place, 
showing  how  highly  they  were  valued  as  an  appur- 
tenance of  certain  estates.  Moreover,  these  are 
often  conveyed  in  limited  shares  sometimes  upon 
distant  streams,  and  restricted  to  the  sweep  of  a 
fixed  number  of  nets.  But  in  these  Charters  we 
see  the  ordinary  and  standing  definition  of  that 
which  was  specially  conveyed  in  grants  of  land, 
assuming  substantially  the  form  which  it  retained 
for  centuries.  That  form  arose  naturally  and  neces- 
sarily out  of  the  endeavour  to  enumerate  as  exhaus- 
tively as  possible  all  the  kinds  and  qualities  of 
surface  which  the  land  presented  almost  every- 
where in  those  ages.  Thus  the  Charter  of  Melros 
specifies  lands  to  mean  "  the  whole  land  in  wood 
and  plain,  in  meadows,  and  in  waters,  in  pastures  and 
moors,  in  ways  and  paths,  and  in  all  other  things." 

It  must  always  be  remembered  that  the  way  in 
which  land  is  used,  in  respect  to  agriculture,  is  a 
totally  different  matter  from  the  principle  on  which 
land  is  held,  in  respect  to  Ownership.  The  method 
of  use  is  one  thing ;  the  principle  or  the  condition 
of  tenure  is  quite  another  thing.  It  is  a  great  con- 
fusion of  thought  to  confound  these  two  together. 
Traces  and  records  and  survivals  in  abundance, 
show  that  great  areas  of  country  were  once  used 
by  many  men  in  common,  and  from  this  it  is  con- 
cluded that  the  Ownership  could  not  have  belonged 
to  an  individual.  But  this  is  altogether  erroneous. 
If  the  Ownership  in  the  fullest  sense  had  not  be- 
longed to  individuals  in  those  days,  the  men  who 
enjoyed  the  common  use  of  it  would  not  have  been 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  XVII. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  47 

lowed  to  enjoy  it  long.  There  were  plenty  others 
ly  to  seize  it  at  a  moment's  notice,  if  it  were 
tot  protected  by  the  powerful  Chief  or  Baron  who 
the  interest  of  exclusive  Ownership  to  assert 
id  to  defend.  Just  as  the  Crown  promised  its 
protection  to  him  as  Owner,  so  he,  and  he  alone, 
could  afford  protection  to  his  men  as  Users.  But 
the  promiscuous  use  of  such  lands  amongst  his 
Tenants  and  retainers  was  a  necessity  arising  out  of 
the  nature  of  things.  Wild  wastes,  and  woods  and 
moors,  could  only  be  used  by  and  for  a  number  of  men, 
although  the  Ownership  lay  in  one.  Such  surfaces 
were  then  useless  except  for  pasture  or  the  chase, 
and  as  they  were  without  fences  or  divisions  of  any 
kind,  separate  areas  could  not  be  kept  for  the  cattle 
of  separate  individuals.  In  this  sense,  but  in  this 
sense  only,  they  were  used  in  common.  But  they 
were  so  used  only  by  individualised  groups  of  men, 
whether  bond  or  free,  whose  tenure  was  dependent 
on  the  tenure  of  the  Lord  to  whom  by  Charter  it 
had  been  given,  or  in  whose  hands  still  more  ancient 
rights  of  Ownership  had  by  Charter  been  recognised 
and  confirmed.  It  was  always  to  him  that  the 
native  population  (nativi)  whom  he  found,  or  the 
colonists  (coloni)  whom  he  brought,  or  the  Free 
Tenants  whom  he  invited,  owed  even  one  moment's 
security  and  peace.  The  enjoyment  which,  under 
him,  was  common  to  the  Few,  was  an  enjoyment 
absolutely  exclusive  of  the  Many.  And  the  Many 
were  always  quite  near  enough  to  make  them  a 
continual  presence  in  the  mind.  From  across  some 
rough  hill,  or  over  some  dreary  moor,  or  from  beyond 
some  firth  or  bay  of  the  sea,  outsiders,  representa- 
tive of  the  Many,  were  always  ready  to  rush  in 
upon  the  Few  who  were  protected  in  the  exclusive 
enjoyment  of  good  natural  meadows,  or  of  sheltered 
woods  with  fine  pastoral  glades,  stocked  with  sheep, 
and  swine,  and  cattle.  Nothing  but  the  quieting 
effect  of  acknowledged  power  and  right,  founded 
on  the  deeds  and  on  the  authority  of  centuries, 


48  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

could  then  keep  the  country  in  peace,  or  give 
time  and  place  for  the  settlements  and  improve- 
ments of  civilisation.  Hence  the  recording  work 
of  Charters  would  have  been  indeed  imperfect  if 
it  had  not  carefully  included  all  the  lands  which, 
so  far  as  the  plough  was  concerned,  were  then 
wastes  and  wildernesses,  within  the  area  of  indi- 
vidual Ownership,  for  responsibility  and  defence. 
It  is  not  too  much  to  say,  that  if  the  thoughtless 
sentiment  which  is  now  so  often  cherished  in  favour 
of  the  common  use  of  land,  as  distinguished  from 
individual  Ownership,  had  been  a  sentiment  capable 
of  existing  in  the  Eleventh  and  Twelfth  Centuries, 
Scotland,  which  was  largely  desert  then,  would 
have  been  nearly  as  desert  at  the  present  day. 

Perhaps  it  may  occur  to  some,  as  a  distinction, 
that  the  Charters  I  have  quoted  had  all  of  them 
reference  to  parts  of  the  country  which  are  now 
Lowland,  and  were  settled  by  the  Teutonic  races. 
But  this  is  to  pre-date  a  condition  of  things  which 
had  not  then  arisen.  We  have  already  seen  how 
completely  the  Highlands  proper  had  been  pene- 
trated, through  and  through,  by  the  power  and 
leadership  of  those  races.  We  have  seen,  too,  how 
Feudalism  in  its  very  roughest  and  rudest  forms  had 
been  long  established  as  the  very  root  and  essence 
of  the  ties  which  bound  together  the  Celtic  Chiefs 
and  Clans.  But  in  addition  to  all  this  we  have  to 
remember  that  in  the  Eleventh  and  Twelfth  Cen- 
turies a  great  part  of  Scotland,  which  was  gradually 
becoming  predominantly  Teutonic,  was  still  at  that 
time  full  of  Celts,  and  that  the  early  Charters 
recorded  nothing  that  had  not  been  long  habitually 
known  to  them.  We  have  seen  that  the  Book  of 
Deir,  written  in  Buchan  in  the  Twelfth  Century, 
recorded  the  transactions  of  many  centuries  in  the 
Celtic  tongue.  We  hear  that  when  Malcolm 
Canmore  visited  the  plains  or  low  country  of  Moray 
he  had  to  translate  the  speech  of  the  people  to  his 
Saxon  Queen.  Gaelic  seems  to  have  been  certainly 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  49 

understood  in  Aberdeen  and  Banff  so  late  as  the 
beginning  of  the  Twelfth  Century.  The  whole  of 
the  south-west  of  Scotland,  from  the  Clyde  to  the 
Solway,  the  Province  of  Galloway,  was  in  those 
centuries  mainly  Celtic,  and  the  Charters  of  King 
David  are  often  specially  addressed  to  "  Gal- 
wegians,"  as  well  as  to  French  (Normans)  and 
Angles.  Down  even  to  the  close  of  the  Seventeenth 
or  the  beginning  of  the  Eighteenth  Century  we  are 
told  on  good  authority  that  even  in  the  County  of 
Fife  so  many  of  the  poorer  classes  still  used  only 
the  Gaelic  language  that  it  was  an  impediment  in 
the  employment  of  them  south  of  the  Forth.1  It  is 
clear,  therefore,  that  in  no  part  of  Scotland,  and  to 
no  one  of  its  component  races,  were  the  powers  and 
gifts  conveyed  by  Charter  anything  but  a  new  form 
of  record  for  old  and  familiar  facts. 

On  this  point,  however,  we  have  one  confirma- 
tory circumstance  which,  if  any  were  needed,  would 
alone  have  the  highest  value.  I  have  already  re- 
ferred to  the  fact  that  for  one  hundred  years  before 
the  Anglo-Normans  invaded  Celtic  Ireland,  the 
native  Chiefs  and  Kings  had  begun  to  give  grants 
of  land  conveyed  in  the  definite  form  of  Charter. 
In  the  Latin  Charter  given  by  the  Irish  King  of 
Leinster  to  the  Monastery  of  Duisk  we  find  fairly 
begun  the  same  method  of  enumerating  the  things 
and  powers  conveyed  in  the  possession  of  land 
which  we  have  seen  also  beginning  in  the  corre- 
sponding Instruments  in  Scotland.  It  was  a  method 
of  enumeration  which  became  amplified  from  time  to 
time  so  as  to  include  complete  possession  of  every- 
thing upon  the  land  which  had  come  to  be  known 
as  of  any  value  in  the  use  or  enjoyment  of  it.  This 
shows  that  among  the  native  Celts  of  Ireland  there 
was  nothing  new  or  strange  in  such  kind  and  such 
measure  of  possession.  The  Irish  Charter  of  the 
(approximate)  date  of  1160  gives  the  definition  or 
enumeration  in  two  separate  forms.  First,  the 

1  Burt's  Letters  from  the  Highlands,  ed.  1876,  vol.  i.  p.  165. 
D 


50  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS 

lands  are  mentioned  by  name,  and  then  these  words 
are  added,  "  with  all  their  pertinents  in  waters,  in 
pastures,  in  woods  " — to  which,  again,  are  added  in 
another  line,  referring  to  another  portion,  "  with  all 
its  former  pertinents,  in  rivers  and  in  meadows  and 
in  groves."1  The  second  of  the  only  two  Latin 
Charters  which  remain  to  us  from  Irish  native 
Kings,  and  which  is  from  the  King  of  Limerick,  of 
about  nine  years'  later  date  (1169),  shows  a  further 
development  of  the  same  kind  of  enumeration, — for 
it  adds  to  the  other  words  already  quoted  these 
further, — "  in  fishings  and  in  mills." :  Both  of  these 
are  in  the  highest  degree  significant  of  the  indi- 
vidual appropriations  connected  with  land,  which 
in  actual  life  and  fact  had  come  to  be  of  use  and 
wont  among  the  Celts  of  Ireland.  If  vague  Tribal 
rights  had  survived  in  anything,  we  might  have 
expected  to  find  them  in  respect  to  fishings  and  in 
respect  to  Mills — both  of  which  were  great  sources 
of  wealth  in  those  early  days,  and  one  of  which— 
Mills — enabled  the  proprietor  to  levy  heavy  dues  on 
all  the  cereal  produce  of  large  districts  of  country. 

Returning  to  the  progress  of  Charters  in  Scot- 
land, there  is  an  interesting  difference  to  be 
observed  between  two  Charters,  both  given  to 
ancestors  of  King  Robert  the  Bruce.  I  have 
already  quoted  one  of  extreme  brevity  and  sim- 
plicity of  form,  given  by  David  i.  to  Robert  de 
Brus,  of  certain  lands  previously  held  by  a  certain 
Randulph  Meschin.  But  the  same  Sovereign  gave 
to  the  same  favourite  Knight  another  more  im- 
portant Charter  of  the  whole  of  Annandale  to  be 
held  in  Forest.  This  Charter  also  is  so  short  and 
simple  as  to  be  interesting  in  the  same  point  of 
view— as  the  mere  record  of  transactions  which  in 
themselves  were  evidently  so  familiar  as  to  need  no 
elaborate  explanation.  It  runs  thus  : — 

"  David  King   of   Scots    to    all    good   men   of 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Ireland,  Part  ii.  No.  LXII. 

2  Ibid.  No.  LXIII. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS. 


51 


his  whole  land,  French  and  English  and  Galwe- 
gians,  greeting.  Know  that  I  have  given  and 
granted  to  Robert  de  Brus  in  fee  and  heritage,  to 
him  and  his  Heir,  the  Valley  of  Anan,  in  forest,  on 
both  sides  of  the  river  of  Anan  as  the  marches  are 
from  the  forest  of  Selkirk  as  far  as  his  land  extends 
towards  Stradwith  and  towards  Clyde,  freely  and 
quietly  as  any  other  forest  of  his  is  best  and  most 
freely  held.  Wherefore  I  forbid  that  any  one 
hunt  in  the  aforesaid  forest  unless  by  his  authority 
on  pain  of  forfeiture  of  ten  pounds,  or  that  any  one 
go  through  the  aforesaid  forest  unless  by  a  straight 
road  appointed."  (Witnesses.) 

But  some  fifty  years  later,  in  the  reign  of 
William  the  Lion  (1165-1214),  the  grandson  of 
this  elder  Robert  de  Brus,  obtained  from  that 
Sovereign  a  new  Charter  of  Confirmation  for  the 
lands  of  Annandale,  and  this  second  Charter  shows 
a  very  considerable  advance  in  legal  elaboration. 
Still,  we  see  that  it  is  elaboration  of  form  and 
nothing  more.  It  is  a  mere  fuller  explanation  of  all 
that  had  been  meant  and  implied  before.  The 
enumeration  is  more  explicit.  The  lands  are  granted 
"  in  wood  and  plain,  in  meadows  and  pastures,  in 
moors  and  marshes,  in  waters,  stanks  and  mills,  in 
forests  and  trysts  (markets),  in  hills  and  harbours, 
in  ways  and  paths,  in  fishings  and  in  all  other  its 
just  appurtenances,  as  freely,  quietly,  fully,  and 
honorably  as  ever  his  father  or  he  himself  most 
freely,  quietly,  fully,  and  honorably  held  that  land 
of  King  David  my  grandfather,  or  of  King  Malcolm 
my  brother — excepting  the  royal  rights  which 
belong  to  my  Royalty,  to  wit,  Treasure -trove,"  etc. 
And  all  this  was  to  be  held  for  military  service, 
expressly  limited  to  ten  knights,  and  with  special 
abolition  of  a  burden  or  exaction  which  had  evidently 
been  customary  before — namely,  that  of  "  warding  " 
the  Royal  Castles  in  the  district.2 

In   this  Charter  we    have  very   nearly  in   full 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland-Pint  i.  No.  XX.     2  Ibid.  No.  XXXIX. 


52  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

development  all  the  essential  features  of  grants  of 
land  throughout  the  Middle  Ages.  They  were  not 
all  identical  in  their  terms,  because  the  scope  and 
intention  of  such  Instruments  were  not  always  the 
same.  But  the  variations  were  just  of  the  kind  to 
show  that  in  every  case  the  forms  of  expression  were 
not  merely  conventional,  but  were  measured  by  the 
different  meanings  of  the  Donor  in  each  case.  Thus 
there  were  Charters  which  conveyed  rights  of 
grazing  only,  and  not  of  the  soil  in  Ownership. 
Again,  there  were  grants  of  grazing  without  the 
grants  of  game,  and  vice  versd,  there  were  grants  of 
game  and  forest  with  express  reservation  of  the 
rights  of  grazing,  which  are  given  separately  and  to 
different  men.  Some  of  these  old  records  afford  us 
curious  glimpses  of  the  condition  of  the  country  and 
of  the  habits  and  manners  of  the  time.  Thus  the 
Avenels,  Lords  of  Eskdale,  had  a  quarrel  with  the 
Monks  of  Melros,  arising  out  of  the  fact  that  to  the 
Monks  they  had  given  by  Charter  rights  of  occupa- 
tion for  agriculture  and  for  grazing  in  a  forest  over 
which  the  Avenels  had  kept  only  the  exclusive 
privilege  of  the  chase.  The  quarrel  is  composed  by 
a  fresh  agreement  before  King  Alexander  n.  (1214- 
1249),  whose  edict  or  award  goes  into  great  detail- 
forbids  the  Avenels  to  keep  any  domestic  animals 
on  the  lands,  or  in  the  pursuit  of  game  to  break 
down  fences  or  injure  standing  corn  or  cattle.  On 
the  other  hand  the  Monks  are  to  leave  all  Hart  and 
Roe,  Wild  Boar,  etc.,  and  other  game  to  the  Superior, 
whilst  a  curious  clause  reveals  the  value  then 
attached  to  the  sources  whence  Hawks  could  be  got 
for  the  favourite  pastime  of  hawking.  The  Monks 
were  not  to  cut  down  any  tree  on  which  Hawks  had 
nests,  nor  were  they  to  cut  any  such  tree  until  the 
intention  of  the  Hawks  had  been  clearly  ascer- 
tained, that  they  would  not  return  in  the  year 
following.  This  clause  included  not  only  Falcons, 
but  Sparrow-hawks.1 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  XLIX. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  53 

This  document  is  of  some  interest  in  several 
rays.  More  than  one  of  our  historians  have  observed 
:hat  we  hear  no  complaint  in  Scotland  of  any  special 
"orest  laws,  such  as  constituted  so  great  a  grievance 
in  England  during  the  early  Norman  Kings.  And 
this  is  true.  There  were  no  such  savage  penalties 
attached  to  the  killing  of  Deer — nor  is  there  any 
notice  of  districts  of  country  once  settled  and  then 
cleared  for  the  purposes  of  Forest.  In  this  document 
we  see  that  without  any  special  legislation,  but  only 
as  a  natural  and  usual  incident  of  property  in 
districts  which  were  naturally  covered  with  woods 
and  real  forests,  the  chase  was  valued  as  a  pursuit, 
and  game  as  a  means  of  sustenance,  and  that  special 
bargains  were  made  in  regard  to  it.  On  the  other 
hand,  we  see  that  it  was  considered  reasonable  that 
mere  leases  or  grants  of  game  should  not  interfere 
with  the  increase  of  tillage  or  the  necessary  enclosure 
of  land  for  cultivation.  This  is  made  still  more  strik- 
ingly apparent  by  a  Charter  given  to  the  Abbey  of 
Melros  by  Walter  the  Steward  of  Scotland  in  the 
Reign  of  Alexander  n.,  in  respect  to  their  powers 
of  pasturage  and  of  improvement  in  the  Forest  of 
Ayr.  In  this  document  it  is  especially  explained 
and  declared  that  the  Forest  rights  retained  by  the 
Superior  were  not  to  limit  or  restrict  the  Abbey  in 
respect  to  the  number  of  cattle  they  might  find  it 
possible  to  support  upon  the  land,  nor  in  respect 
to  the  arable  cultivation  of  any  part  of  them.1 

But  the  greatest  interest  of  all  attaching  to 
these  documents  is  the  evidence  they  afford  of  the 
tendency  of  all  Charters  and  of  all  written  agree- 
ments in  that  age  to  make  the  rights  of  parties  clear, 
fixed,  and  definite.  It  is  impossible  to  exaggerate 
the  importance  of  this  element  at  that  time — all 
the  more  because  the  forms  in  which  it  appears  are 
not  mere  technical  forms  or  the  work  of  skilled 
lawyers.  They  are  of  extreme  simplicity,  but  at  the 
same  time  of  extreme  directness.  The  detail  about 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  LIII. 


54  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  Hawks'  nests  may  seem  childish  to  us  now. 
But  nothing  could  better  illustrate  the  spirit  in 
which  the  respective  parties  were  to  act  towards 
each  other  in  the  exercise  of  rights  which  might 
conflict.  And  be  it  observed,  all  this  was  the  mere 
interpretation  of  a  contract  which  the  Avenels  had 
voluntarily  entered  into  by  a  Charter  with  the  Abbey, 
so  that  the  edict  of  the  King  was  not  in  the  nature 
of  a  law,  but  in  the  nature  of  a  judgment  or  decision. 
But  it  was  a  decision  governed  by  the  great  principle 
which  is  at  the  root  of  all  civilised  jurisprudence 
that  men  must  be  kept  to  the  fulfilment  of  their 
engagements,  and  that  in  the  interpretation  of  these, 
both  rights  and  obligations  must  be  at  once  strictly, 
and  at  the  same  time  equitably,  construed. 

This  was  a  great  period  in  the  history  of  Scotland 
— the  whole  of  this  Thirteenth  Century  to  the  death 
of  Alexander  in.,  the  last  of  the  direct  descendants 
-of  Malcolm  Canmore  and  Queen  Margaret — the 
last  of  our  Kings  who  represented  the  old  Celtic 
Monarchy  in  the  male  line.  It  was  a  manly,  and  a 
simple  time — how  manly,  was  soon  to  be  evinced 
in  the  great  struggle  with  the  two  Edwards  of 
England — how  simple,  is  evinced  by  all  of  the  few 
documents  of  the  time  which  have  survived,  and  by 
the  incidental  circumstances  which  so  often  come 
out  in  them.  And  in  nothing  was  it  nobler,  or 
more  fruitful  in  good  to  come,  than  in  this  instinc- 
tive desire  to  record,  and  to  fix,  and  to  place  under 
the  highest  sanctions,  human  and  divine,  all  the  old 
notions  of  right  and  wrong — all  the  old  traditions  of 
inherited  authority  and  of  recognised  possession, 
which  had  been  growing  up  for  centuries,  which 
had  become  the  basis  of  society,  and  which  needed 
only  to  be  consciously  recognised,  and  duly  em- 
bodied in  Instruments  of  legal  force.  It  seems 
strange  and  almost  incongruous  to  us,  but  it  did  not 
seem  at  all  incongruous  to  those  old  Kings,  that 
they  should  take  a  personal  part  in  the  minutest 
detail  of  this  great  process  of  record  and  of  organi- 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  55 

sation.  In  their  own  persons — on  foot  or  on  horse- 
back— it  was  common  for  them  to  fix  the  boundaries 
of  the  lands  they  gave  to  the  Church,  by  going 
round  the  marches,  and  once  across  the  area  thus 
defined.  It  takes  us  back  pleasantly  to  those  early 
days  when  we  read  King  David  saying  to  the 
Monks  of  Melros  that  he  assures  to  them  certain 
lands  "as  I  myself,  and  Henry  my  son,  and  the 
Abbot  Richard  of  the  same  church,  have  gone 
through,  and  gone  round  them,  on  Friday  the 
morrow  of  the  ascension  of  our  Lord,  the  second 
year,  to  wit,  after  that  Stephen  King  of  England 
was  taken." :  And  this  personal  perambulation  of 
the  marches  is  in  several  cases  recorded  in  the 
Charters.  Causes  were  heard  by  the  King  in  per- 
son ;  and  in  the  dispute  so  equitably  settled  between 
the  Lords  of  Eskdale  and  the  Monks  of  that  famous 
Abbey,  which  was  so  dear  to,  and  so  favoured  by 
the  Kings  of  that  dynasty,  we  can  well  imagine 
the  mixture  of  grave  and  gay — the  sense  of  equity 
and  the  sense  of  fun — with  which  Alexander  n. 
must  have  directed  the  compromise  about  the 
manifest  intentions  of  Falcons  and  of  Sparrow- 
hawks,  in  leaving  or  in  keeping  to  their  old  nest- 
ing trees. 

It  was  in  the  midst  of  this  rapid  process  of 
record,  and  of  consolidation,  and  of  progress,  that 
Scotland  suffered  the  most  terrible  calamities  that 
can  befall  a  nation — the  extinction  of  an  honoured 
Dynasty, — a  disputed  succession, — desolating  in- 
vasions from  a  foreign  army, — and  lastly,  a  long 
and  desperate  struggle  for  national  independence. 
Counting  from  the  death  of  Alexander  in.  to  the 
Battle  of  Bannockburn,  this  unsettled  and  bloody 
time  lasted  for  twenty-eight  years,  and  if  we 
count  to  the  final  Treaty  acknowledging  the 
Independence  of  Scotland,  it  lasted  forty-two 
years — from  1286  to  1328.  As  a  matter  of  course 
there  were  immense  changes  made  in  the  holders 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  XVII, 


56  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

of  landed  property  in  consequence  of  the  contest. 
Barons,  and  Knights,  and  Chiefs  who  in  the  dif- 
ferent divisions,  and  among  the  still  differing  races 
of  the  Monarchy,  had  been  loyal  to  the  cause  of 
national  unity  and  independence — these  had  to  be 
rewarded.  Those,  on  the  other  hand,  who  were 
disloyal  to  that  cause,  had  to  take  the  conse- 
quences of  their  defeat.  It  is  not  too  much  to  say 
that  a  very  large  part  of  the  land  of  Scotland 
changed  hands,  whilst  another  large  part  remained 
indeed  in  the  same  families  in  which  it  had  been 
for  centuries,  but  was  entered  for  the  first  time  in 
the  great  Charter  Boll,  which  recorded  under  a  new 
and  a  glorious  sanction  the  ancient  inheritances 
which  had  been  won  by  services  too  old  and  too 
continuous  to  be  recorded,  but  which  perhaps  had 
been  not  less  important  to  an  earlier  condition  of 
society. 

This  comes  out  very  clearly  in  the  earliest 
extant  Charters  connected  with  my  own  family. 
King  Robert  the  Bruce  was  not  likely  to  forget  the 
loyal  Knight  of  Lochow  who  had  been  his  close 
companion  throughout  his  memorable  adventures 
between  1306  when  he  assumed  the  Crown,  and  the 
great  battle  in  which  he  vindicated  that  assumption 
before  the  world.  The  King  had  good  reason  to 
remember  Lochow.  It  was  in  the  precipitous  pass 
at  the  foot  of  Ben  Cruachan,  where  that  fine  moun- 
tain falls  into  the  gorge  through  which  the  Lake 
finds  its  outlet  to  the  Sea,  that  he  had  one  of  the 
fiercest  and  most  dangerous  contests  of  the  war. 
The  Island  and  Western  Clans  under  the  Celtic 
Chiefs,  descended  from  Somerled,  had  with  their 
characteristic  traditions  from  the  Sea,  occupied  the 
Lake1  with  galleys,  and  the  steep  slopes  of  Cruachan 
with  men.  Nothing  but  personal  strength  and 

1  The  narrative  commonly  runs  that  the  Galleys  of  the  Islanders 
were  on  the  Sea.  But  the  Sea  is  several  miles  from  the  site  of  the  Battle. 
No  doubt  the  Lord  of  Lome  had  dragged  up  his  Galleys  from  Loch  Etive, 
and  launched  them  on  Lochow,  close  under  the  Pass  to  be  defended. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  57 

mrage,  seconded  by  the  only  strategy  which  such 
ground  admitted  of,  brought  the  little  band  of 
Bruce  victoriously  through  that  encounter  ;  and  so 
desperate  was  it  at  one  moment,  that  the  King  was 
as  nearly  as  possible  overpowered, — his  plaid  was 
torn  from  his  person — the  brooch  by  which  it  was 
fastened  was  carried  off,  and  remains  to  this  day  in 
the  possession  of  the  gallant  Chief  of  the  Clan 
Macdougall  in  the  Castle  of  Dunolly.  It  was  not, 
however,  till  after  the  death  of  his  brave  companion 
in  arms,  Sir  Niel  Campbell,  who  did  not  long  sur- 
vive the  Battle  of  Bannockburn,  dying  in  1315, 
that  the  family  seems  to  have  cared  to  have  that 
new  form  of  title  which  consisted  in  a  bit  of  parch- 
ment. The  King  had  given  to  Sir  Niel  his  own 
sister,  Lady  Mary,  in  marriage,  and  although  the 
young  Knight  who  succeeded  to  the  Barony  of 
Lochow  was  not  his  own  nephew,  he  was  the  eldest 
son  of  his  old  friend,  and  the  stepson  of  his  sister. 
Probably  it  was  a  pleasure  to  the  King,  almost  as 
much  as  a  favour  to  this  brave  and  impetuous  youth, 
to  give  a  writing  under  his  own  hand,  "  confirming" 
those  ancient  possessions  in  the  West  which  had 
been  so  long  held,  and  so  bravely  risked  in  his 
cause.  In  this  case  the  words  must  have  been 
more  than  form  which  were  addressed  by  "  Robert, 
by  the  grace  of  God,  King  of  the  Scots,  to  all  good 
men  of  his  whole  land,  greeting;"  on  behalf  of  his 
"  beloved  and  faithful  Colin,  son  of  Niel  Cambel, 
Knight " —confirming  to  him  "  the  whole  land  of 
Lochow,  in  one  free  Barony,  by  all  its  righteous 
metes  and  marches,  in  wood  and  plain,  meadows  and 
pastures,  muirs  and  marshes,  petaries,  ways,  paths, 
and  waters,  stanks,  fish-ponds,  and  mills,  and  with 
the  patronage  of  the  churches,  in  huntings  and 
hawkings,  and  in  all  its  other  liberties,  privileges, 
and  just  pertinents,  as  well  named,  as  not  named." 

But  beyond  necessary  inference,  the  simple 
brevity  of  these  old  Charters  leaves  much  to  be 
understood,  and  it  is  sometimes  only  by  pure  acci- 


58  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

dent  and  by  incidental  allusions  in  later  Instru- 
ments that  we  find  out  how  purely  they  were  very 
often  Instruments  of  mere  record  and  recognition 
in  respect  to  facts,  to  rights,  and  to  powers  which 
were  then  of  very  ancient  standing.  This  comes 
out  very  strikingly  in  a  later  Charter  granted 
by  .David  IL,  son  and  successor  of  Robert  the 
Bruce,  to  another  member  of  the  Cambel  family 
in  1368.  In  this  document  we  have  an  express 
reference  to  rights  which  had  been  acquired  by  the 
Celtic  Chiefs,  under  their  own  system,  and  by  their 
own  pre-eminence  among  their  own  people  :  for  this 
Charter  confirms  and  secures  to  Gillespie  (Archi- 
bald) Cambel  "  all  the  liberties  and  customs  "  which 
had  belonged  to  a  progenitor,  who  is  designated 
by  his  Celtic  patronymic  of  Duncan  Mac  Duine. 
Now  this  Duncan  appears  to  have  flourished  about 
150  years  earlier,  in  the  reign  of  Alexander  IL, 
and  he  is  expressly  referred  to  as  having  been 
then  already  in  possession  of  all  the  "  liberties 
and  customs "  of  the  Barony  of  Lochow,  as  well 
as  of  others  not  specified.  But  this  is  not  all- 
it  is  not  even  the  most  significant  part  of  the  re- 
ference. For  in  the  use,  in  a  formal  Charter,  of 
the  name  "Mac  Duine/'  we  have  clear  historic 
evidence  of  the  truth  of  much  older  traditions. 
We  are  carried  back  to  times  when  this  patronymic 
of  Mac  Duine  must  have  arisen  among  the  Dalriadic 
Celts  (who  were  a  conquering  and  colonising  colony 
from  the  "  Scots  "  of  Ireland)  in  the  period  between 
the  Fifth  and  the  Seventh  Centuries.1 

From  the  War  of  Independence  and  the  death 
of  King  Robert  the  Bruce,  in  1329,  we  are  in  the 
full  light  of  history,  and  are  in  possession  of  an 
uninterrupted  series  of  Charters  for  the  space  of 
500  years  down  to  our  own  time.  There  is  a  perfect 
continuity  of  character,  and  a  complete  universality 
of  application  to  every  part  and  Province  of  the 
Kingdom.  There  was  no  distinction  whatever  be- 

1  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  p.  79. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  59 

tween  the  Lowlands  and  the  Highlands.  The  only 
Celtic  race  which  in  the  Fourteenth  Century  was  still 
noticed  as  representing  a  separate  portion  of  the 
Kingdom,  was  the  Galwegians — the  people  of  the 
south-western  country  of  Galloway.  The  Gaelic 
population  of  the  Highlands  were  not  only  included 
in  the  "  Scots,"  but  were  the  first  owners  of  the  name. 
The  earliest  and  the  most  despotic  of  all  the  forms 
of  native  Feudalism  had  been  developed  and  had 
long  been  firmly  established  among  them.  Even 
the  more  civilised  form  of  written  Charters  had 
been  adopted  by  the  more  civilised  Lords  of  the 
Isles,  and  the  Mackenzies,  Macleans,  and  Mackin- 
toshes had  accepted  and  submitted  to  the  new 
order  of  things  which  confirmed,  but  at  the  same 
time  regulated  their  powers.1  Accordingly  there 
is  not  the  smallest  difference  between  the  Charters 
granted  in  different  parts  of  the  Kingdom  from  the 
Tweed  to  the  Thurso,  and  from  the  mountains  of 
Applecross  to  the  headlands  of  Buchan.  And  no 
wonder — for  everywhere  almost  the  Celts  had  been 
the  original  population,  and  the  very  names  of  the 
lands  disposed  of  were  often  as  purely  Celtic  in  the 
Lowlands  as  they  could  be  in  any  part  of  the  High- 
lands. Many  of  these  have  long  ago  entirely  disap- 
peared, and  it  is  not  without  surprise  that  in  many* 
of  the  earliest  Charters  of  lands  in  districts  which 
have  long  been  purely  Teutonic,  we  meet  with  crowds 
of  names  as  purely  Gaelic  as  the  existing  names  in 
the  centre  of  the  counties  of  Argyll  and  Inverness. 

We  see  the  same  absolute  unconsciousness  on 
the  part  of  the  Sovereigns  that  they  were  doing  or 
giving  anything  that  was  new  when  they  gave 
grants  of  land  anywhere — in  any  and  in  every 
portion  of  their  Kingdom.  The  whole  Valley  of 
Douglas,  sixteen  miles  in  length  from  Tinto  to 
Cairntable,  was  conveyed  to  the  good  and  brave  Sir 
James  Douglas  by  Robert  the  Bruce  in  a  Charter 
in  the  briefest  form.  The  wild  coasts  and  mountains 

1  Burton's  Hist,  of  Scot.,  vol.  iii.  p.  95. 


60  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

of  Gareloch  on  the  mainland  opposite  to  Skye 
been  already  disposed  of  in  precisely  a  similar  form 
by  Brace's  predecessor,  Alexander  in.,  in  1272,  to  a 
Celtic  Chief,  who,  again,  had  previously  held  under 
a  Charter  from  the  Celtic  Earl  of  Boss.  And  when, 
a  little  later,  Charters  became  more  extended  in 
form,  and  purported  to  specify  a  little  more  expressly 
that  which  they  conveyed,  it  almost  seems  as  if  all 
the  resources  of  language  were  exhausted  to 
enumerate  and  include  complete  rights  of  possession 
and  disposal,  of  every  kind  and  degree,  over  every 
kind  and  description  of  land  embraced  within  the 
ancient  and  well-known  boundaries  of  the  Lordship 
or  of  the  estate.  This  came  as  a  matter  of  course 
everywhere,  but  perhaps  in  the  very  nature  of 
things  it  would  have  been  less  possible  even  to  con- 
ceive of  any  exception  as  regards  what  is  called 
"waste"  land  in  the  Highlands  than  in  the  Low- 
lands. Nowhere,  indeed,  in  these  Islands,  have 
there  ever  been  lands  in  the  state  of  "Prairie" — that 
is  to  say,  great  areas  of  virgin  soil,  unencumbered 
with  wood,  and  ready  for  the  plough,  without  any 
process  of  reclamation.  Everywhere  in  Scotland  the 
largest  part  of  the  country  was  covered  with  natural 
forests,  and  with  dense  scrubby  woods,  which  are 
even  more  difficult  to  clear  and  to  eradicate ;  whilst 
elsewhere  little  but  moors  and  bogs  varied  the  sur- 
face under  conditions  even  more  intractable  for 
agricultural  operations.  But  in  the  Highlands,  if 
Charters  had  given  nothing  under  the  full  rights  of 
individual  Ownership,  except  the  cultivated  or  even 
the  cultivable  land,  there  would  have  been  nothing 
given  at  all.  That  which  in  England  would  have 
gone  under  the  name  of  waste  was  practically 
the  whole  surface  of  the  country.  Accordingly, 
in  no  Instrument  of  the  Middle  Ages  is  there 
the  smallest  consciousness  even  shown  that  such 
distinctions  could  be  drawn,  or  that  such  a  question 
could  emerge. 

On  the  other  hand  there  arose,  as  I  have  already 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  61 

shown,  an  instinctive  desire  to  record  and  to  specify, 
and  to  define,  all  that  by  immemorial  usage,  and  the 
habits  and  conditions  of  life  in  that  age,  had  been 
held,  used,  and  enjoyed,  as  of  the  essence  of  the 
Ownership  of  land.  "  With  all  its  just  pertinents  " 
are  the  simple  words  usually  added  in  the  earliest 
Charters  to  the  name  of  the  property  conveyed. 
And  when  these  "just  pertinents"  came  to  be  set 
forth  at  length,  and  separately  named,  they  are 
always  so  named,  not  as  novelties,  but  expressly  as 
the  items  of  ancient  usage.  The  most  elaborate 
enumeration  I  have  observed  is  one  contained  in  a 
Charter  of  Confirmation  granted  by  King  Robert  the 
Bruce  to  Malcolm  Earl  of  Lennox,  and  dated  July 
14,  1321. 1  But  this  Malcolm  was  the  fourth  Earl 
who  had  been  then  in  possession  of  that  great  Earl- 
dom, the  larger  part  of  which  was  at  that  time  purely 
Celtic,  and  the  Charter,  as  usual,  refers  to  it  and  to 
its  "  just  pertinents,"  as  enjoyed  from  a  former  age. 
The  enumeration  is  only  remarkable  as  containing 
such  curious  expressions  as  "  infangandthefe  and  out- 
fangandthefe,"  and  as  including  such  details  as  the 
"  Eyries  of  Birds,"  along  with  the  more  substantial 
advantages  then  arising  from  the  escheats  and  fines 
attaching  to  feudal  dues  and  to  the  Baronial  Courts 
in  the  exercise  of  criminal  j  urisdiction.  To  the  sub- 
ject  of  the  Courts  of  Heritable  Jurisdiction  I  shall 
return  in  a  later  Chapter,  only  observing  here  that 
in  this  as  in  other  things  the  early  Charters  were 
only  granting  under  definite  and  legal  sanction  the 
irregular  but  very  ancient  powers  of  jurisdiction 
which  were  inseparable  from  the  immense  and 
supreme  authority  exercised  by  early  Chiefs  and 
Leaders  among  all  the  Aryan  races. 

There  is,  indeed,  one  remarkable  addition  to  the 
list  of  enumerated  items,  which  appears  to  have 
been  first  inserted  in  the  later  years  of  King  Robert 
the  Bruce.  That  addition  consists  in  such  words  as 
these  (for  there  is  some  variation),  "  with  its  tenants 

1  Boole  of  Lennox,  by  Dr.  W.  Fraser,  vol.  ii.  pp.  19-21. 


62  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

and  tenandries,  and  service  of  free  tenants,"  to  which 
again  are  added,  in  some  cases,  such  further  words 
as  these,  "  with  all  the  native  men  of  the  same/' 
that  is,  the  Bondmen.  Before  the  close  of  the 
century  in  which  King  Robert  the  Bruce  died, 
about  1390,  this  last  item  dropped  out  of  the 
account.  The  Bondmen  had  either  disappeared,  or 
had  become  so  unimportant  as  not  to  be  worth 
separate  mention.  On  the  other  hand,  "  tenandries, 
tenants,  and  services  of  free  tenants,"  survived 
through  centuries,  becoming  the  regular  conven- 
tional phrase  under  which  all  the  holdings,  farms, 
and  revenues  of  an  estate  were  included,  whether 
these  revenues  were  derived  from  sub-feus,  or  from 
leases,  or  from  yearly  holdings,  or  from  other  forms  of 
tenure  which  are  now  lost  or  are  indistinguishable. 
But  through  all  mere  developments  of  wording, 
and  redundancies  of  expression,  that  which  is  of 
most  interest  in  all  those  Charters  is  the  undying 
witness  which  they  bear  to  the  one  original  idea 
of  abolishing  all  the  old  indefinite  and  arbitrary 
exactions  of  Celtic  Feudalism,  as  it  had  become 
established  everywhere  before  the  days  of  written 
documents.  Certain  definite  amounts  of  military 
service  were  commonly  provided  for  in  the  earlier 
centuries ;  but  this  provision  is  always  followed  by 
words  declaring  it  to  be  in  full  satisfaction  and  sub- 
stitution "for  every  other  service  or  custom  or 
exaction."  Among  the  instruments  published  in 
The  Book  of  Grant  there  is  one  highly  illustrative 
of  the  fear  which  had  arisen  of  demands  or  dues  of 
this  nature  which  were  indefinite.  A  certain  Knight, 
Sir  Gilbert  of  Glenkerny,  who  held  his  lands  by 
Charter  from  the  Earldom  of  Strathearn,  had  been 
induced  by  friendship  or  political  sympathy  to  serve 
personally,  and  with  his  following  in  the  wars  of 
the  disputed  succession,  under  Malise,  who  then 
held  that  Earldom.  But  this  service  had  not  been 
due  under  his  Charter.  In  June  1306,  therefore, 
fearing  that  his  actual  service  might  be  construed 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  63 

having  been  feudal  service,  he  procured  from  the 
Malise  a  Deed  of  acknowledgment  as  to  the 
true  nature  of  the  assistance  he  had  rendered.  In 
this  new  Charter  Earl  Malise  formally  declares  that 
neither  he  nor  any  of  his  heirs  should  ever  claim 
or  pretend  that  such  service  should  be  pleaded  as  con- 
suetudinary, or  should  be  quoted  as  affecting  in  any 
way  the  original  conditions  of  Sir  Gilbert's  tenure.1 
But  as  the  great  Earldoms  and  Baronies  of  the 
Thirteenth  and  Fourteenth  Centuries  became  broken 
up  into  smaller  Estates,  the  practice  became  general 
to  commute  all  military  services  into  fixed  amounts 

t/ 

of  money.  It  was  an  inevitable  result  of  advancing 
civilisation  and  of  settled  government  that  the 
importance  of  many  civil  obligations  became  much 
more  prominent  than  those  connected  with  per- 
petual fighting.  Society  ceased  to  think  continu- 
ally of  bows  and  arrows  and  of  coats  of  mail.  It 
wished  to  enjoy  life,  and  not  merely  to  defend 
or  to  secure  it.  In  connection  with  this  change 
a  new  form  of  expression  and  new  conditions  of 
tenure  came  into  use.  Lands  held  under  Charter 
for  a  fixed  annual  sum  of  Feu-duty  were  said 
to  be  given  and  held  '"  in  Feu-farm" — that  is  to 
say,  the  tenure  was  that  of  Feu,  or  Fee,  but 
subject  to  an  annual  payment,  which  came  under 
the  old  designation  of  "  Ferm " — or  Rent,  from 
the  Latin  "Firma."  In  a  very  large  number  of 
cases,  soon  becoming  the  great  majority,  the  annual 
payment  being  measured  in  a  fixed  amount  of  pro- 
duce, either  became  purely  nominal,  or  at  least  was 
very  small ;  whilst  still  later  the  fashion  set  in 
of  making  the  grants  virtually  free — with  nothing 
left  of  the  ancient  Servitudes  except  some  Token, 
often  highly  poetic  and  even  sentimental.  It  was 
frequently  specified  that  these  Tokens  were  to  be 
offered  at  and  on  the  altar  of  some  Church  dedicated 

1  Book  of  Grant,  vol.  iii.  p.  8. 

2  Skeat's  Etym.  Diet.     In  Low  Latin  the  word  means  tribute.     A 
Saxon  word  "  feorme  "  seems  to  have  the  same  meaning. 


64  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

to  a  Patron  Saint,  or  on  some  one  or  other  of  the 
great  festivals  of  the  Catholic  Church.  The  nature 
of  these  Tokens  is  sometimes  very  whimsical — such 
as  a  few  pounds  of  wax,  or  a  little  cumin.  Some- 
times they  are  purely  emblematic — as  in  the  case  of 
an  Arrow.  Sometimes  they  breathe  that  common 
love  of  Nature  which  ever  increases  with  the  advance 
of  civilisation.  The  presentation  of  a  red  rose  is  a 
common  Token ;  whilst  in  one  Charter  we  have  the 
beautiful  expression  of  a  tender  reverence  in  the 
reservation  of  a  chaplet  of  roses,  not  red,  but 
white,  which  was  to  be  presented  to  the  Superior 
every  year  on  the  Feast  of  St.  John  the  Baptist.1 

It  may  perhaps  surprise  some  persons  to  be  told 
that  in  Scotland  at  least  we  are  still  in  "  The  Age 
of  Charters."  Not  only  are  almost  all  Estates  held 
on  tenures  dating  back  to  Charters  of  the  oldest 
form,  but  new  Charters  are  being  granted  every 
day  which,  both  in  form  and  in  substance,  are  the 
lineal  descendants  and  the  living  representatives  of 
the  Instruments  which  were  executed  eight  hundred 
years  ago.  They  constitute  the  favourite  tenure  of 
all  land  acquired  for  the  purposes  of  building  and 
of  residence.  Most  of  the  Towns  in  Scotland,  and 
almost  all  the  rich  and  comfortable  villas  which 
spangle  the  shores  and  estuaries  of  our  great  rivers, 
are  built  upon  the  tenure  conveyed  in  Feu-Charters. 
In  these  Instruments  the  continuity  of  phrases  from 
the  earliest  times  is  remarkable.  The  ceremonies 
once  necessary  for  the  giving  of  Possession — the 
symbolical  acts  such  as  handing  over  actual  bits 
and  portions  of  the  soil — all  these  have  been  abol- 
ished— although  some  of  them  survived  until  a  few 
years  ago.  But  the  fundamental  principles,  and 
some  of  the  dominant  expressions,  are  the  same. 
The  Proprietor  hands  over  to  the  new  Owner — the 
Vassal  in  ancient  and  still  legal  language, — the 
Feuar  in  modern  parlance — the  designated  area  of 
land  "in  feu-farm,  fee,  and  heritage  for  ever,"  for 

1  Boole  of  Lennox,  vol.  ii.  p.  64. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  65 

payment  of  the  Feu-duty,  and  for  performance  of 
the  other  stipulations  which  follow.  Next,  the 
Proprietor  binds  himself  to  free  and  relieve  his  new 
Feuar  of  all  feudal  dues  and  casualties  which  may 
be  payable  to  the  Over-Lord,  or  the  Superior  from 
whom  the  ultimate  Title  may  have  come — and  this 
"  for  all  time  coming."  Lastly — and  this  is  very 
curious — the  Proprietor,  who  now  becomes  only  the 
Superior  of  the  Feuar,  binds  himself  to  accept  one 
fixed  payment  at  some  certain  definite  interval  of 
years,  in  lieu  of  all  the  old  customary  feudal  fines 
and  "  casualties."  This  fixed  payment  generally 
consists  in  a  double  Feu- duty  for  one  year,  at  inter- 
vals of  from  nineteen  to  twenty-five  years.  The 
doctrine  of  the  law  is  that  every  Feu  so  granted 
constitutes  full  and  free  Ownership,  and  that  all 
restrictions  and  restraints  upon  it  must  be  very 
clearly  and  distinctly  provided  for  in  the  written 
words  of  the  Charter.  Moreover,  there  is  a  pre- 
sumption against  even  express  restrictions  where 
.these  have  not  been  continuously  and  consistently 
enforced.  Some  decisions  adverse  to  the  enforce- 
ment of  certain  restrictions  on  Feuars  in  particular 
cases,  have  been  hailed  by  ignorant  writers  as  happy 
limitations  upon  over-strained  rights  of  Property. 
But  those  decisions  have  all  been,  on  the  contrary, 
founded  on  the  very  opposite  doctrine  of  the 
rights  of  Ownership  construed  in  the  very  highest 
sense.  It  is  the  Feuar  who  has  now  become  the 
possessor  and  representative  of  these  rights  :  and 
the  doctrine  of  the  Courts  is  that  no  restraint  upon 
them  can  be  allowed  which  does  not  rest  on  the 
clearest  evidence  of  deliberate  contract,  and  of 
acknowledged  obligation.  In  this  as  in  other  mat- 
ters the  spirit  of  Judicial  interpretation  in  enforcing 
the  strictest  rights  of  property,  has  laid  the  best 
and  the  only  secure  foundation  of  popular  rights. 
The  number  of  Feuars  Has  increased  enormously. 
Popular  sympathies  are  with  them,  and  the  Courts 
of  Law,  when  insisting  on  the  completeness  of  their 

E 


66  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Ownership,  subject  only  to  stipulations  the  most 
definite  and  express,  have  been  insisting  on  the  same 
principle  of  unrestricted  and  undivided  Ownership 
which  also  ruled  the  case  of  the  largest  Baronies  and 
Earldoms.  Thus  the  most  ancient  presumptions  of 
law  which  have  affected  great  Estates  for  many  cen- 
turies have  equally  in  our  own  days  established  the 
most  popular  of  all  the  tenures  of  land  in  Scotland. 
Not  only  are  feus  taken  more  and  more  largely  by 
all  ranks  and  classes,  but  the  Feu-duties  which  they 
pay  for  the  "  Fee-farm  "  are  among  the  most  favourite 
investments  for  various  Charitable  and  Public  Funds. 
Thus  the  fundamental  principles  of  the  first  written 
Feudal  Charters  have  not  only  lain  at  the  root  of  the 
civilisation  of  Scotland  for  800  years,  but  have  lent 
themselves  without  one  break  in  a  perfect  continuity 
to  the  latest  developments  of  modern  life. 

It  is  not  unimportant  to  remember  that  the 
early  age  of  Charters  for  the  tenure  of  land  was  also 
the  early  age  of  Charters  for  the  tenure  of  Muni- 
cipal Privilege.  Moreover  there  is  the  same  clear 
evidence  in  this  case  as  in  the  other,  that  the  first 
grants  of  Municipal  Privilege  were  acts  of  confirma- 
tion and  of  record  rather  than  acts  of  original  institu- 
tion. There  are  references  to  Burghal  communities 
of  a  much  earlier  date,  and  it  has  even  been  con- 
tended that  in  the  southern  parts  of  the  Kingdom 
some  of  them  had  survived  from  Roman  times.  It 
is  at  least  certain  that  through  the  same  invaluable 
channel  of  the  Latin  Church  the  memory  and  the 
tradition  of  them  had  never  been  extinguished. 
When,  therefore,  the  Kings  of  the  Canmore  dynasty 
gave  Charters  to  some  Burghs  in  the  most  Anglo 
Saxon  parts  of  Scotland,  there  are  the  same  express 
references  to  older  times  which  in  the  case  of  land 
Charters  refer  us  back  to  liberties  and  possessions 
which  had  been  of  old.  There  are  indeed  some 
instances  in  which  new  Towns  or  favourite  villages 
were  for  the  first  time  erected  into  Royal  Burghs ; 
but  the  /date  of  existing  Charters  is  no  indication 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  67 

in  itself  of  such  an  origin.  Thus  in  the  case  of 
Dundee,  one  of  the  most  important  of  the  old  Scotch 
Burghs,  the  Charter  granted  by  Robert  the  Bruce 
in  1327  was  the  result  of  a  special  inquiry1  which 
had  been  instituted  by  that  Sovereign  in  1325.  into 
the  rights  and  liberties  of  the  Burgh  in  the  times 
of  his  predecessors  on  the  throne  of  Scotland,  and 
these  rights  and  liberties  having  been  ascertained, 
were  confirmed,  arid  were  definitely  recorded  in  the 
new  form  of  Instrument  which  had  risen  into  the 
highest  rank  of  legal  value. 

There  is,  indeed,  connected  with  this  subject,  one 
very  curious  indication  of  the  tendency  of  that  age 
towards  the  making  of  clear  definitions  in  respect  to 
rights  which  had  previously  rested  on  usage  only. 
This  indication  is  afforded  in  one  of  the  earliest  ex- 
amples which  have  come  down  to  us  of  legislation  in 
Scotland.  It  is  a  short  Act  passed  in  the  reign  of 
William  the  Lion,  in  favour  of  what  was  then 
called  the  "freedom''  or  the  "liberty"  of  Burghs. 
Popular  "  freedom  "  did  not  then  consist  in  what  we 
understand  by  the  word  now.  On  the  contrary,  a 
"  liberty"  then  meant  always,  as  applied  to  Burghs, 
some  exclusive  privilege  in  the  form  of  a  trade- 
monopoly.  It  cannot  be  too  often  repeated  that  the 
system  which  we  now  call  Protection  was  the  system 
on  which  all  our  great  trading  communities  were 
founded,  and  in  which  they  were  brought  up  and 
nursed.  It  was  not  the  class  of  landowners,  but 
the  class  of  traders  and  mechanics,  who  invented 
the  close  restrictions  upon  the  freedom  of  industry 
which  were  for  centuries  considered  the  very 
foundation  of  all  possible  prosperity  in  Burghs. 
It  would,  indeed,  be  more  accurate  to  say  that 
they  were  not  invented  by  any  one,  or  by  any 
section  of  the  community,  for  they  were,  like  all 
the  other  laws  of  a  rising  people,  in  harmony 
with  the  general  sentiments  and  instincts  of  the 
time.  One  of  the  earliest  of  those  restrictions  was 

1  Charters,  etc.,  of  Dundee,  pp.  8-9. 


68  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

upon  free  trade  in  wool  and  in  skins.  Even  in 
those  early  centuries  the  trade  in  wool  had  become 
the  most  valuable  of  all  domestic  industries ;  and 
consequently  one  of  the  earliest  "  liberties  "  accorded 
to  the  Burgesses  of  chartered  Towns  was  the  right 
of  prohibiting  all  men  but  themselves  from  engaging 
in  this  trade  within  their  own  boundaries.  And 
this  did  not  mean  the  boundaries  of  their  own  Town. 
It  meant  the  boundaries  of  some  large  territory 
lying  round  about,  which  for  this  purpose  was 
annexed  to  the  Burgh  as  the  area  over  which  the 
monopoly  was  to  prevail.  It  is  in  connection  with 
this  idea  of  popular  "freedoms"  and  rights  that  we 
have  William  the  Lion  enacting  in  his  Parliament 

O 

or  Great  Council  of  the  nation,  about  the  year  1214, 
that  all  the  landowners,  great  and  small,  clerical  or 
lay,  within  those  Burghal  areas  of  monopoly  should 
be  absolutely  subject  to  it,  to  such  an  extent  that 
they  were  not  to  be  free  to  dispose  otherwise  of  the 
most  valuable  produce  of  their  own  estates.  Nothing 
could  be  more  precise  than  this  record  and  defini- 
tion of  what  usage  appears  to  have  established  in 
connection  with  these  Burghal  "  freedoms."  "  No 
Prelate  nor  Churchman,  Earl,  Baron,  or  secular  per- 
son, shall  presume  to  buy  Wool,  Skins,  Hides,  or  such 
like  merchandise,  but  that  they  shall  sell  the  same 
to  merchants  of  Burghs  within  whose  shiredom  and 
liberty  the  owner  and  seller  of  such  merchandise 
does  dwell." ]  In  the  case  of  the  Burgh  of  Dundee 
this  privilege  was  found  by  the  "  trusty  and  faithful 
men,"  to  whom  the  inquiry  was  committed  by  King 
Robert  i.,  to  have  extended  over  the  whole  "  Sheriff - 
dom  of  Forfar,"  and  in  the  new  Charter  accordingly 
the  same  wide  boundaries  of  monopoly  are  expressly 
confirmed.2 

In  these  strange  and  almost  grotesque  provisions 
of  the  earliest  extant  laws  and  Charters  of  the  Scot- 
tish Monarchy,  in  favour  of  Trade  monopolies  in  the 
hands  of  Burghs,  we  have  a  very  clear  refutation 

1  Acta  Part.  Scot.,  vol.  i.  p.  61.         2  Charters,  etc.,  of  Dundee,  p.  10. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  69 

of  that  most  vulgar  of  all  historical  errors  which 
attributes  the  doctrines  then  legally  established 
to  the  exclusive  and  selfish  interests  of  one  parti- 
cular class,  and  that  class  the  Owners  of  land. 
We  have,  indeed,  very  little  knowledge  in  detail  as 
to  how  the  Great  Councils  of  the  nation  were  then 
summoned,  or  how  they  were  composed  in  the  reign 
of  William  the  Lion.  In  all  probability  there  was 
but  little  formality  either  as  to  the  one  or  as  to  the 
other.  There  is  not  even  uniformity  in  the  few 
words  of  preamble  with  which  those  short  and 
simple  laws  were  passed.  They  are  enacted  some- 
times with  consent  "  of  Bishops,  Abbots,  Earls, 
Barons,  and  Thanes,  and  all  the  community  of  the 
Kynryk  "  (kingdom) ;  sometimes,  more  shortly,  "  by 
counsel  of  his  Kynryk"  only — sometimes  "by 
counsel  of  the  community."  But  that  which  we 
really  do  know  does  not  depend  on  these  archaic  pre- 
fatory forms.  It  depends  on  the  persistent  memory 
of  the  Scottish  people  that  this  was  the  happiest — 
the  formative  time — in  their  national  history — the 
time  to  which  later  documents  all  referred  as  the 
highest  fountain  of  authority  and  of  legal  tradition — 
the  time  when  all  the  races  and  all  the  classes  of 
the  growing  nation  were  being  moulded  into  one 
government  and  one  people. 

The  very  absence  of  detailed  information  as  to 
the  manner  in  which  these  old  laws  were  enacted, 
speaks  volumes  as  to  their  real  nature  and  origin. 
They  were  the  mere  outward  expression  of  ideas  and 
opinions  which  had  long  been  universally  accepted. 
And  crude  and  rude  as  we  may  now  think  the  pro- 
visions for  Protection  and  monopoly  in  matters  of 
Trade,  it  is  probable  that  they  did  really  promote  and 
foster  the  beginnings  of  commerce,  and  did  certainly 
determine  the  seat  of  them  in  particular  localities. 
That  they  did  this  at  the  immediate  cost  of  some 
loss  to  the  owners  and  farmers  of  land  is  certain. 
This  is  proved,  and  it  is  all  that  can  be  proved,  by 
the  doctrines  of  Free  Trade.  Nor  is  it  probable  that 


70  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

this  cost  was  wholly  unknown  to  those  classes  at  the 
time.     The  prohibition  of  direct  sale  to  foreign  mer- 
chants indicates  clearly  enough  that  if  they  had  not 
been  prohibited,  such  foreign  merchants  would  have 
visited  the  country,  and  would  have  given  higher 
prices  than  the  merchants  of  Berwick  or  Dundee.  But 
the  general  sense  of  all  classes  seems  to  have  been 
instinctively  in  favour  of  Protection — on  the  simple 
ground  that  it  was  assumed  to  be  a  national  object 
to  establish  and  to  encourage,  even  at  some  cost, 
native  merchants,  and  native  mercantile  communi- 
ties.    Probably  this  assumption  was  made  without 
argument  or  conscious  reasoning  of  any  kind,  and 
almost  certainly  without  any  attempt  to  calculate 
what  the  extra  cost  might  be  to  the  other  classes  of 
society.     It  is  certain,  however,  that  the  spirit  of 
monopoly  thus  planted  in  the  Burghs  was  continued 
and  developed  in  these  communities  until  it  almost 
stifled  the  commerce  which  it  aimed  at  protecting. 
The  Trade-Guilds  became  most  tyrannically  exclusive, 
and  it  was  not  until  almost  our  own  time  that  the 
evils  attending  them  became  obvious  to  all. 

It  was  most  fortunate,  and  in  some  respects  most 
singular,  that  no  similar  spirit,  and  no  similar  legis- 
lation, arose  in  our  early  history  in  respect  to  deal- 
ings in  land.  The  blunder  is  very  gross  indeed 
which  confounds  property  in  anything  with  monopoly 
in  dealing  or  exchange.  They  are  not  only  different, 
but  they  are  the  antithesis  of  each  other.  Monopoly 
consists  in  the  exclusion  or  limitation  of  Free 
Exchange.  But  Free  Exchange  depends  absolutely 
on  Free  Possession.  Men  cannot  exchange  with  each 
other  freely  anything  which  they  do  not  possess  fully. 
They  cannot  give  to  another  that  which  they  do  not 
hold  themselves.  Therefore,  that  recording  and 
defining  process,  in  respect  to  the  fulness  of  Owner- 
ship, which  we  have  seen  to  be  the  basis  of  all 
written  Charters,  was  the  essential  preliminary  and 
condition  of  Free  Exchange  in  respect  to  land.  In 
acknowledging,  and  in  giving  a  legal  form  to  rights 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  71 

of  possession  which  had  been  long  acquired,  our  early 
laws  made  those  rights  easily  transferable  from  one 
man  to  another.  And  on  such  transfers  there  was  no 
restriction.  The  idea  of  Entails  was  of  much  later 
date.  In  the  early  centuries  of  the  Scottish  Monarchy 
the  right  of  alienation  was  recognised  as  co- extensive 
with  the  right  of  possession.  Moreover,  this  uni- 
versal right  of  alienation  corresponded  with  an 
equally  universal  right  of  acquisition.  It  was  a  right 
which  had  no  limits  as  regarded  any  particular  classes 
of  men,  whether  distinguished  from  others  by  birth, 
or  (as  in  the  case  of  traders)  by  pursuits  and  avoca- 
tions. All  men  who  owned  land  could  dispose  of  it, 
not  to  particular  classes  only,  but  to  all  other  men 
who  could  buy  it.  In  this  respect  the  Feudalism  of 
our  Island  avoided  that  element  of  monopoly  which 
was  developed  in  the  Teutonic  Feudalism  of  Ger- 
many. In  Prussia,  for  example,  particular  areas  of 
land  could  only  be  bought  and  sold  among  certain 
restricted  breeds  of  men.  One  set  of  acres  belonged 
to  and  could  only  be  held  by  the  Peasant  class — an- 
other set  of  acres  belonged  to,  and  could  only  be  held 
by  the  class  of  Nobles.  Free  exchange  in  Land  was 
rendered  impossible  by  these  barriers  of  monopoly, 
properly  so  called.  Some  years  ago  ignorant  men 
were  calling  in  this  country  for  some  imitation  of 
the  land  reforms  of  the  great  Prussian  ministers 
Stein  and  Hardenberg.1  They  did  not  know  that 
one  main  object  of  those  reforms  was  to  establish 
in  Prussia  that  very  system  of  full  property, — 
of  undivided  Ownership, — and  therefore  of  free 
exchangeability,  which  had  been  established  here 
for  centuries,  and  was  indeed  of  immemorial  anti- 
quity. The  German  statesmen  were  driven  by  the 
utter  ruin  which  restrictions  on  the  full  and  free 
Ownership  of  land  were  bringing  on  the  country,  to 
aim  at^  and  ultimately  to  effect  the  complete  aboli- 
tion of  all  such  restrictions.  But  they  were  brought 
to  see  this  not  without  a  struggle.1  They  clung  for 

1  Life  of  Stein,  by  Professor  Seeley,  vol.  i.  ch.  iii. 


72  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

a  time  to  the  artificial  Protection  of  Peasants'  land 
—for  the  sake  of  keeping  up  the  military  popula- 
tion. But  once  they  had  entered  on  the  path  of 
enfranchisement  they  found  that  they  could  not 
halt  short  of  the  only  conclusion  to  which  it  logically 
and  practically  led.  The  bondage  of  men  to  the  soil 
had  to  be  abandoned,  and  the  correlative  bondage  of 
the  soil  to  one  class  of  men,  had  to  be  abandoned 
also.  Two  other  correlatives  had  to  be  substituted 
for  these  :  one  was — full  and  unrestricted  Owner- 
ship ;  the  other  was  the  free  transfer  or  saleability 
of  that  Ownership  to  men  of  all  classes  and  degrees. 
All  this  had  been  effected  in  Scotland  more  than  500 
years  before.  Bondage  to  the  soil  had  been  killed 
out  with  Serfdom.  Ownership  had  been  redeemed 
from  arbitrary  exactions — had  been  made  as  full 
and  definite,  and  undivided,  as  words  could  make  it. 
It  had  been  conveyed  in  forms  which  lent  them- 
selves to  easy  transfer,  and  to  the  security  of  a  multi- 
tude of  subordinate  transactions.  This  was  the  re- 
cording work — in  so  far  as  they  did  any  work  at  all 
—of  the  early  Charters.  Those  who  held  them  imme- 
diately began  to  alienate,  to  sell,  to  sub-feu,  to  lease, 
and  in  many  complicated  forms  to  dispose  of,  to  other 
men,  that  Ownership  which  is  the  essential  basis  of 
Free  Exchange  of  every  kind  and  of  every  name. 

There  never  was  in  Scotland  any  restriction  either 
as  regarded  the  classes  of  men  to  whom  Charters 
were  given,  or  as  regards  the  classes  to  whom  deri- 
vative tenures  could  be  sold  or  granted.  To  the 
Burghs  themselves  valuable  lands  were  sometimes 
granted  by  these  Charters  as  well  as  various  dues 
and  lordships  over  landed  property.  These  consti- 
tute to  this  day,  portions  of  the  "Common  Good" 
of  various  Burghs,  and  such  estates  have  been  man- 
aged by  the  respective  Corporations  on  precisely  the 
same  principles  on  which  land  has  been  managed 
by  other  Owners. 

We  must  look  back  then  on  the  Age  of  the  first 
Charters  as  having  laid  the  foundations  of  national 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  73 

progress  on  the  firm  ground  of  ancient  rights  and 
obligations  so  clearly  and  accurately  defined  as 
thereby  to  be  made  the  subjects  of  Free  Exchange. 
The  exceptional  privileges  given  to  popular  Bodies, 
constituting  in  their  hands  exclusive  trade  mono- 
polies, were  at  least  accessible  to  as  many  as  could 
place  themselves  in  the  position  of  Burgesses  by 
residence  or  otherwise.  They  were,  at  all  events, 
in  accordance  with  the  national  sentiment  of  the 
time,  and  the  Charters  under  which  they  were 
formally  secured  took  their  place  among  the  Institu- 
tions which  welded  together  the  various  classes  and 
interests  of  the  State. 

All  of  these  classes  and  interests  had  been 
taught  and  drilled  to  feel  and  to  act  together  in  and 
by  the  War  of  Independence.  The  Clergy  had 
taken  an  early  and  an  honourable  part.  A  convoca- 
tion of  the  Church,  held  at  Dundee,  had  been  the 
earliest  public  Body  to  espouse  the  cause  of  Bruce. 
The  Towns  and  Burghs  had  co-operated  in  hostility 
to  the  scattered  English  garrisons.  A  mere  handful 
of  Knights  had  indeed  begun  the  war,  but  each 
small  success  had  rallied  others  to  the  standard,  and 
in  so  far  as  popular  sentiment  was  operative  at  all  in 
those  times,  it  spread  by  contagion  among  the  mili- 
tary classes  without  distinction  of  origin  or  of  race. 
Almost  all  parts  of  the  Kingdom  sent  their  contin- 
gents to  the  little  army  which  won  the  day  at  Ban- 
nockburn.  Of  the  four  Divisions  or  "  Battles  "  into 
which  that  army  was  arranged,  the  one  which  Bruce 
himself  commanded  was  composed  of  the  men  of 
Carrick,  of  Argyll,  and  of  the  Isles.1  These  must 
have  been  almost  purely  Celtic,  yet  we  hear  nothing 
of  the  peculiar,  impetuous,  but  undisciplined  and 
unsteady  methods  of  fighting  which  afterwards 
became  so  celebrated  as  characteristic  of  the  High- 
land Clans.  Indeed  from  the  position  assigned  to 
them  by  the  King,  round  his  own  person,  and  held 
as  a  Reserve,  it  is  clear  that  they  must  have  been 

1  Barbour's  Bruce,  bk.  viii.  1.  330-45. 


74  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

considered  among  the  very  best  and  most  highly 
disciplined  troops  at  his  disposal.     It  would  almost 
seem  as  if  the  military  genius  of  that  remarkable 
man,  and  the  necessities  of  rigid  discipline  which  his 
long  and  arduous  contest  imposed  upon  him,  had 
enabled  him  to  anticipate  these  modern  days  when 
Highland  regiments  have  been  not  only  the  most 
dashing,  but  the  steadiest  and  most  enduring  among 
the  battalions  of  the  British  army.     For,   of  this 
amalgamating  power  exercised  by  Bruce,  we  have 
another   example  which  is  too  little  remembered. 
Bannockburn,  as  one  of  the  Decisive  Battles  of  the 
World,  has  obliterated  the  memory  of  another  battle, 
which,  as  a  feat  of  arms,  was  hardly  less  memorable. 
It  is  almost  forgotten  now  that,  eight  years  after 
Bannockburn,  in  13 22,  King  Robert  invaded  England, 
and  again  routed  Edward  n.  in  a  pitched  battle  in  his 
own  Kingdom,  in  the  heart  of  Yorkshire.     In  this 
battle  of  Byland  Abbey,1  it  is  recorded  that  the  criti- 
cal operation  of  the  day,  in  the  carrying  of  a  steep 
hill,  was  committed  by  Bruce  to  the  same  Western  and 
Celtic  soldiers  who  had  been  under  his  own  special 
command  at  Bannockburn,  and  to  whom,  in  the  heat 
of  this  new  day,  he  had  recourse  to  carry  the  high 
and  craggy  ridge  which  looks  down  on  the  Vale  of 
Pickering.     The  nature  of  this  manoeuvre,  executed 
under  the  good  Lord  James  Douglas,   is  specially 
likened  by  the  historian  to  that  by  which  the  King 
had  defeated  the  Chief  of  Lome  on  the  steep  sides 
of  Ben  Cruachan  in  1307.2 

We  must  read  all  these  events  together.  They 
show  the  complete  amalgamation  between  all  parts 
of  the  Scottish  nation  which  had  been  going  on  for 
a  long  period,  and  which  is  not  one  whit  more  con- 
spicuous in  the  Charters  than  in  the  military  and 
political  transactions  of  that  age.  Neither  in  the 
tenure  of  land,  nor  in  rank  and  service  on  the  field 

1  Byland  Abbey,  a  Cistercian  Monastery,  founded  in  1177.    The  Ruins 
still  remain,  situated  in  the  Parish  of  Coxwold,  North  Riding. 

2  Barbour's  Bruce,  bk.  xiii.  1.  230-40.     Tytler,  vol.  i.  p.  328. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  75 

of  battle,  was  there  the  slightest  difference  made  in 
those  grandest  days  of  our  history  between  the 
Lowlands  and  the  Highlands.  In  accepting  the 
new  written  grants,  which  were  given  by  King 
Robert  to  all  who  stood  by  him  in  his  struggle,  the 
Highland  Chiefs  of  Argyll,  of  Kintyre,  and  of  the 
Isles,  stood  on  exactly  the  same  footing  as  the  great 
Earls  of  Ross  and  of  Moray,  of  Lennox  and  Strathern, 
or  as  his  own  family  had  stood  for  some  generations 
with  reference  to  Annandale  and  Carrick.  His 
Charters,  like  those  of  his  predecessors,  and  those 
of  his  successors,  were  nothing  more  than  the  sign 
and  seal  set  by  a  new  Authority  upon  a  long 
continuity  of  Leadership,  and  upon  a  long  con- 
tinuity of  Possession  of  which  that  Leadership  had 
been  the  real  origin,  and  of  which  it  had  always 
been  the  real  title  and  guarantee.  During  centuries 
of  a  growing  civilisation,  that  Leadership  had  sup- 
plied whatever  elements  there  were  of  Authority,  of 
Security,  and  of  acknowledged  Obligation,  in  the 
nascent  organisation  of  the  State.  Those  who  held 
that  Leadership  had  originally  won  it  by  superior 
qualities  of  head  and  hand ;  and  through  many 
rough  and  troublous  generations  they  never  could 
have  kept  it  except  by  a  continuity  of  powers  as 
hereditary  as  the  continuity  of  names. 

Nor  at  any  time  during  the  five  or  six  hundred 
years  between  the  dawn  of  Celtic  history  in  Scotland 
and  the  date  of  these  new  Charters,  had  these  leaders 
of  the  Clans  and  of  the  people  rendered  a  better  or 
a  nobler  service  to  the  country  than  in  that  which 
secured  to  them  those  new  confirmations  of  old 
rights  from  King  Robert  the  Bruce  and  from  his 
descendants.  Men  are  apt  to  speak  very  thought- 
lessly now  of  the  origin  of  property  which  has  been 
acquired  by  the  sword — as  if  the  sword  represented 
nothing  but  brute  force  and  predatory  violence. 
They  forget  that  military  service  and  military  suc- 
cess have  often  required  the  very  highest  faculties 
of  Head  and  Heart  and  Hand.  And  never,  perhaps, 


76  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

has  this  been  more  true  than  of  the  service  which 
was  rendered  to  the  Bruce  by  the  Chiefs  and  Barons 
who  fought  with  him.  The  contest  in  which  that 
Sovereign  won  the  independence  of  his  native 
country  against  all  the  Chivalry  of  England  with 
no  small  aid  from  the  Chivalry  of  France,  was  a 
contest  memorable  for  all  time.  Perhaps  we  can 
hardly  realise  fully  now  all  the  qualities  of  courage, 
tenacity,  and  patriotism  which  were  exhibited  by 
those  who  stood  by  The  Bruce  during  all  the  vicissi- 
tudes, discouragements,  and  almost  despairs  of  that 
deadly  struggle.  And  when  at  last  the  fate  of 
Scotland  came  to  be  decided  on  that  famous  field  in 
the  narrow  valley  of  the  Bannock,  we  can  hardly 
realise  how  stout  the  hearts  must  have  been 
which  clustered  round  the  Standard  of  the  "  Bored 
Stone." l  It  is  said  that  the  English  cavalry 
alone  exceeded  in  number  the  whole  army  of  the 
Bruce.  Their  furious  charges  had  to  be  met  by  a 
manoeuvre  of  the  infantry  with  pikes,  that  seems 
to  have  anticipated  the  formation  of  squares 
with  the  front  rank  kneeling,  against  which  the 
French  cavalry  "  stormed  themselves  away "  at 
Waterloo. 

It  is  impossible,  even  now,  after  the  lapse  of 
more  than  570  years,  to  read  any  account  of  that 
battle — or  still  more  to  visit  the  field, — without 
emotion.  For  we  must  remember  all  the  political 
and  social  questions  which  depended  on  it.  For 
good  or  for  evil,  tremendous  issues  follow  on  the 
gain  or  on  the  loss  of  national  independence. 
Where  there  is  an  inferior  people — or  a  people 
which  has  travelled  far  on  a  wrong  road — it  may 
often  be  well  that  they  should  be  conquered.  The 
mixture  of  a  stronger  race,  and  the  bringing  in 
of  better  laws,  may  be  the  best  of  all  results.  But 
where  the  seeds  of  a  strong  national  civilisation,  of 
a  strong  national  character,  and  of  intellectual 

1  A  stone  which  remains  to  this  day  on  the  Field  of  Bannockburn, 
upon  which  the  Standard  of  the  Bruce  was  planted  in  the  battle. 


THE  AGE  OF  CHARTERS.  77 

wealth  have  been  deeply  sown  in  any  human  soil, 
the  preservation  of  it  from  conquest,  and  from 
invasion,  and  from  foreign  rule,  is  the  essential 
condition  of  its  yielding  its  due  contribution  to  the 
progress  of  the  world.  Who,  then,  can  compute 
or  reckon  up  the  debt  which  Scotland  owes  to  the 
few  and  gallant  men  who,  inspired  by  a  splendid 
courage  and  a  noble  faith,  stood  by  The  Bruce  in 
the  War  of  Independence,  and  on  June  24,  1314, 
saw  the  armies  of  the  invader  flying  down  the  Carse 
of  Stirling  ?  Some  of  these  men  were  the  descend- 
ants of  ancestors  who  had  held  the  same  relative 
place,  and  had  rendered  the  same  relative  service 
in  all  the  older  contests  which  had  built  up  the 
Kingdom  and  the  Nation — which  had  united  under 
one  Crown  the  divided  dominions  of  the  Picts  and 
Scots — which  had  secured  the  Lothians  for  Scot- 
land, and  had  established  the  boundaries  of  the 
Kingdom  at  the  Tweed. 

Never,  perhaps,  has  there  been  a  more  honour- 
able origin  for  the  tenure  of  land,  than  that  which 
was  consecrated  afresh  by  the  Charters  of  the  Four- 
teenth and  following  Centuries  in  the  hands  of  those 
Chiefs  in  Scotland  who  had  then  already  won  and  had 
already  held  them  for  many  generations.  In  some 
cases  the  same  lands  are  to  this  day  owned  by  lineal 
descendants  of  the  men  who  fought  with  Bruce.  In 
others,  derivative  tenures  coming  from  those  Char- 
ters as  their  legal  source,  have  been  the  subject  of 
inheritance,  of  exchange,  and  of  sale  during  the 
course  of  five  hundred  years.  And  during  all  these 
centuries  it  can  be  shown  that  the  successive  holders 
have  continued  to  be  the  leaders  of  the  nation  in 
the  ever  opening  and  widening  fields  of  action  on 
which  all  the  triumphs  of  an  advancing  civilisation 
have  been  won.  In  their  hands  was  vested  the  only 
power  which  in  those  rough  ages  could  maintain  any 
civil  peace  or  political  organisation.  It  was  they 
who  introduced  the  Anglo-Saxon  culture, — and 
endowed  the  Latin  Clergy, — and  brought  in  the 


78  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Roman  Law ;  and  it  was,  as  we  shall  see,  through 
their  wise  and  gradual  legislation  that  agricultural 
husbandry  was  raised  to  the  dignity  of  a  Profession, 
and  was  provided  with  that  legal  security  which 
could  alone  enable  it  to  become  an  Art.. 


CHAPTER  III. 

THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS. 

WE  now  come  to  that  other  great  branch  of  historical 
inquiry  which  concerns  not  the  Ownership  but  the 
cultivating  Occupation  of  the  land.  At  first  sight, 
and  looking  only  to  the  surface  of  things,  it  might 
seem  as  if  the  effect  of  Charters,  however  favourable 
to  those  who  got  them,  might  be  unfavourable  to 
those  who  had  only  subordinate  interests  in  the  soil. 
And  so  it  would,  if  Charters  had  been  what  we  have 
seen  that  they  were  not.  If  the  powers  and  attri- 
butes which  they  recognised  as  belonging  to  Leader- 
ship over  men,  and  to  Ownership  of  land,  had  been 
new  inventions,  introduced  for  the  first  time  by  a 
foreign  and  a  conquering  race,  they  might  have,  and 
probably  they  would  have,  worked  injuriously.  But 
as  those  powers  and  attributes  were  nothing  of  the 
kind, — as  they  were,  on  the  contrary,  purely  indi- 
genous and  of  strictly  native  growth,  they  worked, 
and  were  worked  in  the  spirit  of  the  new  Form,  and 
of  the  new  embodiment  which  had  come  to  them 
with  the  increase  of  legal  knowledge,  and  the  pro- 
gress of  civilisation.  In  this  distinction  lies  the 
whole  difference  between  life  and  death  in  all  human 
Institutions.  For  in  them  the  same  law  prevails 
which  in  organic  bodies  is  called  the  "correlation  of 
growth" — that  law  in  virtue  of  which  all  healthy 
developments  in  one  member  are  surely,  though 
often  invisibly,  accompanied  by  corresponding  and 
closely  related  developments  in  many  surrounding 
parts.  In  secrecy  and  in  silence,  through  all  the 


80  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

centres  of  influence  and  all  the  germs  of  growth,  the 
Formative  Energy  which  governs  and  directs  the 
whole,  builds  up  along  a  thousand  lines  the  parallel 
structures  which  are  needed  for  the  harmony  of  Life. 

Nor,  in  the  case  before  us,  is  there  any  mystery 
as  to  the  nature  of  the  processes  which  ran  below 
and  above,  and  alongside  of  each  other,  in  the  Age  of 
Charters.  It  is  true  that  these  Instruments  imposed 
no  limits  on  the  fulness  of  that  Possession  which 
they  were  intended  to  convey.  On  the  contrary,  it 
was  the  special  object  of  them  to  make  that  Posses- 
sion as  full  and  secure  as  possible.  But  it  is  equally 
true  that  the  fundamental  conception  of  all  Charters 
was  that  of  legal  definition,  and  the  substitution  of 
fixed  and  definite  obligations  for  liabilities  which 
were  incalculable  because  they  were  purely  arbitrary, 
casual,  and  lawless.  This  fundamental  conception, 
in  giving  birth  to  Charters,  gave  birth  at  the  same 
time,  and  of  necessity,  to  other  Instruments  of  a  like 
nature,  which  were  derivative  and  subordinate.  It 
inspired  the  whole  series  of  transactions  which  were 
in  any  way  related  to  the  same  subject.  Men  who 
accepted  from  the  Crown,  or  from  great  Subjects  of 
the  Crown,  Charters  of  land  on  the  emphatic  condi- 
tion that  these  lands  were  to  be  free  from  the 
ungoverned  and  ungovernable  usages  of  Celtic 
Feudalism — "the  exactions  of  Mormaer  and  of 
Toiseach" — were  not  likely  to  return,  in  their  own 
relations  with  their  own  Tenants,  to  the  barbarous 
customs  whose  very  names  had  become  words  of 
opprobrium  and  reproach.  Accordingly  we  find  that 
the  Age  of  Charters  in  respect  to  Ownership  was 
also  the  Age  of  Leases,  or  other  Covenants  in  respect 
to  the  Occupation  of  land,  so  that  all  subordinate 
tenures  tended  more  and  more  to  be  governed  by  the 
same  spirit  of  substituting  limited  and  definite  obli- 
gations for  liabilities  which  were  always  capable  of 
unlimited  extension,  because  they  were  vague,  un- 
written, and  undefined. 

It  may  be  well,  however,  to  look  back  a  little 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  81 

here,  to  see,  as  we  did  in  the  case  of  Charters,  what 
the  conditions  of  society  seein  to  have  been  in  the 
dark  centuries,  as  regards  the  cultivating  class. 
Perhaps  it  would  not  be  too  much  to  say  that  during 
a  great  part  of  those  centuries  there  was  no  such 
class  at  all — except  the  Monks  and  the  Serfs.  All 
other  men  lived  mainly  for  war,  or  for  the  chase;  and 
even  the  Serfs  must  have  had  to  bear  their  share  in  the 
work  of  fighting,  or  of  attending  to  those  who  fought. 
Agriculture  cannot  be  a  pursuit  except  to  peaceful 
men,  and  there  were  then  no  peaceful  men  except 
the  Christian  Brotherhoods.  Accordingly  the  earliest 
glimpses  which  we  get  of  agriculture  in  Scotland 
are  connected  with  the  landed  possessions  of  the 
Church.  And  one  of  the  very  first  of  these  glimpses 
is  in  some  ways  the  most  interesting  of  them  all. 
In  the  narrative  of  the  life  led  by  St.  Columba  on 
the  Island  of  lona,  1300  years  ago,  left  us  by  the 
Abbot  Adamnan,  we  see  a  quiet  picture  of  all  the 
operations  of  a  farm  hardly  differing  at  all  from 
those  which  constitute  the  ordinary  operations  of  a 
modern  farm,  except  that  they  were  more  complete, 
and  embraced  a  more  varied  provision  for  the  com- 
forts of  life.  There  was  a  Smithy  for  needed  iron 
work.  There  was  a  Kiln  for  the  drying  of  corn. 
There  was  a  Mill  in  which  the  Monks  ground 
their  own  corn  into  meal.  There  were  cows  and 
a  cowhouse  or  byre.  There  were  milk-pails  carried 
from  the  pastures  to  the  Monastery  on  horseback. 
There  was  a  Barn  for  the  storage  of  grain.  There 
was  a  Baker  for  baking  the  meal  or  the  flour  into 
bread.  Moreover,  it  is  significant  that  this  skilled 
official  was  a  Saxon.  There  were  wheeled  carts  or 
carriages  for  the  conveyance  of  heavy  articles.1  But 
these  early  ecclesiastical  communities  worked  the 
land  themselves,  or  with  the  help  of  servants  or 
bondmen.  In  lona,  at  all  events,  their  land  was 
too  small  in  extent  to  induce  them  to  let  out  any 
part  of  it  on'hire. 

1  Adamnan's  Life,  of  St.  Columba,  pp.  361-2. 
F 


82  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

But  in  this,  as  in  all  other  cases,  a  different 
practice  arose  naturally  out  of  different  conditions. 
The  Church  acquired  in  the  Middle  Ages  more 
and  more  extensive  grants.  That  which  conferred 
the  island  of  lona  on  Columba,  the  great  Missionary 
of  the  Sixth  Century,  was  before  the  age  of 
formal  Charters,  and  it  seems  doubtful  whether 
it  emanated  from  a  King  of  the  Picts  or  of  the 
Scots.  But  it  is  curious  that  the  most  ancient 
notice  of  it  which  has  come  down  to  us  lays  special 
emphasis  on  the  special  feature  of  it  which  was  novel 
at  the  time.  That  feature  was  the  substitution  of 
"  Definiteness  "  for  "  Indefiniteness  "  in  the  tenure 
which  was  asked  and  given.1  The  Monks  were  wise 
enough  to  require  something  better  than  the  vague 
Tribal  tenures  which  we  have  seen  denounced  by 
Sir  J.  Davies  as  common  among  the  Irish  Celts. 

And  so  throughout  the  Middle  Ages  the  Church 
was,  as  we  have  seen,  the  great  civilising  agency  in 
establishing  security  of  tenure  in  the  Ownership  of 
land.  We  shall  now  see  that  the  Church  was  the 
great  civilising  agency,  also,  in  establishing  that 
other  kind  of  security  of  tenure  which  depended  on 
written  covenants  and  on  calculated  rents.  Ecclesi- 
astics became  the  largest  landowners  in  the  king- 
dom, possessing  estates  in  many  different  districts — 
often  at  a  great  distance  from  the  Monastery.  The 
lands  so  granted  could  not  be  wholly  cultivated  by 
their  own  servants  and  bondmen  as  the  few  fields 
could  be  cultivated  in  the  little  Island  of  lona. 
Under  such  conditions  it  is  easy  to  see  how  Tenan- 
cies arose.  For  in  principle  there  is  no  difference, 
and  in  practice  there  is  a  natural  and  inevitable 
transition,  between  cultivators  paid  by  food  or  wages 
and  cultivators  paid  by  being  allowed  to  retain  a 
certain  portion  of  the  produce.  Nor,  again,  is  the 
transition  less  easy  or  less  inevitable  from  this  con- 
dition of  things  to  that  in  which  the  cultivators 
undertake  their  work  for  a  definite  term  of  years, 

1  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  ii.  p.  88. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  83 

and  on  definite  conditions  as  to  the  amount  they 
are  to  pay  in  produce,  or  in  the  price  of  produce,  or 
in  services,  or  (as  was  often  the  case)  in  all  three 
forms  of  rent.  In  all  cases  the  essence  of  the  trans- 
action is  the  same.  The  Tenant  gets  from  the  lord 
or  Owner  of  the  soil  that  one  thing  which  he  himself 
has  not,  and  could  not  otherwise  get — namely,  the 
assurance  of  full  possession  and  of  the  sole  right  to 
cultivate.  This  full  possession  and  sole  right  to  culti- 
vate was  to  exclude  all  other  men.  This  exclusive 
possession  was  the  one  essential  element  of  the  whole 
transaction ;  it  was  this  for  which  the  holder  of  it 
was  too  glad  to  pay.  In  the  enjoyment  of  it  he 
was  to  be  protected  and  defended  by  the  Owner 
whose  alone  it  was,  and  who  alone  could  lend  it  and 
assure  it  to  another.  Very  often  the  Owner  gave  or 
lent  other  things  besides  this.  But  this  exclusive 
enjoyment — this  peaceful  possession  even  when  it 
stood  alone — was  that  for  which  the  Tenant  or  holder 
was  always  willing  to  pay  a  portion  of  the  produce 
•as  its  price  or  rent. 

Very  often — generally,  indeed,  in  very  early 
times — when  the  actual  cultivators  were  very  poor, 
the  Owner  of  the  land  gave  or  lent  something  more 
than  the  mere  possession  of  the  soil.  He  lent  also 
the  instruments  of  husbandry,  and  the  cattle,  sheep, 
or  goats,  or  other  stock,  which  yielded  perhaps  the 
greater  part  of  the  whole  produce  of  the  land.  This 
is  still  the  footing  on  which  land  is  let  in  no  small 
part  of  Europe  under  what  is  now  called  the  Metayer 
system,  and  which  in  Scotland  was  at  one  time 
very  common,  under  the  name  of  "  Steelbow."  But 
with  the  progress  of  wealth  and  of  the  population 
of  free  men,  it  became  more  and  more  possible  to 
let  land  on  definite  Leases  to  a  class  of  cultivators 
having  sufficient  capital  of  their  own  to  furnish  the 
necessary  stock.  The  transition,  here,  as  in  other 
cases,  was  natural  and  easy,  since  Leases  had  been 
common  under  the  Roman  law,  and  the  Ecclesiastics, 
who  first  made  such  covenants,  must  have  been 


84  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

more    or   less   familiar   with  the  customs    of  their 
brethren  in  the  south  of  Europe. 

But  as  we  had  to  go  a  long  way  back  in  order  to 
understand  the  language  of  the  early  Charters,  so  in 
like  manner  we  must  go  a  long  way  back  in  order  to 
understand  the  terms  of  the  earliest  Leases.  I  have 
already  alluded1  to  the  various  causes  which  had  led 
among  the  Celts  to  the  same  division  between  Free- 
men and  Serfs  or  Bondmen  which  had  been  equally 
established  among  the  Teutonic  races.  Sentiment 
and  poetry  combining,  not  with  knowledge,  but  with 
the  want  of  it,  has  been  spreading  popular  impres- 
sions on  this  as  on  other  kindred  subjects  which 
represent  some  great  distinction  between  Scotland 
and  England,  and  especially  between  the  Highlands 
and  the  Lowlands,  in  respect  to  the  prevalence  of 
Bondage.  It  seems  to  be  supposed  that  there  were 
no  Bondmen  among  the  Celts  as  there  were  in 
abundance  among  the  Saxons.  This  is  one  of  many 
similar  delusions  which  is  at  once  dispelled  by  the 
slightest  examination  of  the  best  ascertained  his- 
torical facts,  and  the  most  authentic  documents. 
The  earliest  Tribal  laws  and  usages  of  the  Celtic 
races,  whether  in  Ireland,  in  Wales,  in  Galloway,  or 
in  Scotland  proper,  are  permeated  through  and 
through  with  the  precepts  and  principles  of  a  rude 
jurisprudence  founded  entirely  on  lines  drawn 
between  the  Bond  and  the  Free.  The  scale  of  fines 
for  the  murder  or  homicide  of  the  different  orders  and 
classes  of  society  was  a  scale  having  this  great  line  of 
division  as  its  base  line.  The  scale  of  dues  exacted 
by  the  Chiefs  upon  marriages  among  the  people  sub- 
ject to  them,  is  also  a  scale  which  was  graduated 
upwards  from  the  number  of  cattle  due  on  the  mar- 
riage of  the  daughter  of  a  Serf.  For  every  word  in  the 
early  Saxon  language  which  designates  any  due,  or 
fine,  or  exaction  of  a  rude  and  unwritten  Feudalism 
some  corresponding  word  is  to  be  found  in  the 
various  dialects  of  the  Celtic  language  which  pre- 

1  See  ante,  Chap.  I.  p.  8. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  85 

vailed  over  Ireland  and  Wales  and  Scotland.1     How 
great  was  the  difference  of  value  set  upon  the  life  of 
a  Freeman,   and  the  value  set  upon  the  life  of  a 
Serf  or  Bondman  among  the  Celts  of  Scotland  may 
be  estimated  by  the  fact  that  when  David  I.  thought 
it  expedient  to  give  a  formal  sanction  to  the  customs 
of  his  Celtic  subjects  all  over  Scotland,  he  thereby 
sanctioned  a  scale  of  fine  for  slaughter  or  homicide 
which  ranged  between  1600  cows  for  a  Prince,  100 
cows  for  a  Thane  or  Chief,  down  to  16  cows  for  the 
slaughter  of  a  "  Carl  "  or  Serf.     The  "  merchet "  or 
due  on  marriage  of  women  showed  less  difference — 
as  the   scale  ranged  between   1  calf  and  12  cows. 
Yet  these  most  rude  and  unequal  laws  are  specially 
recorded,  not  as  the  relics  of  Saxon  Serfdom,  but  as 
the  then  existing  and  living  usages  of  the  Celtic 
races — the  "Brettons"  of  Strathclyde  and  the  "Scoti" 
in  whom  all  the  Celts  had  been  merged  north  of  the 
Clyde  and  Forth.2    But  one  of  the  most  significant 
facts  showing  how  much  the  poorer  classes  gained  by 
the  gradual  disappearance  of  Celtic  customs  in  respect 
to  Bondage,  is  this — that  under  those  customs  it  is 
evident  that  there  had  been  established  precisely  the 
same  connection   between   Serfdom  and  particular 
areas  of  land  which  led  to  such  ruinous  results  in 
Prussia.      In  one  of  the   fragmentary  laws  which 
have  been  collected  in  the  document  called  "  Quoniam 
Attachiamenta"3  there  is  one  which  shows  that  the 
mere  fact  of  a  man,  his  son,  and  his  grandson,  occupy- 
ing certain  portions  of  land  which  were  known  as 
"  servile,"  and  rendering  for  it  corresponding  services, 
he  and  all  his  descendants  to  the  fourth  generation 
became  members  of  the  servile  class,  and  could  be 
adjudicated  to  be  so  before  an  assize  court.4 

In  all  this  we  can  trace  a  steady  stream  of  history 
running  through  several  centuries  from  the  wild  and 
rough  hills  of  Celtic  Feudalism  into  the  rich  and 

1  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  chap.  vi.  ;   Acts  of  Parl.,  vol.   i. 
p.  640. 

2  Acts  of  Parlt  vol.  i.  p.  663.  3  Ibid.  p.  655. 
4  Ibid.  ;  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  p.  22. 


86  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

cultivated  plains  of  modern  progress.  We  see 
passing  before  us  the  long  series,  and  the  gradual 
current  of  events  which  prove  that  the  Age  of 
Charters  and  the  Age  of  Covenants,  instead  of 
having  been  times — as  they  are  often  ignorantly 
represented — of  the  suppression  of  ancient  liberties 
among  the  Celts,  by  the  introduction  of  foreign 
tyranny — were,  on  the  contrary,  times  when  the 
poorer  classes  of  the  Celtic  community  were  gradu- 
ally but  steadily  delivered  and  redeemed  from  very 
barbarous  conditions,  not  only  of  Feudalism  but  of 
servitude,  which  had  grown  up  among  themselves. 
When  we  think  of  the  relics  and  survivals  of  that  bar- 
barism which  were  still  affecting  widely  and  deeply  the 
condition  of  society  in  the  Twelfth  and  Thirteenth 
Centuries,  we  must  estimate  all  the  more  highly  those 
gentle  but  penetrating  influences  of  civilisation  which 
were  then  sapping  their  foundations,  and  before 
which,  like  snow  before  the  breath  of  a  southern  air, 
they  did  within  the  next  200  years  almost  entirely 
disappear  in  Scotland.  Moreover,  we  can  see  that 
it  was  the  Celtic  race  which  most  immediately 
and  directly  benefited  by  the  changes  which  were 
destroying  Bondage.  For  they  often  remained  as 
the  poorer  and  the  working  population  of  the  greater 
part  of  the  Lowlands  and  of  the  eastern  counties 
over  the  whole  of  Scotland,  while  the  Ownership  of 
the  land  was  passing  steadily  into  the  hands  of 
Anglo-Saxon  and  Anglo-Norman  Lords.  This  fact 
is  very  clearly  reflected  in  the  early  Charters  and 
other  documents  in  which  the  regular  word  for  the 
Serfs  or  Bondmen  was  the  "  Nativi,"  or  old  native 
Celtic  population,  whilst  in  some  Charters  they  are 
called  the  "Cumerlache" — a  purely  Celtic  word 
which  has  been  traced  through  the  Irish  language  to 
the  term  applicable  to  men  who  cultivated  "  servile 
land/'1  Moreover,  in  almost  all  cases  in  which  indi- 
viduals of  this  class  are  mentioned  in  the  Chartu- 
laries,  they  are  designated  by  Celtic  names.2 

1  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  p.  223.  2  Ibid.  p.  222. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  87 

One  of  the  earliest  steps  which  seems  to  have 
led  to  the  elevation  of  this  class  out  of  the  ranks  of 
Bondage,  was  a  step  which,  at  first  sight,  may  seem 
to  have  been  in  a  backward  rather  than  in  a  forward 
direction.  This  step  was  the  practice  which  seems 
to  have  been  begun  by  the  Monks  of  moving  the 
Bondmen  from  one  estate  to  another  for  the  sake  of 
their  labour  in  the  reclamation  of  land.  "  Chattel 
slavery"  is  associated  in  our  minds  with  a  very 
inferior  condition  as  compared  with  the  old  mediaeval 
Serfs  who  were  "  adstricti  glebse" — transferable  from 
one  master  to  another  only  along  with  the  land  on 
which  they  lived.  And,  no  doubt,  this  would  have 
been  a  backward  step — if  it  had  stood  alone — or 
rather  if  it  had  not  stood  in  close  connection  with 
other  influences  which  gave  to  it  a  very  different 
tendency.  But  when  all  those  other  influences 
were  moving  in  the  direction  of  freedom,  the  mere 
breaking  of  a  bond  which  tied  men  to  a  certain 
locality  was  clearly  in  itself  a  gain.  If  the  spirit  of 
the  age  was  to  make  all  dues  of  service  more  fixed 
and  definite — if  service  itself  was  coming  to  be 
measured  by  money  payments — if  sale  was  already 
passing  into  hire, — it  is  clear  enough  that  the 
transferability  of  labour  would  be  an  advantage  in 
itself. 

This  is  another  of  the  innumerable  cases  in  which 
the  effect  of  any  given  social  or  political  change  is 
entirely  dependent  on  surrounding  conditions.  It 
is  curious  to  observe  how  completely  unconscious 
those  men  were  who  began  this  change,  of  the  result 
to  which  it  evidently  contributed.  They  thought 
only  of  the  infraction  it  involved  of  ancient  rights 
and  usages — and  they  treated  it  accordingly  in  a 
spirit  of  apology.  Indeed  they  had  to  apply  for 
special  permission  to  the  Sovereign.  All  this  appears 
very  clearly  in  the  earliest  documents  we  possess 
which  record  transactions  of  this  kind.  Thus  we 
have  a  special  Ordinance  or  Prescript  of  Malcolm  iv. 
(1153-1165),  in  which  he  gives  permission  to  the 


88  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Prior  and  Monks  of  Coldingham  to  move  "  their  own 
men,"  that  is,  their  Bondmen,  from  the  particular 
land  on  which  they  served  to  Coldingham,  for  the 
purpose  of  settling  that  Township.1  The  King  for- 
bids any  one  to  trouble  them  in  this  matter.  So 
again  in  the  Heign  of  Alexander  n.  we  have  the 
same  Prior  and  Monks  purchasing  for  3  silver  merks 
a  Serf,  with  his  sons  and  daughters,  from  a  private 
landowner,  who  in  his  deed  or  note  of  sale  takes 
great  care  to  plead  that  the  transaction  was  one 
arising  out  of  his  "  great  want."2  And  so  again  in 
another  transaction  of  the  same  kind  between  the 
same  Monks  and  a  different  landowner,  he  explains 
in  the  same  spirit,  that  the  price  of  10  merks  had 
been  given  to  him  "  in  his  great  necessity."3  On 
the  other  hand  we  have  abundant  evidence  that  the 
rigidity  of  the  old  Celtic  tie  between  the  Bondman 
and  the  land  on  which  he  lived  and  served,  was 
being  constantly  broken  from  another  cause.  The 
Bondmen  themselves  had  an  instinct  in  favour  of 
free  labour.  In  former  times  they  had  often  eagerly 
sought  for  the  means  of  sustenance,  and  for  the  pro- 
tection which  came  with  Bondage.  But  now  they 
were  perpetually  escaping.  "  Fugitivi"  became  one 
of  the  recognised  names  for  them  in  numerous  docu- 
ments of  that  age.  Some  of  these  documents  are 
express  mandates  of  the  Koyal  authority  in  favour 
of  Monasteries  entitling  them  to  pursue  and  recover 
their  fugitive  Serfs  wherever  they  might  be  found  on 
the  lands  of  other  men.  Thus  the  same  Sovereign, 
Malcolm  iv.  (1153-1165),  whom  we  have  seen  giving 
to  the  Monks  of  Coldingham  the  privilege  of  moving 
Bondmen  from  one  estate  to  another,  gives  to  them 
also  a  Precept  commanding  all  men  that  "  wherever 
the  Prior  or  his  servants  can  find  fugitive  Serfs  justly 
belonging  to  Coldingham,  they  shall  have  them 
justly,  without  disturbance  or  trouble,  and  I  forbid 
that  any  of  you  detain  them  unjustly."4  Thus  again 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  XXX. 

2  /^r/.No.XIV.  3  Ibid.  iso.  LIX.  4  Ibid.  No.  XXX. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  89 

in  a  later  reign,  that  of  Alexander  n.  (1214-1249), 
we  have  that  Sovereign  issuing  a  similar  Precept  in 
favour  of  the  Abbot  of  Scone,  "  or  his  serjeant,"  and 
in  this  case  Serfs  or  Bondmen  are  designated  by 
their  ancient  Celtic  designations  of  "  Cumlaws  and 
Cumherbes,"  and  they  are  described  as  "belonging  to 
the  lands  of  the  Abbacy  of  Scone."1 

In  all  these  transactions  for  the  purchase  of  Serfs, 
and  for  reclaiming  them,  the  Abbots  and  Priors  of 
these  days  were  acting  for  the  best.  Not  only  were 
they  working  hard  at  the  Improvement  of  the 
Country,  but  they  were  bringing  the  sweet  influ- 
ences of  Christianity  and  the  civilising  traditions 
of  the  Church  to  bear  upon  the  relations  between 
all  those  powers  which  then  represented  Capital,  and 
all  those  persons  who  then  represented  Labour. 
Just  as  for  centuries  they  had  been  the  great  instru- 
ments in  checking  the  exactions  of  "  Mormaer  and 
of  Toiseach,"  so  now  they  were  not  less  active  in 
raising  the  condition  of  that  lowest  grade  in  Celtic 
society,  the  "Cumlaws  and  the  Cumherbes."  When 
they  got  these  Serfs  into  their  possession,  they 
settled  them  on  their  lands  with  commutation  and 
limitation  of  the  services  which  they  had  before 
been  bound  to  render.  The  old  Columbite  principle 
of  changing  the  Indefinite  into  the  Definite,  which 
puts  an  end  to  so  much  that  is  picturesque  and 
sentimental,  but  is  nevertheless  the  very  foundation 
of  everything  that  is  civilised  and  free,  was  the 
principle  for  which  they  worked,  and  which  they 
gradually  succeeded  in  establishing. 

On  this  subject  we  have  some  detailed  and 
most  interesting  information.  The  Rentals  and  the 
Journals  of  several  of  the  Monasteries  during  the 
Thirteenth  Century  have  been  preserved,  and  parti- 
cularly those  of  some  of  the  great  Monasteries  of 
Teviotdale.  Thus  from  the  Rental  of  the  Abbacy 
of  Kelso  in  1290  it  appears  that  all  the  agricul- 
tural class  whom  they  settled  on  their  Estates, 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  No.  XXXVII. 


90 


SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 


whether  they  had  been  Serfs  or  Freemen,  wei 
held  liable— not  to  " Cosherings "  or  "Cuttings" 
or  "Hostings"  or  "Conveth"  or  "  Caulpes,"  or 
any  of  the  other  old  Celtic  exactions,  but  to  fixed 
rents  in  money,  together  with  services  limited  to  a 
certain  number  of  days,  or  to  the  doing  of  certain 
definite  things.  Thus  each  Cottar  paid  from  one  to 
six  shillings  a  year,  with  services  not  exceeding 
nine  days'  labour.  The  tenants  of  certain  Crofts 
paid  each  two  Bolls  of  meal,  and  were  bound  to 
shear  the  whole  corn  on  a  particular  set  of  fields. 
Again,  on  other  holdings  of  a  large  size,  the  tenants 
were  bound  to  pay  6s.  8d.  of  money  rent,  and  to 
render  certain  services  in  harvest,  in  sheep-shearing, 
in  carrying  peats  and  wool,  or  in  fetching  the  Abbot's 
commodities  from  Berwick.  These  arrangements 
seem  all  to  have  been  settled  by  mutual  agreement 
and  stipulations,  and  they  were  so  precise  that  they 
fixed  even  the  services  in  which  the  husbandman 
was  to  have  his  food  from  the  Abbey,  and  those  in 
which  he  was  to  maintain  himself.1 

Nor  is  this  all.  The  same  penetrating  spirit  of 
reform,  in  substituting  fixed  dues  for  vague  and  semi- 
barbarous  usages,  extended  to  every  department 
in  the  management  of  their  large  estates.  These 
often  included  great  extents  of  mountain-pastures 
which  could  only  be  grazed  by  sheep.  For  these 
the  Monks  made  careful  arrangements  as  to  folds,  as 
to  huts  or  bothies  for  the  herds,  and  as  to  shelter 
for  the  cattle.  The  evidence  of  full  and  complete 
powers  of  property  over  the  whole  area,  which  we 
have  seen  to  be  so  striking  in  the  wording  of  these 
Charters  does  not  rest  on  that  wording  only — but  is 
equally  confirmed  by  the  daily  life  and  the  multi- 
farious transactions  of  estate  management.  The 
frequent  transference  of  lands  from  one  Tenant  to 
another — the  settlement  of  disputed  marches — and 
the  precision  and  care  bestowed  on  Leases,  show  that 

1  Scotland  in  the  Middle  Ages,  by  Cosmo  Innes,  pp.  243-45 ;  Burton's 
History  of  Scotland,  vol.  ii.  pp.  194,  195. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  91 

:he  fundamental  conditions  of  all  agricultural  im- 
>rovement  were  being  rapidly  established  by  the 
[onks,  in  the  consecration  of  the  freedom  of  labour, 
id  of  corresponding  freedom, — of  order  and  legality  • 
— in  the  exercise  of  the  fullest  rights  of  property. 

When  we  consider  the  number  of  these  Monas- 
tics which  were  founded  in  Scotland  during  the 
Velfth  and  Thirteenth  Centuries,  from  the  begin- 
ing  of  the  reign  of  David  I.  in  1124  to  the  death  of 
Alexander  in.  in  1286,  and  when  we  consider  further 
:he  ubiquity  of  their  landed  possessions,  both  in  the 
>wlands  and  the  Highlands,  we  may  be  able  to 
form  some  estimate  of  the  influence  they  had  in 
spreading  everywhere  the  same  rules  of  conduct, 
and  the  same  principles  of  law.  There  was  no 
difference  whatever  between  the  various  parts  of 
the  Kingdom  which  were  then  Celtic  or  non-Celtic 
in  different  degrees.  Many  parts  of  the  country 
which  are  purely  Anglo-Saxon  now  were  as  purely 
Celtic  then,  whilst  throughout  the  districts  which 
we  now  call  Highland  the  great  possessions  of  the 
Church  were  universally  managed  on  the  same  prin- 
ciples, and  were  directed  from  local  Monastic  centres. 
Paisley  had  lands  all  through  the  Lennox  and 
Argyll ;  Scone  and  Cambuskenneth  and  Dumblane, 
through  Strath  earn  and  Menteith ;  Dunkeld  through 
the  Central  Highlands ;  Elgin  and  Inverness  and 
Beauly  throughout  the  northern  mountains,  and 
all  along  the  broad  sea-margins  of  the  North-Eastern 
Coasts.  And  then,  besides  the  lands  held  by  the 
Monastic  bodies,  the  old  Episcopal  Sees  of  Scotland 
were  endowed  with  large  estates.  All  of  these 
exhibited  the  same  principles  of  management,  to 
which  the  old  native  methods  were  all  steadily 
conforming.  So  far  from  the  native  Celtic  popula- 
tion complaining  of  the  full  powers  of  Ownership 
exercised  by  the  Monks  in  the  regulation  of  their 
estates, — so  far  from  feeling  this  to  be  harsh  as  com- 
pared with  the  older  systems  practised  under  their 
native  Lords  and  Chiefs, — that  population,  and  every 


92  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

population  brought  into  contact  with  the  Mon- 
asteries, were  eager  to  come  under  their  protection, 
and  to  exchange  the  heavy  and  incalculable  burdens 
of  Celtic  Feudalism  for  the  moderate  and  rational 
obligations  which  were  founded  on  Covenant  and 
on  intelligible  Law. 

Part  of  the  great  benefits  eagerly  sought  for  by 
the  people  in  coming  upon  ecclesiastical  lands 
depended,  of  course,  upon  the  special  privileges  and 
immunities  of  the  Church  from  all  the  exactions 
which  arose  out  of  the  obligations  of  military 
service.  But  another  part — and  a  very  great  part 
— depended  on  the  fundamental  change  which  lies 
in  the  passage  from  vague  unwritten  customs  to 
written  agreements.  And  this  unspeakable  benefit 
extended  gradually  but  steadily,  and  on  the  whole 
rapidly,  beyond  the  limits  of  Church  Estates.  The 
Anglo-Saxon,  and  the  Scoto-Norman  Earls,  and 
Chiefs  and  Knights,  imbibed  the  spirit  of  their  age, 
and  dealt  with  their  Tenants  on  the  same  principles 
on  which  they  placed  so  high  a  value  in  their  own 
Charters  from  the  King.  The  very  word  Charter 
has  come  to  be  associated  in  our  ears  with  the 
conceptions  of  security  and  of  law.  It  was  the 
Instrument  to  which  every  Civic  Community  and 
every  Owner  of  land  equally  looked  as  their  tower 
of  defence  against  arbitrary  Sovereigns.  Just  as 
every  Burgh  in  Scotland  proceeded  on  the  strength 
of  it  to  develop  its  trade  and  commerce,  so,  "  armed 
with  it,  and  supported  by  the  law,  Norman  Knight 
and  Saxon  Thane,  and  Celtic  Chief,  set  himself  to 
civilise  his  newly  acquired,  or  his  newly  confirmed 
property,  settled  his  '  vil '  or  his  '  town/  built 
himself  a  House  of  Fence,  distributed  his  lands 
among  his  own  few  followers  and  the  "nativi"  whom 
he  found  attached  to  the  soil,  either  to  be  cultivated 
on  his  own  account  or  at  a  fixed  '  ferm '  on  the  risk 
of  the  tenant."  1 

Among  the  historical  facts  which  indicate  this 

1  Origines  Parockiales,  vol.  i.,  Preface,  p.  26,  by  Cosmo  Innes.' 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  93 

great  line  of  advance  in  the  path  of  civilisation,  one  of 
the  most  interesting  is  that  afforded  by  the  arrange- 
ments made  by  Alexander  in.  for  the  marriage  of 
his  daughter  the  Princess  Margaret  to  Eric,  the  young 
King  of  Norway,  in  1278.  This  was  the  mother 
of  the  Princess  whose  early  death  subsequently 
gave  rise  to  the  Disputed  Succession,  and  ultimately 
to  the  War  of  Independence.  Her  portion  was  to 
be  14,000  marks,  but  with  an  option  to  her  father 
to  give  one-half  of  this  sum  in  Scotch  Estates. 
Provisions  of  this  nature  of  course  implied  a  well- 
known  and  ascertained  relation  between  a  definite 
extent  of  land  and  its  annual  revenue ;  and  this 
relation,  again,  could  only  be  established  on  the 
foundation  of  rents  in  money,  or  in  produce  corn- 
mutable  into  money,  which  were  not  dependent  on 
vague  customs  or  exactions,  but  upon  Covenants 
and  agreements  such  as  could  be  relied  upon  for  a 
steady  income.1 

Accordingly  we  have  historical  evidence  that 
these  Covenants  and  agreements  had  been  embodied 
in  the  form  of  written  Leases  at  a  date  almost  as 
early  as  the  earliest  Charters.  One  of  the  oldest 
upon  record  is  dated  1190,  and  conveyed  the  Tenancy 
of  certain  lands  from  a  Lay  Owner  to  the  Abbacy  of 
Kelso.2  The  system  rapidly  extended.  Every  kind 
and  species  of  property  came  to  be  let  on  hire  for 
specific  terms,  and  for  specific  rents — farms,  mills, 
breweries,  houses  with  crofts,  houses  in  towns,  titles, 
annuities  secured  on  rents,  dues,  customs,  and  even 
the  use  of  woods.  In  short,  everything  and  anything 
which  men  could  own  they  could  also  either  sell  or 
let  out  on  hire.2  All  this  came  naturally,  and  as  a 
matter  of  course.  Such  transactions  arose  and  mul- 
tiplied with  the  security  of  property,  the  peace  of 
society,  and  the  advance  of  civilisation.  Towards 
the  middle  of  the  next  century  after  the  earliest 
recorded  Lease  to  the  Abbacy  of  Kelso,  in  1242,  and 

1  Tytler's  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  i.  p.  47. 

2  Hunter,  On  Landlord  and  Tenant,  p.  57. 


94  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

again  in  1296,  the  lettings  of  land  on  Lease  had 
become  so  common  on  Ecclesiastical  Estates  that 
Provincial  Councils  of  the  Church  drew  up  canons 
on  the  subject,  having  for  their  object  to  limit  the 
duration  of  Leases  granted  to  laymen  to  the  maxi- 
mum of  five  years.1 

But  although  these  and  other  transactions  of  a 
similar  kind  make  it  evident  that  the  system  of 
letting  land  on  hire  for  definite  rents  had  become 
well  known  and  universally  established  long  before 
the  close  of  the  Thirteenth  Century,  it  so  happens 
that  whilst  we  have  many  much  earlier  Charters, 
no  actual  specimen  of  a  written  Lease  has  been 
preserved  which  is  dated  earlier  than  the  beginning 
of  the  next  Century — the  Fourteenth.  But  this 
oldest  specimen  is  in  the  highest  degree  interesting 
and  instructive. 

It  is  an  agreement  or  contract  between  the 
Abbot  of  Scone  and  two  gentlemen,  father  and  son, 
whose  name  was  de  Hay  del  Leys,  for  the  Lease  of 
certain  lands  near  Perth.  The  only  peculiarity  in 
the  case  is  that  the  Monastery  of  Scone  had  itself  no 
chartered  tenure  of  those  lands.  They  were  held 
only  at  the  pleasure  of  the  King.  It  is  evident 
that  the  Monks  considered  this  pleasure  to  be  safe 
enough.  But  the  possible  contingency  of  being 
deprived  of  it  had  to  be  contemplated  and  provided 
for  in  the  Lease.  It  is  dated  1312 — two  years 
before  the  battle  of  Bannockburn.  In  many  ways 
this  document  is  remarkable.  In  the  first  place,  its 
business-like  and  definite  legal  form  indicates  clearly 
enough  that,  although  it  happens  to  be  the  first  of 
these  Covenants  which  survives,  it  must  have  been 
drawn  out  on  principles  and  on  practices,  if  not 
in  a  form,  which  had  been  long  familiar.  There 
could  not  be  a  better  example  of  the  undivided 
powers  then  involved  in  the  Ownership  of  land,  and 
of  the  perfect  freedom  which  governed  the  relations 
between  those  who  desired  to  let,  and  those  who 

1  Hunter,  On  Landlord  and  Tenant,  pp.  56,  57. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  95 

desired  to  hire,  the  exclusive  right  of  cultivation. 
Moreover,  it  is  remarkable  in  this — that  the  terms 
of  the  contract  are  in  their  nature  those  which  have 
come  to  be  designated  as  an  "  Improvement  Lease  " 
— that  is  to  say,  a  Lease  under  the  terms  of  which 
the  Lessee  was  only  too  glad  to  execute  improve- 
ments upon  the  land,  and  to  pay  for,  and  out  of, 
the  increasing  produce  some  specified  share  of  that 
increase  in  the  form  of  rent.  He  was  not  bound  to 
improve,  but  it  was  assumed  that  he  would  do  so 
from  self-interest.  On  this  assumption  he  was  bound 
to  pay  an  increasing  rent — the  steps  of  increase, 
however,  being  fixed  and  definite.  In  order  to  pay 
this  increase  he  would  need  to  increase  the  produce. 
There  was  no  other  compulsion  in  this  particular 
case.  But  it  was  enough.  In  the  loose  language  of 
modern  agitation  the  Tenant  would  have  to  pay  this 
increase.  "  upon  his  own  improvements."  But  574 
years  ago  men  understood  the  principles  of  business 
better.  The  Tenants  felt  and  knew  that  "  their  own 
improvements"  had  to  be  made  "  upon,"  and  out  of, 
materials,  and  opportunities,  and  guarantees,  which 
were  not  "their  own,"  but  came  from  other  men. 
All  these  came  from  the  Owner  of  the  soil.  They 
constituted  a  kind  of  Capital  which  the  Tenants  did 
not  possess,  and  it  was  in  the  nature  of  that  Capital 
to.  yield  a  very  large  return  to  certain  kinds  of 
labour, — provided  always,  and  provided  only,  that 
the  tenants  got  the  assurance  and  security  of  posses- 
sion exclusive  of  all  other  men.  But  this  security 
and  exclusiveness  could  only  be  got  by  bargain  with 
the  Owners.  Therefore  the  Tenants  felt  that  their 
own  improvements  could  only  be  "  their  own "  in 
part,  seeing  that  another  great  part  of  the  result 
must  be  derived  from,  and  be  due  to,  the  Owner. 
To  him,  accordingly,  the  cultivating  Tenants  were 
always  ready  to  render  back  in  rent  some  stipulated 
share  of  any  resulting  increase.  In  calculating 
what  that  share  might  be,  time  was  an  all-important 
element.  On  the  length  of  exclusive  enjoyment 


96  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

must  depend  the  share  of  increased  produce  which 
could  be  afforded.  In  this  case  the  term  was 
for  thirty  years.  The  rent  was  to  begin  at  two 
merks  for  two  years  ;  to  rise  to  three  merks  the 
third  year,  and  so  on,  one  merk  more  for  each  year 
till  the  sixth.  Then  for  the  six  following  years  it 
was  to  remain  at  six  merks — that  is,  until  the  end 
of  the  twelfth  year.  Then  for  the  eight  following 
years  to  the  end  of  the  twentieth  year  the  rent  was 
to  be  eight  merks  ;  and  then  for  the  ten  remaining 
years  of  the  term  it  was  to  be  ten  merks.  Besides 
this  rent  they  were  to  grind  their  corn  at  the  Mill 
of  the  Convent,  and  to  pay  the  usual  dues  on  this 
necessary  service.  They  were  to  be  at  liberty  to 
cut  fuel  (peat)  on  the  farm  ;  but  for  their  own  use 
only,  and  were  strictly  prohibited  from  selling  it. 
The  Convent  retained  its  right  to  pasture  its  cattle 
on  the  common  grazing,  and  to  cut  fuel  on  "the 
moors  and  marshes "  when  they  shall  have  need. 
The  Tenants  were  further  bound  to  build  on  the 
farm  competent  buildings  for  themselves  and  their 
husbandmen,  which  they  were  to  leave  so  built  at 
the  end  of  their  term ;  and,  finally,  in  case  of  the 
Convent  losing  the  land  by  any  revocation  of  the 
royal  gift  under  which  alone  they  held  it,  the 
Tenants  were  held  bound  to  leave  the  farm  along 
with  their  Husbandmen,  and  with  this  specified  com- 
pensation, namely,  the  abatement  of  one  year's  rent 
for  the  year  in  which  they  might  be  so  dispossessed. 
But  the  teachings  of  this  Lease  are  so  many  and  so 
important  that,  as  in  the  case  of  the  early  Charters, 
I  think  it  best  to  present  it  to  my  readers  in 
full:- 

(Translation.} 

AGREEMENT  between  the  ABBOT  OF  SCONE  and 
EDMUND  OF  HAY  DEL  LEYS  and  WILLIAM,  his 
Son  (1312). 

IN  the  year  of  grace  1312  was  made  this  agreement 
between  religious  men.  Lord  Thomas  by  the  grace 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  97 

of  God  Abbot  of  Scone,  and  convent  of  the  same 
place,  on  the  one  part,  and  Edmund  de  Hay  del 
Leys  and  William  his  son,  on  the  other  part, 
namely,  that 

The  said  Abbot  and  convent  have  granted  and  to 
farm  (rent)  let  all  their  land  of  Balgarvi,  with  all 
pertinents,  and  their  right  marches, 

With  which  husbandmen  were  wont  to  hold  the 
same  land  to  farms  (rent) 

To  the  said  Edmund  and  William  his  son,  and 
the  heirs  of  the  said  William  of  his  own  body 
lawfully,  directly,  immediately,  lineally,  and  not 
collaterally  to  be  procreated,  and  descending  until 
the  term  of  thirty  years  following  fully  complete. 

Paying  therefor  yearly  the  said  Edmund,  William 
his  son  and  the  heirs  of  the  said  William,  to  the 
said  Abbot  and  convent,  the  first  year  two  merks 
of  good  and  legal  sterlings,  namely,  one-half  at  the 
feast  of  Whitsunday,  and  the  other  half  at  the  feast 
of  St.  Martin,  in  winter  :  the  second  year,  two 
merks  at  the  terms  before  noted ;  the  third  year, 
three  merks  ;  the  fourth  year,  four  merks ;  the  fifth 
year,  five  merks  ;  the  six  year,  six  merks :  and  for 
the  six  years  immediately  following,  namely,  till 
the  end  of  the  twelfth  year,  they  shall  pay  six 
merks  every  year  at  the  terms  before  mentioned, 
and  for  eight  years  immediately  following,  viz., 
till  the  end  of  the  twentieth  year,  they  shall  pay 
eight  merks  every  year ;  and  for  ten  years  im- 
mediately following,  viz.,  till  the  end  of  the 
thirtieth  year,  they  shall  pay  ten  merks  every  year 
of  good  and  legal  sterlings,  at  the  terms  before 
noted. 

The  term  of  entry  of  the  said  Edmund  and 
William  to  the  said  land  beginning  at  the  feast  of 
Whitsunday,  the  year  of  our  Lord  1313  ;  the  term 
of  their  first  payment  beginning  at  the  feast  of 
Whitsunday  the  year  of  grace  1313. 

And  the  foresaid  Edmund,  William,  and  heirs  of 
the  said  William,  shall  do  suit  at  the  court  of  the 

G 


SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Abbot  three  times  in  the  year,  at  the  three  head 
pleas,  their  husbandmen  shall  do  suit  at  all  the 
pleas  of  the  said  Abbot,  to  be  held  within  the 
barony  of  Scone. 

And  the  said  Edmund,  William,  and  heirs  of  the 
said  William  shall  come  to  the  Mill  of  the  said 
Abbot  and  convent  of  Kyncarroqui  with  all  kind 
of  corn  growing  on  the  said  lands  of  Balgarvy,  which 
they  shall  grind  for  their  sustenance,  and  shall 
there  give  the  twenty-fourth  "vas"  (peck)  for  all- 
saving  the  right  of  those  that  serve  at  the  mill  (as 
knaveship)  : 

And  their  men  and  husbandmen  and  their  cottars 
shall  give  the  sixteenth  "  vas  "  (  =  peck)  of  all  kinds 
of  corn  growing  on  the  said  lands  of  Balgarvi,  as 
the  other  husbandmen  and  natives  of  the  said  Abbot 
and  convent : 

Also  both  they  and  their  tenants  shall  do  towards 
the  preparation  and  upholding  of  the  said  mill  in  all 
things  as  other  husbandmen  in  the  neighbourhood. 

And  the  said  Edmund,  William,  and  heirs  of 
the  said  William,  shall  do  the  forinsec  service  of 
our  Lord  the  King  so  much  as  pertains  to  the  said 
land,  and  they  shall  sustain  all  other  burdens  in 
any  manner  of  way  touching  the  said  land  till  the 
end  of  their  term  foresaid. 

And  the  said  Edmund,  William,  heirs  of  the  said 
William,  and  their  men  dwelling  on  the  said  land  of 
Balgarvi  shall  take  fuel  from  the  common  for  their 
own  use  only,  neither  shall  they  sell  therefrom,  give 
or  alienate  in  any  other  way,  unless  from  their 
arable  land,  which  it  shall  be  lawful  to  them  thence 
to  take,  give  and  sell. 

Reserving  to  the  said  Abbot  and  convent  and 
their  successors  in  the  common  pasture  of  the  said 
lands  the  usufruct  for  their  animals  ;  in  moors  and 
marshes  for  taking  fuel  when  they  shall  have  need. 

And  if  disputes,  trivial  and  not  grave,  shall  arise 
among  the  men  of  the  said  Edmund,  William,  and 
the  heirs  of  the  said  William,  they  shall  decide  and 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  99 

correct  them  among  themselves,  but  if  there  shall  be 
greater  differences,  and  pertaining  to  the  lordship, 
such  ought  to  be  reserved  for  the  court  of  the  lord 
Abbot,  there  justly  to  be  determined  : 

Reserving  in  everything  the  lordship  to  the  said 
lord  Abbot  :  And  the  said  Edmund  and  William 
and  heirs  of  the  said  William  are  bound,  without 
dissimulation,  to  agree  to  the  counsel  and  assistance 
of  the  said  Abbot  and  convent  when  required. 

And  if  our  Lord  the  King  shall  happen  to  revoke 
the  gift  of  the  said  land  from  the  said  Abbot  and 
convent,  the  said  Edmund,  William,  heirs  of  the 
said  William,  and  their  husbandmen,  shall  quit 
without  paying  the  rent  of  the  year  of  their  quitting. 

And  the  said  Edmund,  William,  and  heirs  of  the 
said  William,  shall  cause  to  be  constructed  on  the 
said  land  of  Balgarvi  competent  buildings  for  them- 
selves and  their  husbandmen,  which  they  shall  leave 
so  built  at  the  end  of  their  term. 

In  witness  whereof  ..... 

the  common  seal  of  the  chapter  of  Scone  is  ap- 
pended, and  the  seals  of  the  foresaid  Edmund  and 
William  are  appended. 

This  Lease  exhibits  all  the  essential  features  of 
the  contracts  between  free  men  for  the  hire  of  land 
which,  down  to  our  own  time,  have  for  the  long  period 
of  more  than  550  years  prevailed  in  Scotland,  and 
which,  the  moment  domestic  peace  and  security 
returned  to  any  portion  of  the  land,  resulted  in  an 
extent  and  a  rapidity  of  agricultural  improvement 
which  has  never  been  surpassed  in  any  country. 
The  secret  of  the  success  of  these-  Covenants  lies  in 
their  definiteness,  and  with  their  definiteness,  in 
their  justice.  The  particular  stipulations  might  vary 
infinitely  according  to  the  nature  of  the  subject  let. 
The  term  of  years  might  vary  from  five  to  nineteen, 
or  thirty,  or  the  term  might  be  for  a  life,  or  lives. 
There  might  or  there  might  not  be  a  bargain  about 
improvements.  It  depended  obviously  on  the 


100  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

cheapness  or  dearness  of  the  rent  whether  improve- 
ments would  or  would  not  be  remunerative  within 
a  given  time,  and  without  any  other  compensation 
than  that  secured  by  the  increased  production  arising 
out  of  them.  This,  too,  was  generally  a  matter  of 
express  stipulation.  In  the  Lease  now  referred  to, 
the  houses  built  were  to  be  left  without  any  com- 
pensation. Probably  the  houses  of  that  time  were 
made  of  turf  and  wattles.  But  in  many  other 
cases  the  Leases  provided  for  the  payment  of  what 
were  called  "  meliorations  " — that  is,  for  the  value 
of  improvements  of  a  special  kind.  Sometimes 
they  provided  for  an  optional  "  break"  in  the  Lease 
at  seven  years,  or  some  other  period  short  of  the 
full  term,  and  specified  that  the  "meliorations" 
should  be  due  to  the  Tenant  only  if  his  enjoy- 
ment ended  at  the  shorter  term,  and  should  be 
extinguished  if  it  lasted  to  the  end.  He  could 
thus  calculate  securely  how  far  his  outlay  would  be 
returned.  Again,  as  regards  another  great  source 
of  value  in  the  Middle  Ages — namely,  dues  in  the 
form  of  labour — there  might  or  there  might  not  be 
an  exaction  of  services  in  labour,  besides  a  rent  in 
money  or  in  produce.  But  the  one  essential  feature 
in  all  such  lettings  by  Lease  was  that  every  stipula- 
tion was  as  definite  and  precise  as  possible.  Both 
parties  knew  exactly  what  they  were  agreeing  to. 
If  services  were  included,  the  amount  and  nature 
of  the  work  to  be  done  were  generally  specifically 
mentioned.  Already,  in  the  previous  century,  the 
Thirteenth,  we  find  from  the  Bental  of  the  great 
Abbacy  of  Kelso,  that  the  Monks  had  introduced 
the  same  principle  of  definiteness  and  precision  into 
their  arrangements,  even  with  their  Husbandmen,  who 
had  no  Leases,  but  who  were  only  Tenants  at  Will. 
It  is  to  be  observed,  however,  that  these  Cove- 
nants were  strictly  confined  to  the  relations  between 
the  Owner  and  the  Tenant,  or,  as  the  Lease- holding- 
tenant  came  to  be  called  in  Scotland,  the  "  Tacks- 
man," — "Tack"  being  the  name  for  a  Lease.  No 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  101 

notice  whatever  was  taken  in  most  of  these  Leases 
of  any  class  of  men  subordinate  to  the  Lease-holder 
or  Tacksman.  The  full  powers  of  exclusive  posses- 
sion for  the  purposes  of  cultivation  which  the  Owner 
enjoyed,  as  a  necessary  part  of  Ownership,  were  lent 
or  granted,  on  the  stipulated  conditions  and  for  a 
given  time,  to  the  Lessee  who  hired  them.  He  had 
full  power  over  all  inferior  or  subordinate  occupiers, 
if  any  such  existed.  In  the  case  of  this  earliest 
extant  Lease,  given  by  the  Abbot  of  Scone,  we  have 
some  very  clear  and  very  interesting  intimations  on 
this  matter,  which  is  one  of  the  highest  historical 
importance.  In  the  first  place,  we  learn  that  the 
land  or  Farm  which  was  granted  on  Lease  to 
Edmund  and  William  de  Hay  del  Leys  had  pre- 
viously been  rented  by  Husbandmen,  or  actual 
cultivators,  who  "  were  wont  to  hold  the  same  land 
to  farms"  (or  rent).  It  is  certain  from  this  recorded 
fact,  that  when  these  lands  were  granted  to  the 
Abbey,  this  grant  (until  revoked)  was  not  merely  a 
grant  of  a  rent  charge,  or  a  mere  grant  of  grazing, 
but  a  grant  of  such  undivided  Ownership  as  in- 
volved the  right  of  the  Abbot  to  re-let  the  land  to 
whom  he  would.  The  former  "  Husbandmen"  were 
therefore  not  Serfs  or  Bondmen,  who  were  irremov- 
able from  the  soil ;  neither  were  they  free  Tenants 
with  any  rights  of  occupation  which  prevented  the 
land  being  withdrawn  from.  them.  In  the  second 
place,  we  see  that  the  new  Leaseholding  Tenants 
were  expected,  as  a  matter  of  course,  to  bring  fresh 
Husbandmen  of  their  own,  who  are  variously  desig- 
nated as  "  their  men,"  "  their  husbandmen,"  and 
"  their  Tenants."  In  the  third  place,  we  see  that 
certain  stipulations  of  the  Lease  assume  that  over 
these  men  the  Tacksmen  had  complete  power  to 
compel  them  to  pay  certain  services  for  the  upholding 
of  the  Mill,  and  for  the  paying  of  a  higher  rate  of 
meal-tax  for  the  grinding  of  corn  than  was  to  be 
paid  by  the  Tacksmen  themselves.  It  appears  fur- 
ther that  this  obligation  in  respect  to  keeping  up  the 


102  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Mill  was  a  common  obligation  upon  all  the  Husband- 
men of  the  neighbourhood.  Lastly,  there  is  an 
express  condition  that  the  actual  Husbandmen  or 
cultivators  were  to  remove  from  the  land  along  with 
the  Tenant  himself  at  the  termination  of  the  Lease. 
This  was  evidently  the  common  practice  and  usual 
stipulation  of  that  day.  It  was  probably  an  abso- 
lute necessity  for  the  improvement  of  the  soil  then 
largely  waste.  The  native  cultivators  were  probably 
then,  as  we  shall  see  they  were  in  much  later  times, 
wedded  to  barbarous  usages,  or  too  ignorant  and 
too  poor  to  be  improvers.  They  might  or  they 
might  not  be  mere  servants  or  bondmen.  They 
were  the  "  agricolae "  of  the  old  Chroniclers,  the 
"bondi"  and  "nativi"  of  the  earliest  Feudal 
Charters.  They  were  regarded  as  yearly  tenants, 
and  in  the  eastern  districts  of  Scotland  they  were 
often  the  remains  of  the  old  Celtic  population.1 
But,  whatever  their  status  was,  whether  bond  or 
free,  it  is  clear  that  they  were  not  recognised  as 
then  having,  either  by  law  or  custom,  any  right  of 
occupancy  in  restriction  or  limitation  of  the  full 
right  of  Ownership.  If  they  cultivated  any  land  at 
all  for  their  own  use,  which  in  this  case  they  were 
clearly  expected  to  do,  it  must  have  been  only  as  sub- 
tenants at  will  of  the  ' '  Tacksman"  or  Lessee,  and  as 
he  could  not  give  any  possession  longer  than  his 
own,  they  were  to  leave  the  farm  when  he  left  it. 
The  power  of  sub-letting  was  itself  generally  a 
matter  of  express  stipulation.  Sometimes  it  was 
specially  allowed.  Sometimes  it  was  specially  pro- 
hibited. When  there  was  no  stipulation  it  seems 
to  have  been  considered  as  allowed. 

There  is  one  other  stipulation  of  this  Lease  which 
incidentally  casts  an  important  light  on  another 
question  of  much  interest — namely,  the  exact  posi- 
tion under  such  Leases  of  the  common  grazings  of 
the  country.  We  have  seen  that  under  the  Charters 
special  care  was  taken  to  enumerate  and  include 

1  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  p.  85. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  103 

every  variety  and  kind  of  surface — whether  in  woods, 
or  in  mosses,  or  in  meadows,  or  in  mountain  pastures. 
It  followed  as  a  matter  of  course,  and  indeed  of 
necessity,  that  when  portions  of  such  lands  were  let, 
and  divided  from  each  other  by  definite  "  metes  and 
marches,"  whether  these  were  natural  or  artificial, 
the  whole  surfaces  within  those  marches  were  equally 
the  subjects  of  the  Covenant.  The  grazings,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  comparatively  small  areas  of 
enclosed  land,  were  often  the  most  valuable  portion 
of  the  subjects  let.  They  continued  to  be  "common" 
in  one  sense  only — namely,  that  like  all  other  pastures 
in  that  time,  they  were  used  promiscuously  by  the 
Tenant  and  by  all  his  Sub-tenants  or  Husbandmen. 
But  the  Tacksman  alone  had  the  power  of  disposing 
of  them,  and  of  regulating  the  use  of  them  among 
his  subordinates.  So  absolute  and  exclusive  was 
this  power,  that  the  Chartered  Owner  himself  had 
no  right  whatever  to  use  those  pastures  after  he  had 
let  them,  unless  by  express  reservation  in  the  Lease. 
Just  as  he  parted  with  his  exclusive  right  of  posses- 
sion over  the  arable  land  in  favour  of  his  Lessee,  so 
also  did  he  part  with  his  rights  of  grazing,  except 
in  so  far  as  by  express  stipulation  he  might  reserve 
a  share.  Hence  the  clause  in  this  Lease  which 
expressly  reserved  to  the  Monastery  their  right  to 
pasture  their  cattle  upon  the  common  grazings  of 
the  farm  of  Balgarvie.  The  word  " common"  referred 
to  the  method  of  use,  not  at  all  to  the  principle  of 
tenure.  It  was  assumed  that  the  Lessee  would 
have  as  complete  power  to  exclude  the  cattle  of 
the  Owner  as  to  exclude  the  cattle  of  all  other  men, 
unless  the  Owner  took  care  to  preserve,  or  to  reserve, 
some  portion  of  his  own  rights  in  this  matter. 

At  this  time,  it  is  to  be  observed,  the  principles 
embodied  in  the  Lease  rested  on  no  special  legisla- 
tion, but  on  the  much  stronger  foundation,  first,  of 
the  acknowledged  rights  involved  in  Ownership,  as 
these  had  come  to  be  developed  through  the  course 
of  many  centuries,  and  secondly,  of  the  correlative 


104:  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

right  of  all  Owners  either  to  sell  or  to  let  their  pro- 
perty to  any  men,  and  on  any  conditions,  whether 
of  purchase,  or  of  hire.  All  Charters,  as  we  have 
seen,  had  taken  these  rights  for  granted,  and  they 
had  grown  up  so  naturally  and  so  reasonably,  and 
so  much  as  a  matter  of  necessity,  that  they  required 
neither  definition  nor  support.  Moreover ,,  it  is  quite 
certain  that  as  we  have  traced  the  spirit  of  precision 
which  more  and  more  governed  the  form  of  Charters 
to  the  influence  of  the  Latin  Church  and  the  prin- 
ciples of  the  Roman  Law,  so  it  is  even  more  certain 
that  the  same  spirit  as  applied  to  Leases  was  derived 
from  the  same  copious  fountain  of  all  the  elements 
of  Justice  and  of  Civilisation. 

Under  the  Republic  land  was  constantly  let  on 
hire,  and  the  Contracts  of  Leases  were  among  the 
most  familiar  of  all  legal  instruments.  No  actual 
copy  has  survived,  but  the  leading  stipulations  are 
accurately  known.  They  regulated  the  rent,  which 
was  fixed  or  definite,  either  in  money,  or  in  produce, 
or  in  service.  They  regulated  the  duration  of  the 
tenancy,  which  was  always  definite  also,  and  often 
short — most  commonly  not  more  than  five  years. 
They  regulated  also  the  devolution  of  the  Lease  to 
certain  Heirs.  They  regulated,  moreover,  the  kind 
of  husbandry  and  the  succession  of  crops — so  as  to 
secure  the  Owner  against  the  losses  which  so  often 
arise  to  Owners  from  the  misuse  of  their  property  by 
bad  husbandry.  They  regulated  also  the  power  of 
sub-letting.  There  was,  in  short,  under  the  noble 
jurisprudence  of  the  noblest  people  that  have  ever 
ruled,  perfect  freedom  of  contract  between  Free 
Owners  and  the  Free  Hirers  of  Land. 

Under  the  Empire  the  number  of  Leases 
declined,  because  Freedom  declined  also,  and  the 
number  of  Free  Men.  It  had  already  become  more 
and  more  the  custom  to  cultivate  great  estates  by 
Slaves.  They  of  course  did  not  hold  under  contract, 
nor  were  the  dues  they  paid  in  the  nature  of  a  rent. 
They  were  allowed  to  keep  certain  portions  of  the 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  105 

produce — enough  to  sustain  their  life,  and  to  suit 
their  servile  status ;  but  nothing  near  the  proportion 
of  the  total  produce  which  fell  to  the  lot  of  Free 
Tenants  under  the  system  of  Covenants.  More  and 
more  as  the  Free  Population  of  Italy  became 
exhausted  by  constant  and  decimating  wars,  this 
system  of  great  extents  of  country  cultivated  by 
Slaves  extended  itself,  and  was  the  symptom  rather 
than  the  cause  of  evils  which  were  sapping  the 
foundations  of  the  Empire.  It  was  to  this  system 
that  Pliny  referred  when  he  spoke  of  "  Latifundia  " 
as  having  "ruined  Italy."  By  a  most  ignorant 
perversion  of  historical  truth,  this  passage  has  been 
quoted  over  and  over  again  as  applicable  to  large 
Estates  in  modern  Europe,  and  especially  in  Scotland. 
Yet  the  two  systems  of  management  were  not  only 
different  in  their  origin  and  in  their  nature,  but  they 
were  the  antithesis  of  each  other.  Slavery  never  did 
exist  in  modern  Europe  on  the  scale  or  of  the  char- 
acter which  prevailed  in  the  Roman  Empire.  There 
was,  indeed,  Serfdom  and  Bondage,  and  as  we  have 
seen  there  were  a  few  scattered  and  individual 
cases  in  which  the  sale  and  purchase  of  individual 
Serfs  with  their  families  were  just  enough  to  show 
how  easily  under  less  happy  auspices  the  institutions 
of  Serfdom  might  have  passed  into  genuine  Slavery. 
But  the  line  of  movement  in  society  was  not 
towards  the  extension,  but  towards  the  extinction 
of  it.  The  greatest  of  all  Landowners,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  Church,  worked  steadily  against  it.  All 
other  Landowners  followed  in  their  wake,  and  before 
the  end  of  the  century  in  which  the  two  Hays 
received  their  Lease  from  the  Abbot  of  Scone,  Serfs 
and  Bondmen  had  practically  disappeared  from 
Scotland,  and  the  system  of  free  Tenants  holding 
under  free  Covenants  had  become  the  established 
usage  of  the  country. 

Those  who  mistake  or  mis-state  the  facts  on 
this  great  question  of  the  comparative  extent  and 
on  the  comparative  character  of  Slavery  in  the  old 


106  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Heathen  and  in  the  modern  Christian  world,  are 
either  ignorant  or  careless  of  a  distinction  which  is 
fundamental  to  all  right  understanding  of  the 
history  of  Mankind.  Some  of  those  facts  are  indeed 
so  strange  to  all  we  have  either  seen  or  heard  of 
since  the  Christian  era  that  they  seem  hardly 
credible.  At  least  it  is  most  difficult  for  us  to 
realise  the  conditions  of  society  which  are  authen- 
tically known  to  have  prevailed  in  the  Roman 
Empire,  or  even  in  the  later  days  of  the  Republic. 
Slavery  was  at  the  root  of  everything.  It  was  the 
basis  of  society  so  far  as  all  labour  was  concerned. 
Some  rich  men  possessed  as  many  as  20,000  Slaves, 
the  majority  of  whom  were  Field  Labourers. 
Crassus  is  said  to  have  had  500  "  head  "  alone  as 
his  corps  of  builders  and  carpenters.1  Slaves  are 
said  to  have  been  as  three  to  one  of  the  whole  free 
population  at  the  opening  of  the  Christian  era,  and 
for  200  years  later.  So  early  as  the  times  of  the 
Gracchi  they  were  displacing  the  free  rural  popula- 
tion, whether  small  proprietors  or  free  labourers. 
Nor  did  this  great  curse  affect  the  rural  districts 
only.  Freemen  were  crowded  out  of  the  Towns,  as 
well  as  out  of  the  fields,  by  swarms  of  Slaves. 
Their  labour  was  displaced,  and  their  number 
diminished.  Little  more  than  a  century  after  the 
death  of  Pliny,  agriculture  had  so  declined  that 
Italy  could  no  longer  support  its  own  population, 
and  the  Emperor  Commodus  organised  a  regular 
fleet  of  vessels  so  large  as  almost  to  correspond  to 
our  modern  idea  of  a  "  Liner,"  by  which  the  harvests 
of  other  lands  might  be  carried  to  the  Tiber.2 
Rome  came  to  be  supplied  in  abundance  with  corn 
from  Carthage  and  from  Alexandria,  from  Palermo 
and  from  Cadiz,  and  from  all  the  ports  of  the  world 
accessible  to  the  great  grain  ships — from  1000  to 
1300  tons  burden — which  were  employed  in  the 

1  The  Gentile  and  the  Jew,  Toy  Dr.  Dbllinger,  Eng.  Trans.,  vol.  ii.  p.  262. 

2  See  Dissertation  on  the  "  Ships  of  the  Antients  "  in  the  Voyage  and 
Shipwreck  of  St.  Paul,  by  Jas.  Smith  of  Jordanhill,  2d  ed.,  1856,  p.  173. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  107 

trade.  The  free  farmers  and  free  labourers  were 
thus  undersold  from  abroad,  whilst  at  the  same  time 
they  were  undersold  at  home  by  the  cheap  labour 
of  slaves  who  were  exempt  from  military  service. 
These  were  spread  over  large  tracts  of  country. 
The  free  population  disappeared.  This  was  the 
cause,  and  this  was  the  nature  of  the  evil  which 
was  denounced  in  the  word  "  Latifundia."  The 
most  learned  man,  perhaps,  now  existing  in  Europe 
has  examined  this  subject  with  the  conscientious 
care  which  is  always  equal  to  his  great  resources. 
He  shows  how  Slavery  had  undermined  Freedom 
not  only  by  way  of  the  displacement  of  labour,  but 
by  way  of  the  corruption  of  opinion.  Even  in  the 
mind  of  such  a  man  as  Cicero,  it  had  stamped  as 
servile  and  unworthy  a  multitude  of  employments, 
which  in  themselves  are  as  noble  as  any  other  forms 
of  industry.  "  It  was  thus,"  says  Dr.  Dollinger, 
"  the  sturdy,  industrious  middle  class  was  lost  to 
Rome.  The  free  population  consisted  of  proletarii, 
living  in  republican  times  by  the  sale  of  their  votes, 
and  under  the  Emperors  upon  the  public  distribu- 
tion of  money  and  corn  ;  degraded  and  demoralised 
they  were  despised  by  the  rich  and  assimilated 
more  and  more  to  Slavery.  .  .  .  The  Roman  people 
was,  though  Slavery  diminished,  depraved,  and 
utterly  changed  to  its  heart's  core.  The  genuine 
plebeian  stock  had  in  reality  ceased  to  exist. 
Already  by  150  B.C.,  Scipio  ^Emilianus  had  taunted 
the  grumbling  populace  with  the  assurance  that  he 
should  never  tremble  before  those  whom  he  had 
himself  brought  in  chains  to  Rome.  It  was  not  the 
'  Latifundia/  as  Pliny  thought,  but  Slavery  that 
had  ruined  Italy  :  had  the  Latifundia  been  peopled 
by  Free  Tenants  the  consequences  would  have 
been  different." 1 

This  difference  between  the  Roman  Slaves  and 
the  Free  Tenants  of  modern  Europe  is  a  difference 

1  The  Gentile  and  the  Jeiv,  by  Dr.   'Dollinger,   Eng.   Trans.,  vol.  ii. 
p.  270. 


108  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

indeed.  To  confound  the  Latifundia  of  Pliny's  time 
with  the  great  Estates  of  Mediaeval  Barons  is  a 
blunder  which  is  excusable  in  platform  orators,  to 
whose  speeches  the  quotation  of  one  Latin  sentence 
gives  a  tinge  of  learning.  But  it  is  inexcusable  in 
men  who  care  for  sound  reasoning,  or  for  the  truth 
of  History.  In  no  part  of  modern  Europe  did  the 
evils  of  the  Roman  Latifundia  arise.  In  no  part 
of  it  were  they  even  possible.  But  in  Scotland 
perhaps  more  than  in  any  other  country,  the  holders 
of  great  Estates  at  this  time  were  the  Leaders  of  the 
Nation  not  less  in  the  progress  of  civilisation  than 
they  had  been  in  winning  National  independence. 
It  has  been  well  said  both  of  the  New  Owners  and 
of  the  Old  Owners  with  a  new  title,  that  they  were 
of  the  progressive  party.  Their  own  interests, 
their  own  powers,  their  own  aspirations — all  com- 
bined to  make  them  so.  Their  territorial  posses- 
sions could  not  be  used  except  by  sharing  them 
with  others.  Parts  they  granted  in  "  Feu-farm"  to 
kinsmen,  to  friends,  and  to  retainers.  Parts  they 
let  to  Tacksmen  on  different  conditions  of  Lease. 
On  parts  they  kept  the  native  Husbandmen,  sup- 
plementing their  resources  by  lending  them  seed, 
cattle,  and  other  stock ;  whilst  again  other  portions 
of  their  land  they  cultivated  themselves  by  hired 
labourers.  The  whole  of  these  were  Free  Men, 
constituting  a  gradation  of  classes,  founded  on  free- 
dom, and  manly  dealings  with  each  other  between 
diverse  ranks.  All  this  was  the  very  converse  of 
the  processes  and  causes  which  ruined  Italy.1  The 
nearest  type  and  image  of  them  in  the  world  which 
arose  on  the  ruins  of  the  Roman  system,  is  to  be 
found  not  in  the  great  Baronies  or  Estates  which 
were  chartered  with  us  in  the  Twelfth  and  Thir- 
teenth Centuries,  but  in  the  territories  which  were 

1  The  truth  is,  that  the  context  of  the  passage  in  Pliny,  which  is  so 
often  and  so  ignorantly  quoted,  shows  that  it  has  no  bearing  on  the 
subject.  Pliny  is  clearly  speaking  and  thinking  of  the  amount  of  land, 
or  size  of  farm  which  a  man  can  well  manage  and  cultivate  on  his  own 
account. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  109 

then  still  subject  to  those  unwritten  usages  of  Celtic 
Feudalism  which  Chartered  rights  of  Ownership 
had  happily  superseded.  That  older  and  ruder 
Feudalism  had  been  from  the  beginning  largely 
founded  upon  Bondage,  and  it  still  subjected  men 
who  were  nominally  free  to  arbitrary  exactions,  so 
vague,  so  various  and  so  enormous,  that  it  was 
impossible  to  calculate  on  the  secure  enjoyment  of 
the  fruits  of  industry.  The  change  which  took 
place  in  the  passage  from  these  usages  to  such 
written  Covenants  as  that  which  we  have  examined, 
was  a  change  as  deep  and  searching  as  it  was 
beneficent. 

Accordingly  we  find  that  everywhere  over  the 
whole  of  Europe  the  influence  of  the  Latin  Church 
led  to  a  return  to  those  better  and  earlier  practices 
of  the  Homan  people  which  consisted  in  the  letting 
of  land  to  Free  Tenants  under  Covenant,  and  which 
had  never  ceased  to  be  recognised  and  sanctioned 
under  their  noble  jurisprudence.  Probably  even  in 
the  worst  of  times  it  had  never  wholly  ceased,  for 
there  must  have  been  many  places  and  many  circum- 
stances in  which  Slaves  could  not  be  found,  or  could 
not  be  trusted  to  be  the  sole  cultivators  of  landed 
property — especially  when  that  property  lay  in 
distant  Provinces  of  the  Empire.  Thus  we  know 
that  the  Sicilian  Estates  of  the  feeble  Rulers  who 
still  represented  the  Western  Empire  among  the 
marshes  of  Ravenna,  were,  in  the  middle  of  the  Fifth 
Century,  let  to  Free  Tenants  on  Leases  with  all  the 
definite  covenants  usual  in  modern  Estates.1  As 
we  advance  towards  the  Middle  Ages,  we  see  that 
the  Lessees  of  all  ecclesiastical  lands  were  generally 
free  cultivators ;  and  towards  the  end  of  the 
Thirteenth  Century  we  have  a  French  Treatise  on 
the  customs  of  a  portion  of  that  country,  from  which 
it  appears  that  lands  were  let  under  precisely  the 
same  word  used  in  Scotland  about  the  same  time — 
namely,  the  word  "  ferme  "  —meaning  a  fixed  rent 

1  Hunter,  On  Landlord  and  Tenant,  ed.  1876,  vol.  i.  p.  32. 


110  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

agreed  to  upon  a  series  of  fixed  conditions.1  In 
Germany  the  progress  of  events  was  not  so  steady 
in  this  direction.  Serfdom  lasted  longer.  There 
were  stupid  and  antiquated  limitations  of  land  to 
particular  classes,  and  there  was  a  fatal  preference 
of  old  usages,  which  are  always  tending  to  abuse, 
over  perfect  freedom  and  definite  agreements 
between  free  men,  which  are  always  open  to  re 
adjustment.  These  were  undoubtedly  among  the 
causes  which  led  to  the  fall  of  Prussia.  She  did  not 
recover  till  means  had  been  taken  to  abolish  the 
abuses  of  a  traditional  and  unwritten  Feudalism. 
And  it  is  remarkable  that  when  Stein  was  studying 
the  reforms  which  he  afterwards  promoted,  he  took 
as  his  model,  and  as  the  goal  at  which  he  aimed, 
those  happier  developments  of  Feudalism  under 
Anglo-Saxon  and  Scoto-Roman  law  which  he  saw 
established  in  Great  Britain. 

We  strike  deep,  then,  into  the  very  roots  of 
modern  history,  and  into  the  very  sources  of  our 
civilisation,  when  we  examine  all  that  is  implied  in 
this  Lease  given  by  the  Abbot  of  Scone  in  the 
earliest  years  of  the  reign  of  King  Robert  the  Bruce. 
Like  the  Charters  it  may  be  said  that  Leases  rose 
out  of  the  ground,  and  grew.  They  were  far  more 
deeply  founded  than  on  any  local  legislation.  They 
sprung  from  the  seeds  of  freedom,  sown  in  the  fruitful 
soil  of  Roman  Law,  and  trained,  as  regarded  their 
form  and  development,  under  the  conscientious  direc- 
tion of  the  Latin  Church.  Nay,  it  may  even  be  said 
with  truth  that  the  original  source  of  these  Covenants 
lay  deeper  still.  For  the  foundations  of  morality  are 
the  common  property  of  all  mankind.  The  obliga- 
tion of  a  promise  is  an  elementary  obligation.  The 
faith  of  Covenants  is  universally  recognised  as  a  faith 
which  cannot  be  denied.  Strange  to  say,  the  value 
of  it  to  society  has  never  been  more  picturesquely  or 
forcibly  described  than  by  the  oldest  known  code  of 
Celtic  Laws:  For  in  the  "  Brehon  Laws"  we  are 

1  Hunter,  On  Landlord  and  Tenant,  ed.  1876,  pp.  34,  35. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  Ill 

told  that  "there  are  three  periods  at  which  the  world 
is  worthless :  the  time  of  a  plague,   the  time  of  a 

general  war,  the  dissolution  of  express  contracts."1 

Sir  Henry  Maine  has  referred  with  some  incre- 
dulity to  this  sentence  as  seeming  very  like  a  later 
introduction.2  In  this  I  venture  to  disagree  with 

dm.    The  whole  method  of  expression  is  thoroughly 
iltic.     The  words  translated  "  express  contracts  " 

Lo  not  accurately  convey  the  meaning  of  the 
original,  and  might  suggest  to  our  ears  the  idea  of 
written  documents.  This  would  indeed  savour  of  a 
later  age, — of  formal  "  deeds"  and  parchments.  But 
the  Celtic  words  here  used  are  full,  on  the  contrary, 
of  that  archaic  time  when  there  was  nothing  more 
binding  than  the  spoken  word — the  promise  of  the 
mouth, — accompanied  or  unaccompanied  by  some 
symbolic  act.  Accordingly,  the  Celtic  words  used 
in  this  passage  of  the  Brehon  Laws,  which  have 
been  rendered  by  the  English  words  "  express  con- 
tract," specify  the  method  of  expression  as  the  oral 
method — "contracts  made  by  word  of  mouth."3 
I  find,  moreover,  that  there  are  some  idiomatic 
phrases  in  the  Scottish  Gaelic  in  which  the  same 
word  "Cor" — not  now  in  common  use — is  still 
retained  as  expressive  of  a  possessory  right  in  the 
strongest  possible  sense.  A  Highlander  will  say, 
pointing  to  something  which  he  thinks  belongs  to 
him,  "  that  is  cor  to  me,"  meaning,  "  that  is  my 
right."  The  whole  passage,  therefore,  instead  of 
having  a  modern  aspect,  is  redolent,  on  the  contrary, 
of  very  archaic  times.4  There  can  be  little  doubt, 
indeed,  that  those  who  wrote  it  were  not  thinking 
of  Covenants  about  what  we  call  the  hire  of  land. 
But  there  can  be  just  as  little  doubt  that  they 

1  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  ii.  p.  75  ;  Ancient  Laws  of  Ireland,  vol.  i.  p.  51. 

2  Early  History  of  Institutions,  pp.  56,  57. 

3  The  Celtic  words  are  "fuaslucad  cor  mbe'l,"  literally  "loosening  of 
contracts  of  mouth." 

4  My  information  on  this  point  of  language  is  due  to  the  kindness  of 
Mr.  Whitley  Stokes,  the  greatest  living  authority  on  Celtic  literature, 
and  as  regards  Gaelic,  of  Mr.  Macpherson,  minister  of  Inveraray. 


112  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

were  thinking,  and  must  have  had  familiarly  in 
their  minds,  Covenants  about  the  possession  of 
cows,  and  about  the  grazing  of  them,  and  about 
the  division  of  their  calves,  and  about  the  sharing 
of  their  milk,  and  generally  about  the  services 
which  men  were  willing  to  promise  to  each  other, 
for  any  and  every  kind  of  benefit  rendered  to 
themselves.  All  this  is  the  same  thing.  Just  as 
cattle  stood  in  the  place  of  capital  in  those  early 
days,  so  did  they  stand  in  the  place  of  farms,  and 
all  bargains  between  man  and  man  about  them  were 
fundamentally  the  same  as  the  bargains  which  were 
made  in  later  times  about  the  share  of  cattle,  or  of 
other  produce  which  was  commuted  into  various 
forms  of  rent.  The  introduction  of  this  passage, 
therefore,  into  the  Brehon  Laws  does  not  necessarily 
indicate,  or  even  naturally  suggest,  any  foreign 
element  other  indeed  than  those  earliest  echoes  of 
Celtic  Christianity  in  which  we  hear  the  mission- 
aries of  the  New  Testament  repeating  and  enforcing 
the  divine  teachings  of  the  Old.1  In  the  writings 
of  the  Jewish  Prophets  we  see  always  the  same 
conception — that  the  mouth  is  the  organ  of  the 
mind  and  heart  in  their  deepest  issues  of  Thought 
and  of  Intention.  The  solemn  promise — the  sacred 
vow — is  always  spoken  of  as  recorded  by  the  lips. 
Thus  amid  the  splendours  of  the  sixty-sixth  Psalm 
we  have  the  words — "I  will  pay  Thee  my  vows 
which  my  lips  have  uttered,  and  my  mouth  hath 
spoken,  when  I  was  in  trouble."  And  so  also,  in 
respect  to  the  great  duties  of  Worship  and  Devotion 
the  "  fruit  of  the  lips  "  is  spoken  of  as  our  truest  and 
most  acceptable  oblation.  Such  are  the  real  foun- 
tains of  the  fine  old  proverb  in  the  Brehon  Laws 
which  ranks  the  breaking  down  of  personal  honour 
and  good  faith  in  the  keeping  of  engagements  as 
among  the  heaviest  calamities  of  mankind.  This 
is  its  true  connection ;  for  the  same  passage  goes 

1  Numerous  other  passages  in  the  "  Senchus  Mor  "  are  to  the  same 
effect.     See  Ancient  Laws  of  Ireland,  vol.  i.  pp.  33-41,  etc. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  113 

on  to  represent  the  great  practical  duties  of  Charity 
and  of  Religion  as  the  best  guarantees  against  the 
three  enumerated  evils.  And  when  it  is  added  that 
these  duties  "  confirm  all  in  their  good  contracts  and 
in  their  bad  contracts,"  we  recognise  the  influence 
and  authority  of  that  grand  Benediction  in  the 
Psalms  of  David,  which  is  pronounced  upon  him 
"  who  sweareth  to  his  own  hurt,  and  changeth  not."1 
The  Covenants,  however,  about  the  hire  of  land, 
of  which  we  have  thus  seen  the  first  example,  did 
not  need  the  exercise  of  any  heroic  virtue.  Men  did 
not  make  them  to  their  own  hurt,  but,  on  both  sides 
to  their  own  advantage.  The  silence  of  their  intro- 
duction, the  speed  of  their  advance,  and  the  univer- 
sality of  their  prevalence,  are  all  consistent,  and 
consistent  only  with  the  knowledge,  and  experience 
of  mutual  profit,  or  mutual  convenience.  And  as  in 
all  other  similar  cases  where  the  growth  of  indivi- 
dual interests  is  founded  on  rules  of  law  becoming 
more  and  more  definite  and  precise,  these  Covenants 
tended  directly  and  very  powerfully  to  the  growth  of 
national  prosperity  and  wealth.  The  feelings  and 
the  instincts  which  inspired  these  Covenants  are 
the  real  explanation  of  their  great  results.  Senti- 
ment underlies  all  conduct  and  all  opinion ;  and  the 
prevailing  sentiment  of  any  given  time  is  that  which 
directs  for  evil  or  for  good  the  working  of  its  prac- 
tices and  its  laws.  If  that  sentiment  be  natural — 
unperverted,  the  working  will  be  of  a  corresponding 
character.  If  it  be  corrupt,  or  even  if  it  be  only 
rude  and  barbarous,  its  working  will  inevitably  lead 
to  corruptions  far  deeper  than  its  own.  For  this  is 
the  nature  and  property  of  all  evil  in  man  and  in 
society — to  lead  further  and  further  from  the  ascend- 
ing path,  by  the  downward  steps  of  Natural  Conse- 
quence. Thus  the  prevailing  sentiment  which  has 
been  common  in  many  early  conditions  of  society  that 
war  is  the  only  occupation  worthy  of  a  man,  and 
that  all  forms  of  industrial  labour  are  comparatively 

1  Psalm  xv.  4. 
H 


114  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

mean,  is  a  sentiment  which  has  always  been  damag- 
ing, and  very  often  has  been  absolutely  fatal.  Wars 
when  waged  for  a  noble  cause  have  an  ennobling  effect 
on  men.  The  mere  love  of  fighting  and  of  rapine 
has,  on  the  contrary,  an  effect  the  most  degrading. 
Nor  is  this  effect  redeemed  by  picturesque  stories 
and  martial  poetry,  whether  they  be  Norse  Sagas,  or 
Gaelic  songs.  We  have  seen  that  the  Celts  under 
Robert  Bruce  were  disciplined  like  other  civilised 
men  to  fight  in  the  very  van  of  great  battles  for 
great  national  objects.  But  the  prevailing  senti- 
ment of  society  in  Scotland  in  his  days,  and  in  the 
old  times  before  them,  was  what  may  be  called, 
shortly,  the  Spirit  of  Improvement.  As  one  Province 
after  another  was  cleared  of  an  enemy,  and  firmly 
added  to  the  Kingdom,  the  next  thing  thought  of 
was  always  to  settle  and  improve  it,  by  giving  it  to 
men  who  could  hold  it  in  security,  and  could  reclaim 
it  from  bog  or  forest  by  their  own  servants,  or  by 
letting  it  out  to  Husbandmen.  These  classes 
moved  and  were  moved  freely  from  one  Estate  to 
another  as  their  services  or  their  undertakings 
were  required.  The  sentiment  of  keeping  men  on 
the  soil  for  the  sole  purpose  of  fighting  for  a  bare 
living,  eked  out  by  raids  and  forays,  was  not  the 
sentiment  of  the  Kingdom  or  of  the  people  in  those 
greatest  days  of  our  national  history.  Robert  the 
Bruce  did  indeed  enact,  in  a  Parliament  held  at 
Scone  in  1318,  that  all  men  should  be  armed 
according  to  their  rent  or  possessions — the  humblest 
being  bound  to  provide  himself  with  at  least  a  good 
Spear  or  a  good  Bow  and  one  sheaf  of  (24)  Arrows.1 
But  he  and  his  predecessors  were  equally  desirous 
that,  when  possible,  the  Sword  should  be  turned 
into  the  Ploughshare  and  the  Spear  into  the 
Pruning--hook.  For  this  purpose  they  encouraged 
peaceful  industry,  and  the  movement  of  the  culti- 
vating classes  from  one  district  to  another,  as  the 
great  work  of  reclaiming  a  wild  country  might 

1  Act.  Parl  vol.  i.  p.  473. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  115 

require,   under   the    operation  of  natural   motives 
and  of  free  Covenants. 

Accordingly  we  have  historical  evidence  that 
such  movements  of  the  rural  population  were  con- 
stant and  habitual,  and  that  they  began  far 
earlier  than  is  generally  supposed.  The  provisions 
of  the  Scone  Lease  in  1312  show  that  one  set 
of  Husbandmen  went  out  when  the  new  "  Tacks - 
man"  came  in,  whilst  another  set  came  in  with 
him  when  he  entered,  and  were  required  to 
leave  with  him  when  he  left.  But  this  bit  of 
evidence  stands  halfway  in  point  of  time  between 
two  other  items  of  evidence  to  the  same  effect.  One 
of  these  comes  from  the  century  before  the  Scone 
Lease,  and  the  other  from  the  century  after — 
showing  that  we  have  in  the  Scone  Lease  an 
example  of  the  regular  rule  and  practice  of  a  long 
and  a  great  Age.  More  than  a  hundred  years  be- 
fore that  Lease,  so  early  as  1209,  in  the  Reign  of 
William  the  Lion,  we  find  that  the  case  of  Husband- 
men leaving  their  holdings  at  the  covenanted 
expiration  of  an  express  term,  had  become  a  case 
so  common  that  it  needed  special  notice  and 
recognition  in  respect  to  the  heavy  dues  which 
were  then  raised  on  the  grinding  of  corn  for  the 
support  of  Mills.  Accordingly  it  was  provided  in  a 
short  Act  of  the  Great  Council  of  the  Kingdom, 
held  at  Scone  in  1209,  that  a  man  leaving  land 
which  he  had  held  on  Lease  for  a  given  term,  "  and 
passing  away,"  should  not  be  called  upon  to  pay 
more  than  a  certain  limited  rate  of  "  multure  "  on 
his  corn,  or  should  have  one  half  of  the  quantity 
required  for  seed  wholly  exempted.1  Another 
Statute  of  the  same  date  made  some  corresponding 
regulation  for  the  case  of  new  or  in-coming  Tenants. 
This  early  care  for  "  outgoing  Tenants,"  and  for  those 
who  came  in  their  place,  as  a  well-known  class,  is 
remarkable.  We  are  apt  to  fancy  that  in  those 
remote  times  agriculture  was  hardly  yet  a  profession 

1  Act.  Parl.  vol.  i.  p.  382. 


1 1  6  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

or  a  pursuit — that  men  only  farmed  to  live,  and  that 
there  were  few  or  none  who  lived  to  farm.  But 
from  this  old  law  of  William  the  Lion,  and  from  the 
simple  and  natural  terms  in  which  it  speaks  of  a 
class  who  held  lands  "  on  farm,"  and  who  "passed 
away  "  from  them  at  the  end  of  their  term,  it  is 
clear  that  this  condition  of  things  had  then  already 
become  common  at  the  beginning  of  the  Thirteenth 
Century,  and  that  all  the  Estates  of  the  Realm 
regarded  it  as  a  natural  and  necessary  incident  of 
the  progress  of  agriculture,  and  of  the  operation  of 
free  Covenants  between  those  who  owned,  and  those 
who  hired  land  for  the  purposes  of  cultivation. 
Such  movings  and  changings  among  Tenants  might 
arise  either  from  the  Tenant  thinking  he  could  do 
better  elsewhere,  or  from  the  Owner  finding  he  could 
do  better  in  improving  and  reclaiming  through 
other  men. 

We  have  only  to  look  at  the  Scone  Lease  to  see 
how  great  was  the  work,  of  reclamation  in  those 
days,  and  how  little  it  could  be  intrusted  to  men 
who  mentally,  if  not  physically,  were  "  adstricti 
glebse,"  tied  by  ignorance  to  the  idle  habits  and 
wasteful  usages  of  a  barbarous  age,  who  had 
absolutely  no  capital,  or  whose  industry  had  often 
been  destroyed  by  the  desolating  customs  of  Celtic 
Feudalism.  There  was  much  to  be  done  in  those 
days  in  subduing  the  earth,  and  it  was  the  first  care 
as  it  was  the  first  duty  of  the  Owners  of  land  to  see 
that  those  things  were  done.  How  much  was 
expected  from,  and  how  much  was  habitually  done 
by,  the  class  of  men  who  took  land  on  hire,  and  who 
reclaimed  it  for  their  own  profit,  as  much  as  to  the 
advantage  of  the  Owner  and  of  the  Nation,  may  be 
judged  by  the  scale  of  increasing  rent  which  was 
bargained  for  by  the  Monks  under  the  Scone  Lease. 
Within  the  comparatively  short  space  of  20  years, 
the  Tenants  in  this  case  became  bound  to  pay  ten 
merks  instead  of  two  merks  for  the  same  amount 
of  land.  That  is  to  say,  that  the  calculated  increase 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  117 

of  value,  measured  by  rent  alone,  was  to  be  500 
per  cent.  Beyond  all  this,  of  course,  the  Lessees 
expected  to  make  not  only  a  profit,  but  probably 
an  increasing  share  of  profit  out  of  the  reclamations 
they  might  effect.  But  assuming  that  their  profit 
was  to  bear  to  the  end  of  the  Lease,  not  an  increas- 
ing proportion,  but  only  the  same  proportion  to 
total  produce  as  at  the  commencement,  we  see  that 
the  processes  of  improvement  were  then  known  to 
be  so  rapid  and  so  sure  in  their  results  that  Lessees 
could  calculate  upon  a  great  increase  of  produce  in 
twenty  years, — so  great  that  a  Farm  producing  corn 
and  cattle  to  the  value  of  6  merks,  at  the  beginning 
of  that  time,  was  safe  to  produce  at  least  30  merks' 
worth  at  the  end  of  it.  I  assume,  as  a  rough  ap- 
proximation to  the  truth,  the  correctness  of  an  old 
saying  in  Scotland,  that  Rent  in  those  days  gener- 
ally represented  about  one-third  of  the  produce. 
This  saying  was  embodied  in  a  rhyme  which  has 
descended  with  its  old  Scotch  dialect  from  distant 
generations, — 

"  Ane  to  saw, 
Ane  to  maw, 
And  ane  to  pay  the  Laird  witha'." 

which,  translated  into  purer  Anglo-Saxon,  means 
"  One  part  to  sow  (for  seed),  one  part  to  eat  (con- 
sumption or  profit),  and  one  part  to  pay  the  Laird 
(Owner)  withal"  (Rent). 

There  is  no  reason  to  believe  that  the  rate  of 
increase  contemplated  under  the  Scone  Lease  was 
in  any  way  exceptional,  for  fertile  as  the  Valley  of 
the  Tay  now  is,  it  is  clear  that  at  that  time  it  had 
a  large  proportion  of  peat-mosses  and  other  wild 
land,  which,  under  the  system  of  Free  Covenants, 
already  long  in  operation  before  1312,  have  now 
entirely  disappeared. 

I  have  already  said  that  the  Scone  Lease  stands 
midway  in  point  of  time  between  two  items  of 
historical  evidence  as  to  the  habitual  movings  and 


118  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

changes  among  the  cultivating  class,  consequent 
on  the  taking  and  on  the  leaving  of  land  under 
covenants  of  Lease.  We  have  seen  how  distinct 
that  evidence  is  at  a  date  more  than  a  hundred 
years  before  the  Scone  Lease.  Let  us  pass  on  for 
another  hundred  years,  and  we  have  another  evidence 
still  more  emphatic  and  remarkable.  It  is,  indeed,  a 
most  significant  indication  of  the  fundamental  value 
attached  to  the  full  rights  of  Ownership  in  land,  and 
of  the  insuperable  objections  which  were  then  enter- 
tained against  any  division  of  those  rights  or  any 
limitation  of  them  except  such  as  might  flow  from 
perfect  freedom  of  contract  between  free  men.  This 
indication  is  afforded  by  an  entry  in  the  proceed- 
ings of  one  of  the  early  Parliaments  of  James  i.  held 
at  Perth  in  the  year  1429 — an  entry  of  a  most 
anomalous  kind.  It  appears  that  the  system  of 
letting  land  on  lease  to  "Tacksmen"  had  become  so 
prevalent  that  attention  had  been  much  called  to  the 
consequent  sudden  removal  of  the  actual  cultivators 
or  Husbandmen  who  had  previously  occupied  the 
lands  so  let.  James  I.  did  not  ask  his  Parliament 
to  remedy  this  inconvenience  by  giving  to  such 
cultivators  any  "  fixity  of  tenure  "  which  would  be 
obviously  incompatible  with  undivided  Ownership 
and  with  the  progress  of  agricultural  improvement. 
He  did  not  even  ask  therefore  for  any  positive 
statute  on  the  subject.  But  he  proposed  to,  and 
obtained  from,  the  Barons  and  Prelates  who  were 
the  great  Landowners  present  at  Perth,  a  promise  or 
engagement  that  for  the  future  they  would  give  one 
year's  notice  to  all  cultivators  or  Husbandmen  whose 
removal  might  be  involved  in  any  new  Leases  they 
might  grant.1  At  a  time  when  there  was  much  un- 
cultivated land,  and  no  difficulty  in  obtaining  the 
occupation  of  it,  this  promise  was  probably  quite 
effectual  to  prevent  any  serious  hardship  to  the 
cultivating  class. 

It  is  not,  however,  till  twenty  years  later  that 

1  Acts  of  the  Parliaments  of  Scotland,  vol.  ii.  p.  17. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  119 

we  find  the  earliest  legislative  landmark  in  the  his- 
tory of  Covenants  for  the  hire  of  land.  The  first  Act 
of  Parliament  on  the  subject  arose  out  of  the 
necessity  of  deciding  whether  the  Owner  of  land 
could  grant  Leases  which  should  be  binding  on  his 
successors  by  purchase,  or  on  other  "  singular  suc- 
cessors ; "  that  is,  successors  to  the  estate  not  being 
his  own  natural  heirs.  The  question  before  that  old 
Parliament  may  be  stated  thus : — each  new  Owner, 
in  buying  land,  bought  or  succeeded  to  all  the  full 
rights  of  Ownership.  Could  he  be  deprived  of  them 
by  the  act  of  those  who  had  preceded  him  ?  To 
admit  that  he  could  was  in  one  sense  an  immense 
extension  of  the  powers  of  Ownership,  because  it 
extended  those  powers  even  beyond  the  grave,  and 
made  the  "dead  hand"  prevail  over  the  living.  Yet, 
in  another  sense,  and  for  the  very  same  reason,  it 
would  be  a  great  limitation  on  the  powers  of  Owner- 
ship in  the  hands  of  the  living,  because  it  made 
them  subject  to  promises  and  engagements  to  which 
the  living  Owner  had  never  been  a  party.  Whether 
was  the  dead  Owner  or  the  living  Owner  to  prevail  ? 
Were  all  existing  and  living  Owners  to  be  deprived 
of  their  freedom  over  their  own  estates  because  their 
predecessors  had  chosen  to  limit  their  own  freedom 
during  their  own  lives  ?  This  was  one  aspect  of 
the  question,  and  it  was  the  aspect  in  which  the 
question  might  most  naturally  be  regarded  by  an 
Assembly  of  rough  Chiefs  and  Barons,  who  were 
themselves  also  the  greatest  Landowners  in  the 
Kingdom. 

But  there  was  another  aspect  of  the  question 
—namely,  this  :  What  was  just  to  those  who  had 
taken  Leases  from  one  Owner  and  found  themselves 
suddenly  in  the  hands  of  another  ?  Again  :  What 
was  the  best  principle  to  adopt  in  the  permanent 
interests  of  agriculture  and  of  all  the  classes  who 
had  interests  in  land  subordinate  to  the  interests 
of  Ownership  ?  These  were  the  questions  which 
had  to  be  decided  by  the  Parliament  of  Scot- 


120  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

land  in  1449  ;  and  the  manner  in  which  they  were 
decided  is  an  excellent  answer  to  the  ignorant  clap- 
trap which  assumes  that  all  ancient  legislation, 
having  been  enacted  by  the  classes  connected  with 
the  Ownership  of  land,  was  necessarily  guided  by  u 
purely  selfish  spirit.  It  would  be  more  true  and 
philosophical  to  admit  that,  on  the  whole,  in  every 
advancing  country,  each  generation  has  had  at  least 
as  much  conscience  and  as  much  sense  of  justice  as 
our  own.  So  it  was  certainly  in  the  Fifteenth 
Century  in  Scotland  ;  and,  although  in  that  case, 
as  in  all  other  similar  cases,  the  decision  which  was 
just  was  also,  in  the  long-run,  the  decision  most 
conducive  to  the  interests  of  those  who  might  have 
been  tempted  to  think  otherwise,  yet  the  reasons 
which  influenced  that  decision  were  reasons  of  con- 
science dictating  a  wise  and  reasonable  policy. 

It  is,  indeed,  remarkable  that  these  considera- 
tions, and  not  what  we  should  now  call  reasons  of 
Political  Economy,  are  especially  set  forth  in  this 
statute,  as  the  determining  considerations  in  the 
case.  The  wording  is  curious  : — 

"  It  is  ordained  for  the  safety  and  favour  of  the  poor  people 
that  labour  the  ground  that  they,  and  all  others,  that  have  taken 
or  shall  take  lands  in  time  to  come  from  Lords,  and  have  times 
and  years  thereof,  that  suppose  the  Lords  sell  or  alienate  these 
lands,  the  Takers  shall  remain  with  their  tacks  on  to  the  ische 
(expiry)  of  their  times,  into  whosesoever  hands  these  lands  come 
(pass),  for  such  like  male  (rent)  as  they  took  them  for  before."  * 

This  is  indeed  sound,  wise,  and  civilised  legis- 
lation— directed  to  the  encouragement  of  deliberate 
contracts  by  insisting  on  their  binding  force  against 
the  party  which  was  then  the  strongest — and  on 
their  binding  force,  too,  especially  in  the  case  of  a 
change  of  Ownership,  so  that  Leases  should  be  valid 
against  all  comers.  It  has  been  supposed  that  the 
words  "  poor  people  that  labour  the  ground"  indicate 
some  very  specially  low  condition  of  the  agricultural 

1  Act.  Parl.  (Jacob.  Prim.)  vol.  ii.  p.  35.     This  Act  is  quoted  in  law 
books  as  1449,  c.  17. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  121 

classes.  But  this  is  by  no  means  a  necessary  impli- 
cation. It  does,  indeed,  imply  that  Leases  were 
given  to  Tenants  who  were  poor.  But  the  protec- 
tion which  the  statute  gives  is  not  confined  to  this 
class,  but  is  expressly  extended  to  "  others  "  —to  all 
who,  whether  poor  or  comparatively  rich,  should 
make  bargains  for  the  hire  of  land  for  definite  times 
and  for  fixed  rents.  The  historian  is  right  when  he 
describes  this  law  as  "  a  wise  and  memorable  act  in 
its  future  consequences  on  the  security  of  property, 
the  liberty  of  the  great  body  of  the  people,  and  the 
improvement  of  the  country."  1 

It  will  be  observed  that  this  legislation  not  only 
places  no  restriction  on  the  undivided  Ownership  of 
land,  but  that  it  implies  and  assumes  as  belonging 
to  that  property  the  most  complete  and  unrestricted 
rights.  It  was  simply  an  Act  to  facilitate  and  to 
enforce  contracts  or  engagements  which  had  been 
deliberately  made.  As  between  the  Owner  and  the 
Lessee  it  implies  that  the  Lessee  could  have  no 
other  rights  than  those  he  might  stipulate  for  in 
his  Lease.  He  could  enforce  these,  not  only  against 
the  natural  heirs  and  successors  of  the  Owner  with 
whom  he  had  made  the  covenant,  but  also  against 
all  who  might  otherwise  acquire  the  same  estate, 
but  beyond  these  he  had  none  to  enforce.  He  was 
in  no  way  protected  against  himself.  He  might 
agree  to  render  services  of  any  extent,  but  they 
must  be  sufficiently  definite  to  be  capable  of  legal 
enforcement.  On  the  other  hand,  neither  in  this 
way  nor  in  the  way  of  rent  in  money  or  in  produce 
could  the  Owner  add  anything  during  the  stipulated 
term.  But  again,  at  the  end  of  that  term  all  the 
Lessee's  rights  ceased,  because  this  was  part  of  the 
covenant.  Thus  both  parties  could  have  confidence 
—that  one  essential  element  in  all  the  transactions 
of  business.  Then,  further,  as  between  the  Lessee 
and  those  under  him  there  was  no  interference  of 
the  law.  The  Lessee  could  exercise  all  the  rights 

1  Tytler's  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  iv.  p.  66. 


122  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

of  Ownership  which  his  Lease  conveyed  to  him, 
and  if  there  was  no  Lease  or  other  express  Cove- 
nant, the  law  presumed  him  to  have  the  yearly 
fruits  of  the  soil,  whether  natural  or  artificial,  and 
the  complete  power  of  exclusive  occupation  over 
the  whole  surface  for  the  purposes  of  husbandry.1 
If  his  Lease  allowed  him  to  sublet,  he  might  do 
so  under  whatever  conditions  he  could  obtain  from 
others.  If  his  Lease  did  not  allow  him  to  sublet, 
the  prohibition  would  be  enforced.  If  the  Lease 
was  given  to  a  group  of  the  "poor  people  that 
laboured  the  ground,"  the  same  rights  and  obliga- 
tions applied  to  them  that  applied  to  the  wealthier 
individual  "  Tacksman."  Such  men  who  held  land 
under  Lease  could  deal  with  all  others  of  their 
own  class  precisely  as  richer  Lessees  could  deal  with 
them  under  the  same  conditions.  The  one  great 
characteristic  feature  of  this  system,  and  its  one 
immense  superiority  over  Celtic  and  all  other  mere 
local  customs,  was  in  the  substitution  of  certainty 
for  uncertainty,  of  Defmiteness  for  Indefiniteness,  of 
known  and  settled  law  for  mere  vague  usages  and 
tradition. 

We  pass  on  for  another  short  space  of  only  20 
years,  and  we  come  upon  another  sample  of  that 
wise  and  progressive  legislation  which,  in  keeping 
to  fundamental  principles,  and  to  all  that  was  good  in 
ancient  usages,  yet  took  note  of  evils  as  they  arose, 
and  checked  any  accidental  invasions  of  acknowledged 
obligation.  Somehow  it  had  come  to  pass  that  when 
Owners  of  land  got  into  debt,  their  creditors  came 
upon  their  lands  and  seized  all  the  cattle  and  crop 
they  could  find  upon  it,  without  distinguishing 
between  that  which  properly  belonged  to  the  Owner 
of  the  soil,  and  that  which  belonged  to  the  hirer  of 
it.  Probably  this  hardship  began  in  and  arose  out 
of  the  prevalence  of  "  Steelbow"  holdings,  in  which 
the  cattle  and  other  stock  were  supplied  by  the 
Owner  of  the  soil.  But  whatever  was  its  origin, 

1  Erskine's  Institutes,  ed.  1838,  p.  330. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  123 

it  had  become  a  grievance,  and  it  was  obviously 
destructive  of  the  principle  of  a  Lease,  which  secured 
the  Tenant  against  any  increase  of  his  "  male  "  or 
rent  before  the  expiry  of  his  term.  If  a  Tenant  had 
this  security  only  against  a  solvent  Owner,  but  lost 
it  as  against  creditors  the  moment  his  landlord 
became  insolvent,  it  is  obvious  he  would  practically 
have  no  security  at  all,  and  the  whole  value  of 
Leases  would  have  been  destroyed.  Accordingly, 
in  strict  consistency  with  the  fundamental  principle 
of  ancient  and  well-established  covenants,  with 
recent  confirmatory  legislation,  and  with  the  clear 
equities  of  the  case,  the  Parliament  of  James  in.1 
which  was  held  at  Edinburgh  in  1469,  enacted,  that 
this  invasion  of  the  faith  of  Leases  should  be  put  an 
end  to — that  the  "  puir  tenants"  should  never  in 
any  case  be  liable  for  any  portion  of  their  Landlord's 
debts,  beyond  the  amount  of  their  stipulated  rent- 
so  that  "the  inhabitants  should  neither  be  grieved 
nor  hurt  by  their  Lord's  debts."  The  Roll  of  this 
Parliament  shows  that  only  four  Burgesses  attended, 
representing  Stirling,  Aberdeen,  Edinburgh,  and 
Dumfries.  All  the  rest  of  the  legislative  body 
belonged  to  the  Ecclesiastical  and  Baronial  Orders 
— who,  in  this  case,  as  usual,  were  the  leaders  of 
the  nation  in  the  progress  of  civilisation  and  of  law. 
There  is  but  one  other  important  step  to  be 
noticed  in  this  memorable  course  of  legislation. 
Eighty-five  years  later  than  the  Statute  we  have 
just  mentioned,  it  was  again  found  necessary  for 
Parliament  to  interfere  for  the  purpose  of  regulating 
the  forms  under  which  Owners  should  give  notice 
to  Tenants  whether  they  intended  to  renew  their 
Covenants  for  another  term  or  not.  Some  ancient 
traditional  customs  connected  with  this  point  are 
curious  and  obscure.  It  seems  that  in  remote  times, 
before  written  documents  were  in  use,  the  Owner  of 
land,  in  letting  it  to  a  "  Malar"  or  Tenant,  used  to 
present  him  with  a  wand.  And  so  also  when  he 

1  Act.  Parl  (Jacob,  in.)  vol.  ii.  p.  96. 


124  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

wished  his  "Malar"  or  Tenant  to  remove  at  the 
stipulated  end  of  his  term,  the  Owner  used  to  give 
him  legal  and  formal  notice  by  coming  to  his  Tenant's 
door,  and  breaking  another  wand  before  him.1  And 
this  could  be  done  at  any  time,  and  on  any  day  in 
the  last  year  of  the  Lease.  This  was  clearly  the 
survival  of  some  very  ancient  symbolism.  I  do  not 
know  its  origin,  and  very  probably  this  cannot  now 
be  traced.  But  it  points  beyond  question  to  the 
great  antiquity  of  the  sentiment  that  the  letting  of 
land  was  a  mere  lending  of  it  by  the  Owner,  and 
that  he  had  a  right  to  resume  his  property  by  a 
very  simple  and  peremptory  process.  In  very  rude 
and  early  times,  when  the  stock  was  very  generally 
lent  by  the  Owner  along  with  the  land  itself,  and 
when  Tenants  had  little  or  nothing  to  remove, 
except  their  persons  and  a  few  simple  instru- 
ments of  husbandry,  the  want  of  any  fixed  period 
of  previous  notice  was  probably  not  felt  as  a  hard- 
ship, or  even  a  serious  inconvenience.  But  of  course 
as  agriculture  improved,  and  as  the  class  which 
lived  on  the  hire  of  land  became  a  little  wealthier, 
this  inconvenience  would  become  serious.  It  was 
to  remedy  this  that  a  new  Act  was  passed  by  the 
Parliament  of  Queen  Mary  which  sat  in  Edinburgh 
in  1555.  There  was  evidently  much  need  of  some 
processes  more  regular  than  those  then  in  use,  for 
we  know  by  a  previous  Act  passed  in  1546  that 
serious  troubles  and  even  bloodshed  had  arisen 
connected  with  the  removal  of  Tenants  at  the  end 
of  their  Leases.  The  Scottish  Parliament  did  not 
conceive  that  the  way  to  remedy  such  evils  was  to 
sanction  bad  faith,  or  to  legalise  the  breach  of  deli- 
berate covenants.  But  it  did  require  that  every 
step  should  be  taken  in  due  form  of  law — not  by 
sudden  violence  on  the  one  side  provoking  as  sudden 
resistance  on  the  other,  but  by  the  intervention  of 
the  King's  Officers  and  the  King's  Courts.  And 
now  for  further  and  more  permanent  remedy,  it 

1  Erskine's  Institutes,  p.  353. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  125 


provided  that  not  less  than  40  days'  notice 
Whitsunday  in  the  last  year  should  be  gr 


before 
given  to 

every  Tenant  if  his  Owner  desired  him  to  remove  at 
the  originally  stipulated  date.  If  this  notice  was 
resisted,  the  case  was  to  be  taken  before  the  King's 
Courts,  by  whom  the  question  was  to  be  decided 
according  to  covenant  and  to  law.1  Such  has  been 
the  law  of  Scotland  until  the  other  day,  since  which 
a  larger  notice, — the  natural  agricultural  unit  of  one 
year,  has  been  required.  The  progress  of  agriculture 
has  made  this  extension  as  reasonable  as  was  the 
period  of  40  days  in  the  Sixteenth  Century.  But 
practically  that  Statute  of  Queen  Mary  may  be  said 
to  have  closed  the  era  of  Legislation.  Upon  that 
Legislation,  or  rather  upon  the  fundamental  prin- 
ciples of  equity  and  of  acknowledged  obligation 
which  underlay  it,  the  whole  subsequent  progress  of 
agricultural  industry  was  conducted.  It  well  ful- 
filled the  noble  purpose  and  declaration  which  was 
made  by  one  of  the  Parliaments  of  Robert  the  Bruce: 
"  The  King  wills  and  commands  that  common  law — 
that  right — be  done  to  Poor  and  Rich,  after  the  old 
laws  and  freedoms  before  these  times  rightiously 
oysset  and  hantit"  (known  and  understood).2 

We  have  not  yet  done,  however,  with  the 
important  historical  questions  on  which  light  is 
thrown  by  the  Scone  Lease.  A  common  impression 

Erevan's  in  many  minds,  that  although  lands  were 
it  on  hire  so  early  and  so  commonly  as  we  have 
seen,  yet  that  the  rents  paid  by  the  Tenants,  if  not 
mere  quit  rents,  were  at  least  very  low,  and  not  at 
all  regulated  by  anything  like  what  we  now  under- 
stand by  Market  Value.  It  is  not  easy  to  explain 
how  this  impression  has  arisen.  In  two  ways  the 
evidence  seems  to  be  complete  against  it.  The  first 
kind  of  evidence  is  such  as  that  which  arises  out 
of  the  Scone  Lease — going  as  it  does  to  show  that 
rent  was  expected  to  follow  the  rising  value  of  the 

1  Act.  Parl  (Mar.  Reg.)  vol.  ii.  p.  494. 

2  Ibid.  (Rob.  T.)  vol.  i.  p.  107. 


126  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

land,  and  that  Covenants  were  habitually  made 
under  which  the  Lessee  bound  himself  to  pay 
increasing  rents,  only,  however,  to  a  specified 
amount,  as  he  might  be  enabled  to  pay  them  out  of 
increasing  produce.  The  second  kind,  of  evidence 
is  not  less  strong, — consisting  in  the  fact  that  there 
were  some  Tenants  to  whom  Lands,  Mills,  Houses, 
and  other  subjects  were  let  specially  and  expressly 
on  the  footing  that  they  should  hold  these  various 
possessions  at  a  low  or  preference  rent ;  and  in  the 
further  fact  that  this  was  a  well-known  kind  of 
Lease,  and  a  well-known  class  of  Tenant,  so  well 
known,  indeed,  that  they  were  designated  by  a 
name  separate  from  all  others.  This  name,  more- 
over, was  one  singularly  expressive  of  the  special 
origin  and  of  the  special  nature  of  the  tenure.  In 
the  language  of  those  centuries  they  were  "  kindly 
Tenants."  This  exactly  signifies  the  exceptional 
personal  feeling  which  led  Landowners  from  time 
to  time  to  grant  to  particular  persons,  and  as  a 
particular  favour,  farms  or  other  kinds  of  holding 
at  a  low,  or  sometimes  even  at  a  nominal  rent — 
just  as  they  might,  and  often  did,  actually  for 
similar  reasons,  grant  Annuities  out  of  rents  or 
Feus  at  a  small  and  fixed  rate  of  Feu-duty. 
Sometimes  we  know  that  these  "kindly"  feelings 
and  kindly  grants  were  given  in  gratitude  for  some 
special  service — sometimes  to  men  of  Knightly  rank, 
sometimes  to  Husbandmen,  and  "  Nativi "  of  the 
country.  But  the  same  healthy  usages  and  laws 
which  demanded  "  definiteness  "  in  all  other  tenures, 
made  the  same  demand,  and  all  the  more  carefully, 
in  the  case  of  this  exceptional  kind  of  Tenancy. 
They  were  grants,  or  they  were  covenants,  and 
nothing  more.  Like  all  other  grants  and  Covenants 
they  must  rest  on  evidence  of  the  intention  of  the 
Owner  or  the  Superior  from  whom  they  came. 
The  slovenly  argument  or  inference  that,  because 
an  Owner  may  not  have  asked  a  higher  rent  for  a 
long  time,  he  had  thereby  parted  with  his  right  to 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  127 

do  so,  and  had  sacrificed  a  power  incident  to  Owner- 
ship, was  an  argument  never  used,  and  an  idea 
never  entertained,  in  those  days.  But  on  the  other 
hand,  in  the  high  spirit  of  legality  and  precision, 
which  is  the  only  secure  defence  of  the  rights  of 
men,  whether  they  be  rich  or  poor,  "  kindly " 
tenancies  were  rigidly  respected  wherever  there 
was  proper  evidence  of  the  preferential  right  in 
which  they  consisted. 

There  could  not  be  a  better  example  of  this 
than  a  case  given  in  the  Book  of  Lennox.  The 
Crawfords  of  Jordanhill,  near  Glasgow,  were  a 
distinguished  family  in  the  Sixteenth  Century. 
They  had  received  from  one  of  the  Earls  of  Lennox 
the  "  kindly  "  Tenancy  of  a  Mill  with  its  adjuncts 
in  the  village  of  Partick,  on  the  Clyde.  Later 
transactions  had  placed  in  the  hands  of  the  Com- 
mendator  of  the  Abbey  of  Paisley,  the  right  of 
Feuing  lands  in  the  same  Barony  of  Glasgow,  but 
under  the  restriction  that  he  was  to  respect  the 
rights  of  all  "  kindly  Tenants."  In  1587,  Thomas 
Crawford  of  Jordanhill  seems  to  have  been  in  some 
danger  of  losing  his  Mill  in  Partick,  with  its  adjoining 
land.  James  vi.  and  the  Duke  of  Lennox  of  that 
date,  were  obliged  to  interfere,  and  in  the  Deed  or 
Warrant  to  which  I  refer,  they  record  the  reasons 
for  which  they  do  so.  These  were  twofold.  In  the 
first  place,  satisfactory  evidence  had  been  laid  before 
them  "  by  authentic  writ,"  and  otherwise,  that 
Thomas  Crawford  of  Jordanhill "  was  kindly  tenant  of 
the  Mill,"  etc.,  and  that  he  had  been  in  peaceable 
possession  of  it  for  these  many  years  bygone  by 
virtue  of  heritable  right  and  feu  granted  to  him  "  by 
such  as  had  sufficient  power  for  the  time  to  set  (let) 
the  same/'  In  the  second  place,  the  King  and  Duke 
recount  "  the  good,  true,  honest,  faithful,  and  con- 
stant service  done  to  us  and  to  our  House  of  Lennox 
by  the  said  Thomas,  in  all  time  bygone  from  his 
youth."  Therefore,  the  Deed  declares  as  a  matter 
of  fact  that  upon  trial  or  examination,  the  said 


128  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Thomas  had  been  found  "to  be  kindly  Tenant  of 
the  foresaid  Mill  and  pertinents,"  and  directs  that 
in  future  he  should  hold  it  "  in  Feuferme  "  to  his 
Heirs  and  Assigns  for  ever.1 

There  is,  however,  a  much  more  remarkable  case 
than  this  of  "  kindly "  Tenancy — dating  from  a 
much  older  time,  and  surviving  to  the  present  day. 
Long  before  the  great  House  of  Bruce  had  become 
allied  with  the  old  Royal  Family  of  Scotland  they 
had  been  the  Lords  of  Annandale.  Not  many  miles 
from  the  point  where  the  river  Annan  falls  into  the 
Sol  way  Firth,  there  is  a  little  tract  of  country  marked 
by  a  curious  group  of  small  Lakes.  Within  the 
Parish  there  are  no  less  than  seven  of  these  sheets 
of  water.2  Of  these  the  largest  was  and  is  still 
called  Lochmaben.  Such  situations  were  naturally 
often  chosen  in  the  Military  Ages  for  Castles  of 
Defence.  So  it  was  in  this  case.  The  mounds 
and  moats  which  indicate  a  Castle  of  great  an- 
tiquity still  mark  the  spot  where  the  Lords  of 
Annandale  lived  before  they  had  risen  to  more 
than  Baronial  greatness.  Another  Castle  of  much 
more  magnificent  proportions  also  survives,  in  frag- 
ments of  massive  wall,  upon  another  spot  nearly 
surrounded  by  the  waters  of  the  largest  Lake. 
Here  King  Robert  loved  to  hold  Court,  both  as 
King  and  as  Lord  of  Annandale,  on  his  Ancestral 
territory.2  Round  this  Castle,  and  by  the  side  of 
these  intertwining  Lakes,  there  were  four  of  the 
ancient  Farms  or  Townships  of  the  country,  which 
then  everywhere  represented  the  modes  of  cultiva- 
tion and  of  residence  common  among  the  native 
population.  For  some  special  reason  not  now  known, 
and  at  some  time  which  is  equally  uncertain— 
whether  before  or  after  the  Lords  of  Annandale  had 
become  Kings  of  Scotland,  one  or  more  of  them  had 
granted  to  the  Tenants  and  Husbandmen  of  these 
Farms  some  promise  or  engagement  that  they 

1  Boole  of  Lennox,  vol.  ii.  pp.  330,  331. 

2  Old  Stat.  Ace.  vol.  vii.  p.  234. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  129 

should  hold  their  land  on  the  footing  of  "  kindly 
Tenants."  These  "  Rentallers  "  were  called  "the 
poor  Tenants  of  His  Majesty's  lands,"  and  "  kindly 
Tenants:"  their  duties  were  called  "Rents"  and 
their  possessions  "  Rooms."  There  was  no  written 
Deed  or  Charter ;  but  on  the  other  hand  there  was 
not  only  continuous  and  unbroken  local  tradition, 
but  there  was  an  equally  unbroken  chain  of  evidence 
in  the  continuous  transactions  of  many  generations. 
Succession  to  these  holdings  had  been  recognised 
always  by  the  simple  process  of  writing  the  name 
of  the  Successor  in  the  Rental  Book  of  the  Lord, 
which  entry  it  was  the  custom  for  the  Steward  of  the 
Estate  or  the  Constable  of  the  Castle  and  Lordship  to 
make  without  fee  or  charge.  These  little  holdings 
were  bought  and  sold  as  freely  as  any  other  Estate 
in  land.  During  the  course  of  centuries,  in  rude 
times,  and  in  a  Border  District  when  and  where  it 
needed  sometimes  all  the  strength  of  strong  men  to 
keep  and  to  hold  their  own,  these  "kindly  Tenants" 
lived  on — strong  only  in  the  memory  of  The  Bruce. 
There  were  some  attempts  to  oppress  them  oc- 
casionally by  the  Constables  of  the  Castle.1  But 
whenever  their  complaints  were  brought  to  the 
knowledge  of  the  higher  authorities  of  the  Kingdom 
they  were  always  remedied.  On  two  recorded 
occasions  there  were  direct  interferences  of  the 
Crown — once  in  the  time  of  James  vi. — once  again 
in  the  times  of  Charles  n.2  At  a  much  later  date 
— in  1726 — the  Courts  of  Law  were  called  upon 
carefully  to  consider  their  titles,  and  in  solemn 
decisions,  not  without  legal  difficulties,  these 
have  always  been  sustained.3  In  signal  rebuke  of 
the  loose  and  ignorant  charge  against  the  Law, 
and  the  Administrators  of  the  Law  in  Scotland, 
as  if  they  had  wrongfully  construed  the  rights  of 
property  against  the  poor,  the  kindly  Tenants  of 
the  "  Four  Towns  "  of  Lochmaben  have  survived, 

1  Lochmaben,  etc.     By  Rev.  W.  Graham,  pp.  100-1. 

2  Ibid.  p.  102.  3  Erskine's  Institutes,  p.  342. 

I 


130  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

and  still  survive  immense  changes  in  surrounding 
property,  for  the  simple  reason  that  the  evidence 
of  original  intention,  and  of  deliberate  covenant, 
although  not  resting  on  written  documents,  was 
nevertheless  of  such  a  nature  as  to  be  equally 
conclusive.  That  evidence  clearly  distinguished 
them  from  ordinary  agricultural  Tenants,  especially 
in  this,  that  their  rent  was  from  the  first  fixed  at 
a  rate  below  that  of  ordinary  value,  and  had  never 
been  on  the  footing  of  a  rent  variable  from  time  to 
time,  like  the  rent  of  ordinary  farms.  The  ultimate 
decision  of  the  Courts  of  Law  in  Scotland  recognised 
this  tenure  as  virtually  the  tenure  of  a  Feu — just 
as  James  vi.  and  the  Duke  of  Lennox,  on  another 
kind  of  evidence,  had  recognised  the  tenure  of  the 
Mill  at  Partick  by  Crawford  of  Jordanhill,  as  the 
tenure  of  a  Feu.1  In  virtue  of  this  decision  the 
kindly  Tenants  of  Lochmaben  became  Proprietors, 
and  have  ever  since  been  entered  as  such  in  the 
Valuation  Roll  of  the  county  in  which  these  lands 
are  situated. 

These  cases,  taken  from  very  different  centuries, 
and  applicable  to  very  different  classes  of  men,  show 
the  principle  on  which  alike  the  language,  and  the 
customs,  and  the  law  of  Scotland  recognised  the 
position  of  Tenants  who  held  lands  at  rents  which 
were  low  and  fixed,  as  fundamentally  distinct  from 
the  position  of  men  who  held  land  on  the  ordinary 
terms  of  hire.  Both  were  tenures  by  Covenant ; 
and  both  were  to  be  dealt  with  on  evidence  of 
intention.  But  the  nature  of  the  Covenant  in  the 
two  cases  was  wholly  different.  Where  the  cheap- 
ness of  rent  below  the  ordinary  value  was  guaranteed 
permanently  and  heritably,  the  holder  of  such  land 
was  virtually  a  Feuar,  and  it  was  best  to  recognise 
his  status  as  such.  In  both  the  instances  I  have 
given  this  was  done — in  the  case  of  the  man  who  was 
already  of  Proprietary  rank,  the  Laird  of  Jordanhill, 
and  in  the  case  of  the  poor  tenants  of  the  Four 

1  Hunter,  On  Landlord  and  Tenant,  4th  ed.  vol.  i.  p.  426. 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  131 

Towns  of  Lochmaben,  who  clearly  belonged  at  first 
to  the  class  of  Husbandmen,  or  perhaps  of  the 
soldiers  and  retainers  of  the  House  of  Annandale. 
In  other  cases  of  which  there  appear  to  have  been 
many  in  some  centuries,  where  the  grant  of  land  at 
a  low  or  abated  value  was  given  not  heritably  but 
personally  to  a  particular  man,  his  right  was  re- 
cognised as  that  of  a  Liferent,  and  at  his  death  the 
Owner  of  the  land  recovered  his  right  to  let  out  his 
farm  on  the  ordinary  terms  of  hire.  What  these 
ordinary  terms  were  in  principle,  and  in  the 
universal  understanding  and  practice,  is  clear  from 
the  mass  and  variety  of  transactions  in  the  nature 
of  Leases  which  already,  as  we  have  seen,  had  taken 
written  form  nearly  a  century  and  a  half  before  the 
death  of  King  Robert  the  Bruce.  As  regarded 
agricultural  lettings  it  is  clear  that  the  principle 
and  the  practice  was  that  rents  should  follow  real 
or  actual  value.  Values  were  rising .  with  a  rising 
civilisation,  and  with  the  progress  of  improvements 
which  were  made  on  the  strength  of  undivided 
Ownership  and  on  the  faith  of  Covenants  founded 
thereupon.  On  the  other  hand,  these  improvements 
did  not  at  that  time,  when  scientific  agriculture 
was  unknown,  involve  the  heavy  expenditure  of 
modern  Buildings,  Drainage,  and  Fencing.  The 
only  draining  known  was  wide  open  Ditches — the 
"  Fossae  "  of  many  early  documents — to  cut  off  the 
cultivated  land  from  actual  bogs  and  morasses. 
The  only  fencing  was  made  of  rough  sticks  and 
branches  taken  from  the  nearest  brushwood — so 
light  and  flimsy  that  as  we  have  seen  the  Lords  of 
Avenel  used  to  break  and  trample  them  down  when 
out  with  Hounds  and  Hawks.  The  only  houses 
were  the  traditionary  habitations  made  very  much  of 
the  same  materials — with  timber  frames,  wattled 
walls,  and  an  external  covering  of  mud  or  of  some 
kind  of  plaster.  Under  such  conditions  the  labour 
of  reclaiming  and  improving  land  must  have  con- 
sisted chiefly  in  digging  or  trenching,  and  in  taking 


132  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

out  the  roots  of  trees.  Very  often,  in  the  case  of 
the  poorer  class  of  Tenant,  the  oxen  for  ploughing, 
and  the  other  cattle,  were  supplied  by  the  Owner 
of  the  land.  Under  such  conditions  the  increasing 
produce  of  land  would  speedily  repay  the  labour 
spent  upon  it,  and  a  short  term  of  hire  at  a  rent 
proportioned  to  value  at  the  time  of  letting,  would 
be  an  ample  inducement  to  the  cultivating  classes 
to  seek  the  "  Tack."  This  explains  the  rule  laid 
down  by  the  Provincial  Council  of  the  Church  in 
1245  that  Tacks  should  not  be  granted,  and  con- 
sequently that  rents  should  not  be  fixed,  for  a 
longer  term  than  five  years.  This  also  explains  the 
rapid  scale  of  increase  in  the  rent  at  short  intervals, 
which  the  Tenants  agreed  to  pay  within  the  first 
twenty  years  in  the  long  Scone  Lease.  These 
Tenants  belonged  to  the  wealthier  class,  and  they 
would  certainly  calculate  upon  a  return  suitable  to 
their  condition. 

It  may  be  assumed,  therefore,  upon  a  combination 
of  evidence  which  is  conclusive,  coming  as  it  does 
from  every  direction  of  the  compass,  that  the 
system  of  Leases  as  it  arose  in  Scotland,  was  a 
system  of  definite  Covenants  for  definite  terms  of 
years,  longer  or  shorter  as  special  circumstances 
might  determine  in  each  case,  during  which  the 
rent  was  either  absolutely  fixed  or  graduated 
according  to  a  fixed  scale  ;  but  at  the  end  of  which 
the  Owner  was  not  only  free,  but  was  ordinarily 
expected  to  make  a  new  Covenant,  on  new  con- 
ditions such  as  might  bring  the  rent  up  to  the 
usual  and  average  proportion  of  Rent  to  total, 
or  gross,  Produce.  This  does  not  mean  that  farms 
at  the  end  of  Leases  were  let  by  any  process  similar 
to  that  by  which  goods  are  sold  in  a  modern  auction 
room.  That  was  not  the  way  in  which  things  were 
done  in  those  days.  The  new  rent  may  some- 
times have  been  settled,  as  it  almost  certainly 
was  in  the  case  of  the  Scone  Lease,  by  the  Owner 
accepting  the  voluntary  offer  of  new  men  of  capital 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  133 

like  the  Hays.  But  generally  the  rent  must  have 
been  settled  not  by  the  highest  offer  of  any  actual 
or  formal  competition,  but  simply  and  naturally  by 
the  amount  which  any  dozens  or  scores  of  men 
would  be  eager  to  give  in  order  to  get,  or  to  renew 
the  Lease. 

This  is  market  value  in  its  natural  and  ordinary 
sense.  Between  this  kind  of  rent  and  a  "  fair  rent  " 
there  was  no  distinction.  In  a  manly  age  men 
thought  that  when  they  bought  anything,  or  hired 
anything  at  a  price  or  rent  such  as  almost  any  other 
man  would  give,  they  bought  or  hired  it  at  a  value 
which  was  fair.  It  is  remarkable,  moreover,  that 
when  at  a  much  later  time  the  loose  colloquial  ex- 
pression of  a  "  fair  rent  "  came  to  be  used  for  some 
practical  purpose  and  with  some  important  meaning, 
and  when  the  Law  was  obliged  to  give  to  it  some 
definite  interpretation,  that  interpretation  had  the 
effect  of  identifying  a  "  fair  rent  "  not  with  a  rent 
lower  than  the  average,  but,  on  the  contrary,  with  a 
rent  which  should  not  be  lower  than  that  average. 
This  interpretation  arose  out  of  the  practice  of 
Entails.  The  necessity  was  obvious.  •  When 
Owners  were  deprived  of  the  power  of  sale,  it  was 
absolutely  necessary  to  deprive  them  also  of  the 
power  of  alienating  under  collusive  forms.  If  a 
man  might  let  his  lands  at  any  scale  of  rent  he 
liked,  however  low  and  however  much  under  the 
average  or  market  value,  he  could  of  course  by 
accepting  large  fines  on  the  renewal  of  Leases  or  on 
the  first  lettings  of  land,  lower  the  rental  to  the 
point  of  practical  alienation.  To  prevent  such 
corrupt  practices,  and  still  to  preserve  the  essential 
principle  of  Leases  as  sanctioned  by  the  Act  of 
1449,  it  was  essential  to  provide  that  an  Entailed 
Proprietor  should  not  let  his  farms  below  a  "fair 
rent."  And  again,  in  order  to  make  this  prohibition 
effectual,  it  was  absolutely  necessary  to  lay  down 
the  principle  that  by  a  "  fair  rent "  was  meant  a 
rent  fair  to  all  the  parties  concerned — to  the  existing 


1  34  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Heir  in  possession — to  his  successors  in  the  Estate — 
to  the  Tenant,  and  to  the  interests  of  agriculture, 
which  are  never  really  promoted  by  the  removal  of 
those  incentives  to  exertion  which  arise  out  of  the 
necessity  of  meeting  obligations.  No  scale  of  rent 
could  suit  all  these  conditions  except  that  re- 
presenting the  value  which  men  of  average  capital, 
enterprise,  and  skill  would  be  certainly  willing  to 
give.  In  our  own  day,  wherever  "the  public"  is 
concerned,  the  same  principle  is  adopted.  Lands 
are  always  valued  for  purposes  of  taxation  or 
assessment  on  the  basis  of  the  value  at  which  they 
would  let  one  year  with  another. 

A  moment's  consideration  will  show  that  under 
such  a  system  as  this  rents  might  remain  unchanged 
for  generations — even  for  centuries,  without  the 
slightest  inference  arising  against  these  rents  being 
purely  a  matter  of  Covenant,  or  the  least  presump- 
tion against  the  right  and  the  power  of  the  Owner 
to  let  his  lands  at  a  higher  value  if  he  could.  The 
value  of  everything  depends  upon  civilisation — not 
the  value  of  land  only,  but  the  value  of  all  its  pro- 
ducts, and  of  all  the  articles  manufactured  from  these, 
and  most  of  all,  the  value  of  human  labour.  But 
civilisation  does  not  advance  everywhere  and  at  all 
times.  It  may,  and  it  often  does,  stagnate,  and  for 
long  periods  of  time  it  may,  and  it  often  does,  go  back. 
The  population  of  particular  countries,  or  districts  of 
country,  may  be  given  up  to  less  improving  pursuits 
than  those  of  agriculture.  Its  produce  may  decline, 
and  a  recrudescence  of  barbarism  may  condemn  it 
to  chronic  poverty  and  waste.  Under  such  circum- 
stances, of  course,  Rent  would  follow  the  conditions 
of  Society,  of  which — like  Price  in  every  other 
form,  and  especially  like  the  price  of  labour — it  is 
only  one  of  the  measures  and  results.  But  with 
the  return  of  peace,  and  the  recommencement  of 
peaceful  industries,  the  old  Covenants  would  be 
revived.  Land  would  regain  its  natural  value,  and 
the  same  proportion  of  its  total  produce  which  men 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  135 

are  always  ready  to  give  for  the  exclusive  possession 
of  it,  would  represent  a  higher  rent,  because  the 
total  produce  would  itself  be  a  much  larger  quan- 
tity, and  saleable  for  a  much  higher  price. 

But  the  universally  accepted  idea  over  the  whole 
of  Scotland  that  every  form  of  possession  in  land, 
whether  permanent  or  temporary,  rested,  and  could 
only  rest  upon  grant  from,  or  Covenants  with,  those 
"  who  had  sufficient  power  and  right  for  the  time  to 
grant  or  to  let  the  same,"  is  an  idea  which  receives 
another  illustration  from  another  tenure  in  Scotland 
which  is  even  more  striking  and  complete  than  the 
tenure  by  Lease.  I  refer  to  the  very  peculiar  but 
the  very  common  tenure  of  older  days,  which  was 
called  "  Wadset."  '  Wad  "  or  "  Wed  "  is  another 
form  of  the  word  "  Pledge,"  and  in  exact  accordance 
with  the  usual  meaning  of  that  word,  lands  let  upon 
"  Wad  "  were  lands  lent  on  Pawn.  The  Owner,  in 
consideration  of  a  certain  sum  of  money  paid  down 
to  him,  gave  in  pawn  or  in  pledge  to  the  Wadsetter 
certain  lands  or  farms,  under  the  counter-pledge  or 
Covenant  given  by  the  Wadsetter,  that  on  the  same 
sum  in  money,  or  some  other  sum  definitely  fixed, 
being  repaid  to  him  or  to  his  Heirs,  he  would  restore 
the  lands  to  the  former  Owner  or  his  Heirs. 

Under  this  strange  tenure  large  portions  of  great 
Estates  and  Baronies  were  often  pawned  to  Wad- 
setters.  Very  frequently  neither  the  Owner  nor  his 
Heirs  for  long  periods  of  time — it  might  be  for  genera- 
tions— found  it  convenient  to  redeem,  by  repayment 
of  the  stipulated  sum.  During  all  that  time  the 
Wadsetter  was  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  full  rights 
of  Ownership.  He  might  and  he  often  did  build 
valuable  houses  for  the  residence  of  a  Proprietary 
family — he  might  and  he  often  did  improve  the 
land,  and  let  it  out  at  increased  rents.  Yet 
whenever  the  original  Owner  or  his  Heirs  were 
enabled  to  fulfil  their  part  of  the  bargain  the  Wad- 
setter  was  bound  to  fulfil  his  part  of  the  bargain 
also — and  that  bargain  was  that  the  land  should 


136  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

return    to    the    Owner,    with    all   its  pertinents, 
according  to  the  terms  of  the  Covenant.    But  this, 
although  at  variance  with  popular  sentiments   of 
equity  in  the  present  day,  was  in  reality  perfectly 
just,   not  only  because  it  was  in   fulfilment   of  a 
deliberate  Covenant,  but  also  because  the  balance 
of  real  advantage  as  between  the  two  parties,  did 
not  by   any  means   always  lie  on  the  side  of  the 
Owner  who   redeemed   a   valuable  Wadset.      The 
value  of  the  land  originally  pledged  may  have  been, 
and  generally  was,  much  more  than  amounted  to 
fair  or  ordinary  interest  upon  the  sum  lent.      Be- 
sides this,  all  the  natural  or  accidental  increments  of 
rent  which  might  arise  with  the  progress  of  time, 
from  the  cessation  of  wars,  or  from  other  causes,  went 
into  the  pocket  of  the  Wadsetter,  so  that  by  the 
time  of  redemption  he  might  well  have  been  repaid 
not  only  the  whole  of  loan,  but  very  high  or  even 
usurious  interest  besides.     The  balance  of  advantage 
may  therefore  have  been  very  largely  on  the  side  of 
the  Wadsetter,  because  of  his  long  enjoyment  of  an 
enormous  return  for  some  small  loan  borrowed  by 
the   Owner,   under  the  pressure,  perhaps,  of  some 
great  and  unforeseen  necessity.     It  was   perfectly 
equitable  that  when  that  necessity  had  passed  away 
the  "  Reverser,"  as  he  was  called,  should  re-enter 
upon   his   property,   and  even  its  increased  value 
might  very  well  be  but  a  small  part  of  the  immense 
price  he  had  really  paid  for  a  temporary  accommo- 
dation. 

In  repeated  cases  large  Estates,  which  had  been 
broken  up  into  Wadsets  by  an  extravagant  or  un- 
fortunate Owner,  have  been  re-united  by  some  one 
or  more  successors  who  were  frugal  in  their  manage- 
ment, or  happy  in  their  alliances  and  acquisitions. 
The  Wadsetters  often  tried  to  avoid  or  evade  ac- 
cepting the  redemption  money.  But  both  the  law 
and  the  public  sentiment  held  firmly  and  unshakenly 
to  the  doctrine  that  Covenants  deliberately  made 
between  free  men  must  be  upheld.  The  Legislature 


THE  AGE  OF  COVENANTS.  137 

interposed  in  1469  to  prevent  fraudulent  evasions 
of  them.  The  Courts  from  time  to  time  were  busy 
in  the  same  work,  and  in  regulating  the  rules  of 
warnings  of  redemption,  so  as  to  make  all  such 
Covenants  as  clear  and  express  as  possible,  and  to 
make  it  easy  for  both  parties  to  protect  themselves 
against  usurious  interest  on  the  one  hand,  and 
sudden  redemptions  on  the  other.  But  these 
objects  have  always  been  aimed  at  on  the  principle 
of  reconciling  as  far  as  possible  unforeseen  and 
equitable  claims  with  substantial  observance  of  the 
faith  of  Covenants.  The  tenure  of  land  by  Wadset 
is  now  extinct,  but  it  has  become  extinct  mainly 
from  this  cause,  that  whilst  some  Wadset s  were 
converted  into  Feus,  or  bought  up  by  the  Wadsetters, 
a  very  large  number  were  extinguished  by  the 
literal  fulfilment  of  the  original  obligation,  by  the 
redemption-money  being  paid,  and  by  the  wad- 
setted  land  being  merged  in  the  Estate  to  which  it 
had  originally  belonged.1 

We  have  seen  in  reviewing  the  Age  of  Charters 
how  early  they  had  begun — and  how  universally 
they  had  become  established.  We  have  seen  how 
they  forced  their  own  way  by  the  inherent  excellence 
of  the  principle  on  which  they  were  founded — giving 
form  and  substance  to  the  long  accepted  ideas  of 
men  in  respect  to  the  actual  sources  of  authority 
and  of  power,  whilst  at  the  same  time  they  tended 
to  check  the  excesses  of  that  power,  and  to  restrain 
within  the  limits  of  definite  law  and  obligation  the 
arbitrary  exactions  of  unwritten  Feudalism.  We 
have  seen  how,  even  in  Ireland,  the  Celtic  Provincial 
Kings  had  yielded  to  their  civilising  influence  before 
a  single  Norman  soldier  had  as  yet  landed  to  invade 
the  Isle  of  Saints.  We  have  seen  how  in  Scotland 
even  the  fierce  Lords  of  the  Isles — the  Sons  of  the 
wild  Somerled  of  Celtic  blood  and  of  Norse  inherit- 
ance— had  persuaded  the  lawless  Chieftains  of  the 
Western  Highlands  to  accept  and  to  impose  the  same 

1  Erskine's  Institutes,  ed.  1838,  pp.  388-403. 


138  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

restrictions  on  their  desolating  usages.  So  now  we 
have  to  observe  that  precisely  the  same  progress  was 
made  with  all  the  corresponding  tenures  which  were 
subordinate  to  Charters,  and  which  rested  on  the 
same  great  principle  of  defining  the  rights  of  men, 
and  of  accustoming  them  to  regulate  their  dealings 
with  each  other  on  the  faith  of  Covenants. 
Accordingly,  these  subordinate  tenures  in  the  form 
of  Leases,  Wadsets,  Grants,  Warrants,  and  Agree- 
ments of  every  form  and  kind  spread  rapidly  over 
the  whole  Kingdom,  from  the  Pentland  Firth  to  the 
Solway,  and  from  the  Western  Isles  to  the  German 
Ocean.  There  was  no  difference  between  different 
parts  of  Scotland  in  respect  to  the  law,  or  in  respect 
to  the  practices  founded  upon  it,  wherever  law 
and  order  were  maintained  at  all.  Leases  and  Wad- 
sets — which  last  tested  to  the  very  utmost  the 
principle  of  Covenant, — became  as  common  in  the 
heart  of  the  Highlands  as  they  were  in  the  Lowlands 
proper,  or  in  the  Southern  and  Border  Highlands. 
In  these  Border  districts  the  conditions  of  Society 
were  long  quite  as  unsettled  as  in  the  Western 
Mountains  or  on  the  Western  Coasts.  But  at  all 
times  and  in  all  places,  whenever  and  wherever 
peace  prevailed,  the  law  of  Charters  and  the  law 
of  Covenants  was  the  law  on  which  men  acted 
and  on  which  men  relied — on  the  strength  of  which 
every  step  was  taken  in  the  path  of  improvement, 
and  in  the  work  of  civilisation.  If  in  any  part 
of  Scotland  this  system  of  law  was  ever  supplanted 
by  a  relapse  into  the  old  usages  of  Celtic  Feudalism, 
it  was  only  in  the  places  where,  and  in  the  times 
when,  all  law  was  suspended,  and  all  improvement 
stopped,  and  all  civilisation  turned  back  on  the 
way  to  Barbarism.  This,  however,  is  a  subject 
too  interesting  and  too  important  to  be  treated 
incidentally.  It  must  form  the  subject  of  another 
chapter. 


CHAPTER  IV. 

THE   EPOCH   OF    THE    CLANS. 

WHEN  a  great  man  dies,  even  after  doing  imperish- 
able work,  it  may  sometimes  be  that  his  work  suffers 
skaith,  and  that  the  full  value  of  it  may  not  be  seen 
until  after  many  days.  It  was  so  with  King  Robert 
the  Bruce.  His  work  was  one  of  the  greatest  which 
it  is  given  to  men  to  do.  He  did  not  merely  win  a 
Crown — that  may  be  a  very  small  matter.  He 
made  a  Nation — and  that  must  always  be  a  very 
great  one.  He  gave  to  a  weak,  and  a  scattered, 
and  a  divided  people  one  common  object  of  ambition, 
and  that  a  noble  object.  He  welded  and  disciplined 
diverse  and  antagonistic  races  into  one  people — 
seeking  to  establish  that  national  independence  on 
which  alone  can  be  raised  the  structure  of  liberty 
and  of  law.  He  left  a  profound  impression  on  the 
mind  of  his  people.  It  is  one  of  the  great  merits  of 
the  curious  history  of  the  life  of  Bruce,  which  has 
been  left  to  us  by  a  Monk  of  the  same  century,  that 
its  laborious  rhymes  are  more  true  to  fact  than  to 
the  poetic  spirit.  There  are,  however,  some  passages 
of  true  poetry,  and  there  is  one  passage  in  particular 
of  singular  beauty,  force,  and  pathos.  It  is  the 
passage  in  which  the  Chronicler  relates  the  last 
scene  of  all — when  in  his  castle  of  Cardross,  looking 
down  on  the  junction  of  the  Leven  and  the  Clyde, 
the  old  Lion  had  lain  down  to  die.  When  the  sense 
of  death  had  smitten  him,  when  he  had  called  his 
Knights  around  him  and  told  them  of  his  long- 
cherished  purpose — the  purpose  of  all  knightly  piety 


140  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

in  that  age — to  fight  against  the  Infidel, — when  he 
had  begged  that  some  one  might  be  chosen  who 
could  at  least  carry  his  heart  to  the  war  where  it 
had  long  wished  to  be, — when  the  good  Lord  James 
Douglas  had  accepted  this  mission,  when  the  dying 
King  had  given  his  last  instructions — when  the 
Church  had  shrived  him — with  "  very  repentance" 
Robert  the  Bruce  gave  up  the  ghost.  Then  the 
Historian,  after  the  manner  of  Livy  and  other 
ancient  authors,  puts  into  the  mouth  of  those 
who  surrounded  the  deathbed  of  this  great  man, 
a  Song  of  Lament  which  well  expresses  the  sense 
of  loss  which  must  ever  accompany  the  departure 
of  a  powerful  Personality  from  the  world  :— 

"  All  our  Defence,"  they  said,  "  alas ! 

And  he  that  all  our  comfort  was, 

Our  wit  and  all  our  governing, 

Alas  !  is  here  brought  till  ending  ! 

His  worship,  and  his  mickle  might, 

Made  all  that  were  with  him  so  wycht, 

That  they  might  never  abased  be, 

While  forouth l  them  they  might  him  see. 

Alas  !  what  shall  we  do  or  say  1 

For  on  life  while  he  lasted,  ay 

With  all  our  neighbours  dred2  were  we  : 

And  in  till  many  ser3  con  trie 

Of  our  Worship  sprang  the  renown  : 

And  that  was  all  for  his  persoune."  4 

These  touching  words  were  not  more  touching 
than  profoundly  true.  The  personal  qualities  of 
great  men  are  in  all  ages  powerful.  In  rude  ages, 
when  the  foundations  of  society  are  being  laid, 
they  are  the  root  and  spring  of  everything.  But 
hero-worship,  the  disposition  to  follow  and  be  led  by 
any  one  with  strength  of  hand,  like  everything  else 
that  is  good,  may  have  its  dangers  too.  If  the  men 
whom  others  follow  be  men  like  Bruce,  with  some 
fruitful  principle  of  conduct  and  some  really  great 
objects  of  pursuit,  fidelity  to  their  standard  may 

1  Before — in  times  past.  2  Dreaded — feared. 

3  Foreign.  4  Barbour's  Bruce,  bk.  xiv.  lines  853-867. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          141 

well  be  the  very  highest  form  of  public  virtue.  But 
if,  on  the  contrary,  the  men  whom  others  follow  are 
the  reverse  of  all  this — if  they  embody  nothing  but 
the  lower  instincts  of  mankind,  and  have  no  objects 
of  pursuit  higher  than  intertribal  feuds  or  the  lust 
of  power  or  gain,  then  fidelity  to  Chiefs  and  Leaders 
may  be,  and  often  is,  the  very  greatest  danger  to 
which  Society  can  be  exposed.  It  has  broken  up 
great  Empires,  and  has  thrown  back  into  utter 
barbarism  national  governments  which  had  been  full 
of  promise. 

No  man  knew  this  better  than  Robert  Bruce, 
nor  did  any  man  know  so  well  from  what  part 
of  his  Kingdom  this  great  danger  would  be 
likely  to  arise.  If  the  thoughts  of  his  deathbed 
were  fixed  upon  the  fields  of  Palestine,  the  anxieties 
and  the  cares  of  his  last  days  of  health  had  been 
wisely  directed  to  duties  which  lay  nearer  home. 
We  have  seen  that  many  of  his  Celtic  subjects  had 
followed  him  with  unswerving  fidelity,  even  when 
his  fortunes  had  been  at  the  lowest.  He  had  not 
only  trusted  them,  and  disciplined  them  along  with 
men  of  other  races,  but  he  had  placed  upon  them 
special  reliance  as  his  own  Battalions  of  reserve  in 
the  pitched  battles  of  Bannockburn  and  Byland. 
But  he  knew  also  that  whilst  under  good  Leadership 
they  were  brave  and  faithful,  they  might  as  easily 
be  equally  brave  and  equally  faithful  to  other  Chiefs, 
whose  first  care  was  not  for  the  Scottish  Kingdom. 

o 

Accordingly,  in  the  Treaty  which  he  negotiated  with 
Edward  in.  in  the  last  year  of  his  life,  1328,  and 
which  was  ratified  by  the  English  Parliament  of 
Northampton  in  that  year,  he  took  care  to  extract 
from  that  Sovereign  an  Article  pledging  him  not  to 
intrigue  with  or  support  the  Celtic  subjects  of  the 
Scottish  Crown  in  the  Western  Isles.  For  himself, 
he  gave  a  corresponding  pledge  that  he  would 
abstain  from  similar  methods  of  attack  through  the 
rebellious  Celts  of  Ireland.1  It  is  impossible  to 

1  Tytler,  vol.  i.  p.  352. 


142  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

mistake  the  significance  of  this  provision.  Robert 
Bruce  knew  that  when  handled  and  led  by  true 
patriots,  the  Celtic  element  in  the  population  of  his 
Kingdom  would  be  an  element  of  strength ;  but  he 
knew  also  and  perhaps  foresaw  that  when  led  by 
anarchical  or  traitorous  Chiefs,  they  would  be  a 
source  of  weakness  and  of  danger.  How  near  and 
how  great  that  danger  was  it  was  not  possible  for 
even  Bruce  to  see.  Let  us  look  for  a  moment  at 
how  it  arose  and  what  it  teaches. 

In  the  long  and  happy  processes  of  amalgamation 
between  the  Celtic  and  Teutonic  races,  which  went 
on  in  Scotland  during  the  200  years  between  the 
reign  of  Malcolm  Canmore  and  the  reign  of  Robert 
the  Bruce,  there  never  was  any  recognition  of  such 
a  thing  as  the  Irish  "  Pale."  There  never  was  a 
circle  of  favoured  Provinces  within  which  the  people 
enjoyed  the  advantages  of  civilised  and  written 
laws,  and  outside  of  which  a  whole  Nation  was  left 
to  Archaic  usages  in  the  last  stages  of  decay, 
corruption,  and  abuse.  Wherever  the  authority  of 
the  Crown  extended,  there  was  one  system  of  law 
regulating  the  rights  and  obligations  of  men.  At 
one  early  period,  some  special  provisions  were  made 
for  respecting  and  protecting  certain  local  usages 
much  valued  by  the  Celts  of  Galloway — just  as 
under  the  Norman  Sovereigns  of  England  respect 
was  paid  to  such  local  customs  as  Gavelkind  in 
Kent.  But  never  in  any  part  of  Scotland,  once  it 
had  been  brought  under  the  National  Monarchy, 
were  Knights  and  Barons  encouraged  or  allowed  to 
hold  property  and  to  exercise  powers  under  the  old 
desolating  practices  of  Celtic  Feudalism.  The 
remotest  Earldoms  and  Baronies  of  the  Highlands 
had  been  brought  under  the  law  of  definite  and 
Chartered  rights,  and  the  most  powerful  of  the 
Chiefs  had  found  it  for  their  own  interest  to  impose 
the  same  limitations  and  obligations  upon  their 
subordinate  Vassals  and  Tenants.  Somerled  himself, 
the  great  Celtic  Lord  of  the  Isles,  who  was  killed 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          143 

when  invading  the  Lowlands  of  Strathclyde  in  the 
middle  of  the  Twelfth  Century  (1164),  had  adopted 
and  enforced  the  system  of  written  Charters.  So  far 
therefore,  as  acknowledged  Law  and  the  duties  of 
loyalty  were  concerned,  these  had  been  universally 
established  long  before  the  reign  of  Bruce.  Indeed, 
this  had  been  well  settled  eleven  years  before  he 
was  born  (July  12,  1274).1  The  Celtic  Chiefs  and 
people  of  the  Hebrides  had  been  allowed  their 
choice — to  emigrate  with  their  property,  or,  remain- 
ing, to  be  governed  in  future  by  Scottish  laws.2 
They  do  not  seem  to  have  had  any  reluctance  in 
transferring  their  allegiance  from  the  Sons  of  Haco 
to  the  descendants  of  Malcolm  Canmore.  By  a 
treaty  with  Norway  in  1266,3  Alexander  in.,  Bruce's 
predecessor  in  the  Throne,  had  secured  to  the  Crown 
of  Scotland  the  Sovereignty  of  the  Isles,  and  from  that 
date  forward  there  never  was  any  doubt  or  question 
of  the  rightful  or  legal  supremacy  of  the  common 
Law  and  Statutes  of  the  Realm  over  the  whole  of 
the  western  Highlands  and  the  Western  Isles.4 

But  although  there  was  no  "Pale"  in  Scotland 
beyond  which  the  common  laws  and  statutes  of  the 
Realm  were  out  of  place,  there  was  a  very  large  part 
of  that  Realm  within  which  those  laws  could  with 
difficulty  be  enforced.  Not  only  remoteness  and 
inaccessibility  of  geographical  position,  but  the  em- 
bodiment and  predominance  of  Celtic  Feudalism  in 
the  organisation  of  the  Clans,  placed  in  the  hands 
of  innumerable  Chiefs  a  social  and  political  power 
which  was  practically  absolute.  Removed  from  the 
centres  of  national  life  and  interest,  caring  nothing 
for  them,  and  engrossed  with  their  own  local  ambi- 
tions and  petty  feuds,  the  Chiefs  and  population  of 
all  the  Islands,  and  of  a  great  part  of  the  adjacent 
mainland,  were  a  perpetual  thorn,  and  at  times  a 
source  of  real  danger,  in  the  side  of  the  Scottish 

1  Lochmaben,  Five  Hundred  Years  Ago.     By  Rev.  William  Graham. 
1865.  2  Tytler,  vol.  i.  p.  40. 

3  Gregory,  Hist.  p.  23.  4  Skene,  Celt.  Scot.  vol.  i.  p.  495. 


144  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

monarchy  and  nation.  They  exhibited  in  curious 
perfection  the  operation  of  a  tendency  in  human 
society,  analogous  to  the  tendency  which  Darwin 
detects  in  animal  structures, — to  revert  to  an  older 
type.  I  do  not  believe  in  the  Savage  origin  of  Man. 
But  it  is  historically  certain,  that  all  races  of  which 
we  know  anything  have  passed  through  stages  of 
comparative  barbarism.  There  is  an  innate  tendency 
under  certain  conditions  to  go  back  to  these.  We 
feel  it  even  as  individuals.  In  the  midst  of  our  own 
highly  developed  civilisation  we  are  conscious,  in 
sentiment  at  least,  of  the  charm  of  stories  depicting 
a  "  wild  life."  In  a  few  cases,  and  among  the  poorer 
classes,  this  tendency  breaks  through  the  bounds  of 
sentiment,  and  passes  into  the  realities  of  action. 
Darwin  has  told  us  how  he  was  struck  by  the  condi- 
tion of  the  poorest  savages  in  the  world,  the  natives 
of  Tierra  del  Fuego,  when  he  saw  a  canoe  full  of  them 
alongside  his  ship,  and  among  them  a  woman  who, 
naked  herself,  was  suckling  an  equally  naked  child, 
whilst  the  snow  and  sleet  of  that  pitiless  climate  were 
beating  against  her  breast.  Yet  scenes  hardly  less 
piteous  may  often  be  seen  among  ourselves.  There 
are  men,  women,  and  children — whole  families,  who 
in  Scotland  and  England  betake  themselves  to  a  life 
in  the  open  air.  Often  with  scanty  clothing,  and 
nothing  to  shelter  them  but  a  ragged  tent,  they 
brave  the  wettest  seasons  and  the  severest  winters. 
I  have  seen  a  poor  woman  nursing  a  child  under 
conditions  of  exposure  hardly  less  apparently  miser- 
able than  the  mother  whom  Darwin  saw  in  the 
Straits  of  Magellan.  Yet  the  love  of  a  wild,  and 
almost  savage  life,  is  so  strong  on  these  wayside 
dwellers  that  it  is  almost  impossible  to  reclaim  them. 
I  have  known  of  houses  being  given  to  them,  and 
opportunities  of  work  ;  but  the  old  instinct  returns, 
and  the  old  life  is  resumed.  The  same  tendency, 
and  a  like  result,  takes  place  on  a  large  scale  when 
whole  tribes  of  men  enter  upon  a  backward  course. 
More  gradually,  and  with  no  violent  contrasts  to 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  145 

make  the  changes  visible  or  striking  in  any  high 
degree,  communities  and  nations  may  deviate  from 
the  path  of  civilisation,  and  wander  back,  without 
a  single  regret  or  sense  of  loss,  to  the  ways  of  bar- 
barism. 

But  the  wild  life  of  nations,  and  a  relapse  into 
its  habits  and  pursuits,  is  a  very  different  and  a 
much  more  serious  affair  than  in  the  case  of  indi- 
viduals. The  love  of  war  is  one  of  the  most  univer- 
sal of  these  pursuits,  and  it  has  often  been  the  most 
destructive.  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that 
to  this  cause  alone  was  due  the  ruin  of  a  civilisa- 
tion in  the  New  World  which  had  made  great  pro- 
gress, and  the  re-subjection  of  a  great  part  of  that 
Continent  under  the  foot  of  the  hunter  and  the 
savage.  It  is  well  worthy  of  observation,  also,  that 
there  are  some  races  more  prone  than  others  to  such 
relapse,  and  this,  too,  from  elements  in  the  character 
which  are  in  themselves  eminently  attractive.  A 
quick  and  imaginative  temperament,  with  strong 
passions  and  deep  emotions,  is  precisely  that  which 
is  most  open  to  the  love  of  adventure,  most  easily 
swayed  by  ambition,  most  readily  incited  by  hatred 
or  by  revenge.  Delight  in  songs  and  legends  of  the 
past,  in  which  strength  and  courage,  or  both  com- 
bined with  cunning,  are  the  great  objects  of  worship, 
tend  to  keep  alive,  and  to  transfuse  with  intense 
reality,  the  feuds  and  animosities  of  the  dead  into 
the  memory  and  hearts  of  the  living.  A  people 
with  such  gifts,  and  with  these  gifts  so  unregulated 
and  so  perverted,  may  not  only  be  in  danger  them- 
selves of  a  relapse  into  barbarism,  but  may  even 
have  power  to  drag  down  men  of  other  races  who 
come  within  the  circle  of  their  influence.  Just  as 
in  many  individual  men  and  women  there  are  inde- 
finable sources  of  attraction,  which  consist  in  Charm 
—sources  of  attraction  which  give  them  a  power  over 
others  far  beyond  any  reasonable  measure,  so  it  is 
with  some  races.  Perhaps  more  than  any  other 
race  of  whom  we  have  any  knowledge,  the  Celts 

K 


146  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

have  had  this  power  of  Charm.  Their  customs  and 
usages,  their  poetry  and  their  legends,  their  courteous 
manners,  and  their  wild  life,  have  always  attracted 
the  men  of  other  races  who  have  been  brought  into 
contact  with  them.  Under  the  power  of  this  temp- 
tation, Saxons  and  Normans  have  revelled  in  Celtic 
customs,  have  put  into  them  a  coarser  spirit,  have 
ridden  them  to  the  death,  until  they  have  come  to 
represent  nothing  of  liberty  except  licence,  and 
nothing  of  law  except  licentious  usages.  The 
dwindled  and  degenerated  representative  of  the 
great  virtue  of  patriotism  has  shrunk  into  nothing 
better  than  passionate  fidelity  to  some  little  group 
of  men,  not  necessarily  even  of  the  same  blood,  but 
followers  merely  of  the  same  adopted  name  and 
standard. 

We  have  seen  in  a  former  chapter  how  Norman 
and  Anglo-Saxon  settlers  in  Ireland  became  the 
worst  oppressors  of  the  Irish,  by  descending  below 
the  level  of  their  own  native  Chiefs,  and  conform- 
ing their  habits  and  their  conduct  to  the  most 
corrupt  of  native  usages.  A  process  somewhat 
similar  passed  over  the  Chiefs  and  Barons  of  the* 
Hebridean  Isles  and  Coasts,  many  of  whom  were 
of  Norman  or  of  Norse  descent,  and  almost  all 
of  whom  were  of  more  or  less  mixed  blood.  The 
marriage  between  Norse  and  Celtic  usages  could 
not  fan*  to  increase  both  the  charm,  the  tempta- 
tions, and  the  inherent  vice  of  the  wild  life  of  both 
races.  There  are  some  outward  forms  and  exhibi- 
tions of  war,  which,  by  their  strength  and  poetry, 
tend  naturally  to  inflame  men's  passion  for  it.  The 
pomp  and  circumstance  of  great  armies  did  not  con- 
stitute the  incitement  of  the  Islanders.  But  the 
beauty  and  the  winged  swiftness  of  great  fleets  of 
galleys,  each  of  them  "  walking  the  waters  like  a 
thing  of  life,"  each  of  them  carrying  its  contingent 
of  armed  men  from  land  to  land,  and  pouring  them 
forth  on  quiet  shores  to  fight  and  ravage  and  destroy 
— these,  celebrated  with  sounds  of  Harp  and  Song, 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          147 

must  have  lived  in  the  memory  and  in  the  imagina- 
tion of  "  roving  tribes  and  rude  barbarians"1  from 
one  generation  to  another.  It  is  difficult  to  con- 
ceive anything  more  exciting  or  inspiring  to  wild 
men  inheriting  the  traditions  of  the  lawless  races, 
than  the  habitual  prosecution  of  war  in  picturesque 
galleys  rounding  stormy  capes,  running  up  sheltered 
inlets,  pouncing  upon  enemies  unawares,  and  carry- 
ing off  the  harvests  and  the  cattle  of  all  who  were 
not  strong  enough  to  defend  them.  But  in  this,  as 
in  many  other  cases,  poetry  and  charm  were  the 
servants  of  corruption.  Civilisation  withered  before 
the  Clans,  so  long  as  their  Chiefs  were  uncontrolled 
by  higher  laws  than  the  usages  of  the  Celt. 

Having  now  glanced  at  the  causes  in  operation, 
let  us  look  at  their  actual  results.  In  round  numbers, 
300  years  elapsed  between  the  coronation  of  Robert 
the  Bruce  and  the  Union  of  his  Crown  with  that  of 
England.  Bruce  was  crowned  in  1306.  James  vi. 
succeeded  to  the  English  throne  in  1603.  Calcu- 
lating, however,  not  from  the  Coronation,  but  from 
the  death  of  King  Robert,  the  period  embraced 
between  these  two  events  is  only  265  years.  It  is 
well  worth  while  to  note  the  working  of  Celtic 
Feudalism  during  this  time  of  little  more  than  two 
centuries  and  a  half. 

The  remainder  of  the  Fourteenth  Century,  in 
which  Bruce  did  his  work  and  died,  was  occupied 
by  the  reign  of  his  son  David  II.  (1329-1371),  of  his 
nephew  Robert  n.,  the  first  Sovereign  of  the  House 
of  Stuart  (1371-1390),  and  by  part  of  the  reign  of 
Robert  in.,  who  continued  to  occupy  the  throne 
during  the  first  six  years  of  the  following  or  Fifteenth 
Century  (1390-1406).  This  first  period  of  only  65 
years,  short  as  it  is  in  the  life  of  a  nation,  was 
marked  by  several  events  and  several  circumstances 
highly  significant  of  the  changes  which  had  begun. 
The  Chief  who  was  Lord  of  Islay  and  the  Southern 
Islands  had  been  faithful  to  the  cause  of  Bruce,  and 

1  Johnson's  Journey  to  the  Hebrides. 


148  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

had  been  rewarded  for  it.  But  he  and  King  Robert 
died  about  the  same  time,  and  his  son,  though  dis- 
tinguished in  many  ways,  and  a  great  favourite  of 
the  Church,  exhibited,  through  a  long  and  successful 
life,  that  striking  peculiarity  of  the  Celtic  race- 
that  their  fidelity  is  to  Persons  and  not  to  Principles. 
The  House  of  Islay  ceased  to  be  faithful  to  the  Crown 
of  Scotland  the  moment  Robert  the  Bruce  had  ceased 
to  wear  it.1  The  cause  of  Scotland  and  of  National 
independence  was  nothing  to  him.  His  father's 
King  and  companion  in  arms  was  dead,  and  John  of 
Islay  felt  free  from  fealty.  Within  15  years  of  the 
death  of  the  Great  King,  David  n.  had  serious  diffi- 
culty in  coming  to  a  peaceful  arrangement  with  this 
powerful  Chief.  Once  in  1344,2  and  again,  after  the 
lapse  of  25  years,  in  1369,3  the  same  danger  arose  of 
a  rebellion  of  the  whole  Insular  and  West  Highland 
population.  On  the  last  of  these  occasions  David  n. 
had  to  support  his  negotiations  by  large  military 
preparations. 

But  this  was  not  all ;  nor  was  it  by  any  means 
the  worst  indication  of  a  great  political  danger.  In 
spite  of  a  marriage  with  a  daughter  of  the  Steward 
of  Scotland,  who,  in  1371,  succeeded  to  the  Throne 
as  Robert  II.,  John  of  the  Isles  was  in  constant  com- 
munication with  the  English  Kings,  who  were  at 
perpetual  war  with  his  own  Sovereign,  and  were  the 
hereditary  enemies  of  the  independence  of  Scotland. 
To  such  an  extent  was  this  system  carried,  that  when 
in  1388  a  temporary  truce  was  made  between  the  two 
countries,  the  agreement  was  openly  signed  on  one 
side  by  the  Lord  of  the  Isles  as  an  ally  of  the  King 
of  England.  Considering  that  by  an  earlier  marriage 
this  Lord  of  the  Isles  had  re-united  all  the  Northern 
Isles  with  the  great  possessions  of  the  Earldom  of 
Ross  on  the  mainland  of  the  Western  Highlands, 
we  can  estimate  the  formidable  danger  to  which  the 
Scottish  Monarchy  was  exposed  from  the  absolute 
powers  wielded  under  Celtic  Feudalism  by  such  a 

1  Gregory,  Hist.  p.  26.  2  Ibid  p.  27.  3  Ibid.  p.  28. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  149 

strong-handed  Chief  over  his  subject  Clans.  This 
danger  increased  under  the  succeeding  generation. 
John  of  Islay's  son,  Donald,  though  nearly  related 
through  his  mother  with  the  royal  family  of  Scot- 
land,1 was  a  far  more  rebellious  subject  than  his  father. 
In  strict  accordance  with  the  tendency  to  increasing 
corruption  which  seems  to  have  been  inseparable 
from  the  unwritten  Feudalism  of  the  Celts,  his  dis- 
affection and  his  conduct  took  a  lower  and  an  almost 
purely  predatory  type.  In  1392  another  great 
Highland  Chief  gathered  his  following  of  the  Clans, 
burst  down  the  slopes  of  the  Grampians  upon  the 
oldest  and  most  settled  civilisation  of  the  East  of 
Scotland,  defeated  the  Lowland  forces  in  the  battle 
of  Gasclune,  and  ravaged  the  whole  districts  of 
Angus  and  the  Mearns. 

But  significant  as  these  events  are  of  the  nature 
and  tendency  of  Celtic  Feudalism,  I  am  not  sure  that 
they  are  so  significant  as  two  other  incidents  or 
passages  of  the  same  period,  which  in  themselves 
may  seem  more  grotesque  than  serious.  They  ex- 
hibit in  two  very  different  forms  the  dangerous 
attraction  which  savage  customs,  and  the  usages  of 
a  wild  or  lawless  life,  are  capable  of  exciting  over 
men  who  by  race,  birth,  and  education  have  risen  to 
higher  things. 

There  was  then  no  blood  in  Scotland  of  more 
purely  Norman  origin  than  the  House  of  Stuart. 
That  name,  as  is  well  known,  was  of  merely  official 
origin,  the  family  having  long  held  by  an  hereditary 
tenure  the  great  feudal  office  of  Seneschal,  or  High 
Steward  of  the  kingdom.  This  office  had  been 
granted  to  their  ancestor  in  the  reign  of  David  i., 
and  therefore  some  time  before  1153.  It  had  been 
confirmed  by  a  Charter  of  Malcolm  iv.  in  1157. 
They  had,  therefore,  a  Scottish  history  and  pedigree 
running  through  more  than  200  years  at  the  time 
of  which  we  are  now  speaking.  But,  like  the  family 
of  the  Bruce,  they  had  come  over  to  England  with 

1  Gregory,  p.  29.  i 


150  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  Conqueror,  and  had  been  first  settled  by  him  on 
great  manors  and  baronial  possessions  in  Shropshire, 
in  the  heart  of  England.  Alan,  the  son  of  Flathald, 
was  the  name  of  the  Conqueror's  friend,  and  the 
title  of  Fitz  Alan,  now  united  with  the  Howards  of 
Norfolk,  comes  by  direct  descent  from  them.  Like 
the  Bruces  they  moved  northward  with  many  other 
Norman  Barons  when  the  connection  became  more 
intimate  between  the  Knighthood  of  the  two 
countries.  In  Scotland  they  became  the  founders  in 
1160  of  the  Great  Monastic  House  of  Paisley,  and 
had  there  planted  a  branch  of  the  Cluniac  Monks 
from  an  older  Foundation  they  had  made  at  Wenlock. 
It  does  not  appear  that  they  had  any  Celtic  blood 
at  all  except  that  which  at  a  much  later  date  they 
inherited  through  their  marriage  with  a  daughter  of 
King  Robert  the  Bruce — an  alliance  through  which 
they  at  last,  in  1371,  succeeded  to  the  Throne, 
Robert  n.  was  the  eighth  in  descent  from  the  first 
High  Steward,  and  of  his  seven  predecessors  only 
one  seems  to  have  been  allied  by  marriage  with  any 
Celtic  House.  This  one  exception  was  the  fifth  High 
Steward,  who  married  a  daughter  of  James  Macrory, 
the  Lord  of  Bute — a  truly  Highland  name,  and  no 
doubt  of  as  purely  Celtic  origin  as  any  in  the  whole 
muster  of  the  Clans.1  The  small  Celtic  element, 
therefore,  which  existed  in  the  blood  of  the  Stuarts 
was  of  the  noblest  type — the  far-off  strain  of  Mal- 
colm Canmore,  reinforced  in  later  times  by  alliance 
with  those  descendants  of  Somerled  in  the  Southern 
Isles  who  were  most  faithful  to  the  cause  of  Bruce. 
It  would  be  difficult  to  conceive  an  original  descent, 
or  a  subsequent  line  of  succession,  or  a  course  of  life 
through  many  generations,  which  could  have  been 
better  adapted  to  implant  in  any  breed  of  men  the 
best  and  highest  tendencies  and  accomplishments 
of  their  age.  Born  and  bred  in  the  best  times 
of  chivalry,  seeing  and  taking  part  in  the  rising 
civilisation,  which,  from  Malcolm  Canmore  to 

1  Douglas's  Peerage,  s.v,  Albany. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  151 

Robert  the  Bruce,  was  amalgamating  the  Celt,  the 
Saxon,  the  Norman,  and  the  Norseman  into  one 
people,  and  consecrating  everything  that  was  good  in 
old  customs  under  the  strong  authority  of  equal  laws, 
the  Stuarts  ought  not  to  have  been  easily  tempted 
to  fall  back  into  barbaric  habits  of  which  they  could 
have  had  no  living  memory  or  tradition.  Yet  one  of 
the  most  prominent  occurrences  of  this  last  part  of 
the  Fourteenth  Century  was  the  part  played  in  the 
Highlands  by  a  member  of  this  great  Scoto-Norman 
family.  No  less  high  a  member  of  it  than  a  younger 
brother  of  the  first  Stuart  King,  Robert  II.,  was 
granted  great  landed  possessions  in  the  Central 
Highlands,  whilst  by  marriage  with  an  heiress  he 
acquired  also  the  extensive  lands,  or  many  of  them, 
belonging  to  the  old  Celtic  Earldom  of  Ross.  In 
this  position  he  at  once  found  himself  invested 
with  absolute  power  over  innumerable  Clans  who 
were  ready  to  "go  anywhere  and  do  anything " 
which  he  chose  to  direct.  Under  this  temptation 
he  developed  such  ferocity  of  character,  and  per- 
petrated such  deeds  of  cruelty,  that  he  acquired  in  his 
own  day,  and  has  since  been  known  in  history  as 
the  Wolf  of  Badenoch.1  A  recent  authority  has 
described  him  as  "  a  species  of  Celtic  Attila."5  His 
son,  though  he  served  in  more  civilised  warfare  with 
the  chivalry  of  France,  seems  in  his  early  life  to  have 
been  a  worthy  representative  of  his  father.  He  be- 
came Earl  of  Mar,  and  was  a  considerable  figure  in 
his  day.  It  was  under  his  command  that  the  Clans 
were  launched  against  the  Lowlands  in  1392,  and 
routed  their  defence  in  the  battle  of  Gasclune.3 

The  second  incident  of  this  period,  which  still 
more  curiously  illustrates  the  same  principles,  is  one 
which  stands  alone,  not  only  in  the  history  of  Scot- 
land, but  in  the  history  of  any  modern  nation.  The 
gladiatorial  shows  of  Rome  are  associated  in  our 
minds  with  the  worst  days  of  imperial  corruption, 

1  Burton's  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  pp.  97-9. 

a  Tytler,  vol.  iii.  p.  62.  3  Burton,  ut  supra. 


152  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

and  the  worst  degrading  exhibitions  of  Pagan 
customs.  They  have  had  no  counterpart  in  modern 
times.  In  the  days  of  chivalry  the  contests  of  the 
tournament  were  not  intended  to  be  deadly,  and, 
although  sometimes  loss  of  life  occurred,  this  was 
purely  by  mischance,  and  all  the  rules  of  the  game 
were  inspired  by  a  spirit  even  of  gentleness  as  well 
as  honour.  Yet  in  days  when  chivalry  had  not 
declined,  and  not  long  after  the  heart  of  the  Bruce 
had  been  cast  into  the  squadrons  of  the  Infidel  by 
the  Good  Lord  James  Douglas,  suddenly  we  hear  of 
a  scene  recalling  the  most  bloody  exhibitions  which 
aroused  the  savage  tastes  of  Nero  or  Caligula.  In 
that  beautiful  Valley  which  so  struck  the  Roman 
Legions,  that  when  it  burst  upon  them  from  the  top 
of  its  enclosing  hills,  they  threw  up  their  spears  and 
shouted  "  Ecce  Tiber," — on  the  fair  green  meadow 
which  borders  the  River  Tay,  and  is  called  the 
"  North  Inch  of  Perth,"— all  the  chivalry  of  Scot- 
land were  assembled  on  the  23d  of  October  1396,  to 
see  a  deadly  fight  between  two  bodies  of  wild  High- 
landers, sixty  in  ah1 — thirty  on  either  side.  The 
King  himself  was  there,  with  all  his  Court  and 
Nobles,  and  a  vast  crowd  of  men  of  all  ranks  and 
stations.  The  combatants,  like  the  gladiators,  were 
devoid  of  defensive  armour,  and  were  to  fight  only 
with  their  native  weapons,  knives,  axes,  swords,  and 
bows.  So  exciting  was  the  scene,  and  such  was  the 
contagion  of  barbarism  which  it  induced  even  in 
peaceful  men,  that  on  the  flight  of  one  of  the 
Highlanders  who  dashed  into  the  Tay  and  escaped, 
one  of  the  spectators — an  artificer  of  Perth,  possibly 
of  Celtic  blood  —  came  forward  and  offered  the 
sacrifice  of  his  life  to  fill  up  the  blank.  This 
being  accepted,  the  bloody  work  proceeded.  At  the 
end  of  the  butchery,  on  one  side  only  one  man  re- 
mained alive,  on  the  other,  only  ten,  and  these  all 
wounded.  Nobody,  to  this  day,  can  make  out 
with  any  certainty  whence  these  men  came,  whom 
they  represented,  or  why  they  fought.  The  most 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  153 

favourable  view  of  it  is  that  it  was  a  Trial  by  Wager 
agreed  upon  as  a  means  of  settling  a  Clan  feud,  and 
of  preventing  still  more  extensive  bloodshed.  But 
there  is  no  satisfactory  evidence  that  it  settled  any- 
thing, or  that  it  was  ever  intended  to  do  so.  What- 
ever it  arose  from,  it  was  made  a  great  spectacle. 
An  enclosure  was  made  and  the  lists  were  kept.  As 
the  historian  tells  us,  "  It  was  the  nature  of  the 
beings  brought  together  to  fly  at  each  other  like 
wild  cats,  and  kill  in  any  way  they  could." l  Such 
names  as  the  "Clan  Kay"  and  "  Clan  Qwhele" 
appear  in  the  chronicles  of  the  time  as  the  Lowland 
guesses  as  to  the  particular  Celtic  Clans  which  fur- 
nished the  victims.  These  names,  evidently  corrupt, 
have  been  plausibly  translated  into  the  Clan  Chattan 
and  the  Clan  Cameron.2  There  is  only  too  much 
reason  to  believe  that  the  ferocious  habits  of  the 
Clans,  having  then  become  notorious,  and  having  very 
probably  furnished  the  theme  of  exciting  stories, 
and  the  subject  of  sentimental  admiration  to  men 
who  saw  in  them  at  least  a  contempt  of  death, 
these  poor  Highlanders  had  been  bribed  by  the 
promise  of  reward  to  the  survivors,  to  furnish  forth 
this  horrid  spectacle  to  the  chivalry  of  Scotland, 
with  its  guests  from  France.  If  this  be  the  ex- 
planation— and  it  is  the  only  explanation  at  least  of 
the  publicity  of  the  scene — it  is  a  signal  illustration 
of  the  dangerous  attraction  which  some  races  have 
exerted  by  their  barbarous  usages  upon  men  of  a 
far  higher  civilisation  than  their  own. 

With  the  exception  of  some  obscure  references 
in  the  old  Book  of  Deir,  in  which  such  family  names 
as  Morgan  are  spoken  of  as  representing  "Clans" 
in  the  Lowlands  of  Buchan,  the  first  mention  of  this 
word  in  the  history  of  Scotland  stands  connected 
with  the  Gladiatorial  Exhibition  in  the  North  Inch 
of  Perth,  and  with  a  Brief  of  Eobert  in.,  in  1390, 
against  the  murderous  followers  of  the  Wolf  of 
Badenoch.  I  speak  of  the  name,  or  the  word — 

1  Burton,  vol.  iii.  p.  72.          2  Skene's  Celtic  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  pp.  314-15. 


154  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

not  of  the  thing  or  the  system  which  it  represents. 
That  system  is  as  old  as  the  existence  of  wild  and 
lawless  conditions  of  society  in  which  the  weak 
cluster  round  the  strong,  both  for  protection  and 
in  order  to  share  in  the  spoils  which  strength  only 
could  secure.  But  it  was  not  till  towards  the  close 
of  the  century  in  which  King  Robert  the  Bruce 
died  that  the  Scotch  people  recognised  the  new 
conditions  under  which  they  were  henceforth  to 
live  within  reach  of  the  race  which  had  so  often 
stood  shoulder  to  shoulder  with  them  in  the  battles 
of  Independence.  Somewhat  suddenly  their  eyes 
were  opened  by  a  bitter  and  a  new  experience. 
But  nine  years  before  the  spectacle  of  massacre 
between  the  "  Clan  Kay"  and  the  Clan  "  Mac- 
Quhele,"  the  Parliament  of  the  Kingdom  had  been 
compelled  to  take  notice  of  the  habits  which  were 
becoming  developed  under  the  licence  of  Celtic 
Feudalism.  In  1385  we  have  the  first  of  a  long 
series  of  statutes  passed  for  the  defence  of  the 
country  against  the  robberies  and  the  raids  of  those 
who  now  came  to  be  known  under  the  name  of 
"  Katherans."  All  the  subjects  of  the  Crown  were 
encouraged  and  exhorted  to  resist  and  to  arrest  them, 
and  it  was  provided  that  if  the  Katherans  resisted, 
the  killing  of  them  would  be  no  murder,  and  no 


crime.1 


With  these  events,  we  have  fully  entered  on  the 
epoch  of  the  Clans.  The  bloody  spectacle  on  the 
North  Inch  of  Perth  was  a  mere  outward  symptom 
of  more  serious  things.  In  the  first  law  directed 
against  the  Highlanders  as  Katherans — in  the  syste- 
matic treachery  of  the  Lords  of  the  Isles  towards 
the  national  cause — in  the  savage  rebellions  and 
ravages  of  the  Wolf  of  Badenoch  and  his  son — 
brother  and  nephew  of  the  King  (Robert  IT.) — in 
their  power  to  wield  the  force  of  whole  hordes  of 
men  who  followed  them  without  any  real  tie  of  Tribal 
or  blood  relationship — we  see  the  dangerous  alliance 

1  Act,  Part,  vol.  i.  pp.  186-7. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  155 

between  the  absolute  despotism  of  Celtic  Chiefs  and 
the  mere  forms  of  Feudal  Law.  Most  of  these 
Chiefs  held  Charters  ;  but  they  used  these  Instru- 
ments of  legal  possession,  and  of  lawful  powers, 
only  as  blinds  and  covers  for  an  unwritten  code  of 
usages  utterly  without  law,  limit,  or  restraint.  The 
primeval  Tribal  system, — its  poetical  family  origin, 
and  its  peaceful  pastoral  associations, — must  no 
longer  be  confounded  with  this  terrible  system  of 
military  aggregations  round  red-handed  Knights 
who  were  mere  deserters  and  apostates  from  a  higher 
civilisation.  The  sentimental  admiration  for  them 
and  for  their  followers  is  little  less  corrupting  now 
than  it  was  in  the  Fourteenth  Century.  It  is  a 
terrible  mixture  when  violence  and  anarchy  put 
on  the  robes  of  order  and  of  law,  and  plead  the 
authority  of  its  noblest  instruments  for  deeds  and 
principles  which  they  were  invented  to  rebuke  and 
to  supplant. 

One  of  the  most  careful  and  accurate  of  our 
national  historians  has  pointed  out  more  clearly 
than  others  the  fundamental  distinctions  between 
all  that  we  admire  in  the  theory  of  Tribal  Institu- 
tions, and  the  true  nature  of  the  Highland  Clans 
when  they  first  come  into  the  light  of  history. 
"  Powerful  Chiefs,"  he  says,  "  of  Norman  name  and 
Norman  blood  had  penetrated  into  the  remotest 
districts,  and  ruled  over  multitudes  of  serfs  and 
vassals,  whose  strange  and  uncouth  appellatives 
proclaim  their  difference  of  race  in  the  most  con- 
vincing manner." *  These  Chiefs  used  any  legal 
power  which  they  could  find  in  Charters  to 
strengthen  or  sustain  the  most  absolute  authority, 
but  without  themselves  conforming  to  any  feudal 
law  whatever,  either  in  their  relations  to  those 
below,  or  to  those  above  them.  At  a  later  period 
it  became  a  common  system  through  "  Bonds  of 
Manrent  "  to  recruit  from  every  quarter  men  who  in 
return  for  protection,  and  for  employment  in  common 

1  Ty tier's  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  iii.  p.  214. 


156  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

robberies,  deliberately  bound  themselves  over  to  be 
obedient  followers  and  retainers.  Thus,  although 
the  position  and  authority  of  Chiefs  was  generally 
founded  on  territorial  property,  it  was  to  a  great 
extent  independent  of  it — did  not  flow  from  the 
same  sources  of  legal  possession,  and  was  continually 
used  to  coerce  and  overawe  men  of  smaller  property 
who  could  not  command  the  same  armed  following. 

This  distinction  cannot  be  too  clearly  kept  in 
view,  because  it  is  fundamental  in  the  history  of  the 
Highlands  for  more  than  300  years.  It  was  not 
the  chartered  rights  of  landed  Ownership,  but  the 
unchartered  absolutism  of  Celtic  Chieftainship,  that 
made  the  Highlands  for  several  centuries  a  scourge 
to  themselves,  and  a  danger  to  the  nation.  It  can  be 
clearly  shown — so  deeply  marked  is  the  distinction 
— that  in  direct  and  exact  proportion  as  Highland 
Chiefs  and  Chieftains  could  be  induced,  or  were 
enabled  by  the  condition  of  the  country,  to  live  and 
spend  their  time  simply  as  great  Landowners,  with 
the  fullest  rights  of  property,  and  all  the  chartered 
powers  of  Baronial  Jurisdiction,  in  the  same  propor- 
tion did  the  districts  under  them  advance  in  wealth 
and  civilisation,  and  their  people  cease  to  be  a  terror 
to  those  around  them.  On  the  other  hand,  it  can 
be  shown  with  equal  clearness,  that  in  direct  pro- 
portion as  the  principal  families  in  the  Highlands 
were  purely  or  predominantly  Celtic,  leading  only 
the  life,  and  exercising  only  the  tremendous  powers 
of  Celtic  Feudalism,  in  the  same  proportion  did  the 
country  go  back  to  desolation,  and  the  people  to  the 
most  utter  barbarism. 

It  is  precisely  due  to  this  great  distinction  that 
we  have  a  corresponding  difference  between  two 
great  areas  of  the  country  which  are  separated 
from  each  other  by  a  well-marked  line  of  physical 
geography.  Roughly  speaking,  this  line  runs  along 
the  "watershed"  of  the  mountains  from  which 
the  streams  divide  to  the  West  and  to  the  East 
—that  irregular  mass  of  hill  country  which  was 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  157 

anciently  called  Drumalban,  and  at  a  later  period  the 
"Mounth."  But  practically  we  may  take  the  divid- 
ing-line to  be  that  which  catches  every  eye  that 
looks  intelligently  to  the  map  of  Scotland, — the  line 
which  the  Celts  called  Glen  More — or  the  Great  Glen 
—running  across  the  whole  Island  from  south-west 
to  north-east,  and  occupied  by  the  chain  of  Lakes, 
of  which  advantage  was  taken  in  the  construction 
of  the  Caledonian  Canal.  The  whole  Highlands  to 
the  east  and  south  of  that  Great  Glen,  with  its  pro- 
longation southwards  among  the  Islands,  was  com- 
paratively accessible  to  the  advancing  civilisation  of 
the  Eastern  and  South-Eastern  Lowlands — a  civili- 
sation which  crept  up  slowly  but  surely  along  the 
Valleys  and  the  Firths  and  Lochs  leading  into  the 
areas  which  were  the  centres  of  the  early  Monarchy. 
On  the  other  hand,  all  the  Highlands  and  Islands 
which  lie  to  the  west  and  north  of  that  Great 
Glen  were  less  accessible  to  the  same  influences, 
were  more  exclusively  Celtic  in  their  population, 
and  were  more  absolutely  under  the  dominion  of 
Celtic  usages.  There  the  great  families  did  not 
live  merely  as  great  Proprietors,  but  altogether 
in  the  much  more  absolute  and  formidable 
character  of  small  Monarchs  commanding  the 
hereditary  services  of  an  armed  and  lawless  popula- 
tion. Clustering  round  the  memory  and  traditions 
of  two  Old  Celtic  Dignities — the  Lordship  of  the 
Isles,  and  the  Earldom  of  Boss — and  fighting 
fiercely  with  each  other,  first  for  the  succession  to 
these,  and  next  for  the  possession  of  the  bits 
and  fragments  of  them — the  West  Highland  Clans 
lived  perpetually  such  a  life  of  war  and  rapine  as 
that  which  was  only  too  closely  imitated  by  the 
great  Norman  Baron  who  disgraced  the  blood  of 
Hobert  the  Bruce  under  the  name  of  the  Wolf  of 
Badenoch. 

Gregory,  in  his  History  of  the  Highland  Clans,1  was 
the  first  to  point  out  clearly  this  great  geographical 

1  See  Preface,  pp.  i-ii. 


158  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

distinction,  which  marks  a  corresponding  distinction 
in  the  social  and  political  development  of  the  two 
districts.  He  goes  so  far  as  to  say  that  the  history 
of  the  Eastern  and  Western  Highlands  cannot  be 
written  in  the  same  book.  This  is  a  great  exaggera- 
tion. Neither  in  geography  nor  in  social  condition 
was  there  any  hard  and  fast  line.  Glen  More  was 
not  impassable  to  the  Clans  on  either  side,  neither 
was  it  impassable  to  habits  and  institutions. 
Charters  and  Leases  existed  in  the  West,  and  Clan 
feuds  and  fights  were  not  wanting  in  the  East. 
Still,  it  is  true  that  on  the  western  side  of  the  line 
the  written  laws  of  property  were  long  submerged 
under  the  unwritten  codes  of  Celtic  usage,  whilst  on 
the  eastern  side  these  became  gradually  checked  and 
subordinated  to  the  precepts  of  a  settled  jurispru- 
dence. This  was  the  root  and  cause  of  the  differ- 
ence between  the  two  areas,  and  it  is  one  which 
arises  out  of  the  very  nature  of  things.  The  cor- 
ruption of  human  nature  is  a  law  which  we  cannot 
afford  to  abandon  to  the  theologians.  Historians 
and  politicians  must  take  note  of  it  as  the  whole 
secret  of  the  most  characteristic  facts.  Hence  comes 
the  danger  of  mere  usages  as  distinct  from  laws. 
All  usages  tend  to  abuse,  from  which  nothing  can 
keep  them  except  the  arresting  barriers  of  written 
law  and  recorded  judgments.  It  is  the  grossest  of 
all  errors  that  traditional  customs  tend  to  the  pre- 
servation of  popular  liberties.  They  tend  on  the 
contrary  to  the  exaggeration  of  power,  and  to  the 
continual  aggrandisement  of  the  strong.  There 
may,  indeed,  be  usages  which  rise  to  the  dignity  of 
laws,  and  every  civilised  system  of  jurisprudence 
recognises  as  such  all  customs  which  are  capable  of 
definition,  and  can  be  classed  as  the  real  but  unex- 
pressed conditions  under  which  all  Covenants  were 
made.  But  Society  cannot  be  built  up  on  the  quick- 
sands of  shifting  memories,  and  of  loose  allegations 
incapable  of  proof.  These  are  always  wrested,  as 
we  have  seen  that  Celtic  Feudalism  did  wrest  them, 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  159 

to  strengthen  and  to  aggravate  the  abuses  of  per- 
sonal strength  and  of  personal  ambition. 

We  can  see  then  how  it  was  that  for  300  years, 
after  the  close  of  the  century  in  which  King  Robert 
the  Bruce  had  done  his  great  work  of  amalgamation, 
that  work  was  being  steadily  undone,  as  far  as  they 
could  undo  it,  by  the  Celtic  Clans.  In  the  eleventh 
year  of  the  new  century,  in  1411,  Donald,  Lord  of 
the  Isles,  with  an  army,  it  is  said  of  10,000  Clans- 
men, attempted  the  overthrow  of  the  Scottish  King- 
dom by  a  regular  invasion.  They  were  with  difficulty 
repulsed  in  the  bloody  battle  of  Harlaw ;  and  the 
final  but  hard-won  victory  of  the  Lowland  forces 
was  universally  felt  in  Scotland  to  be  a  deliverance 
not  less  happy  than  the  deliverance  which  had  been 
achieved  at  Bannockburn.  One  signal  note  of  its 
value  is  to  be  found  in  the  circumstance  that  the 
contagion  of  Celtic  Feudalism  had  done  its  worst. 
Alexander,  Earl  of  Mar,  son  of  the  Wolf  of  Bade- 
noch,  had  now  returned  to  the  allegiance  of  his 
blood  and  race.  He  commanded  the  Lowland 
gathering  of  that  higher  Feudalism  which  rested 
on  written  Charters,  and  on  loyalty  to  acknowledged 
obligation.  Under  this  banner  of  civilisation  he 
distinguished  himself  by  the  most  desperate  valour. 
The  Eastern  Highlands,  therefore,  in  the  person  of 
one  of  its  most  powerful  Chiefs,  were  now  com- 
mitted to,  and  associated  with  the  same  cause.* 

Twelve  years  later,  in  the  Fifteenth  Century,  we 
enter  on  the  period  of  "  The  Jameses."  The  first 
Sovereign  of  that  name,  and  perhaps  the  most  dis- 
tinguished, assumed  the  crown  in  1424.  He  and 
five  successors  of  the  same  name,  with  the  tragic 
interlude  of  Mary,  occupy  the  179  years  which 
elapsed  before  the  sixth  James  succeeded  to  the 
English  throne.  No  more  troubled  and  turbulent 
time  has  perhaps  ever  passed  over  any  people  which 
still  retained  the  elements  of  progress  and  of  civi- 
lisation. But  in  spite  of  all  the  years  of  war,  re- 
bellion, anarchy,  and  bloodshed,  those  elements 


160  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

were  retained,  and  some  of  the  most  fruitful  of  them 
were  strengthened  and  developed.  The  Clergy  of 
the  Latin  Church  had  not  yet  learned  to  be  afraid 
of  Learning,  and  under  their  influence  the  Fifteenth 
Century  saw  the  foundation  of  the  three  oldest  Uni- 
versities in  Scotland,  St.  Andrews,  Glasgow,  and 
King's  College,  Aberdeen.  Some  sound  and  excel- 
lent legislation,  as  we  have  already  seen,  was  passed 
for  the  restraint  of  violence,  and  for  the  encourage- 
ment and  security  of  Covenants  between  man  and 
man.  A  Supreme  Court  was  established  for  the 
administration  and  interpretation  of  the  law,  and 
some  steady  progress  was  made,  both  by  new  enact- 
ments and  by  systematic  decisions,  in  the  general 
understanding  of  civil  obligations.  In  the  south- 
western mainland  of  the  Highlands,  as  well  as  in 
the  eastern  Highlands,  the  growing  power  and  in- 
fluence of  the  Chiefs  who  had  taken  part  with  Bruce, 
and  who  continued  faithful  to  the  Monarchy  he 
had  restored,  were  turning  to  good  account, — as 
loyal  men  can  always  turn  them, — the  force  and 
fidelity  of  their  Clans.  But  with  this  exception,  the 
working  of  Celtic  Feudalism  during  the  whole  of  the 
Fifteenth,  and  the  whole  of  the  Sixteenth  Centuries, 
presents  little  more  than  one  continued  spectacle  of 
all  the  worst  vices  which  can  afflict  or  destroy  a 
nation.  So  long  as  the  Lordship  of  the  Isles  ex- 
isted, or  the  Earldom  of  Ross,  the  Islanders  under 
those  Chiefs  were  systematically  disloyal  to  the 
Scottish  Monarchy.  In  1462  they  entered  into  a 
formal  treaty  with  Edward  iv.  of  England,  for  the 
subjection  and  partition  of  the  Kingdom.1  This  led 
to  the  final  suppression  of  the  Earldom  of  Boss  and 
its  annexation  to  the  Crown.2 

But  treachery  to  the  Monarchy  was  only  replaced 
by  treachery  to  each  other  among  all  the  Clans  and 
Chiefs,  between  whom  the  spoils  were  divided. 
There  is  no  more  miserable  history  than  the  history 
of  the  Highland  and  Island  Clans  during  this  period. 

1  Gregory,  History  of  the  Clans,  p.  47.  2  Ibid.  p.  50. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          161 

If  we  silence  our  moral  judgment  altogether,  it  is 
of  course  possible  to  pick  out  picturesque  incidents, 
and  to  bestow  our  admiration  here  and  there  on 
displays  of  mere  animal  courage.  But  when  one 
compares  this  wretched  epoch  with  the  older  and 
nobler  time  when  one  great  man  had  taught  the 
Celtic  population  of  the  Highlands  how  to  fight 
in  a  great  cause  and  for  a  great  purpose,  it  is  im- 
possible not  to  turn  with  disgust  from  a  perpetual 
recurrence  of  plunder  and  devastation,  of  cruel  mas- 
sacres, and  of  the  most  treacherous  murders.  Even 
where  the  Celtic  Chiefs  were  induced  sometimes  to 
send  some  contingent  to  strengthen  the  national 
army,  they  could  hardly  be  withheld  from  fighting 
out  their  own  feuds  and  quarrels  in  the  presence  of 
the  common  enemy.  Sometimes,  even  in  moments  of 
common  misfortune,  and  of  national  overthrow,  the 
passions  of  Celtic  Feudalism  could  not  be  restrained 
from  atrocious  acts.  On  the  fatal  field  of  Flodden, 
when  the  King  and  half  the  nobles  of  his  Kingdom, 
with  a  corresponding  proportion  of  their  men,  fell 
under  the  spears  and  arrows  and  battle-axes  of  the 
English  army,  it  is  related  of  a  Highlander  of  the 
Clan  Mackenzie,  that  he  heard  those  near  him  ex- 
claiming, "Alas!  Laird,  thou  hast  fallen."  "What 
Laird?"  shouted  the  Celtic  Clansman.  In  the 
answer,  "  the  Laird  of  Buchanan,"  he  heard  a  name 
with  which  his  own  had  a  blood-feud.  Then  and 
there  the  "faithful  Highlander,"  as  he  is  called  by  the 
sympathetic  historian,  sought  out  the  fallen  Laird, 
found  that  he  was  only  wounded,  and  butchered 
the  helpless  man  without  ruth  or  pity.  Even 
this,  however,  is  by  no  means  the  most  revolting 
kind  of  deed  which  was  only  too  common  among 
the  Clans.  There  was  one  Chief  of  the  name  of 
Macian,  possessing  Ardnamurchan,  who  was  in  per- 
petual feud  with  the  Macleans  of  Mull.  But  the 
softer  passion  on  one  occasion  brought  about  an 

Iipparent  reconciliation,  when  the  Chief  Macian  was 
i  suitor  for  the  hand  of  a  daughter  of  Maclean.     In 
• 


162  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

1588  the  Macians  were  cordially  invited  under  as- 
surance of  peace,  to  come  to  the  wedding  of  their 
Chief.  The  wedding  over,  with  feast  and  wassail, 
and  one  of  the  houses  of  the  country  assigned  to 
the  wedded  pair, — in  the  middle  of  the  night  the 
Macians  were  surrounded  by  the  Macleans  and  mas- 
sacred to  a  man — the  Chief  only  being  spared  to  the 
shrieks  and  entreaties  of  his  wife.1  In  a  raid  of  the 
Clanranald  against  the  Mackenzies  of  Kintail,  a  whole 
congregation  was  burned  to  death  in  the  Church  of 
Gilchrist,  whilst  the  piper  of  the  Macdonalds  played 
round  the  building  to  drown  the  frantic  cries  of  the 
victims.  This  was  so  late  as  1603,  the  year  of 
James  vi.'s  accession  to  the  English  crown.2 

In  visiting  the  lofty  and  striking  precipice  which 
surmounts  the  Island  of  Eigg,  called  the  "  Scoor," 
every  stranger  is  shown  a  spot  where  a  similar 
atrocity  was  committed.  In  the  standing  feud 
between  the  Macdonalds  and  Macleods  the  whole 
population  of  Eigg,  invaded  by  a  superior  force,  had 
taken  refuge  in  a  cave,  the  entrance  to  which  is 
narrow  and  concealed.  Here  they  were  discovered, 
and  the  Macleods  enjoyed  the  savage  pleasure  of 
smoking  the  whole  of  them  to  death,  some  200  in 
number,  by  fires  lighted  at  the  mouth.  When  Sir 
Walter  Scott  visited  the  cave  in  1814,  the  bones  of 
the  victims  still  covered  the  floor,  and  he  carried  off 
a  skull  which  seemed  to  be  that  of  a  young  woman.3 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  where  human  life  was 
so  little  regarded,  property  was  still  more  universally 
held  as  a  prey  to  the  spoiler.  Occasionally  we  have 
details  of  the  ravages  committed.  Thus,  in  1455, 
the  Islanders  attacked  the  Southern  districts  of 
Cumbrae  and  Arran,  from  which  they  took  500 
horses,  10,000  cattle,  and  more  than  1000  sheep  and 
goats.4  In  this  case  it  is  specially  mentioned  that 
the  Clans  did  not  murder  more  than  a  score  of  men, 

1  Gregory,  History  of  the  Clans,  pp.  238-9.         2  Ibid.  p.  303. 

3  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,  vol.  iii.  p.  240. 

4  Gregory,  History  of  the  Clans,  p.  44. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          163 

women,  and  children.  Such  robberies  as  these,  and 
they  were  common,  must  have  reduced  whole 
districts  to  poverty  for  many  years.  In  a  long- 
standing feud  between  the  Macleods  of  Skye  and 
the  Mackenzies  of  Lewis,  we  are  told  that  at 
one  time,  about  the  close  of  the  Sixteenth  Cen- 
tury, both  Clans  were  reduced  to  the  verge  of  ruin, 
and  that  the  people  had  to  live  on  horses,  dogs,  and 
cats.1 

These  are  but  a  few  examples  of  the  whole 
course  of  history  in  the  Islands  and  Western 
Highlands  during  the  Fifteenth  and  Sixteenth 
Centuries.  It  will  be  obvious  that  such  a  condition 
of  things  tended  inevitably  to  render  more  and  more 
absolute  the  power  of  the  Chiefs  over  all  whom  they 
recruited  to  become  members  of  their  Clan.  To  be 
under  the  protection  of  some  powerful  Chief  was 
the  only  chance  of  enjoying  any  peace  or  any  safety 
for  the  dependent  classes.  Those  of  them  who  were 
themselves  little  better  than  soldiers  of  fortune  had 
indeed  a  different  inducement  with  the  same  result. 
Accordingly,  the  Crown  and  Government  of  the 
Kingdom,  in  their  perpetual  contests  with  the 
Western  Chiefs,  determined,  in  1496,  to  assume, 
as  they  had  a  good  right  to  do,  that  those  Chiefs 
were  really  responsible  for  everything  done  or  left 
undone  among  those  over  whom  they  ruled  so 
absolutely.  An  Act  passed  by  the  Lords  of  the 
Council  in  that  year  provided  that  the  Chief  of 
every  Clan  should  be  held  responsible  for  the  due 
execution  of  all  legal  writs  against  the  men  of  his 
own  Clan,  under  penalty  of  being  himself  made 
liable  to  the  party  bringing  the  action.2 

Not  long  after,  in  1502,  the  Government  tried 
to  deal  with  the  great  evil  of  a  purely  military 
population,  the  obedient  followers  of  the  Chiefs, 
settling  in  the  country,  to  the  exclusion,  or  supplant- 
ing, perhaps,  of  the  older  settled  population  who 
may  have  been  the  truer  representatives  of  the 

1  Gregory,  Hist,  of  Clans,  p.  296.  2  Ibid.  p.  91. 


164  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

ancient  Clans.  In  dealing  with  lands  resumed  by 
the  Crown  in  Lochaber,  the  Royal  Commissioners 
were  desired  to  let  the  lands  for  five  years  to  "  true 
men  "-  —that  is,  men  loyally  affected  to  the  Crown— 
and  to  expel  all  "  broken  men  "  from  the  district. 
This  was  the  regular  Parliamentary  phrase  now 
established  by  which  the  military  following  of  Chiefs 
was  designated ;  and  so  numerous  had  this  class 
become  that  the  historian  observes  of  this  part 
of  the  country,  that  in  the  state  of  affairs  then 
prevalent,  the  order  of  the  Lords  of  Council  "  was 
equivalent  to  an  order  to  expel  the  whole  popula- 
tion." 1  But  here  it  is  important  to  observe  that 
the  Commissioners  were  ordered  to  exert  upon  the 
Crown  lands,  in  Lochaber,  exactly  the  same  full 
rights  and  powers  of  Ownership,  which  the  Highland 
Chiefs  had  long  been  exerting  upon  their  own  lands. 
In  both  cases  the  Proprietors  of  those  lands  were 
disposing  of  them  in  favour  of  men  who  could  be 
counted  upon  as  "  true  •"  to  them.  It  was,  in  fact, 
a  process  of  a  "  plantation " — that  is  to  say,  the 
colonising  of  certain  lands  with  Tenants  who  would 
be  loyal  to  the  Owner  of  them.  If  the  truth  could 
now  be  fully  traced,  and  if  we  could  exactly  see  how 
large  tracts  of  Highland  country,  which  had  been 
devastated  by  murderous  raids,  came  to  be  re- 
peopled  and  re-settled  by  so-called  "  Clansmen/' 
we  should  probably  discover  that  in  numberless 
cases  the  process  was  the  same,  and  that  Clans  were 
largely  recruited,  if  not  sometimes  almost  wholly 
replaced  by  "  broken  men "  enlisted  from  other 
districts.  Such  men  owed  everything  they  had 
in  the  new  plantation  to  the  Lords  and  Owners  of 
the  soil  on  which  they  came  to  seek  employment 
and  protection.  Here  and  there  a  case  is  recorded 
which  may  well  lead  us  to  suspect  how  common  it 
must  have  been.  One  of  these  occurs  in  the  history 
of  those  Eastern  Highlands  which  were,  on  the 
whole,  so  much  less  troubled  than  the  Western.  It 

1  Gregory,  History  of  the  Clans,  p.  97. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          165 

is  a  hideous  story  which  is  told  in  the  Chiefs  of 
Grant?  In  revenge  for  the  murder  of  a  kinsman 
somewhere  in  the  valley  of  the  Dee,  the  Chief  of 
Grant  had  incited  and  joined  the  Earl  of  Huntly  in 
slaying  all  the  men  in  the  country  of  the  Dee  where 
the  murder  had  taken  place.  Some  time  after,  on 
visiting  Huntly  at  his  castle  of  Strathbogie,  he  was 
shown  between  sixty  and  eighty  orphan  children 
who  had  been  carried  off  when  their  fathers  were 
slain,  and  were  now  fed  at  one  long  trough,  as  pigs 
are  fed,  one  row  of  children  eating  at  each  side. 
This  sight  is  said  to  have  caused  such  remorse  to 
the  Chief  of  Grant  that  he  carried  off  the  whole  of 
these  children  from  one  side  of  the  trough  and  took 
them  to  his  own  estate  on  Strathspey,  where  they 
were  settled,  taking  the  name  of  Grant,  whilst  those 
on  the  other  side  of  the  trough  were  in  like  manner 
kept  by  Huntly,  and  took  the  name  of  Gordon. 

If  these  things  were  sometimes  done  in  the 
green  tree  of  the  Eastern  Highlands,  how  often  must 
they  have  been  done  in  the  dry  tree  of  the  Western 
Clans  !  It  is  beyond  doubt  that  a  large  part  of  the 
population  of  the  Highlands  are  the  descendants  of 
men  who  were  moved  about  and  planted  from  time 
to  time  by  the  Chiefs  who  disposed  of  their  lands, 
whether  acquired  by  inheritance  or  by  conquest, 
precisely  as  the  Crown  disposed  of  the  Braes  of 
Lochaber,  and  as  the  Grants  disposed  of  the  upper 
valley  of  the  Spey.  In  the  Western  Highlands, 
however,  the  Chiefs  had  a  somewhat  different  end  in 
view.  In  Lochaber  the  King  planted  men  who  were 
to  be  real  farming  Tenants,  holding  under  Leases 
with  their  settled  Covenants,  and  definite  rents. 
In  the  Northern  and  Eastern  Highlands,  such 
families  as  the  Chiefs  of  Grant  aimed  always  princi- 
pally at  the  settlement  and  improvement  of  their 
country.  The  Island  and  Highland  Chiefs,  on  the 
other  hand,  planted  men  who  were  to  be  devoted 
mainly  to  fighting,  whilst  the  possessions  of  the 

i  Vol.  i.  p.  113,  note. 


166  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

real  old  native  population  in  corn  or  cattle  were  to 
be  held  subject  to  the  arbitrary  exactions  of  the 
most  lawless  Celtic  Feudalism. 

The  state  of  things  which  had  again  arisen 
among  the  Western  Isles  towards,  and  after  the 
close  of  the  Sixteenth  Century,  is  indeed  hardly  con- 
ceivable as  co-existing  with  a  national  Government 
in  Scotland.  It  was  almost  if  not  quite  as  bad — as 
dangerous  and  as  discreditable — as  it  had  been  four 
hundred  years  before,  in  the  days  of  Somerled  and 
of  his  immediate  descendants.  The  Chief  who 
styled  himself  Lord  of  the  Isles,  Macdonald,  Lord 
of  Islay  and  Kintyre,  affected  all  the  airs,  and 
assumed  all  the  powers  of  an  independent  Prince. 
He  did  exactly  what  King  Robert  the  Bruce  had 
promised,  some  two  hundred  and  sixty  years  earlier, 
he  would  not  allow  his  subjects  to  do,  namely,  to 
attack  England  through  her  rebellious  Irish.  In 
1595,  Queen  Elizabeth  was  in  serious  trouble  from 
Tyrone's  rebellion.  Whether  from  hostility  to  the 
Reformed  faith,  of  which  Elizabeth  was  the  great 
supporter  in  Europe,  or  from  other  motives,  the 
Macdonalds,  both  of  Islay  and  of  Skye,  allied  them- 
selves with  Tyrone,  and  were  ready  with  a  great 
fleet  of  galleys  and  a  formidable  force  to  land  in 
Ireland,  and  reinforce  the  rebels.  But  the  astute 
Queen  had  friends  as  well  as  enemies  among  the 
Western  Celts.  The  old  loyalty  of  the  Campbells 
to  the  Monarchy  of  Bruce,  and  their  new  loyalty  to 
the  Protestant  religion,  combined  to  ho]d  them  true 
against  an  alliance  so  hostile  to  both  as  the  alliance 
between  the  Clan  Donnell  and  the  Romish  Celts  of 
Ireland.  Accordingly  the  Earl  of  Argyll,  in  coun- 
ter-alliance with  the  Macleans  of  Douart,  and  with 
some  other  septs,  collected  so  large  a  force,  and 
placed  it  in  so  strong  a  flank  position,  that  the 
Macdonalds  did  not  dare  to  pursue  their  expedition, 
and  to  leave  their  own  territories  to  devastation. 
Other  means,  moreover,  were  employed.  The  great 
Ministers  who  served  Elizabeth  so  well  kept  her  well 


THE  EPOCH  OP  THE  CLANS.  167 

informed.  Divisions  were  sown  among  the  Clans  ; 
preparations  were  made  in  time  to  meet  them,  so 
that  when  a  small  portion  of  their  fleet  reached  the 
coast  of  Ireland,  they  were  easily  dispersed,  and  this 
new  insular  armada  dissolved  and  disappeared. 

In  this  incident  we  see  how  little  centuries 
had  done  to  change  the  nature  of  the  Clans. 
Moreover,  we  have  a  sketch  of  one  man  in  par- 
ticular, to  show  how  little  time  had  changed  the 
nature  of  the  Chiefs.  The  description  presented  to 
us  in  history  of  the  person  and  character  of  James 
Macdonald  of  Dunluce,  cousin  of  the  Lord  of  Islay 
and  Kintyre,  reproduces  towards  the  close  of  the 
Sixteenth  Century  all  the  essential  characteristics 
which  we  have  seen  marking  the  career  of  the  Wolf 
of  Badenoch  towards  the  close  of  the  Fourteenth. 
There  is  the  same  mixture  of  Lowland  culture,  of 
wide  acquaintance  with  men  and  things,  and  of 
fierce  and  unscrupulous  conduct  in  the  exercise  of 
an  absolute  local  power.  "  He  seems,"  says  Tytler, 
"  to  have  been  a  perfect  specimen  of  those  Scoto- 
Hebridean  Barons,  who  so  often  concealed  the 
ferocity  of  the  Highland  freebooter  under  the 
polished  exterior  which  they  had  acquired  by  an 
occasional  residence  in  the  Low  Country."  It  was 
his  pleasure  sometimes  to  join  the  Court  at  the 
Palaces  of  Falkland,  Linlithgow,  or  Holyrood. 
There  he  was  the  gayest  among  the  gay,  giving  rich 
presents  to  the  Queen  and  her  ladies,  and  fascinat- 
ing all  observers  by  the  splendour  of  his  tastes,  and 
the  graces  of  his  person  and  manners.  But  suddenly 
some  news  from  the  West  would  trouble  him,  and 
then  "  Macsorlie  "- —  this  accomplished  gentleman — 
would  fly  back  to  his  native  Island,  and  revel  in  the 
worst  atrocities  of  the  Clans.1  This  man,  however, 
had  perhaps  acquired  from  his  connection  with  the 
Celts  of  Ireland  an  exceptional  ferocity.  For  in 
Ireland  Celtic  Feudalism  had  long  reached  the 
lowest  stages  of  violence  and  corruption.  But  the 

1  Tytler's  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  ix.  pp.  252-3. 


168  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Hebridean  Chiefs  were  too  closely  connected  with 
those  of  Antrim  to  escape  the  desperate  contagion. 
And  so  we  have  another  member  of  the  Clan  Donald 
— a  cousin  of  "  Macsorlie,"  who  seems  to  have  been 
by  no  means  behind  his  kinsman  of  Dunluce.  This 
was  the  son  of  the  Lord  of  Islay  and  Kintyre,  also 
highly  favoured  at  the  Co  art  of  James  I.,  knighted 
by  that  Sovereign,  and  conspicuous  in  the  history 
of  the  time  as  Sir  James  Macdonald.  Of  this  man 
the  incredible  atrocity  is  recorded  that  in  order  to 
accomplish  the  death  of  some  feudal  enemy,  he  set 
fire  to  the  house  where  his  own  father  and  mother 
were  living  at  the  time.  Escaping  with  difficulty, 
and  severely  burnt,  the  father  was  confined  in  irons 
for  several  months — until,  probably,  he  had  consented 
to  the  transfer  of  his  authority  by  a  premature  suc- 
cession.1 Assuming  the  command  of  the  Clan,  Sir 
James  was  soon  involved  in  a  furious  contest  with 
the  Macleans  of  Douart,  the  circumstances  of  which 
are  variously  narrated,  but  which  in  the  pages  of 
Tytler2  appear  as  an  additional  example  not  only 
of  ferocity,  but  of  the  basest  treachery.  Maclean 
was  an  uncle  of  Sir  James,  but  he  was  a  firm  friend 
of  Queen  Elizabeth,  and  of  that  Protestant  cause  of 
which  she  was  the  rallying  centre,  and  the  standard- 
bearer.  The  Macdonalds  seem  to  have  all  been  more 
or  less  in  league  with  the  Irish  enemies  of  the  Queen, 
and  the  determined  enemies  of  the  Clans  who  were 
most  loyal  to  the  Scottish  Monarchy.  On  this 
occasion  Douart  and  most  of  his  men  were  slaugh- 
tered, and  the  Cause  in  which  they  had  fought 
together,  fell  chiefly  into  the  hands  of  the  Campbells. 
The  interest  of  these  stories,  however,  does  not 
lie  either  in  the  illustrations  of  individual  character, 
or  even  in  the  picture  they  present  of  the  habits  and 
manners  of  the  time.  It  lies,  rather,  in  the  evidence 
they  afford  as  to  the  condition  of  the  people.  It  is 
quite  certain  that  they  were  absolutely  at  the  dis- 

1  Gregory's  Highlands,  pp.  281-2. 

2  Tytler's  History  of  Scotland,  vol.  ix.  p.  251. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  169 

posal  of  their  Chiefs.  Even  when  these  Chiefs  did 
not  use  them  as  soldiers,  but  left  them  to  cultivate 
the  ground,  and  employed  mercenaries,  all  the  re- 
sources by  which  these  mercenaries  were  sustained 
came  out  of  the  ceaseless  and  unlimited  exactions 
from  the  native  husbandmen,  which  were  the  inse- 
parable concomitant  of  Celtic  Feudalism.  All  the 
minor  Chieftains  and  all  the  retainers  of  the  Chiefs 
were  quartered  on  the  people  of  the  country,  who 
were,  besides,  liable  to  be  cleared  off  and  removed 
as  a  matter  of  regular  bargain  among  the  Chiefs 
when  they  treated  with  each  other  for  exchanges  or 
extensions  of  territorial  possession.  The  delusion 
that  prehistoric  "  Tribal  rights "  had  outlived  the 
transforming  processes  of  Clanship,  and  the  absolute 
dependence  of  the  people  for  many  centuries  on 
military  Chiefs,  is  a  delusion  which  is  effectually  dis- 
pelled if  we  look  for  a  moment  at  the  historical  facts 
which  emerge  in  all  the  transactions  of  this  time. 
Thus  it  was  one  of  the  conditions  offered  to  the 
Crown  by  Sir  James  Macdonald,  in  return  for  cer- 
tain advantages,  that  he  would  give  up  Kintyre 
and  remove  "his  whole  Clan  and  dependers"  from 
it,  so  that  the  lands  should  be  completely  cleared, 
and  placed  at  the  disposal  of  the  Crown  for  the  re- 
letting  of  it  to  new  Tenants.1  The  Island  of  Coll 
had  been  similarly  cleared  in  1 596  by  the  Macdonalds.2 
Everywhere  and  in  everything  the  Chiefs  were 
absolute,  and  the  more  Celtic  Institutions  were 
allowed  their  full  development,  the  more  abject 
became  the  condition  of  the  people. 

And  now  let  us  see  the  consequences.  The  evi- 
dence comes  to  us  in  the  most  formal  and  authentic 
shape.  Soon  after  James  vi.  united  the  two  Crowns, 
he  resolved,  as  so  many  of  his  ancestors  had  resolved 
before  him,  to  restore  peace  and  law  to  the  Islands 
and  Highlands  of  his  native  country.  After  several 
abortive  expeditions  and  negotiations,  for  this  pur- 
pose he  appointed  a  special  Commissioner  who  was 

1  Gregory,  p.  288.  2  Ibid.  p.  269. 


170  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

to  visit  the  Hebrides  and  call  the  Chiefs  to  a 
friendly  conference.  The  Commissioner  selected 
was  the  minister  who  had  accepted  the  Bishoprick 
of  the  Isles  and  the  Deanery  of  lona,  under  the 
new  Episcopacy  which  James  had  then  restored. 
Whatever  doubts  the  Presbyterian  people  of  Scot- 
land may  have  had  as  to  the  constitutional  character 
of  the  proceedings  under  which  the  Restoration  had 
been  effected,  no  such  doubts  could  affect  the  Island 
Chiefs.  Constitutional  illegality  was  the  very  last 
thing  that  could  offend,  or  even  be  observed  by 
Highlanders  amongst  whom  the  Reformed  faith  and 
the  Presbyterian  Church  had  as  yet  made  but  little 
way.  They  were  probably  rather  conciliated  by 
this  renewal  of  an  ancient  Dignity,  and  they  came 
in  numbers  to  meet  the  Commissioner  of  the  Crown. 
The  place  of  meeting  was  wisely  selected  as  one  that 
was  attractive  to  them.  It  was  that  Holy  Island,  in 
whose  ancient  Churchyard  all  the  Kings  and  Chief- 
tains of  the  Isles  had  been  buried  for  900  years. 
Their  descendants  seem  to  have  come  willingly  to 
the  place  where  probably  many  of  them  had  come 
before  to  bury  their  own  Dead,  in  the  same  sacred 
soil.  And  there  they  finally  came  under  certain 
solemn  engagements,  founded  on  a  narrative  and 
confession  as  to  existing  evils,  which  have  become 
known  in  Scottish  history  as  the  "  Statutes  of  lona." 
These  authentically  reveal  to  us  both  the  condi- 
tion to  which  the  country  had  been  reduced  and  the 
causes  which  were  now  acknowledged  to  be  at  the 
root  of  its  decline.  The  Bond  which  the  Chiefs  sub- 
scribed proceeded  on  the  narrative  or  confession  of 
"the  great  misery,  barbarity,  and  poverty  unto  which, 
for  the  present,  their  barren  country  was  subject." 
Nor  were  these  sweeping  words  used  without  ade- 
quate explanation  in  detail.  Religion  had  fallen 
into  universal  decay.  The  old  order  had  passed 
away,  and  no  new  order  had  been  established  in  its 
place.  The  clergy  had  been  starved  and  banished. 
The  Churches  had  been  allowed  to  fall  into  ruins. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  171 

Christianity  had  become  little  more  than  a  memory 
and  a  name.  Marriage  itself  had  ceased  to  be 
an  institution  of  general  obligation,  and  had  largely 
been  replaced  among  the  people  by  an  old  Celtic 
barbarous  custom  called  "  Handfasting,"  which 
was  a  contract  of  union  for  some  short  term  of 
years  only.  It  is  difficult  to  conceive  a  more  ter- 
rible indictment  against  any  system  of  life  and 
government  than  that  which  was  admitted  and 
acknowledged  to  be  true  of  the  country  which  had 
been  so  long  under  the  sway  of  Celtic  Feudalism. 
Nor  are  the  promised  remedies  and.  reforms  less 
eloquent  than  the  general  confession.  The  Statutes 
of  lona  numbered  nine  in  all — referring  to  so  many 
separate  measures  to  be  taken,  and  to  the  taking 
of  which  all  the  Chiefs  solemnly  bound  themselves 
by  an  oath  under  the  most  solemn  sanctions  of 
a  most  solemn  place.  Of  these  nine  Statutes  it  is 
a  memorable  fact  that  no  less  than  four  were  directly 
aimed  at  abuses  which  were  the  invariable  product 
of  the  unwritten  laws  and  usages  of  Celtic  Feudalism. 
These  abuses  indicate  precisely  the  same  conditions 
of  absolutism  on  the  part  of  the  Chiefs,  and  pre- 
cisely the  same  kind  of  sufferings  on  the  part  of 
their  people,  which  we  have  seen  Sir  John  Davies 
denouncing  in  Ireland  about  the  same  time,  and 
both  of  which  were  the  natural  and  necessary 
jsults  of  loose  and  traditional  customs  smothering 
itten  laws  and  definite  agreements. 

O  * 

The  first  Statute  which  bears  upon  these  was 
me  for  the  establishment  of  Inns,  on  the  express 
"ound  that  the  burden  of  supporting  all  strangers 
tad  hitherto  been  thrown  upon  the  Tenants  and 
ibourers   of  the  ground.     The  second  Regulation 
touching  the  -same  subject,  struck  at  another  form 
of   the    same    abuse,    namely,    the    multitudinous 
retainers  and  personal  attendants  of  the  Chiefs,  the 
cost  of  whose  support  was  also  habitually  thrown 
on  the  same  helpless  classes  in  addition  to  their 
usual  rents.      These  retainers  were  in  future  to  be 


172  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

limited  in  number,  and  it  was  specially  provided 
that  each  Chief  should  support  his  Household  out 
of  his  own  regular  rents,  and  not  by  indefinite 
exactions  levied  from  his  Tenantry.  When  we 
look  into  the  rules  laid  down  under  this  Statute, 
which  indicate  the  number  of  personal  retainers 
which  was  thought  reasonable  for  the  station  of  the 
leading  Chiefs,  our  eyes  become  opened  to  the  pre- 
valent delusion  that  the  dues  paid  by  the  occupying 
class  to  the  Owners  were  light  and  easy  under  Celtic 
Feudalism.  The  habitual  entertainment  of  gentle- 
man-followers to  numbers  varying  from  ten  to  eight, 
or  from  six  to  three,  by  each  of  the  Chiefs  and 
Chieftains  of  the  impoverished  Hebrides,  indicates 
an  immense  drain  on  the  sources  of  such  a  country. 
When  we  remember  that  these  gentlemen-retainers 
were  men  who  lived  at  the  same  board  with  the  Chief 
— that  hardly  any  articles  of  foreign  produce,  except 
wine,  were  then  imported — that  they  did  no  work  of 
a  productive  kind — that  they  were  supported  in  addi- 
tion to  the  servants  necessary  for  work, — we  must 
come  to  the  conclusion  that  the  rents  paid  in  produce 
by  the  people  must  have  been  relatively  very  much 
greater  than  are  paid  in  modern  times.  There  are 
very  few  Landowners  now  except  some  of  the  very 
richest,  and  certainly  there  is  no  mere  Highland 
Landowner,  who  would  not  find  the  habitual  enter- 
tainment of  six  or  eight  gentlemen  at  his  table  all 
the  year  rourj.d,  an  intolerable,  or  perhaps  even  an 
exhausting  burden,  when  added  to  the  unavoidable 
cost  of  service.  We  may  well  conceive  then  what 
the  habitual  oppression  of  the  people  must  have 
been  under  the  native  usages  which  rendered  it 
habitual  to  throw  burdens  indefinitely  heavier  than 
this  upon  the  Tenants  in  addition  to  any  fixed 
or  stipulated  rents.  The  third  Statute  of  the 
same  class  applied  the  same  principle  to  all  who 
were  "  Sorners "  in  the  country,  that  is  to  say, 
persons  living  at  free  quarters  upon  the  poor 
inhabitants. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  173 

The  Fourth  Statute  aiming  at  reform  is  per- 
haps the  most  remarkable  of  all,  because  it  touched 
one  of  the  most  purely  native  and  the  most  char- 
acteristically Celtic  habits  of  life  which  prevailed  in 
the  country,  and  which  in  itself  might  appear  to 
be  the  most  harmless,  as  it  certainly  was  one  of  the 
most  poetic  and  the  most  attractive.  This  was  the 
habitual  entertainment  of  travelling  Bards  who  by 
Harp  and  Song  handed  down  the  stories  and 
traditions  of  the  Clans.  But  it  was  precisely  in 
this  attractiveness  that  the  danger  lay.  The  bloody 
experience  of  many  centuries  had  shown,  and  the 
exhausted  condition  of  the  country  then  showed, 
that  the  very  root  of  the  evil  lay  in  the  deathless 
animosities  between  Clan  and  Clan,  and  the  cruel 
passions  which  were  developed  in  the  prosecution  of 
them.  It  was  the  very  business  of  the  Bards  to 
carry  these  on  from  generation  to  generation,  and 
by  all  the  incitements  of  voice  and  of  stringed 
instruments  to  keep  every  offence  from  being  for- 
gotten, and  every  deed  of  barbarous  revenge  from 
being  repented  of.  Sitting  in  the  hall  of  some 
strong  Keep,  built  upon  a  stormy  headland  or  a 
sheltered  Islet, — or  in  the  one  long  undivided  apart- 
ment which  occupied  the  whole  of  a  house  built  of 
turf  and  wattles, — the  Bards  kept  up  round  roaring 
fires,  and  in  the  midst  of  still  more  uproarious 
companies,  the  unquenchable  flames  of  hatred  and 
revenge.  Thus  a  barbarous  Past  was  kept  from 
ever  becoming  a  Past  at  all.  Time  was  not  allowed 
to  have  any  effect  in  softening  manners,  or  in 
bringing  about  the  oblivion  of  injuries.  So  real  and 
so  practical  was  this  tremendous  evil  that  we  read 
of  one  feud  between  two  Clans — the  same,  it  is 
believed,  that  fought  on  the  Inch  of  Perth — whose 
feud  is  known  to  have  lasted  fully  300  years.1  Of 
all  the  causes  which  led  to  this  condition  of  things, 
and  kept  it  up,  the  Bards  were  the  incarnation.  It 
was,  therefore,  from  no  idle  Lowland  prejudice,  but 

.      1  Gregory's  Histvry,  p.  78. 


174  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

from  the  true  and  instinctive  perception  of  the 
authorities  who  were  brought  face  to  face  with  the 
problem  how  to  redeem  the  Islands  and  Western 
Highlands  from  utter  barbarism,  that  they  called 
upon  the  Celtic  Chiefs  to  suppress  the  Bards,  and 
that  the  Bards  themselves  were  threatened  first 
with  the  stocks  and  then  with  banishment.1 

The  best  remedy,  however,  which  was  provided 
by  the  Statutes  of  lona,  was  that  which  provided  for 
a  re-establishment  of  a  free  communication  with  the 
more  civilised  portions  of  the  Kingdom  such  as 
might  bring  about  once  more  some  amalgamation  of 
the  two  races,  and  some  community  of  thought  and 
sentiment.  With  this  view  it  was  provided  that 
every  Highlander  who  possessed  as  much  as  sixty 
head  of  cattle  should  send  his  eldest  son  or  his 
eldest  daughter  to  school  in  the  Lowlands,  till  he 
or  she  had  learned  to  speak,  read,  and  write  the 
English  language.  It  is  said  that  this  provision, 
as  much  as  any  other,  had  speedy  and  permanent 
effects — that  it  led  in  the  next  generation  to  that 
personal  loyalty  to  the  House  of  Stuart  which  many 
of  the  Islanders  displayed  in  the  following  century. 
Representing,  as  I  do,  a  Clan  and  family  who  were 
true  to  the  Stuarts  so  long  as  the  Stuarts  were  true 
to  the  Laws  and  Constitution  of  their  country,  but 
who  preferred  that  Law  and  Constitution  to  any  mere 
personal  affection,  I  can  only  in  imagination  admire 
the  opposite  preference  shown  by  the  Jacobite  Clans. 
But  at  least  their  conduct,  in  that  great  division  of 
opinion,  exhibited  an  unspeakable  elevation  of 
character  above  that  which  had  so  long  been  spent 
on  their  own  broils.  Those  who  are  faithful  to  a 
great  Cause  with  all  its  attachments  of  intellect  and 
heart,  must  ever  rank  higher  in  the  history  of 
civilisation  than  those  who  are  faithful  merely  to  a 
great  Family.  But  it  is  impossible  to  praise  too 
highly  the  unselfish  and  incorruptible  devotion  with 
which  so  many  of  the  Celtic  Clans,  and  the 

1  Gregory's  History,  pp.  330-33. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          175 

poorest  members  of  these,  resisted  the  bribes  and 
threats  of  a  powerful  government  equally  strong  to 
punish  or  reward,  in  their  protection  of  the  Royal 
fugitive  who  lived  so  long  in  the  cliffs  and  caves  of 
Skye.  There  was  not  only  genuine  poetry  in  it, 
but  genuine  virtue  too.  It  is  an  immortal  page  in 
an  otherwise  rude  and  melancholy  history,  and  has 
conferred  upon  the  Celtic  character  a  just  and 
imperishable  renown. 

We  have,  however,  a  signal  illustration  of  the 
elements  of  charm  and  of  attraction  which  that 
character  has  included,  and  of  the  somewhat  dis- 
torting effect  which  has  been  exerted  by  its  poetry 
and  romance,  when  we  look  at  the  popular  estimate 
which  has  been  formed  of  the  Clan  system  as  it 
existed  in  the  Celtic  Highlands  and  as  it  existed 
in  those  Border  Highlands  in  which  the  population 
was  predominantly  Scoto- Saxon.  It  seems  to  be  now 
almost  forgotten  that  neither  in  nature  nor  even  in 
name,  was  the  Clan  organisation  confined  to  the 
Celtic  Highlands.  We  have  the  best  possible 
evidence  on  this  subject — the  evidence  of  the 
language  and  of  the  action  of  contemporary  Par- 
liaments, embracing  representative  men  from  all 
corners  of  the  Kingdom  who  could  not  possibly  be 
mistaken  on  the  identity  of  the  social  phenomena 
with  which  they  were  called  to  deal  in  its  different 
Provinces.  Moreover  this  evidence  of  instinctive 
recognition  is  corroborated  and  confirmed  by  the 
still  higher  evidence  of  clear  intellectual  definitions. 
Those  Parliaments  had  before  them  tremendous  prac- 
tical evils,  exposing  Society  very  often  to  great  suffer- 
ing, and  to  the  continual  dread  and  anticipation  of  it. 
They  were  compelled  to  think  about,  and  to  define 
to  themselves  and  others  for  the  purposes  of  legis- 
lation, the  root  and  source  of  such  great  evils. 
Accordingly  they  arrived  at  consistent  and  clearly 
intelligible  results.  They  had  before  them  two 
great  sources  of  power  and  of  authority.  One  of 
these  was  the  power  of  the  Proprietor  of  land  in  the 


176  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

exercise  of  the  rights  of  Ownership.  The  other  of 
these  was  the  power  of  a  few  great  Families  in  the 
exercise  of  the  power  of  Chiefship.  The  powers  of 
Ownership  rested  upon  chartered  and  legal  authority, 
in  close  connection  with  systems  of  law  and  of  tradi- 
tion as  wide-spreading  as  the  civilisation  of  Europe 
both  in  the  ancient  and  in  the  modern  world.  The 
power  of  Chiefs  rested  on  unwritten  and  indefinite 
usages,  on  influences  essentially  local,  personal,  and 
individual.  These  were  not  formal  differences. 
They  were  differences  in  the  nature  of  things.  The 
interest  of  a  Proprietor  of  land,  as  such,  lay  in  the 
improvement  of  the  soil,  the  increase  of  its  produce, 
in  the  peace  of  the  country,  in  the  growing  wealth  of 
its  population.  The  interests  of  a  Chief,  merely  as 
such,  were  generally  the  interests  of  a  political  and 
Military  Leader,  whose  ambitions,  passions,  and 
desires,  did  not  by  any  means  tend  to  be  in  harmony 
with  the  national  government  or  the  general 
interests  of  the  country. 

As  between  these  two  great  sources  of  influence 
and  of  power  there  could  be  no  doubt  in  the  Six- 
teenth Century  which  of  them  was  the  instrument 
to  be  relied  upon  in  the  cause  of  Law,  Order,  and 
Civilisation.  This  was  the  question  which,  under 
the  pressure  of  great  and  intolerable  disorders  in 
many  parts  of  the  Kingdom,  came  at  last  to  be 
specially  dealt  with,  first,  by  the  Parliament  of  1581, 
and,  next,  by  the  Parliament  of  1587. 

The  first  of  these  does  not  give  a  flattering 
description  of  the  confraternities  of  men  who  then 
were  known  under  the  name  of  Clans.  It  calls  them 
"Clans  of  thieves,"  and  says  they  were  "for  the 
most  part  copartners  of  wicked  men,  coupled  in 
fellowship  by  occasion  of  their  surnames,  or  near 
dwelling  together,  or  through  keeping  society  in 
theft,  or  reset  of  theft,  not  subject  to  the  ordinary 
Courts  of  Justice,  nor  to  any  Landlord  that  will 
make  them  amenable  to  the  laws,  but  commonly 
dwelling  upon  sundry  men's  lands  against  the  g( 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  177 

will  of  their  Landlords,  whereby  true  men  injured 
by  them  can  have  no  remedy  at  the  hands  of  their 
masters." 

The  Parliament  of  1587  dealt  with  this  con- 
dition of  things  much  more  carefully,  and  with 
an  amount  of  detail  which  is  of  the  highest  his- 
torical interest.  It  was  held  in  Edinburgh,  and 
was  attended  by  a  full  proportion  of  the  classes 
which  generally  attended  the  Great  Council  of 
bhe  nation  in  those  days.  In  particular,  there 
were  both  among  the  clerical  and  the  lay  members 
men  from  parts  of  the  Kingdom  who  lived  in ,  or  in 
the  neighbourhood  both  of  the  Celtic  and  of  the 
Anglo-Saxon  Highlands.  The  Earls  of  Lennox,  of 
Mar  and  of  Huntly,  the  Abbots  of  Melros,  Scone, 
Inchaffray,  Paisley,  and  many  others,  the  representa- 
tives for  the  Burghs  of  Aberdeen,  Stirling,  Inverness, 
Dingwall,  Wigton,  Selkirk,  and  Dumfries,  must  have 
known  what  they  were  talking  about  when  they 
absolutely  identified  the  Clan  system  of  the  High- 
lands proper,  with  the  Clan  system  of  the  Border 
Hills  and  Vales.  This  they  did,  not  only  in  the 
general  title  of  the  statutes  they  passed,  or  in  any 
loose  cursory  application  of  the  same  words  to  things 
which  were  only  analogous,  but  not  in  principle  the 
same.  They  conjoined  together  the  Highlands  and 
the  Borders  in  these  titles  indeed,  but  also  in  the 
far  more  effective  way  of  defining  that  feature  of 
Clanship  in  which  its  essence  lay.  This  was  in  the 
power  of  Chiefship  as  distinguished  from  the  power 
of  Ownership.  It  was  the  Chiefs  as  such  who  re- 
cruited, entertained,  and  harboured  "broken  men." 
It  was  the  Chiefs  who  waged  war  against  each 
other,  and  overruled  and  overrode  the  legitimate 
influence  of  Proprietors  over  their  own  Tenants.  It 
was  to  Proprietors  that  the  Legislature  looked  for 
a  remedy  to  this  state  of  things.  It  was  to  their 
legal  and  authorised  powers  that  it  appealed  as  in- 
volving corresponding  duties  in  keeping  the  peace  of 
the  country.  They  had  a  right  to  turn  out  "  broken 

M 


178  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

men  "  who  lived  upon  their  Estates.  They  had  a 
right  to  let  their  lands  on  any  condition  they  liked. 
They  were  not  to  allow  themselves,  if  they  could 
help  it,  to  be  reduced  to  the  condition  of  mere  rent- 
chargers  on  their  own  Estates — divorced  from  the 
powers  and  rights  which  they  held  as  Owners  of  the 
soil.  If,  indeed,  from  living  in  the  "  far  Hielands," 
or  on  the  Borders,  they  were  helpless  in  the  matter  ; 
if  they  lived  on  their  Estates,  and  yet  could  only 
get  their  "mailes  and  rents,  and  no  other  service 
or  obedience,"  then  such  landlords  were  to  be  exempt 
from  penalty  for  consequences  which  they  could  not 
prevent.  But  as  soon  as  possible  they  were  to 
deliver  themselves  from  such  a  condition.1  It  was 
their  duty  not  to  let  their  farms,  or  other  holdings, 
to  men  who  were  not  loyal  subjects  of  the  Crown. 

This  language  was  addressed  equally  to  all 
Owners  of  land  over  all  the  Highlands,  Celtic  and 
non- Celtic.  The  tongue  spoken  in  particular  dis- 
tricts could  make  no  difference  in  these  rights  and 
powers  of  Ownership  as  known  to  the  law,  nor  could 
it  make  any  difference  in  the  duties  they  imposed. 
Therefore,  all  over  the  Kingdom,  both  in  the  Borders 
and  in  the  Highlands,  the  Proprietors  of  land  were 
exhorted  and  enjoined  to  resist  to  the  utmost  the 
unlawful  powers  of  Chiefs  over  the  Tenants  and 
others  who  lived  upon  their  land,  and  they  were 
especially  enjoined  not  to  let  their  land  on  hire  to 
such  men  as  would  lend  themselves  to  such  leaders. 

But  in  order  to  make  these  enactments  more  defi 
nite  and  practical,  two  lists  or  "  Bolls  "  were  drawn 
up,  and  scheduled  in  the  Act ;  one  of  them  being  a 
"Boll  of  the  Clans  that  has  Captains,  Chiefs,  and 
Chieftains,  on  whom  they  depend  oft  time  against  the 
wills  of  their  Landlords,  as  well  on  the  Borders  as  the 
Highlands,  and  of  some  special  persons  of  Branches 
of  the  said  Clans."  The  other  list  was  a  "  Boll  of 
the  Landlords  and  Baillies  of  lands  dwelling  in  the 
Borders  and  the  Highlands  where  broken  men  have 

1  Act.  Parl  (Jacob,  vi.)  vol.  iii.  p.  462. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  179 

dwelt,  and  presently  dwell/'  At  the  head  of  the 
first  of  these  rolls  we  find  some  of  the  most  famed 
names  of  families  of  the  Border  Counties  or  the 
non-Celtic  Highlands  —  such  as  the  Elliotts,  the 
Scots,  the  Armstrongs,  the  Johnstones,  the  Jardines, 
Maxwells  and  Carruthers.  These  are  bracketed  in 
the  same  list  with  the  Macdonalds,  the  Macleods, 
the  Mackintoshes,  the  Camerons,  and  all  the  best 
known  Chiefs  of  the  Clans  in  the  Western  Isles  and 
Highlands,  as  well  as  in  the  central  and  eastern 
districts  of  the  Celtic  area.  It  is  quite  evident  that 
at  that  time  the  system  of  men  aggregated  into 
Septs  and  Clans  under  a  common  name,  and  with  at 
least  a  flavour  and  a  memory  of  common  blood,  was 
so  identical  in  the  two  great  divisions  of  the  King- 
dom that  no  distinction  could  be  drawn  either  in  its 
principle,  or  in  its  effects.  It  is  evident  also  that 
the  evil  and  danger  of  this  system  essentially  con- 
sisted in  the  military  and  predatory  character  which 
these  Septs  and  Clans  tended  to  assume — in  the 
perpetuation  of  feuds,  and  generally  in  the  en- 
couragement of  a  lawless  spirit,  and  the  practices 
of  a  lawless  life. 

Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  the  short  but  powerful 
sketch  of  the  history  of  the  Southern  Counties  dur- 
ing 300  years,  which  he  has  given  in  the  preface  to 
his  Minstrelsy  of  the  Scottish  Border,  has  entirely 
accepted  this  view  of  the  identity  of  the  Clan  sys- 
tem in  the  two  divisions  of  the  Kingdom.  Through- 
out the  pages  of  that  sketch,  he  speaks  of  the  great 
families  of  the  Border  as  the  Chiefs  and  heads  of 
Clans.  He  even  speaks  of  the  " Tribe;"  and  his 
narrative  affords  signal  examples  of  all  the  charac- 

rib        O  x 

teristic  features  of  Celtic  Clanship.  The  broken 
remains  of  some  decimated  Sept  were  in  the  habit 
of  joining  and  merging  in  some  other  more  fortunate 
and  more  powerful  Clan.  Exactly  the  same  results 
to  the  nation  and  to  society  had  arisen  in  both 
areas.  In  the  Fifteenth  Century  the  great  House  of 
Douglas  played,  in  the  southern  part  of  the  Kingdom, 


180  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

towards  the  Scottish  Crown  and  Monarchy  a  part 
strictly  analogous  to  that  which,  during  the  previous 
Century,  had  been  played  in  the  Highlands  by  the 
Lords  of  the  Isles  and  the  Earls  of  Ross.  And  when 
that  great  House  was  broken  up,  its  place  was  taken 
by  a  crowd  of  Clans,  which  kept  up  against  each  other, 
and  often  against  the  Crown,  the  same  perpetual 
feuds,  and  the  same  frequent  rebellions.  The  only 
difference  between  the  Celtic  and  the  non- Celtic 
Clans  and  Septs  lay  in  the  geographical  situation  of 
their  respective  countries,  and  in  the  distinctions  of 
language.  Both  of  these  differences  tended  to  keep 
up  the  Clan  system  in  the  Highlands  long  after  it 
had  practically  disappeared  in  the  Lowland  coun- 
ties. The  Union  of  the  Crowns  under  James  vi.,  in 
1603,  put  an  end  to  the  isolated  position  of  the 
southern  Clans  as  Borderers.  As  Sir  Walter  Scott 
pithily  puts  it,  this  event  "  converted  the  extremity 
into  the  centre  of  his  Kingdom.'' *  Community  of 
language  had  been  already  established  for  centuries 
between  the  southern  Clans  .and  their  neighbours  in 
the  Low  Country. 

The  Reformation  took  a  powerful  hold  over  the 
population  of  the  Borders ;  and  it  is  well  known 
that  a  few  years  later  they  furnished  the  most  un- 
compromising adherents  and  martyrs  of  the  Pres- 
byterian Covenant.  On  the  other  hand,  the  Celtic 
Clans  continued  as  isolated  and  inaccessible  as 
before,  and  their  language  and  habits  were  an  in- 
superable barrier  to  any  real  community  of  thought. 
The  Reformation  did  not,  until  a  much  later  date, 
make  much  progress  among  the  Celtic  population. 
They  had  no  religious  sympathy  whatever  with 
the  powerful  motives  and  incitements  which  kept 
up  among  the  Presbyterian  people  a  passionate 
devotion  to  constitutional  liberty,  and  to  a  system 
of  government  strictly  subordinate  to  law.  All 
this  is  intelligible  enough.  But  what  is  less  intel- 
ligible is  the  extent  to  which  it  is  forgotten  that  the 

1  Minstrelsy,  Pref.  p.  xlviii.  (ed.  1802). 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          181 

ultimate  decline  of  the  Clan  system  in  the  Highlands 
and  in  the  Borders  was  due  to  the  same  general 
causes  which  operated  in  both  cases  the  same  kind 
and  measure  of  improvement.  The  only  difference 
was  that  the  change  came  in  the  Highlands  more 
suddenly,  and  later  by  more  than  a  hundred  years. 
But  the  essence  of  that  change  was  the  same  in 
both  cases.  It  was  the  decline,  on  the  one  hand, 
of  usages  unwritten  and  unknown  to  the  law.  It 
was  the  emergence,  on  the  other  hand, — the  survival 
and  working — of  powers  and  influences  which  were 
imbedded  in  the  Legislation  of  many  centuries,  and 
had  been  from  time  immemorial  the  basis  of  all 
civilisation.  The  Chief,  as  such,  lost  a  power  which 
was  checked  by  no  responsibility,  and  was  only  by 
accident  connected  with  any  public  duty.  The 
Proprietor,  as  such,  became  free  to  exercise  powers 
which  were  recognised  by  law,  and  were,  in  the 
nature  of  things,  inseparably  bound  up  with  the 
progress  of  the  country  and  the  advance  of  agri- 
culture. 

Yet,  strange  to  say,  the  imaginations  of  men  in 
the  Highlands  continued,  down  to  our  own  time,  to 
think  of  the  Clan  as  having  a  legal  and  substantive 
existence  there,  although  it  had  for  two  centuries 
ceased  to  be  even  thought  of  in  the  Border  Counties, 
where  it  had  once  been  quite  as  powerful,  and  quite 
as  universally  established.  With  such  vividness 
was  this  imagination  entertained,  that  so  late  as 
the  year  1852  an  attempt  was  made  by  a  man  of 
the  name  of  Macgillivray  to  claim  certain  lands  from 
the  natural  heir,  on  the  ground  that  this  heir  did 
not  belong  to  the  "  Clan  Chattan,"  whilst  he,  the 
claimant,  did  belong  to  it.  Such  a  claim  showed 
a  wonderful  forgetfulness  of  the  methods  by  which 
Clans  had  been  maintained.  They  had  been  kept 
up  by  mere  enlistment — by  "  Bonds  of  Manrent  " 
entered  into  with  strangers — by  the  adoption  of  the 
children  of  slaughtered  foes, — by  the  absorption  of 
the  broken  remnants  of  other  Septs.  It  would 


182  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

have  been  a  return  to  barbarism,  indeed,  if  mythical 
"  Tribal  rights  "  had  been  suffered  to  disinherit  the 
nearest  blood-relations  of  the  last  Proprietor,  and  to 
establish  in  possession  the  descendant,  perhaps,  of 
some  "broken  man"  of  a  hostile  Sept,  who  had 
changed  his  allegiance  and  his  name.  That  such  a 
claim  should  have  been  made  is  another  example, 
in  a  separate  line  of  action,  of  the  corrupting  effect 
of  sentimental  admiration  for  Celtic  Feudalism,  of 
which  we  have  already  seen  other  illustrations.  The 
claim  brought  up  before  the  Supreme  Court  in  Scot- 
land the  whole  question  whether  the  Clan  organisa- 
tion had  any  existence  which  could  be  recognised 
by  law.  The  decision  of  that  Court  is  one  of  high 
legal  and  historical  interest,  and  bears  upon  the  face 
of  it  its  justice  and  its  truth.  I  give  it  therefore  in 
full,  as  quoted  by  Mr.  Skene  : — 

"  The  lapse  of  time  and  the  progress  of  civilisation, 
with  the  attendant  influences  of  settled  Govern- 
ment, regular  authority,  and  the  supremacy  of  law, 
have  entirely  obliterated  the  peculiar  features,  and 
destroyed  the  essential  qualities  and  character  of 
Scottish  Clanship,  but  whether  they  are  viewed  as 
they  once  were,  or  as  they  now  are,  a  Court  of  Law 
is  equally  precluded  from  recognising  clans  as  exist- 
ing institutions  or  societies  with  legal  status,  the 
membership  of  which  can  be  inquired  into  or 
acknowledged  for  ascertaining  the  character  of 
heirs  called  to  succession. 

"  The  inquiry  which  the  pursuer's  averments 
would  here  demand  must  be  attended  with  extreme 
practical  difficulties  ;  but  the  recognition  of  a  Clan 
as  an  institution  or  society  known  to  law,  so  that 
membership  thereof  shall  be  a  quality  of  heirship 
and  a  condition  of  succession,  is  open  to  serious 
objection  in  point  of  principle. 

"  In  an  earlier  age,  when  feudal  authority  and 
irresponsible  power  were  stronger  than  the  law,  and 
formidable  to  the  Crown,  Clans  and  Chiefs,  with 
military  character,  feudal  subordination  and  internal 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.  183 

arbitrary  dominion,  were  allowed  to  sustain  a 
tolerated,  but  not  a  legally  recognised  or  sanctioned 
existence. 

"  In  more  recent  times  Clans  are  indeed 
mentioned,  or  recognised  as  existing,  in  several 
Acts  of  Parliament.  But  it  is  thought  that  they 
are  not  mentioned  or  recognised  as  institutions  or 
societies  having  legal  status,  legal  rights,  or  legal 
vocation  or  functions,  but  rather  as  associations 
of  a  lawless,  arbitrary,  turbulent,  and  dangerous 
character. 

"  But  nothing  now  remains  either  of  the  feudal 
power  and  independent  dominion  which  procured 
sufferance  in  one  age,  or  of  the  lawless  and  dangerous 
turbulence  which  required  suppression  in  another. 
When  all  military  character,  all  feudal  subordination, 
all  heritable  jurisdiction,  all  independent  authority 
of  Chiefs,  are  extracted  from  what  used  to  be  called 
a  Clan,  nothing  remains  of  its  essential  and  peculiar 
features.  Clans  are  no  longer  what  they  were. 
The  purposes  for  which  they  once  existed,  as 
tolerated  but  not  as  sanctioned  societies,  are  not 
now  lawful.  To  all  practical  purposes  they  cannot 
legally  act,  and  they  do  not  legally  exist.  The  law 
knows  them  not.  For  peaceful  pageantry,  social 
enjoyment,  and  family  traditions,  mention  may  still 
be  made  of  Clans  and  Chiefs  of  Clans  ;  but  the 
Highlands  of  Scotland,  no  longer  oppressed  by 
arbitrary  sway,  or  distracted  by  feudal  contentions, 
are  now  inhabited  by  loyal,  orderly,  and  peaceful 
subjects  of  the  Crown  of  Great  Britain ;  and  Clans 
are  not  now  corporations  which  law  sustains,  nor 
societies  which  law  recognises  or  acknowledges." 

There  is  only  one  point  of  view  which  is  not  fully 
presented  in  this  clear  and  admirable  Judgment. 
There  is  probably  no  human  institution,  however 
liable  to  abuse,  or  however  greatly  it  may  have  been 
actually  abused,  which  has  not  also  some  original 
elements  of  good.  These  may  survive  and  revive 
even  in  the  processes  of  decay.  When  the  purely 


184  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

feudal  relations  of  Chieftain  and  of  Clan  were  not 
separated  from,  but,  on  the  contrary,  were  united 
with,  the  peaceful  and  industrial  relations  of  Pro- 
prietor and  Tenant,  and  when  the  life  and  pursuits 
of  Chiefs  were  no  longer  directed  by  political  ambi- 
tions or  by  inter-tribal  hatreds,  the  combined  in- 
fluences of  Chief  and  of  Landlord  were  obviously 
capable  of  being  converted  into  the  most  powerful 
agency  of  civilisation  and  of  progress.     Such,  accord- 
ingly, they  proved  to  be,  first  among  the  Lowland, 
and,  at  last,  also  among  the  Celtic  Clans.     Of  this 
we  shall  see  some  examples  in  the  next  Chapter. 
The  passage  between  these  two  conditions  of  Clan- 
ship is  sure  to  be  accompanied  by  incidents  of  diffi- 
culty and  discontent.     These  are  illustrated  by  a 
melancholy   example.      In  virtue    of  the   arrange- 
ment made  by  the  Statutes  of  lona  many  of  the 
young  Highland  Chiefs  came  to  be  educated  in  the 
leading  centres  of  learning,  both  in  Scotland,  in  Eng- 
land, and  on  the  Continent.     Thus  two  young  men 
of  the  Clanranald — Macdonalds  of  Keppoch,  one  of 
the  oldest  families  in  the  Highlands — returned  from 
the  Low  Country  in  1666,  full  of  zeal  for  the  im- 
provement of  their  estates.       Such  improvements 
never  fail  to  offend  many  whose  lives  have  been 
spent  in  pursuits,  and  in  ideas,  which  belong  to 
the  dying  past.     Such  men  have  neither  the  intel- 
ligence nor   the   education  which  enable  them  to 
understand  reforms.      They  misjudge  the   motives 
and  the  reasons  which  induce  men  of  superior  know- 
ledge to  depart  from  ignorant  but  ancestral  usages. 
The  two  young  Macdonalds  seem  in  this  way  to 
have  fallen  victims  to  their  superior  culture,  and 
were  barbarously  murdered  by  some  of  their  own 
Clan.1    But  these  young  men  were  martyrs  in  a  cause 
which   was  soon  to  triumph.      About   twenty-two 
years  after  their   untimely  death,  their  own   fol- 
lowers fought  with  their  old  enemies,  the  Mack- 
intoshes, the  last  Battle  of  the  Clans.     This  was  in 

1  Gregory,  p.  415. 


THE  EPOCH  OF  THE  CLANS.          185 

1688,  shortly  before  the  Bevolution  which  finally 
established  the  Reign  of  Constitutional  Law  in 
the  government  of  the  United  Kingdom.  After 
this  there  was  a  slow  but  steady  change ;  and 
although  a  great  number  of  the  Clans  chose  and 
fought  for  the  Cause  which  was  opposed  to  Progress, 
yet  they  fought  in  that  cause  nobly — with  a  per- 
sonal loyalty  and  a  chivalrous  devotion.  The  better 
elements  of  Clanship  were  thus  emerging  even  in 
those  who  did  not  choose  the  better  side.  The 
same  elements  emerged,  at  least  equally,  among 
those  other  Chiefs  and  Clans  who  fought  as  well,  as 
devotedly,  and  sometimes  with  as  much  self-sacrifice 
in  that  other  Cause  which  was  identified  with  the 
triumph  of  Settled  Law  over  Arbitrary  Power. 


CHAPTEE  V. 

THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS. 

THE  solemn  appeal  made  by  the  Parliament  of  1578 
to  the  ordinary  powers  and  legal  rights  of  Ownership, 
as  the  best  and  only  remedy  for  the  terrible  evils 
which  had  arisen,  both  in  the  Highlands  and  on  the 
Borders,  from  a  traditional  and  lawless  Feudalism, 
was  an  appeal  in  strict  accordance  with  the  whole 
history  and  principle  of  progress  in  Scotland  since 
the  dawn  of  her  Civilisation. 

We  have  seen  that  from  times  dating  at  least 
400  years  before  this  Parliament,  the  right  of  Owners 
to  select  their  own  Tenants,  and  to  let  their  own 
lands  on  whatever  conditions  for  which  they  could 
get  acceptance,  had  been  so  completely  recognised 
as  a  matter  of  course,  that  the  "  passing  away "  of 
one  set  of  Tenants,  and  the  coming  in  of  another 
set,  was  dealt  with  as  a  common  contingency,  and 
as  requiring  to  be  met  by  an  equitable  modification 
of  the  local  burdens  imposed  for  the  support  of  Mills. 
Celtic  Feudalism  itself  had  largely  taken  advantage 
of  those  rights  of  Ownership  by  planting  men  upon 
estates  who  could  be  counted  upon  as  absolutely  at 
the  disposal  of  Chiefs  in  any  enterprise.  And  now 
we  have  to  notice  another  appeal  to  the  same  legal 
power  and  rights  made  by  a  previous  Parliament, 
and  for  a  more  permanent  purpose.  The  appeal  in 
the  Acts  of  1578  had  reference  to  the  maintenance  of 
law  and  order, — to  the  restraint  of  feuds  and  broils, 
to  the  cessation  of  plunder  and  ravage  committed 
against  the  peaceful  subjects  of  the  Crown  who 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  187 

lived  within  reach  of  the  Highlands  or  of  the 
Border  Clans.  These  were  indeed  the  first  and 
indispensable  conditions  of  all  internal  improvement 
in  the  districts  tenanted  by  the  Clans,  and  also  in 
all  the  districts  accessible  to  them.  Beyond  this, 
however,  the  Acts  of  1578  did  not  point  to  the 
advance  of  agriculture,  or  indicate  any  methods  by 
which  that  great  industry  might  be  established 
among  the  people.  But  this  had  been  done  before. 
It  had,  indeed,  been  a  continuous  work  going  on  for 
centuries.  The  foundations  of  it  had  been  laid  in  the 
encouragement  given  to  free  Covenants ;  and  more 
than  a  century  and  a  quarter  before  this  date  the 
Act  of  1449  had  made  all  Tenants  secure  in  the 
enjoyment  of  their  Leases.  But  in  like  manner,  and 
as  an  essential  part  of  the  system  of  free  Covenants, 
the  Owners  of  land  were  to  be  secured  also  in  the 
fulfilment  of  all  conditions  on  which  such  Leases  had 
been  given.  Founding  on  this  great  principle,  both 
of  law  and  of  equitable  custom,  another  Parliament, 
that  of  1454,  had  indicated  to  Proprietors  that  they 
could  bind  their  Tenants  by  covenants  of  Lease  to 
take  their  part  in  the  agricultural  improvement  of 
the  country.  The  particular  kind  of  improvement 
which  attracted  the  special  notice  of  that  Parlia- 
ment is  not  a  matter  of  great  importance.  Scientific 
agriculture  was  then  unknown,  and  the  interferences 
of  legislation  with  agricultural  industry  were  not 
always  more  intelligent  than  its  interferences  with 
the  industry  of  the  Towns.  Generally,  indeed, 
they  were  founded  on  the  better  policy  of  leaving 
men  free  to  find  out  the  best  modes  of  promoting 
their  own  interests.  On  this  occasion,  however, 
for  an  immediate  purpose  of  great  importance, 
Parliament  did  point  out  one  of  the  best  and 
most  fruitful  means  by  which  the  Owners  of 
land  could  exert  their  powers  for  the  improvement 
of  the  country.  The  immediate  object  in  view  was 
the  progress  of  enclosures,  both  for  woods  and  the 
better  fencing  of  arable  land.  So  much  that  is 


188  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

valuable  in  principle  is  involved  in  this  statute,  and 
its  very  wording  is  so  intimately  connected  with 
the  working  of  chartered  Ownership  and  Jurisdic- 
tion, that  I  give  it  in  full : — 

"  Anent  the  plantation  of  woods  and  hedges,  and  the 
sowing  of  broom,  the  Lords  think  it  speedful  that  the  King 
charge  all  his  freeholders,  spiritual  and  temporal,  that  in  the 
making  of  their  Whitsunday  sets  (lettings)  they  statute  and 
ordain  that  all  the  tenants  plant  woods  and  trees,  and  make 
hedges,  and  sow  broom,  up  to  the  faculty  of  their  malings  (the 
capacity  of  their  holdings),  in  places  convenient  therefor  under 
such  pain  and  unlaw  as  the  Baron  or  Lord  shall  modify."1 

This  is  rather  a  Minute  or  Memorandum  as  the 
basis  of  a  law,  than  a  direct  Statute.  But  the 
informal  legislation  of  those  days  includes  many 
such  admonitions  and  directions  issued  to  the  lieges, 
and  historically  they  furnish  some  of  the  most  valu- 
able indications  of  the  public  policy  of  those  times. 
In  this  case  we  cannot  fail  to  observe  the  peculiar 
phraseology  which  is  employed  as  to  the  power  of 
Landowners  in  respect  to  the  enforcement  of  the  con- 
ditions on  which  they  might  choose  to  let  their  land. 
They  were  to  "  statute  and  ordain"  in  respect  to  that 
enforcement.  Whence  comes  this  expression,  which 
was  the  usual  phrase  adopted  to  express  the  enact- 
ing authority  of  Parliament  ?  The  answer  to  this 
question  brings  us  face  to  face  with  one  of  the  most 
important  of  all  the  Institutions  of  those  centuries— 
namely,  the  Courts  of  Heritable  Jurisdiction,  and 
the  combination  of  these  with  the  ordinary  powers 
and  rights  of  Landowners  over  the  disposal  of  their 
property.  We  are  accustomed  to  think  of  the 
Heritable  Jurisdictions  conferred  by  Charter  upon 
the  Owners  of  Baronial  estates,  and  also  upon  the 
Magistrates  of  Royal  Burghs,  as  Institutions  inde- 
fensible in  principle,  and  wholly  barbarous  in  effect. 
That  they  led  very  often  to  great  abuses  and 
oppressions  is  certain.  It  is  certain  also  that  they 
became  inconsistent  with  the  universal  prevalence  of 

1  Act.  Parl  (Jacob,  n.)  vol.  ii.  p.  51. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  189 

the  authority  of  a  central  Government,  and  of  the 
equal  administration  of  justice  by  impartial  tribunals 
all  over  the  Kingdom.  But  it  may  well  be  doubted 
whether,  in  any  of  the  centuries  before  the  close  of 
our  Civil  Wars,  the  Courts  of  Baronial  Jurisdiction 
could  have  been  dispensed  with  over  a  large  portion 
of  the  country,  and  especially  in  the  Highlands. 
This  at  least  was  the  feeling  of  those  centuries,  and 
they  were  centuries  full  of  the  instincts  which  alone 
can  build  up  a  Nation. 

Perhaps  it  will  surprise  many  to  know  that  in 
the  few  cases  in  which  we  can  catch  a  glimpse  of  the 
ordinary  working  of  these  Institutions  the  truth 
of  this  feeling  is  very  much  confirmed.  My  own 
attention  was  first  called  to  this  question — one  of 
great  historical  interest — by  observing  the  stipula- 
tions which  were  universal  in  Leases  down  to  our 
own  times,  by  which  all  agricultural  Tenants  were 
bound  to  attend  "  the  Baron  Baillie  Courts  "  of  the 
Lordship  or  Barony  in  which  their  farms  lay.  Clearly 
those  Tenants  were  not  asked  to  appear  before  the 
Courts  as  litigants,  or  as  accused  persons,  nor  merely 
to  express  submission.  They  became  bound  to  attend 
for  some  practical  purpose,  and  it  is  quite  evident 
what  that  purpose  was.  It  was  for  the  purpose  of 
serving  as  jurymen  or  assessors  to  assist  in  the 
administration  of  justice,  or  as  members  of  a  Council 
for  the  general  regulation  of  rural  and  local  affairs. 
Accordingly,  in  the  few  cases  in  which  the  records 

O    */  ^ 

of  these  Baronial  Courts  have  come  to  light  we  see 
that  the  system  of  Heritable  Jurisdictions,  which 
has  acquired  such  an  evil  name,  was  in  reality,  in  its 
best  days,  a  thoroughly  popular  institution — one  in 
which  the  Baron  or  the  Lord  exercised  his  powers 
and  jurisdiction  with  the  general  assent  of  those 
over  whom  he  held  them.  It  is  true,  indeed,  that 
the  Tenants,  and  others  who  attended,  could  do 
nothing  without  consent  and  co-operation  of  the 
Lord  ;  and  it  is  certainly  true  also  that  he  could  do 
almost  all  he  liked  to  do  without  them.  But  it  is 


190  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

equally  evident  that  ordinarily  he  acted  with  them 
and  through  them, — so  that  by  means  of  these 
Courts  not  only  did  a  great  Baron  execute  in  the 
main  substantial  justice,  but  a  great  Landowner 
could  also  the  better  introduce  agricultural  improve- 
ments, and  enforce  new  ideas  and  new  practices 
upon  his  Tenants  by  securing  general  acquiescence 
in  their  obligation  and  in  their  value. 

All  this  comes  out  with  striking  clearness  in  the 
life  of  one  great  Highland  Chieftain,  and  in  the 
careful  records  which  he  has  left  behind  him.  We 
cannot  do  better  than  look  carefully  for  a  little  into 
the  evidence  to  be  found  in  both. 

Not  very  long  after  the  death  of  Robert  the 
Bruce,  the  ancient  Barony  of  Lochow,  which  he  had 
confirmed  by  a  new  Charter  in  the  hands  of  the  son 
of  his  old  companion  in  arms,  came  in  the  usual 
course  of  inheritance  into  the  possession  of  one  Sir 
Duncan.  He  had  two  sons,  the  elder  of  whom,  Sir 
Archibald,  became  the  immediate  progenitor  of  the 
first  Earl  of  Argyll.  To  his  younger  son,  Colin,  Sir 
Duncan  gave  that  part  of  his  Barony  and  territory 
which  consisted  of  the  lands  of  Glenurchy,  including 
the  adjacent  shores  of  Lochow  at  its  head  or  eastern 
end.  These  lands  have  a  remarkable  geographical 
position.  From  that  end  of  Lochow  a  very  short 
hollow  in  the  hills,  leads  up  along  a  rough  but  easy 
slope  to  a  low  Pass,  which  is  the  watershed  between 
the  western  and  eastern  coasts  of  Scotland.  From 
the  top  of  this  low  Pass,  the  same  great  gap  in  the 
surrounding  hills  opens  into  the  long  and  somewhat 
winding  glen  or  strath  which  in  its  upper  reaches  is 
called  Strath-Fillan,  then  becomes  occupied,  first,  by 
the  small  waters  of  Loch  Dochart,  next,  by  the 
larger  waters  of  Loch  Tay,  and  from  that  point  con- 
stitutes the  bed  of  the  river  Tay,  till  that  river 
emerges  on  the  Low  Country  north  of  Perth.  This 
long  stretch  of  glen,  strath,  and  valley  is  the  most 
remarkable  transverse  break  in  the  mountain  masses 
which  constitute  the  central  Highlands.  It  affords 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  191 

an  easy  access  to  those  Highlands  from  the  Eastern 
and  Lowland  Counties,  and  there  is  reason  to  believe 
that  along  it  more  than  one  of  the  great  movements 
of  passage  and  of  invasion  have  found  their .  way. 
It  must  have  been  by  this  route  that  King  Robert 
the  Bruce  passed  westward  to  attack  his  enemy 
John  of  Lome,  and  it  was  on  the  direct  continua- 
tion of  it  that  he  fought  the  battle  of  Ben  Cruachan 
in  1308.  It  is  to  a  part  of  this  long  line  of  depres- 
sion that  the  name  Breadalbane  properly  belongs, 
the  only  name  in  which  we  have  the  survival  of  the 
old  name  "  Alban "  by  which  the  whole  Scottish 
mainland  was  known  in  the  early  days  of  the  Scoto- 
Celtic  emigration  from  Ireland. 

From  the  moment  when  the  younger  branch  of 
the  Campbell  family  became  Lords  of  Glenurquhay, 
they  seem  to  have  directed  their  chief  attention  to 
the  extension  of  their  authority  and  possession  east- 
ward along  this  great  line  of  access  to  the  Highlands 
of  Perthshire.  In  the  course  of  a  few  generations 
they  had  acquired  the  whole  of  it  either  in 
Superiority  or  in  Ownership — had  built  Castles  on 
Loch  Dochart,  at  Finlarig  near  the  western  end 
of  Loch  Tay,  and  lastly  at  Balloch,  near  the  eastern 
end  of  that  Lake,  and  subsequently  known  as 
Taymouth.  It  would  be  difficult  to  find  a  more 
typical  example  of  a  great  Highland  estate  and 
Barony.  With  the  exception  of  a  few  flats  along 
the  river-sides, — of  a  very  few  gentle  slopes  capable 
of  cultivation  at  either  end,  and  here  and  there 
about  the  middle, — almost  the  whole  area  consists 
of  very  steep  and  high  mountains,  with  a  few  lateral 
passes,  all  more  or  less  narrow  and  defensible,  open- 
ing southwards  towards  Loch  Lomond  and  Loch 
Earn,  and  northwards  towards  the  wilds  of  Eannoch 
and  Glenco.  Yet  into  this  country  gathered  from 
time  to  time  various  "  broken  men,"  and  "  broken 
Clans,"  who  came  to  live  under  the  protection  of 
the  Lords  of  Glenurchy  on  the  usual  terms  of  Celtic 
Feudalism,  gradually  passing  into  the  more  civilised 


192  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

relationship,  founded  on  Charters,  of  Landlord  and 
Tenant  under  written  Covenants.  In  this  great 
period  of  change  the  single  life  of  Duncan,  the  seventh 
Lord  of  Glenurchy,  spans  an  important  epoch  in  the 
history  of  Scotland.  Born  in  1 545 — only  thirty-two 
years  after  Flodden,  and  early  in  the  reign  of  Queen 
Mary — living  through  the  whole  of  her  reign,— 
through  the  whole  of  the  reign  of  James  vi.,  both  as 
King  of  Scotland  and  as  King  of  England,  and 
surviving  through  the  first  five  years  of  the  reign 
of  Charles  I.,  this  Baron  seems  to  have  been  one  of 
the  earliest  of  the  great  Landowners  of  the  High- 
lands who  exerted  himself  in  the  rural  improve- 
ment of  his  country.  By  a  fortunate  accident  his 
papers,  and  the  papers  of  some  of  his  predecessors, 
have  been  preserved,  and  a  selection  of  them  pub- 
lished by  a  competent  and  careful  Editor.1  As  Sir 
Duncan  ruled  for  forty-eight  years,  from  1583  to 
1631,  these  papers  throw  a  flood  of  light  on  the 
economy  of  estate  management,  and  of  rural  con- 
ditions generally  during  the  Sixteenth  and  Seven- 
teenth Centuries. 

Here  we  find  a  full  explanation  of  the  Act  of 
1454,  when  it  exhorted  Landlords  to  "  statute  and 
ordain "  that  certain  things  should  be  done  by 
Tenants  as  conditions  of  their  Lease.  We  find  that 
the  Baronial  Courts  were  local  Councils  with  very 
extensive  authority  over  all  kinds  of  matters.  They 
voted  their  Regulations  in  the  set  form  of  Acts  of 
Parliament — "  it  is  statute  and  ordained."  More- 
over, these  words  are  often  (though  not  always) 
followed  by  words  analogous  to  those  in  Acts  of 
Parliament  by  which  the  Sovereign  declared  that  he 
acted  with  the  advice  and  consent  of  the  other 
branches  of  the  Legislature.  So  in  the  Baronial 
"  Statutes "  it  is  often  narrated  that  they  were 
enacted  "  with  consent  and  advice  of  the  whole 
Commons  and  Tenants."  This  form  varies  some- 
times, for  an  intelligible  reason,  with  the  subject- 

1  Black  Book  of  Taymouth,  edited  by  Cosmo  Innes. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  193 

matter,  where  special  interests  were  affected.  Thus, 
in  one  case  where  the  statute  affected  Mills,  it 
narrates  that  it  had  been  passed  with  consent  of 
the  "  whole  Tenants  and  Millers."  Some  of  the 
statutes  are  for  the  enforcement  of  old  Parliamentary 
enactments.  Some  are  for  the  better  regulation 
of  morals,  as  where  women  are  prohibited  from 
going  to  drink  without  their  husbands  in  public 
brew-houses.  But  the  great  majority  of  the  regu- 
lations concern  what  may  be  strictly  called  estate 
management — the  obligations  laid  upon  Tenants  to 
conform  to  certain  rules  necessary  for  their  own 
welfare,  the  welfare  of  their  neighbours,  the  com- 
fort of  the  Cottars  or  Subtenants  who  laboured 
the  ground,  and  the  general  improvement  of  the 
country.  Some  important  facts  come  out  very  clearly 
in  these  and  other  relative  documents.  In  the 
first  place  it  is  evident  that  all  the  poorer  Tenants 
held  their  farms  or  " rooms''  on  the  Steelbow 
tenure,  under  which  the  Landlord  supplied  not  only 
the  land  but  the  stock  and  the  seed  corn.1  It  is 
needless  to  point  out  that  quite  irrespective  of  the 
powers  and  rights  attaching,  over  the  whole  of  Scot- 
land, to  the  undivided  Ownership  recognised  and 
conveyed  both  by  Charter  and  by  the  immemorial 
usages  which  we  have  traced,  this  position  of  the 
Owner  of  the  land  being  also  the  owner  of  the  stock, 
and  the  lender  of  the  capital  required  for  seed,  etc., 
by  Tenants,  was  a  position  which  must  have  rendered 
the  exercise  of  his  equitable  as  well  as  legal  powers 
of  admitting  and  removing  Tenants,  a  matter  of 
universal  recognition.  Accordingly  among  the 
Statutes  of  the  Baronial  Courts  of  Glenurchy,  and 
in  other  documents  of  the  same  series,  we  find  that 
the  outgoing  and  incoming  of  Tenants  was  as  much 
contemplated  and  provided  for  as  it  had  been  332 
years  before  in  the  legislation  of  William  the  Lion. 
Thus  in  1621,  "  it  is  statute  and  ordained  that  every 
Tenant  and  Cottar  shall  ]eave  their  Dwelling  Houses, 

1  Black  Book  of  Taymouth,  Pref.  p.  xxiv. 
N 


194  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

at  their  removing  therefrom,  as  sufficient  in  all  re- 
spects as  they  entered  thereto — every  person  failing 
herein  under  the  penalty  of  ten  pounds  "  1  (Scots). 
So,  again  in  1624  there  is  a  careful  statute  regulating 
according  to  a  just  valuation  the  sums  which  might 
be  due  by  incoming  and  outgoing  Tenants  for  houses 
and  head-dikes  respectively.2  One  example  is  given 
of  the  forms  pursued  at  an  actual  removal  in  1596. 
The  outgoing  Tenant  was  removed  by  the  authority 
and  in  the  presence  of  a  regular  Officer  of  the  Sheriff- 
dom  of  Perth — the  household  gear  was  taken  out, 
and  the  Cattle,  Sheep,  Goats,  and  Horses  were  led 
beyond  the  march  of  the  farm,  whilst  the  incoming 
Tenant  was  inducted  into  his  new  possession  with 
the  like  formalities.3  There  are  a  few  indications 
that  occasionally  the  removal  of  Tenants  was  unlaw- 
fully resisted ;  but  these  indications  are  so  rare  that 
they  are  classed  with  other  acts  of  violence,  against 
which  men  protected  each  other  in  their  "Bonds  of 
Manrent,"  just  as  they  engaged  to  protect  each 
other  against  the  ravages  of  hostile  Clans.  Indeed, 
the  common  and  usual  danger  against  which  these 
peculiar  personal  and  family  alliances  were  directed 
was  not  the  danger  of  Tenants  resisting  lawful 
removals,  but  the  danger  of  Tenants  suffering  un- 
lawful violence  from  others  than  their  Landlord. 
In  one  case  among  the  published  documents  of  this 
kind  in  the  Book  of  Taymouth  we  find  that  the 
Lord  of  Glenurchy  engaged  in  a  "  Bond  of  Manrent," 
to  defend  his  friends  of  the  name  of  Shaw,  having 
lands  in  Menteith,  against  all  kinds  of  injury  from 
lawless  men,  and  only  as  one  item  among  many 
others,  "  to  assist  them  in  all  actions  of  removing 
against  their  Tenants."4 

On  the  other  hand,  the  common,  usual,  and 
indeed  permanent  condition  of  things  in  those 
centuries,  was  the  inevitable  dependence  of  the 
Tenants  upon  that  protection  from  ravages  and 

1  Slack  Book  of  Taymouth,  p.  353.  2  Ibid.  p.  365. 

^Ibid.  p.  418.  4  Ibid.  p.  238. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  195 

violence  which  lay  in  the  fear  inspired  by  great 
Baronial  Landlords  in  the  minds  of  predatory 
neighbours,  and  by  the  power  which  lay  in  their 
hands  alone  of  recompensing  their  Tenants  and 
Retainers  by  the  grant  of  new  holdings  of  land 
where  the  ravages  of  such  men  had  not  been  fore- 
seen and  prevented.  Of  this  contingency  and  of 
the  obligation  which  it  imposed  we  have  a  pleasant 
specimen  in  a  letter  from  Colin,  Lord  of  Glenurchy, 
father  of  Sir  Duncan,  in  1570,  to  one  of  his  fol- 
lowers who  had  suffered  from  the  great  Robber 
Clan  of  those  days — the  Clan  Gregour.  The  letter 
runs  thus : — "  Gregor  M'Ane,  I  commend  me 
heartily  to  you.  MacCallum  Dow  has  shown  me 
how  the  Clan  Gregour  has  taken  up  your  geir  and 
your  poor  Tenants'  geir,  the  which  I  pray  you  to 
take  no  thought  of,  for  albeit  I  have  no  cattle  to 
recompense  you  instantly,  I  shall,  God  willing,  make 
you  and  yours  sure  of  rooms  (farms  or  crofts)  that 
shall  make  you  more  profit  than  the  geir  that 
ye  have  lost  at  this  time,  you  being  a  true  faithful 
servant  unto  me.  And  if  the  poor  men  that  want 
geir,  dwelling  under  you,  be  true  to  you,  take  them 
into  the  place  upon  my  expense,  and  give  to  their 
wives  and  bairns  some  of  my  Victual  to  sustain 
them  as  you  think  expedient.  I  pray  you  have  the 
place  well  provided  with  such  furnishing  as  you  may 
get,  and  spare  neither  my  geir  nor  yet  your  own, 
for,  God  leaving  us  our  health,  we  will  get  geir 
enough ;  ...  for  albeit  the  geir  be  away  and  the 
ground  wasted,  I  keeping  that  old  House,  and 
Holding  (with)  the  rigs  (ridges)  whole,  as  God 
willing  I  shall,  you  being  a  faithful  servant  to  me, 
my  bairns  and  yours  shall  live  honorable  in  it, 
God  willing,  when  the  plague  of  God  will  lie  upon 
them  and  their  posterity  out  of  memory  that  molest 
me  and  you  at  this  present."  l 

Returning  to  the  enactments  of  the  Baronial 
Courts  of  Glenurchy  in  the  days  of  Duncan  the 

1  Black  Book  of  Taymouth,  pp.  429-30. 


196  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

seventh  Lord,  we  find  that  the  great  powers 
which  the  conditions  of  Society,  as  well  as  mere 
law,  placed  of  necessity  in  the  hands  of  such  Barons, 
were  now  setting  steadily  in  the  direction  of  civili- 
sation and  improvement.  It  was  ordered  that  every 
Householder  should  provide  himself  with  a  Kitchen 
Garden,  such  as  the  scanty  knowledge  of  those  days 
could  understand.  They  were  "kailyards,"  to  be 
well  fenced  from  beasts,  and  to  be  stocked  with 
Red  Kail,  and  White  Kail,  and  Onions.  Every 
Tenant  was  to  see  that  his  Cottars,  or  Sub-tenants, 
were  to  be  similarly  furnished.  This  seems  rude 
and  simple  enough.  Yet,  strange  to  say,  there  are 
thousands  of  Crofters  and  Cottars  in  the  Highlands 
even  at  the  present  day,  who  have  never  provided 
themselves  with  even  such  kail-yards  as  this — far 
less  the  comforts  of  the  newer  vegetables,  which  are 
so  easily  grown,  and  are  so  great  an  addition  to  the 
comforts  of  a  family.  Similar  regulations  were  laid 
down  for  an  enclosed  and  protected  place  for  peats 
for  the  Cottars.  Careful  and  elaborate  rules  were 
laid  down  for  the  protection  of  existing  woods,  and 
for  the  systematic  planting  of  a  few  trees,  Oak,  Ash, 
and  Sycamore,  on  every  farm,  according  to  its  size, 
from  nurseries  which  were  to  be  established  in  the 
kail-yards.  The  plants  were  to  be  furnished  by  the 
Lord  at  a  fixed  and  very  low  rate.  These  seem  to 
have  been  made  conditions  of  Leases,  and  the 
statutes  of  the  Baronial  Courts  were  directed  to  the 
execution  and  enforcement  of  them  by  the  general 
concurrence  of  the  "  haill  Tenants  and  Commons." 
Similar  regulations  as  to  manure  in  the  formation 
of  dungsteads  show  a  care  on  this  head  much  in 
advance  of  the  time  and  of  the  country,  whilst 
another  rule  against  ploughed  and  manured  land 
too  near  the  banks  of  rivers,  is  evidently  aimed 
against  the  pollution  of  waters,  and  the  injury  of 
Fish. 

But  the  question  naturally  arises,  what  kind  of 
agriculture   could  possibly  be  practised  in  such  a 


THE  APPEAL  FBOM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  197 

country  ?  By  far  the  largest  part  of  it  consisted  in 
steep  mountain-sides  leading  up  to  enormous  moors, 
and  very  often  leading  not  even  to  these,  but  to 
sharp  ridges,  which  fall  down  as  steeply  again  into 
some  narrow  glen  on  the  other  side.  Artificial 
Drainage  was  unknown.  The  bottoms  of  the  glens 
and  of  the  wider  straths  were  often  swampy  or 
occupied  by  bogs.  Thus  the  only  area  at  all  capable 
of  cultivation  consisted  of  the  knolls  and  the  gentler 
slopes  which  lay  between  the  flats  of  the  bottom 
and  the  line  above  which  the  hills  were  too  steep 
for  the  plough.  The  universal  custom  all  over  the 
Highlands  was  to  draw  a  "  head-dike  "  somewhere 
along  this  line,  and  to  cultivate  such  ground  as  could 
be  made  available  below  it.  Potatoes  were  then 
unknown.  Turnips  were  unknown.  There  was  no 
green  crop.  Wheat  was  unsuited  both  to  soil  and 
climate.  There  was,  and  there  could  be,  no  rota- 
tion. The  only  rest  for  the  land  was  bare  fallow, 
and  dense  crops  of  weed.  The  only  crops  which 
were  raised,  therefore,  were  some  varieties  of  Oat, 
and  Bear — an  inferior  kind  of  Barley.  From  these 
bread  was  made,  and  beer  was  brewed.  The  main 
produce  of  the  country  was  Cattle,  with  some 
Goats,  and  a  few  Sheep.  All  of  these  pastured 
during  the  winter  upon  what  they  could  pick  up 
from  the  last  stubbles,  and  from  such  coarse  herbage 
as  endured  the  season.  No  care  seems  to  have 
been  bestowed  on  making  or  saving  hay.  This 
indispensable  article  is  not  even  named.  It  seems 
to  have  been  unknown.  The  consequence  was 
that  the  Cattle  were  of  the  most  wretched  descrip- 
tion. When  spring  came,  and  it  was  necessary 
to  sow  the  arable  land,  the  Cattle  and  the  few 
Sheep  were  turned  out  beyond  the  "  head-dike  " 
to  graze  upon  the  lower  slopes,  on  which  the 
wild  grasses  were  beginning  to  appear.  There  they 
gradually  picked  up  flesh  as  the  season  advanced. 
But  Cattle,  even  the  smallest  and  nimblest,  are 
comparatively  heavy  animals,  and  there  were  thou- 


198  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

sands  of  acres  on  every  mountain-side  which  were 
too  steep  for  them  to  climb,  whilst  beyond  these 
again  there  were  miles  of  moor  to  which  they  could 
not  go,  and  of  green  faces  almost  precipitous  which 
every  summer  covered  with  a  luxurious  vegetation. 
What  became  of  these  great  surfaces  of  country  in 
those  centuries  ?  The  answer  is,  that  to  an  enormous 
extent  they  were  absolutely  lost,  except  for  the  use 
of  Deer,  respecting  the  care  and  preservation  of 
which,  as  a  valuable  supply  of  food,  there  were 
careful  "  Statutes"  made  by  the  Baronial  Courts. 
This  is  a  subject  on  which  there  is  the  profoundest 
ignorance  in  the  popular  writings  and  impressions 
of  the  present  day.  The  mountain  areas  are  sup- 
posed to  have  been  pastured  by  the  Cattle  of  the 
Tenants  and  Sub-tenants.  The  fact  is,  that  they 
were,  for  the  most  part,  not  pastured  by  domestic 
animals  at  all.  And  the  only  exception  to  this  is 
an  exception  of  great  interest  in  the  economy  and 
in  the  rural  life  of  the  Highlands,  which  like  many 
other  exceptions  is  a  signal  proof  and  illustration  of 
the  general  rule. 

Every  one  who  has  walked  much  among  the 
Highland  mountains  must  have  come  with  surprise, 
every  here  and  there,  upon  curious  marks  of  deserted 
habitations,  in  very  secluded  and  distant  spots. 
There  are  no  such  retentive  memories  as  the  grassy 
swards  of  mother  Earth.  They  keep  sacred  for 
generations — sometimes  even  for  ages — the  marks  of 
human  life  both  in  its  joys  and  in  its  sorrows,  in  its 
business  and  in  its  amusements.  Nowhere  are  the 
graves  of  men  so  well  remembered  as  in  swellings  of 
the  turf.  Nor  does  it  forget  their  pastimes.  Look- 
ing down  from  the  Terrace  of  Stirling  Castle  upon  a 
field  below  which  was  grazed  by  cows,  I  was  struck 
and  surprised,  many  years  ago,  to  see  in  the  faithful 
grass  the  almost  ghostly  markings  of  a  French 
"  Parterre"  which  was  once  the  Flower  Garden  of 
poor  Mary  Queen  of  Scots.  And  so  almost  any- 
where among  the  hills  we  may  find  ourselves  among 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  109 

little  rings  of  mouldered  wall — or  of  turfy  ridges, 
sometimes  circular,  sometimes  oblong,  always  very 
small,  and  generally  placed  in  groups — suggesting 
rather  the  huts  of  a  temporary  encampment  than 
any  permanent  buildings.  They  are  always  above 
the  steep  sides  of  glens,  and  they  are  never  on  the 
stony  shoulders  of  peaks,  or  upon  the  summits. 
Sometimes  they  are  among  sudden  knolls  where  the 
ground  is  dry,  and  where  little  tracts  of  soft  green 
grass  are  invaded  by  tufts  of  heath,  and  look  as  if 
they  would  soon  be  covered  by  it  altogether.  Some- 
times they  are  in  natural  hollows  through  which  a 
"burn"  flows,  where  the  Dipper  flits  and  dives,  and 
where  the  Heron  watches  by  the  side  of  little  pools. 
Sometimes  they  are  on  the  top  of  sudden  braes  rising 
over  a  Moor  Loch  rich  in  Water  Lilies,  and  lively 
with  surface  rings  and  dimples,  which  show  it  to 
be  populous  with  Trout.  But  everywhere  and 
always,  if  we  look  around,  we  can  see  that  those 
who  came  there,  to  live  or  visit  for  a  time,  had  an 
eye  to  the  best  pasture,  the  best  shelter,  and  access 
to  a  fresh  spring  or  to  some  running  water.  These 
are  the  summer  "Shearings"1  so  famous  in  Highland 
history,  and  the  poetry  of  which  makes  men  as  mad 
now,  as  it  made  a  primitive  population  happy,  two 
hundred  years  ago.  That  population  went  to  these 
distant  and  lonely  spots  for  the  one  sufficient  reason 
that  their  Cattle  would  not  go  to  them  unless  they 
were  taken  there,  and  unless  they  were  herded  by 
the  men  and  women  and  children  during  a  few 
weeks  in  the  middle  of  summer.  Between  these 
spots  and  the  glens  in  which  the  people  habitu- 
ally lived,  there  lay  perhaps  miles  of  ascent  almost 
precipitous,  or  of  bogs  which  could  only  be  crossed 
by  careful  paths,  or  of  rocky  ground  on  which  the 
grassy  bits  were  too  few  and  scanty  for  the  grazing 
of  Cattle.  It  was  not  then  even  known  that  Sheep 

1  This  word,  like  many  others,  is  variously  spelt  in  the  old  documents 
—  the  earliest  form  being  apparently  "sheillings" — but  the  later  form  is 
that  adopted  in  the  text. 


200  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

could  be  left  to  graze  by  themselves  among  the 
Highland  mountains/  The  breed  was  a  poor  one 
with  thin  hairy  wool,  and  considered  so  delicate 
that  they  were  habitually  folded  even  at  night. 
Indeed,  this  was  an  absolute  necessity,  for  the 
mountains  were  haunted  by  Wolves,  and  among 
the  Statutes  of  the  Baronial  Court  of  Glenurchy 
there  is  one  expressly  enjoining  the  regular  manu- 
facture of  weapons  for  the  destruction  of  this 
savage  animal.  Their  ravages  must  have  been  for- 
midable indeed  when  at  a  date  so  late  as  1622  we  find 
that  a  case  came  before  the  Baronial  Court  respect- 
ing three  Cows  "whilk  were  slain  by  the  Wolf."1 

Under  such  a  combination  of  circumstances  the 
only  way  of  turning  to  any  human  use,  even  the 
most  favoured  bits  of  the  upland  pastures,  was  for 
the  whole  population  of  the  Villages  or  Townships 
to  turn  out  of  their  homes,  with  all  their  stock,  at  a 
certain  season  of  the  year,  and  migrate  to  some  spot 
where  pasture  could  be  found  sufficiently  good,  and 
sufficiently  continuous  to  support  for  a  time  all  the 
Cattle  and  other  stock  belonging  to  them.  It  was 
always,  no  doubt,  a  delightful  time.  From  the 
smoky  habitations  deep  in  the  hollows,  where  often 
the  sun  shone  for  a  few  hours  only  out  of  the 
twenty-four,  it  must  have  been  a  pleasant  and  a 
wholesome  change  to  live  almost  wholly  in  the 
open  air,  amongst  the  fragrant  heather,  and  with 
the  splendid  after- glows  of  the  short  midsum- 
mer nights  setting  off  all  the  hills  around  in  the 
superbest  colouring.  It  did  not  require  the  conscious 
eye  of  a  landscape  painter  to  enable  even  a  very 
primitive  people  to  enjoy  thoroughly  such  a  change 
as  this  in  the  routine  of  life.  Even  the  lower 
animals  often  exhibit  that  unconscious  exhilara- 
tion of  spirits  which  comes  from  the  influences  of 
Nature.  Accordingly  the  "  Summer  Shealings " 
are  the  theme  of  much  natural  sentiment,  and 
the  description  of  them  given  by  Mrs.  Grant 

1  Black  Book  of  Taymouth,  p.  374. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  201 

of  Laggan  in  her  once  famous  Letters  from  the 
Mountains,  is  referred  to  by  gushing  Ministers 
in  the  House  of  Commons,  as  if  they  repre- 
sented a  condition  of  things  which  it  is  possible 
or  desirable  to  restore.  They  might  as  well  go 
back  to  the  description  given  by  the  same  Mrs. 
Grant  of  life  in  a  very  different  country  and 
in  a  very  different  kind  of  wilderness.  In  my 
own  boyhood  I  recollect  having  seen  that  vener- 
able woman.  Yet  her  girlhood  had  been  spent 
at  Albany,  in  the  State  of  New  York,  at  a  time 
when  she  heard  the  talk  of  men  just  escaped  from 
the  savage  and  fatal  fight  of  Ticonderoga,  and  when 
the  path  from  the  waters  of  the  Hudson  to  the 
waters  of  Ontario  lay  through  primeval  forests, 
occupied  only  by  a  chain  of  posts  at  distant  intervals, 
and  dangerous  from  "  the  tomahawk  of  the  Indian, 
and  the  scalping  knife  of  the  savage."  Her  de- 
lightful account  of  that  journey1  with  her  father, 
— the  boating  by  day,  the  night  encampments,  the 
Mohawk  villages  and  King, — is  a  still  more  striking 
picture  of  wild  life  than  her  account  of  the  summer 
Shealings  in  the  Highlands. 

Both  of  these  scenes  belong  to  an  age  which, 
although  so  recent,  has  for  ever  passed  away,  and 
this  not  because  of  the  decline  of  anything,  but 
on  account  of  the  advance  of  everything.  In 
nothing  has  there  been  a  greater  advance  than  in 
that  branch  of  knowledge  which,  more  than  any 
other,  has  lain  at  the  root  of  all  civilisation — the 
knowledge  how  best  to  use  and  manage  those 
domestic  animals  which  were  among  the  very  earliest 
and  most  blessed  possessions  of  mankind.  The 
advance  in  this  knowledge,  which  has  reduced  the 
summer  Shealings  to  rings  of  turf,  has  been  nothing 
less  than  one  which  has  brought  some  nine-tenths  of 
the  Highland  mountains  for  the  first  time  under 
effective  contribution  to  human  use.  The  dense 

1  Memoirs   of  an   American    Lady,   chap,   xliv.,   by   J.    G.   Wilson. 
Albany,  1876. 


202  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

forests  of  the  upper  Hudson  and  Mohawk,  through 
which  Mrs.  Grant  travelled  when  a  child,  were  not 
more  useless  to  the  American  Colonies  than  the  vast 
vacant  pastures  of  the  Highlands  were  useless  to 
Scotland,  when  nothing  but  little  bits  of  them  were 
grazed  during  the  few  picnic  weeks  of  midsummer. 
No  one  who  has  ever  looked  with  an  eye,  however 
careless,  at  the  mountains  of  Glenurchy  and 
Breadalbane,  could  fail  to  see  what  a  mere  fraction 
of  the  ground  could  ever  be  used  for  Shealings.  The 
steep  acclivities  of  such  hills  as  Ben  Cruachan,  Ben 
Doran,  and  Ben  More  are  altogether  inaccessible  to 
Cattle.  And  even  on  the  lower  mountains  with 
moory  slopes,  which  were  available  for  summer  huts, 
we  have  only  to  consider  how  short  the  time  was 
during  which  these  were  occupied,  in  order  to 
estimate  this  tremendous  waste.  On  this  point  we 
have  precise  information  from  the  Baronial  Courts  of 
Glenurchy.  It  was  an  essential  part  of  the  system 
that  no  Cattle  or  other  stock  should  be  left  at  home. 
If  any  beasts  of  any  kind  were  to  remain  behind, 
they  would  trespass  on  the  cultivated  land,  and 
destroy  the  crops.  Every  man  therefore  in  the 
Township  must  do  as  his  neighbour  did.  Although 
the  live  stock  was  always  the  personal  property  of 
each  Tenant,  the  management  could  not  be  individual 
because  of  the  promiscuous  grazing.  Rigid  rules 
therefore  had  to  be  laid  down  as  to  the  moving  to, 
and  the  moving  from,  the  Shealings.  From  these 
rules  we  learn  that  in  the  central  Highlands  the 
migration  of  the  people  with  all  their  Cattle  to  the 
hills  was  never  to  take  place  earlier  than  the  8th  of 
June,  and  the  return  from  them  never  later  than 
the  15th  of  July.1  That  is  to  say,  the  whole  time 
during  which  even  a  few  bits  of  these  great  moun- 
tain surfaces  were  to  be  used  for  grazing,  did  not 
cover  more  than  six  weeks  out  of  the  whole  year. 

It  is  clear  therefore  that  during  all  the  rest  of 
all  the  seasons,  the  whole  of  these  mountain  pas- 

1  Black  Book  of  Taymouth,  p.  364. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  203 

tures,  even  the  choicest  bits  of  them,  were  left  to 
the  Deer  and  to  the  Wolf,  to  the  Moor-fowl  and  to 
the  Fox.  Those  only  who  have  trod  the  moors  and 
hills  of  the  Highlands  during  the  later  summer  and 
autumnal  months,  and  have  observed  how  rich  they 
are  in  grasses,  in  addition  to  the  heather,  which  in 
itself  is  highly  nutritious,  can  fully  estimate  the 
wealth  and  the  bounteousness  of  nature  which  was 
then  wholly  sacrificed  to  traditional  and  untutored 
ignorance.  Even  if  the  little  bits  of  moorland, 
which  were  fit  for  Shealings,  had  been  occupied  all 
the  year  round^instead  of  for  only  six  weeks,  a  mere 
fraction  of  the  whole  area  of  the  Highland  moun- 
tains would  have  been  made  available.  There  are 
hundreds  of  thousands  of  acres  on  every  mountain 
group  so  full  of  sudden  steeps,  and  little  precipices 
of  rock,  that  no  breed  of  Cattle,  however  small  and 
worthless,  would  ever  attempt  to  approach  them, 
even  if  they  were  herded  in  the  neighbourhood. 
Yet  these  places  are  nevertheless  very  often  full  of 
ledges  and  crannies,  of  steep  faces,  and  even  little 
flats,  of  the  richest  vegetation — every  inch  of  them  a 
perfect  garden  of  wild  grasses  and  wild  flowers  ready 
to  be  converted  by  the  Ruminants  into  human  food 
and  clothing.  All  these  immense  extents  of  surface 
were  inaccessible  from  the  Shealings. 

Nor  must  we  omit  another  immense  item  in  our 
account.  In  estimating  the  enormous  difference  be- 
tween the  productiveness  of  the  Highlands  as  they 
were  in  the  centuries  of  which  we  have  been  speaking, 
and  in  modern  times,  we  must  take  account  not  only 
of  the  immense  extent  of  area  redeemed  since  the 
Eighteenth  Century  to  economic  use,  but  we  must 
estimate  also  the  nature  and  value  of  the  animals 
which  came  to  be  fed  upon  that  area.  Here,  again, 
the  Taymouth  papers  give  us  authentic  information. 
From  other  sources  we  know  that  the  old  breeds 
of  Sheep  used  in  the  Highlands  were  small,  long- 
legged,  and  with  coats  more  like  hair  than  wool.  So 
late  as  1730  this  was  well  described  by  Captain 


204  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Burt  in  his  well-known  letters.  But  in  the  Tay- 
mouth  Book  we  have  an  accurate  statistical  return 
of  the  numbers  of  stones  (weight)  of  wool  which 
these  lean  creatures  produced  ;  and  from  this  return 
we  gather  that  it  took  27  fleeces  to  make  up  one 
stone  weight.  Now  the  poorest  Sheep  possessed  by 
even  the  poorest  Crofters  in  the  Highlands  will 
produce  a  stone  of  wool  for  every  six  Sheep,  and 
many  of  them  for  every  five  Sheep.  Each,  therefore, 
of  the  old  breed  was  worth  less  than  one-fifth  of 
one  of  the  poorest  of  the  new  breed.  It  is  no 
exaggeration  to  say  that  when  in  the  progress  of 
civilisation  it  was  discovered  that  the  finest  breed  of 
Sheep  could,  without  being  folded  by  night,  or 
watched  by  day,  live  all  the  year  round  upon  those 
mountains,  and  could  seek  out  every  nook  of  them 
in  search  of  every  patch  of  verdure,  a  very  large 
part  of  the  Highlands  was  as  much  redeemed  from 
absolute  waste  as  if  it  had  been  recovered  from 
the  sea. 

It  would,  however,  be  a  great  mistake  to  sup- 
pose that  those  great  areas  of  mountain  were  not 
valued,  and  very  highly  valued,  by  the  Owners  of 
them.  Eegulations  laid  down  for  the  burning  of 
the  moors  are  as  strict  and  careful  as  for  the  culti- 
vation of  the  glens.  The  Moor-fowl  they  produced 
were  part  of  the  Owner's  commissariat.  No  part  of 
the  whole  country  ever  was,  or  ever  could  be,  sepa- 
rated from  the  rest.  In  the  first  place,  the  Sheal- 
ings,  however  few  and  isolated,  were  an  essential 
part  of  the  life  of  those  times.  The  saving  of  all 
the  home  pastures  during  six  weeks  in  the  height 
of  summer,  was  perhaps  even  more  of  a  gain  than 
the  mere  browsing  of  the  hills.  But,  besides  all 
this,  the  Owners  of  estates  in  those  days  set  a  high 
value  on  the  mountains  of  their  country  for  pur- 
poses of  the  chase.  It  is  a  great  blunder  to  suppose 
that  Deer  Forests  are  a  modern  invention  in  the 
Highlands.  The  high  money  value  of  those  Forests 
is  new,  but  nothing  else.  The  truth  is  that  an  area 


: 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  205 

enormously  larger  than  now  was  formerly  occupied 
by  nothing  but  Deer.  Doubtless,  Wolves  and 
"  broken  men  "  poached  and  destroyed  them  much, 
and  lawlessness  often  led  to  the  waste  of  this 
resource  just  as  it  led  to  waste  and  ravage  beyond 
the  hills.  But  the  documents  preserved,  in  the 
Breadalbane  Charter  Chest  prove  not  only  that 
venison  was  largely  depended  upon  as  an  article  of 
food  by  the  Landowners  of  the  Highlands  during 
the  centuries  which  lie  more  than  200  years  behind 
us,  but  that  they  took  great  care  to  preserve  Deer 
in  special  mountain  areas  set  apart  for  the  purpose. 
Thus  we  have  a  Lease  of  some  land  in  Glenurchy, 
being  part  of  the  same  hills  which  now  form  the 
Forest  of  the  Black  Mount,  granted  in  1687, 
and  indicating  very  ancient  customs,  of  which 
the  terms  were  that  the  Tenant  was  to  be  Forester 
— that  he  was  to  keep  off  intruders, — that  the 
Stock  of  Deer  and  Roe  upon  the  ground  as  given 
to  his  care  was  to  be  estimated  by  the  Chamber- 
lain1 "  and  honest  men  in  the  country,"  so  that  it 
might  be  known  how  they  prospered  under  his  care, 

—that  he  was  not  himself  to  allow,  or  himself  to 
use,  any  pasturing  of  Cattle  except  upon  the  out- 
skirts of  the  Forest,  and  that  he  was  to  supply  the 
Lord's  House  at  Finlarig  with  not  less  than  sixteen 
Deer  between  Midsummer  and  Hallowmas.2 

Leases  and  other  transactions  of  this  kind,  and 

f  many  other  kinds  in  great  variety,  show  that  the 
Lords  of  Glenurchy  were  in  the  habit  of  dealing 
with  the  whole  area  of  their  Estate  as  sole  and 
undivided  Owners  ;  that  they  did  so  in  full  accord- 
ance not  only  with  the  phraseology  of  Charters,  but 
in  accordance  with  the  unbroken  traditions  of  im- 
memorial times,  and  with  the  repeatedly  expressed 
acquiescence,  approval,  and  co-operation  of  all 
classes  and  ranks  of  men  living  on  the  land.  In 

1  The  title  by  which  the  chief  Factor  or  Commissioner  was  designated 
on  large  Estates  in  the  Highlands. 

2  Black  Book  of  Taymouth,  p.  426. 


206  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

nothing  is  this  more  remarkable  than  in  the  fact 
that  many  of  these  men  were  themselves  the  living 
proofs  of  the  exercise  of  such  powers.  They  had 
applied  for  leave  to  come  into  the  country  under  the 
protection  of  these  powers,  and  continued  to  hold 
their  possessions  on  no  other  terms  whatever  than 
the  terms  granted  to  them  when  they  so  entered. 
I  have  already  hinted  at  the  probability  that  if 
we  could  now  fully  trace  the  history  of  the  popu- 
lation on  many  of  the  great  territorial  Estates  of 
the  Celtic  Chiefs  and  Landlords,  we  should  find 
that  no  small  part  of  them  had  been  recruited 
almost  as  soldiers  are  recruited,  or  adopted  in 
groups  and  families  of  "  broken  "  Septs,  who  came  to 
seek  protection,  and  were  selected  and  planted  on 
the  land  in  substitution  for  disloyal  or  predatory 
Septs  who  were  driven  out.  This  suspicion  is  amply 
confirmed  by  the  remarkable  collection  of  Bonds  of 
Manrent  which  are  published  in  the  Book  of  Tay- 
mouth.  For  here  we  have  every  variety  of  circum- 
stance which  can  show  the  absolute  powers  of 
disposal  over  the  land,  which  were  exercised  by  the 
chartered  Owners,  and  which  it  was  absolutely 
necessary  to  exercise,  for  the  peaceable  settlement 
and  improvement  of  the  country.  Moreover,  we 
have  in  these  Bonds  of  Manrent  a  very  clear  ex- 
planation of  the  language  which  has  suggested  to 
many  writers  a  hazy  notion  that  the  Celtic  Chiefs 
were  chosen  or  elected  by  their  people.  For  in 
these  Bonds  we  see  that  "  broken  men,"  coming  to 
settle  in  the  Lord  of  Glenurchy's  country,  were 
said  to  "  elect  him  to  be  their  Chief,"  exactly  in  the 
same  sense  in  which  a  recruit  may  be  said  to  elect 
the  commanding  officer  of  the  Regiment  in  which  he 
chooses  to  enlist.  Yet  the  Colonel  of  the  91st 
Highlanders  would  be  very  much  astonished  if  he 
were  said  to  be  elected  by  his  men. 

It  is  curious,  indeed,  to  observe  how  complete 
is  the  evidence  in  these  Documents  of  the  ancient, 
wide-spread,  and  perfectly  natural  customs  by  which 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  207 

Clans  in  the  Highlands  had  come  to  be  built  up 
during  many  centuries  on  the  ruins  of  the  prehistoric 
Tribal  system.  Except  that  the  fragments  which 
from  time  to  time  aggregated  round  powerful  Chiefs 
were  generally  all  of  the  Celtic  race,  there  was  not 
necessarily  any  blood  relationship,  and  sometimes 
men  from  even  the  most  hostile  Septs  came  in  to  join. 
Thus  in  1552  several  families,  formerly  belonging  to 
the  Clan  Gregor,  renounce  Macgregor,  "their  auld 
Chief,"  and  in  their  Bond  of  Manrent  record  that 
they  have  elected  and  chosen  the  Lord  of  Glenurchy 
and  his  Heirs  as  "  their  chiefs  and  masters."1  This 
is  a  transaction  repeated  over  and  over  again,  and 
seems  to  have  been  then  quite  common.  Nor  is  it 
less  interesting  to  observe  the  use  made  of  such 
men  when  they  were  admitted  and  accepted  as 
Tenants  on  the  Glenurchy  Estate.  In  the  following 
year,  1553,  we  have  a  Lease  granted  of  some  lands  in 
Rannoch,  taken  from  the  Clan  Gregor,  to  a  gentle- 
man of  the  name  of  MacCouliglas.  In  this  Lease 
we  see  the  inseparable  connection  which  existed 
then  between  the  political  and  the  agricultural 
interests  of  the  country — between  the  legal  exercise 
of  Chartered  rights,  and  the  suppression  of  the  rival 
powers  of  Celtic  Feudalism.  In  this  Lease  the 
Tenant  is  bound  to  take  in  no  Subtenants,  except 
such  as  should  be  subordinate  to  himself — to  support 
the  Lord  of  Glenurchy  in  all  his  lawful  quarrels 
except  against  the  Crown  or  against  his  Chief,  the 
Earl  of  Argyll — to  labour  and  manure  the  land  and 
to  make  his  principal  residence  upon  it — also  to 
guard  the  Forests  and  the  Woods — all  for  the 
purposes  and  objects  which  are  explained  very 
clearly  in  these  words  : — "  Always  and  until  he  may 
bring  the  same  to  quietness  for  the  common  weal  of 
the  country,  and  shall  not  surfer  any  of  the  Clan 
Gregor  to  have  entry  or  intromission  of  the  foresaid 
lands."2  Nor  did  the  Lords  of  Glenurchy  limit 
their  action  for  these  purposes  within  their  own 

1  Black  Book  of  Taymouth,  pp.  194-5.  2  Ibid.  pp.  206-7. 


208  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Estates.  By  Bonds  and  Agreements  between  them- 
selves and  smaller  Owners  of  land  who  were  less 
able  to  defend  their  own  interests,  this  younger 
branch  of  the  Clan  Campbell  exerted  their  influence 
all  around  them  to  the  same  ends.  Thus  in  1590 
they  bound  themselves  to  the  Robertsons  of  Strowan 
to  help  them  to  evict  and  remove  Tenants  who 
belonged  to  the  hated  Clan  Gregor,  and  to  maintain 
in  possession  the  loyal  men  whom  the  Robertsons 
might  plant  in  their  room.1  Thus,  again,  in  the 
case  of  a  Widow  Lady  in  possession  of  an  Estate  in 
which  probably  there  was  some  danger  of  her 
strength  being  insufficient — she  comes  under  an 
obligation  not  to  admit  as  her  Tenants  or  Subtenants 
men  who  were  not  first  submitted  for  approval  to 
the  Lord  of  Glenurchy.2 

The  criminal  jurisdiction  of  the  Barony  seems  to 
have  been  exercised  with  care,  and  with  an  ample 
apparatus  of  form  and  of  publicity.  The  Assessors 
or  Jurors  seem  to  have  been  generally  fifteen  in 
number.  Fines  were  imposed  for  offences  against 
the  Statutes  of  the  Barony.  Sheep-stealing,  as  in 
our  own  code  up  to  a  very  recent  date,  was  punish- 
able with  death,  and  one  case  is  given  with  the 
evidence  in  full,  in  which  this  penalty  was  inflicted — 
the  sentence  of  the  Court  being  pronounced  by  an 
officer  called  a  Chancellor.  But  the  great  criminals 
of  those  days  could  not  be  successfully  pursued  by 
the  ordinary  law,  whether  in  Royal  or  in  Baronial 
Courts.  The  most  notable  exercise  of  criminal 
jurisdiction  which  is  recorded  in  the  Book  of  Tay- 
mouth  is  that  by  which  the  Lord  of  Glenurchy,  in 
1552,  assisted  by  two  of  his  vassals,  Campbell  of 
Glenlyon  and  Menzies  of  Rannoch,  caught  and  be- 
headed one  Duncan  MacGregor  and  his  two  sons, 
who  for  more  than  forty  years  had  been  the  terror 
and  scourge  of  the  central  Highlands.8 

On  the  whole,  these  Journals  of  a  Baronial  Court 

1  Book  of  Taymouth,  pp.  246-7.  *  Ibid.  p.  186. 

3  Ibid.  Pref.  p.  xiii. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.          209 

give  a  very  favourable  impression  of  the  way  in 
which  they  were  ordinarily  conducted,  and  of  the 
indispensable  function  they  must  have  discharged 
throughout  the  country  in  familiarising  the  people 
with  the  highest  sanctions,  and  with  the  regular 
operation  of  authority  and  of  Law.  Considered 
merely  as  a  means  of  enforcing  the  few  and  simple 
rules  and  usages  which  a  very  rude  condition  of 
agriculture  rendered  necessary,  and  some  of  which 
were  requisite  for  the  management  of  a  great  terri- 
torial Estate,  they  must  have  played  a  valuable  and 
important  part.  In  this  capacity,  they  must  have 
been  essential  to  the  ready  and  easy  administration 
of  those  powers  of  Ownership  to  which  Parliament 
had  always  wisely  appealed  against  the  lawless  ties 
by  which  men  then  banded  themselves  against 
Society.  It  is  evident  that  in  these  Courts,  with 
their  regular  and  stipulated  attendance  of  Tenants 
and  Feuars  of  all  classes,  the  authority  of  Baronial 
Proprietors  was  conducted  upon  principles  and  in 
the  exercise  of  powers  which  were  universally  ac- 
cepted as  just  and  rightful.  They  were  in  truth 
traditional  powers,  as  well  as  chartered  powers,  and 
beyond  them  the  memory  of  man  did  not  run.  This 
aspect  of  the  Heritable  Jurisdictions  has  been  too 
much  overlooked.  A  few  great  cases  of  abuse  arising 
out  of  the  inevitable  corruption  of  Celtic  Feudalism 
when  it  could  (as  it  often  did)  possess  itself  also  of 
such  an  instrument  of  power,  have  tended  to  raise 
an  unjust  amount  of  prejudice  against  the  old  Herit- 
able Jurisdictions.  In  their  own  time  they  were  in- 
dispensable. In  fact  they  were  highly  popular  Insti- 
tutions, both  for  the  local  administration  of  Justice, 
and  for  the  local  administration  of  rural  affairs. 

It  must  be  remembered  that  it  was  not  in  what 
is  now  called  ordinary  crime,  still  less  was  it  in  even 
a  thought  connected  with  agrarian  violence,  that 
any  danger  to  civilisation  then  lay.  The  real  danger 
—the  constant  and  pressing  evil — from  which  Society 
then  suffered  was  one  which  could  rarely  be  dealt 

o 


210  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

with  by  any  Court,  because  the  criminals  could  not 
be  brought  before  them  until  after  they  had  been 
subdued  by  arms.  Against  those  criminals  Parlia- 
ment appealed  to  great  Landowners  to  strike  at  the 
root  of  the  evil  by  not  allowing  "  broken  men"  to 
live  upon  their  Estates.  It  is  not  until  we  read  the 
contemporary  documents  of  that  time  that  we  can 
bring  home  to  ourselves  the  wretched  condition  of 
every  district  of  Scotland  which  was  sufficiently  near 
the  Highlands  to  be  within  striking  distance  of 
predatory  Clans.  A  most  false  and  perverted  senti- 
ment has  come  to  make  men  treat  as  a  joke,  or  even 
to  sing  of  as  a  glory,  the  doings  of  men  whose  con- 
duct was  characterised  by  a  treachery  and  brutality 
which  may  now  seem  almost  incredible.  It  is  not 
until  we  have  gone  into  some  detail,  and  looked 
matters  in  the  face  as  they  really  were,  that  we  can 
at  all  understand  the  absolute  necessity  which  was 
then  attached  to  the  complete  power  of  removal,  and 
of  replantation,  which  the  Landowners  always  had, 
and  which  they  were  specially  exhorted  to  use  in  the 
interests  of  industry  and  of  peace.  This  and  this 
alone  explains  the  constant  stipulations  recurring  in 
the  Bonds  of  Manrent  between  the  Lords  of  Glen- 
urchy  and  others,  whereby  it  is  anxiously  provided 
how  lands  are  to  be  cleared  of  predatory  Clans,  and 
repeopled  with  loyal  and  peaceful  men.  Some  of  these 
Bonds  seem  very  savage  in  their  terms,  but  they 
were  more  than  justified  by  the  incomparable  ferocity 
of  those  against  whom  they  were  directed.  I  will 
take  a  case  from  the  Book  of  Taymouih  that  may  in 
some  degree  help  us  to  realise  what  the  condition  of 
things  was  against  which  civilisation  had  to  fight. 

In  1589  the  great  event  which  occupied  attention 
in  Scotland  was  the  approaching  marriage  of  the 
Sovereign,  James  vi.,  to  the  Princess  Anne  of  Den- 
mark. The  Bride  was  to  come  to  Scotland,  and 
immense  preparations  were  made  to  receive  her.  It 
will  be  remembered  that  angry  winds  detained  the 
Princess — that  they  ultimately  dispersed  the  fleet 


THE  APPEAL  FKOM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.          211 

conveying  her — that  the  King  was  obliged  to  post- 
pone his  marriage  till  he  himself  could  go  to  Denmark 
after  some  months'  delay — that  the  wedding  took 
place  accordingly  in  Denmark — and  that  James  and 
his  Bride  did  not  return  to  Scotland  until  May 
1590.  But  in  the  autumn  of  1589  all  this  was 
unforeseen.  It  was  known  that  the  Princess  was  on 
the  point  of  setting  sail,  and  with  a  favourable  breeze 
her  Convoy  might  have  been  seen  any  day  entering 
the  Firth  of  Forth  and  dropping  anchor  in  the 
harbour  of  Leith.  The  Nobles  and  the  people  of 
Scotland  seem  to  have  been  desirous  and  ambitious 
to  give  a  great  reception  to  the  Foreign  Princess 
who  was  to  be  their  Queen.  Each  and  all  were 
eager  to  contribute  something  of  their  best  for  the 
festivities  of  the  occasion.  Amongst  others,  Lord 
Drummond,  whose  territories  included  the  famous 
Forest  of  Glenartney ,  desired  to  supply  his  Sovereign 
and  his  Queen  with  the  best  venison  from  a  pastur- 
age of  such  great  renown.  Not,  indeed,  for  more 
than  200  years  was  that  Forest  to  be  made  for  ever 
famous  beyond  the  bounds  of  Scotland  by  that 
immortal  opening : — 

"  The  Stag  at  eve  had  drunk  his  fill 
Where  danced  the  moon  on  Monan's  rill, 
And  deep  his  midnight  lair  had  made 
In  lone  Glenartney's  hazel  shade."1 

But  although  its  reputation  was  then  local,  it  seems 
to  have  been  well  established.  There  was,  however, 
one  awkward  circumstance  about  it,  which  must 
have  been  a  serious  impediment  to  sport.  It  was 
dangerously  near  the  territory  and,  indeed,  the 
head-quarters  of  the  terrible  Clan  Gregor.  They 
were  specially  seated  on  the  hills  and  glens  which 
fall  into  the  northern  and  western  shores  of  the 
beautiful  Loch  Katrine,  whence  easy  passes  led  to 
the  neighbourhood  of  Glenartney.  The  sportsman 
in  that  Forest  might  very  suddenly  find  himself  con- 

1  The  Lady  of  the  Lake,  canto  i. 


212  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

verted  from  the  Hunter  into  the  Hunted,  and  be 
overtaken  by  the  fate  he  had  intended  for  the  Deer. 
Lord  Drummond  knew  the  danger,  and  he  determined, 
therefore,  to  take  every  precaution.  Through  more 
than  one  friendly  channel,  therefore,  he  seems  to  have 
secured  a  safe-conduct  for  those  whom  he  intended 
to  send  to  slay  the  Deer.  He  then  chose  a  gentle- 
man of  his  own  Clan  and  name,  Drummond  of  Drum- 
monderocht,  who  was  to  repair  to  Glenartney  and 
procure  the  venison.  Accordingly  this  unfortunate 
man  proceeded  on  his  mission,  and  began  his  hunt. 
He  was  doubtless  watched  from  his  entrance,  and 
when  far  from  all  succour  or  alarm,  he  was  surrounded 
by  the  Macgregors,  and  barbarously  butchered.  The 
method  of  the  murder  is  quaintly  expressed  by  the 
document  which  relates  it  in  the  Book  of  Taymouth, 
which  tells  us  that  the  Clan  Gregorys  dealing  with 
or  Drummond  was  that  they  "  cuttit  and  aff-took 
is  Heed."  According  to  another  barbarous  usage 
of  the  Clans,  the  bloody  head  of  the  victim  was 
exhibited  to  as  many  of  the  Clan  as  could  be  collected 
in  order  that  by  their  own  code  of  honour  the  whole 
of  them  should  be  implicated  in  the  deed,  and 
banded  equally  in  its  defence.  Ghastly  as  this  story 
is,  it  is  not  so  ghastly  as  its  sequel  which  is  told  by 
Sir  Walter  Scott.1  The  murderers  proceeded  with 
the  head  to  the  House  of  Stewart  of  Ardvoirlich, 
whose  wife  was  a  sister  of  the  victim.  Not  know- 
ing their  horrid  burden,  the  poor  lady  offered  them 
hospitality,  and  when  she  was  engaged  in  her 
kitchen  preparing  their  food,  they  found  means 
of  placing  her  brother's  bloody  head  upon  the  table, 
so  that  it  might  confront  her  on  her  return.  The 
dreadful  sight  drove  her  shrieking  into  the  woods, 
and  ended  in  depriving  her  of  her  reason.  But 
before  she  died  she  bore  a  child,  in  whom  the  taint 
of  her  insanity  seems  to  have  come  out  fifty-four 
years  later,  when  he  committed  a  treacherous  and 
cruel  murder  in  the  camp  of  the  Marquis  of  Mon- 

1   Tales  of  a  Grandfather,  chap.  xlii. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.          213 

trose.  Such  are  among  the  shocking  incidents 
which  were  not  unfrequent  in  the  history  of  the 
Clans.  It  was  in  consequence  of  this  outrage  by 
the  Macgregors  and  of  others  of  the  same  kind 
deemed  specially  barbarous  even  in  those  days,  that 
we  find  war  to  the  knife  proclaimed  against  the  Clan 
Gregor,  and  in  one  case  we  have  a  Lease  of  lands 
given  by  the  Lord  of  Glenurquhay,  in  which  it  is 
the  main  condition  of  the  Tenancy  that  the  holder 
of  it  should  be  in  deadly  feud  with  the  Macgregors, 
and  should  engage  to  slay  and  capture  them  on  all 
possible  occasions,  whether  by  open  or  by  secret 
means. 

We  see  then  how  the  chartered  rights  of  Owner- 
ship over  land,  involving  the  free  and  complete  dis- 
posal of  it  in  all  its  areas  and  in  all  its  surfaces, 
constituted  the  one  great  power  which  alone  could 
mitigate  and  ultimately  abolish  the  desperate  evils 
which  had  been  developed  under  the  lawless  powers 
and  tendencies  of  Celtic  Chiefs.  It  afforded  the 
only  means  of  introducing  with  authority  the  dawn- 
ing light  of  agricultural  improvement.  It  afforded 
the  only  means  of  substituting  universally  the  idea 
of  fixed  and  stipulated  rents,  for  uncertain  and 
arbitrary  exactions.  It  afforded  above  all  the  only 
means  of  securing  that  the  country  should  be  in- 
habited by  peaceful  and  loyal  men. 

Turning  now  from  the  Central  to  the  Western 
Highlands  we  find  the  same  processes  in  active 
operation,  and  always  with  the  same  result.  The 
transfer  of  territorial  Estates  from  Chiefs  who  were 
disloyal,  to  others  who  were  loyal  to  the  Crown  and 
the  Constitution,  was  uniformly  followed  by  cor- 
responding migrations  of  the  subordinate  population. 
These  were  not  clearances  of  the  true  old  Celtic 
type  such  as  that  which  doomed  the  whole  population 
of  the  Island  of  Eigg  to  suffocation  in  a  cave,  or 
that  which  swept  off  the  people  of  the  Upper  Dee 
under  the  exterminating  vengeance  of  the  Chiefs  of 
Huntly  and  of  Grant.  In  the  regular  transfers  of 


214  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Ownership  effected  by  Charters  from  the  Crown, 
after  the  conquest  of  rebellious  Clans,  a  great  part 
of  the  true  old  "  nativi,"  or  Celtic  occupiers,  had 
never  any  difficulty  in  transferring  their  allegiance 
to  a  new  Chief  or  Landowner.  Smaller  Septs  who 
had  settled  under  the  protection  of  some  great  Chief 
were  equally  ready  to  accept  the  same  protection 
from  his  successor,  and  so  it  resulted  that  those  who 
were  actually  removed  were  only  the  military  and 
predatory  elements  of  the  Clan.  Still,  this  element 
was  large  enough,  and  above  all,  its  possessions  in 
lands  and  "  rooms  "  were  always  large  enough  to 
give  scope  for  extensive  re-plantation  of  the  country. 
All  this  indeed  had  been  going  on  for  centuries,  but 
generally  until  the  times  of  which  we  are  now 
speaking,  there  was  little  change  for  the  better  in 
these  re-plantations.  One  Clan  superseded  another 
by  massacre  or  displacement.  But  the  new-comers 
were  as  purely  military  and  as  purely  predatory  as 
their  predecessors  had  been,  and  no  new  element  of 
value  either  in  blood  or  in  habits  and  ideas  was 
rooted  in  the  country.  Now,  however,  after  the 
Union  of  the  Crowns,  and  the  gradual  but  steady 
establishment  of  more  civilised  Lords  and  Barons  in 
the  Highlands,  these  re-plantations  of  the  country, 
often  gradual  but  continuous  in  their  operation, 
worked  an  important  change.  Not  only  was  new 
blood  frequently  introduced,  but  also  "  milder 
manners,  purer  laws  ; "  whilst  the  whole  mind  and 
attention  both  of  Owners  and  of  Occupiers  of  the 
soil  began  to  be  set  on  living  by  peaceful  industry 
instead  of  by  predatory  violence. 

We  have  one  striking  illustration  of  the  great  and 
beneficent  changes  which  were  thus  brought  about, 
in  the  history  of  the  Highland  District  of  Kintyre 
in  the  county  of  Argyll.  There  is  no  more  remark- 
able feature  in  the  physical  geography  of  Scotland 
than  the  long  narrow  Peninsula  of  Kintyre  which 
stretches  so  far  out  into  the  Western  Sea  that  at 
its  termination  in  that  direction  it  approaches  within 


THE  APPEAL  FEOM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  215 

14  miles  of  the  Irish  Coast.  Round  the  stormy 
Headland  thus  presented  to  the  western  winds  the 
whole  force  of  the  Oceanic  tidal  wave  from  the 
North  rushes  in  boiling  eddies,  rising  constantly  into 
foaming  and  dangerous  seas.  The  brave  naviga- 
tors of  the  North  must  have  rounded  it  constantly 
in  their  way  from  the  Northern  to  the  Southern 
Isles.  But  they  had  a  method  of  avoiding  it  with 
at  least  their  lighter  vessels,  for  across  the  narrow 
Isthmus  which  separates  Kintyre  from  Knapdale  on 
the  North,  they  were  accustomed  to  drag  their 
galleys  from  Loch  Tarbet  to  launch  them  in  Loch 
Fyne.  They  thus  anticipated  an  economy  of  time, 
of  distance,  and  of  danger  which  our  modern  coast- 
ing trade  does  not  now  enjoy,  but  which  will 
certainly  be  accomplished  some  day  whenever  the 
eyes  of  enterprise  and  of  common  sense  are  opened 
to  the  obvious  utility  and  value  of  the  short  canal 
which  alone  is  needed  at  that  point  "to  unite  the 
Eastern  and  Western  waters,  and  to  escape  some  60 
miles  of  stormy  and  dangerous  navigation. 

A  great  area  of  land  so  conspicuous  to  all  comers 
whether  from  the  South  or  from  the  North, — which 
fronted  the  navigators  northwards  from  Galloway 
and  from  Man,  and  flanked  on  the  East  for  many 
miles  the  course  of  galleys  southwards  from  Mull, 
Skye,  and  the  Scandinavian  Seas, — must  have  from 
the  earliest  times  attracted  the  notice  of  all  the  hardy 
Tribes  which  were  peopling  those  lands  with  settlers. 
Nor  would  this  attraction  be  diminished  when 
they  landed  on  it.  Hilly,  but  hardly  mountainous, — 
its  green  sea  margins, — the  slopes  above  its  low  cliffs 
which  have  been  long  abandoned  by  the  waves, — 
and  here  and  there  wide  openings  of  comparatively 
level  land, — all  afforded  precisely  the  sort  of  country 
most  easily  converted  to  purposes  of  pasture  and 
of  the  rude  cereal  cultivation  which  was  then 
practised.  Moreover,  there  was  another  great  fea- 
ture about  Kintyre  which  has  always  determined 
the  early  settlements  of  maritime  populations. 


216  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Near  the  South-eastern  termination  of  Kintyre  its 
shores  retreat  suddenly  into  a  long  and  deep  bay,  or 
loch,  somewhat  sinuous  in  its  course,  and  with  its 
entrance  marked  by  a  high  and  precipitous  island, 
which  effectually  protects  one  of  the  finest  harbours 
on  the  British  coasts. 

Here,  accordingly,  we  find  that  the  Scoto-Irish 
missionaries  had  established  one  of  their  earliest 
churches,  and  Kiaran,  one  of  Columba's  followers, 
had  given  his  name  to  the  harbour  and  the  loch. 
Here,  in  later  times,  the  Kings  of  Scotland  had 
erected  a  castle,  and  in  their  naval  expeditions  to 
and  from  the  Isles,  they  had  repeatedly  made  it  a 
point  of  gathering  or  rest.  In  all  the  contests 
for  and  about  the  Lordship  of  the  Isles,  Kintyre 
was  treated  practically  as  one  of  the  Islands  from 
its  almost  exclusively  maritime  position.  The  Lord 
of  Islay  and  of  Kintyre  had  befriended  Bruce, 
had  harboured  him  in  Kintyre,  and  the  place 
in  which  he  entertained  him  is  as  peculiar  and 
beautiful  as  many  more  celebrated  sites.  All 
round  the  Western  coast  of  Scotland  there  are  many 
remains  of  the  Old  Red  Sandstone  rocks,  which 
geologically  are  of  much  more  recent  date  than  the 
grey  and  slaty  schists  which  form  the  great  mass  of 
the  Highland  mountains.  Along  the  shores  of  Kin- 
tyre  these  remains  are  chiefly  confined  to  the  out- 
lines of  the  existing  shore,  and  to  an  older  line  of 
beach,  from  which  the  sea  has  now  retired.  At 
many  places  they  present  the  character  of  pudding- 
stones,  or  of  a  conglomerate  of  pebbles  cemented  in 
a  red  paste  of  sand.  Near  the  south  end  of  Kintyre 
these  rocks  are  at  some  points  conspicuous.  At  one 
spot  they  present  a  remarkable  position  of  defence. 
In  a  recess  of  the  coast,  containing  some  of  the 
richest  land  in  Kintyre,  in  the  middle  of  a  beautiful 
curved  bay  of  sand  and  pebbles,  backed  by  link- 
land,  meadow,  and  dunes,  some  strata  of  this  con- 
glomerate have  been  tilted  up,  and  now  form  a 
small  rocky  promontory  with  sharp  edges,  turned 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  217 

steeply  to  the  sky.  On  one  side  they  fall  in  a 
perpendicular  precipice  eastwards  into  the  sea ; 
on  the  other  side  they  slope  abruptly  into  a 
shallow  bay,  whilst  farther  round  towards  the 
beach  the  place  is  protected  by  the  sea-pool  of  a 
considerable  stream.  By  one  narrow  neck  alone  is 
it  accessible  at  all  from  the  land.  On  this  curious 
"  Dun  "  or  isolated  rocky  headland  the  Lords  of  the 
Isles,  and  all  the  Clans  and  Tribes  who  ever  settled 
in  Kintyre,  had  erected  one  of  the  principal  castles 
of  defence.  "  Dunaverty  "  commands  a  magnificent 
view.  From  it  the  coast  of  Ireland  seems  close  at 
hand,  with  the  island  of  Rathlin,  Brace's  hid- 
ing-place in  1307,  seen  to  the  extreme  right.  South- 
ward and  eastward  it  swept  all  the  sea  approaches 
from  the  Isle  of  Man  and  from  the  Clyde.  In  this 
stronghold,  when  the  Clan  Donnell  had  entered  on 
their  long  career  of  hostility  to  the  Crown  of  Scot- 
land, they  had  often  defied  the  attacks  of  their 
enemies.  In  the  final  contest,  however,  with  the 
Campbells  and  other  Clans  who  were  loyal  to  the 
Scottish  Monarchy,  they  were  defeated  early  in  the 
17th  century,  and  Kintyre  passed  into  the  hands  of 
the  Earl  of  Argyll,  the  leader  of  the  Confederacy 
which  acted  for  the  Crown.  The  Macdonalds  of  Islay 
and  Kintyre,  however,  had  not  in  vain  meddled  so 
long  in  the  bloody  rebellions  and  feuds  of  the  Irish 
Celts.  They  had  established  themselves  there  in 
territorial  possessions,  and  in  the  succeeding  reign 
of  Charles  I.  they  blossomed  into  the  Earls  of 
Antrim,  and  did  their  best  once  more  to  subdue 
Scotland  under  an  Irish  and  Catholic  invasion. 

When  the  Campbells  entered  upon  possession  of 
Kintyre  they  found  the  country  to  a  large  extent 
devastated  by  wars.  Out  of  353  merk-lands  in  the 
whole  Peninsula  no  less  than  113  were  lying  waste.1 
As  in  other  similar  cases  the  native  people  and 
the  minor  Clans  who  were  willing  to  accept  a 
new  Chief  were  unmolested,  and  not  a  few  of 

1  Gregory's  History,  p.  308. 


218  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

them  remain  in  possession  of  their  lands  to  the 
present  day.  But  the  migration  of  the  leaders  to 
Ireland,  and  the  devastation  which  continual  wars 
had  caused,  left  large  areas  to  be  filled  up  on  the 
principles  which  had  been  so  wisely  inculcated 
upon  Owners  by  the  Parliament  of  1587.  It  is 
doubtful  whether  this  process  of  the  plantation  of 
peaceful  and  loyal  men  was  ever  pursued  in  any 
part  of  Scotland  under  such  peculiar  circumstances 
or  with  so  happy  a  result.  It  so  fell  out  that  not 
many  years  after  Kintyre  had  been  placed  in  the 
possession  of  the  Argyll  family,  the  great  contests 
of  our  civil  wars  began.  In  that  contest  the  Mar- 
quis of  Argyll  took  the  side  which  was  identified 
with  the  Reformed  Church  in  Scotland,  and  with 
the  determined  opposition  of  the  Presbyterian 
ople  to  the  arbitrary  measures  of  Charles  I. 
o  early  as  about  the  year  1640  he  either  invited 
or  accepted  the  offer  of  a  number  of  Presbyterian 
families  from  the  counties  of  Ayr  and  Renfrew  who 
were  disgusted  by  the  persistent  measures  of  the 
Government  to  impose  Episcopacy  upon  the  Church. 
These  families  the  Marquis  of  Argyll  settled  upon 
his  estate  in  Kintyre.  A  second  plantation  of  Low- 
landers  took  place  between  1649  and  1660.  This 
was  only  one  item  in  the  whole  course  of  his  policy 
and  conduct  in  support  of  the  popular  cause  which 
brought  him  to  the  scaffold  in  1661.  His  son, 
however,  the  ninth  Earl,  inherited  his  sympathies, 
and  pursued  the  same  course,  at  the  same  ultimate 
sacrifice  of  his  life.  After  the  Restoration,  as  is  well 
known,  all  the  power  of  Charles  II.  and  his  agents 
was  employed  in  hunting  down  the  opponents  of 
his  policy,  religious  and  political,  who  were  espe- 
cially numerous,  and  especially  devoted  in  the 
Western  counties  south  of  the  Firth  of  Clyde.  As 
Bruce  used  to  watch,  sometimes  from  Kintyre  or 
from  Arran,  the  beacon-fires  which  were  lighted  for 
him  on  the  opposite  coast  of  his  native  Carrick, 
so  did  the  Earl  of  Argyll  or  his  agents  watch  the 


liilill  iii 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  219 

swellings  of  persecution  which  raged  against  the 
Covenanters  of  Renfrewshire,  of  Ayrshire,  and  of 
Wigtown.  On  a  fine  summer  evening  the  low,  pink 
hills  of  these  coasts  seem  near  to  men  who  look  for 
them  from  the  headlands  of  Kintyre,  whilst  the 
noble  precipices  of  Ailsa  Craig  are,  as  it  were,  a  half- 
way milestone  between  the  coasts.  With  a  south- 
erly or  western  wind  a  few  hours'  sail  was  sufficient 
for  the  passage.  What  more  natural  than  that  the 
Covenanters  should  look  occasionally  across  the 
water,  and  should  seek  for  shelter  in  a  portion  of  the 
Highlands  where  so  many  of  their  kindred  were 
thriving  well,  and  which  was  under  the  rule  of  a 
Chief  who  exercised  his  power  in  favour  of  the  Con- 
stitution and  of  the  Protestant  religion  ?  And  so 
it  was  that  a  third  migration  came  into  Kintyre. 
The  persecuted  Lowlanders  crossed  in  not  incon- 
siderable numbers,  and  were  again  planted  in  various 
vacant  lands  all  over  the  estate. 

It  will  mark  the  continuity  of  Scottish  history, 
and  the  sense  in  which  our  days  have  been  hitherto 
"  bound  each  to  each  by  natural  piety,"  if  I  relate 
here  an  incident  which  occurred  to  myself  in  connec- 
tion with  this  plantation  of  Lowlanders  in  Kintyre. 

The  deep  depression  in  the  line  of  hills  constitut- 
ing the  backbone  of  Kintyre,  which  gives  entrance 
to  the  sea  along  the  shores  of  Loch  Kilkiaran  (now 
called  Campbelltown  Loch),  is  a  depression  which 
stretches  right  across  the  Peninsula  from  sea  to  sea. 
It  amounts,  indeed,  to  a  complete  gap  in  the  hills, 
and  it  widens  rapidly  towards  the  western  shore, 
where  it  terminates  in  a  long  sandy  bay,  called 
Machrihanish,  into  which  the  surf  of  the  Atlantic 
rolls  with  such  tremendous  force  that  the  roar  of  its 
breakers  can  be  often  heard,  in  favourable  conditions 
of  the  atmosphere,  so  far  off  as  the  coast  of  Ayr- 
shire. This  great  depression  in  the  central  ridge 
is  a  feature  of  much  interest  both  in  the  geolo- 
gical structure  and  in  the  economic  history  of  the 
district.  Its  geological  interest  lies  in  its  im- 


220  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

mense  antiquity.     It  dates  from  before  the  forma- 
tion of  the  Coal  Measures.    Then  as  now,  this  hollow 
was  a  deep  depression  in  some  surrounding  country, 
and  formed  a  "  basin "  in  which  the  usual  succession 
of  deposits  was  made  which  constitute  a  coal-field. 
It  is  entirely  separated  from  the  other  coal-fields 
of  Scotland,  and  is  the  only  one  existing  in    any 
portion  of  the  Highlands.1     Ever  since  that  age  of 
unmeasurable  antiquity  it  has  continued  to  be  sub- 
ject   to  the  same  conditions  of  alternative  depres- 
sion under  the  sea,  and  of  slight  elevation  above  it. 
A  thick  bed  of  leaves,   derived  from  the  tangled 
growths  of  willow  and  of  hazel,  testify  to  a  time, 
very  recent,  when  it  was  occupied  by  brushwood. 
Over  that  bed  there  is  laid  a  deposit  of  marine  gravel 
and  of  clay,  showing  that  it  had  been  again  lowered 
under  the  ocean,  and   the  south   end  of  Kintyre 
had  been  made  an  island  by  a  broad  belt  of  tidal 
waters    washing   through  Loch   Kilkiaran  between 
the   eastern   and  western  shores.     Another  eleva- 
tion had  lifted  this  area   again — also  during  very 
recent  times — and  it  became  covered  with  a  dense 
forest  of  oak,  whose  immense  roots    and   gnarled 
trunks  testify  to  the  length  and  greatness  of  their 
ancient  growth.     Whether   by  fire  or   by  inunda- 
tion, or  by  other  means,  this  forest  fell  into  decay, 
and    stagnant    waters    soon     accumulated,    round 
and  over  its  fallen  trunks,  the  matted  mosses  and 
other  vegetation  which  by  decay  and  pressure  be- 
came converted  into  peat.     Hence  the  whole  of  this 
wide  depression   became  one  enormous  peat-moss, 
stretching  from  the  foot  of  the  hills  on  one  side  to 
the  foot  of  the  hills  upon  the  other.     Indications 
have  been  found  that  Prehistoric  Man  occupied  the 
country   before   these   forests   grew ;    whilst   more 
recent  remains   prove   that  races  of  much  higher 
civilisation  had  carried  their  arms  around  the  great 

1  Secondary  Coals  exist  in  Sutherland,  and  some  small  seams  of  Ter- 
tiary age  in  the  Island  of  Mull.  But  the  true  Coals  of  the  Carboniferous 
age  exist  nowhere  in  any  portion  of  the  Highland  area. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  221 

moss,  and  had  occasionally  hid  them  in  recesses  of 
the  peat.  Very  lately  a  ploughman  was  startled  by 
the  clash  and  clangour  of  sounding  metal,  and  by 
shining  fragments  scattering  around  his  feet.  His 
ploughshare  had  broken  up  a  bundle  of  those  beautiful 
leaf-shaped  swords  of  bronze,  with  which  the  Britons 
and  the  Picts  had  encountered  the  legions  of  Caesar 
and  of  Hadrian.  The  silent  continuity  of  causation 
had  in  this,  as  in  many  other  cases,  been  perfectly 
compatible  with  a  very  sudden  catastrophe.  Buried, 
perhaps,  originally  many  feet  beneath  the  surface 
of  the  moss,  these  swords  had  escaped  the  cutting 
of  drains,  and  for  probably  2000  years  had  lain 
where  they  were  found.  With  infinitesimal  slow- 
ness after  it  had  been  reclaimed,  the  peat  had 
been  shrinking  and  settling  from  increasing  loss  of 
moisture,  until  at  last  the  moment  came  when 
the  ordinary  depth  of  ploughing  just  enabled  the 
coulter  to  reach  the  long-hidden  armour  of  some 
doughty  Pict,  and  then  his  graceful  yet  formidable 
swords  were  dashed  along  a  very  different  surface 
from  that  in  which  he  had  hidden  them. 

Since  the  beginning  of  historic  times  it  has 
been  the  work  of  Husbandry  to  cultivate  along 
the  margins  of  this  great  sheet  of  bog,  and 
here  and  there  to  make  inroads  upon  it,  and  to 
extend  the  area  of  pasture  or  of  corn.  Under  the 
manly  system  of  Free  Covenants  between  Owners 
and  Cultivators  this  work  has  gone  bravely  on,  and 
some  of  the  finest  farms  in  Kintyre  have  been 
won  and  furnished  upon  the  old  area  of  bog.  On 
one  of  my  first  visits  to  the  Estate  I  was  told  of  a 
small  farm  situated  in  the  middle  of  this  moss,  upon 
one  of  the  little  hills  which  rise  out  of  it,  and  afford 
a  vantage-ground  of  dry  land.  The  Tenant  was  said 
to  be  the  lineal  descendant  of  one  of  the  earliest 
refugees  from  the  Lowlands,  whose  family  had  re- 
mained ever  since  upon  the  Estate,  although  they 
had  changed  repeatedly  from  one  possession  to 
another.  The  historical  interest  attaching  to  such 


222  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

a  case,  as  well  as  the  account  given  to  me  of  the 
character  of  the  family,  led  me  at  once  to  visit  it. 
I  found  it  a  typical  example  of  the  middle  stage  of 
progress  between  the  genuine  old  Highland  "  stead- 
ing," and  the  finished  and  elaborate  accommodation 
which  farmers  have  been  asking  and  have  been 
getting  during  the  last  half-century.  One  long 
line  of  low  thatched  houses  built  across  the  slope 
of  the  Hill  without  any  attempt  to  keep  a  level,  or 
to  have  any  dressing  of  the  ground,  recalled  the 
oldest  arrangement  of  Highland  hovels.  As  in 
them,  the  shelters  for  cattle  were  part  of  the  same 
range,  and  in  close  proximity  to  the  kitchen. 
As  in  them,  too,  this  apartment  was  without  a 
chimney,  the  fire  being  made  in  the  centre  of  the 
floor,  round  which  the  family  congregated  in  the 
evenings,  the  smoke  curling  out  at  an  aperture 
in  the  raftered  roof,  whilst  the  heat  and  light 
were  distributed  in  a  warm  and  comfortable  glow 
among  those  who  sat  around.  On  the  other 
hand,  the  best  apartment  was  a  neat  parlour  with  a 
regular  fireplace,  and  a  couple  of  beds  somewhat 
recessed  in  the  wall.  Moreover,  instead  of  mere  turf 
and  loose  stones  according  to  the  old  Highland 
fashion,  the  walls  were  rough  stones  put  together 
with  lime,  and  though  by  no  means  rigidly  perpen- 
dicular, yet  fairly  solid.  The  table  in  the  parlour  was 
covered  with  such  Books  as  Sir  William  Hamilton's 
Lectures,  and  the  best  treatises  on  Philosophy  and 
Theology.  These  were  the  prizes  won  by  some 
of  the  sons  at  the  University  of  Glasgow.  The 
father  of  the  family,  whose  name  was  Huie,  was 
accustomed  to  sit  on  a  rough  but  picturesque  chair 
of  oak,  rudely  carved,  with  the  date  of  1626  cut 
in  conspicuous  figures  on  corners  of  the  back. 
This  was  a  relic  of  their  migration.  It  had  been 
brought  with  them  from  Ayrshire  when  their  an- 
cestors had  sought  refuge  from  the  persecutions 
of  the  Restoration. 

Of  its  hereditary  owner  I  cannot  speak  with- 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  223 

out  memories  of  affectionate  respect.  He  was 
as  much  a  bit  of  continuous  history  as  the  chair 
which  was  his  domestic  throne.  Not  less  visibly 
than  on  it,  the  date  of  1626  was  carved  in 
legible  letters  on  his  brow.  As  a  Celt  myself  I 
like  to  think  that  the  ease  and  natural  dignity  of 
his  manners  were  not  wholly  underived  from  the 
Highland  country  to  which  his  ancestors  had  re- 
moved. But  the  type  of  his  religion  came,  undoubt- 
edly, from  the  Lowlands.  It  was  the  religion  of 
the  Covenant  very  slightly  modified.  It  did  not 
show  itself  ostentatiously,  but  in  little  things. 
Forms  which  have  become  hardly  more  than  forms 
to  us,  were  vivid  realities  to  him.  "  Grace  before 
meat "  was  one  of  these.  I  have  heard  it  sung  in 
voices  of  exquisite  harmony  by  the  Glee  Club  in 
London.  I  have  heard  it  monotonously  recited  in 
Latin  in  College  Halls.  I  have  heard  it  droned  by 
chaplains  at  public  feasts  ;  and  who  has  not  seen  the 
last  stages  of  its  decay  in  the  scarcely  instantaneous 
pause  of  tongues  at  an  ordinary  table  ?  But  never 
but  once  have  I  heard  a  real  "  grace  before  meat." 
After  a  ride  of  some  eleven  miles,  with  as  much  before 
him  on  his  return,  I  had  occasion  once  to  urge  Mr. 
Huie,  then  above  eighty  years  of  age,  to  take  some 
food.  He  would  accept  nothing  but  tea  and  bread. 
But  before  taking  it  he  said  he  was  sure  I  would 
excuse  a  habit  which  he  knew  had  become  unusual. 
And  then,  bowing  his  grey  head,  he  poured  forth  a 
prayer,  which  was  a  prayer  indeed,  full  of  the  old 
man's  belief  in  the  presence  and  in  the  reality  of  the 
Providence  which  dispensed  his  daily  bread.  He 
was  exactly  the  sort  of  man  who  would  have  led 
the  singing  of  a  congregation  in  the  hills  when 
the  ruffians  of  Charles  n.  and  of  Lauderdale  were 
already  galloping  upon  them. 

Such  is  the  sturdy  blood  which  was  brought 
into  this  district  of  the  Highlands  by  the  right  of 
letting  land  freely  to  free  men,  in  the  exercise  of  the 
ordinary  powers  of  Ownership.  It  has  answered 


224  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

admirably.  The  Highlanders  were  not  supplanted. 
Both  races  were,  as  elsewhere  in  the  best  parts  of 
Scotland,  blended  and  interfused.  The  process  has 
gone  on  for  more  than  200  years.  Celtic  Tenants 
are  still  among  the  best — not  by  special  favour,  but 
under  the  stimulus  of  a  healthy  rivalry,  and  by 
survival  of  the  fittest.  There  is  no  race  in  the 
world  more  intelligent  or  more  industrious  than  the 
Celts  when  they  are  brought  under  such  conditions. 
Campbells  and  Stewarts,  Mackays  and  Macalpines, 
are  found  side  by  side  with  Hunters,  and  Wallaces, 
and  Montgomeries,  and  no  district  in  any  part  of 
Scotland  has  made  such  rapid  advances  in  agricul- 
tural improvement. 

From  this  remarkable  example  of  the  powers  of 
Ownership  exerted  in  the  cause  of  liberty  and  of 
civilisation,  it  is  most  instructive  to  turn  to  one  of 
the  last  exhibitions  of  Celtic  Feudalism  yoked  to 
the  cause  of  despotism  and  oppression.  The  contrast 
is  all  the  more  remarkable  since  the  two  transactions 
may  be  said  to  have  been  contemporary,  and  to  have 
stood  in  close  relation  to  the  same  political  condi- 
tions. Probably  no  legitimate  Government  of  modern 
times  was  ever  so  utterly  bad  as  the  Government 
of  Scotland  under  Charles  n.,  conducted  by 
Middleton  and  Lauderdale,  and  animated  by  Arch- 
bishop Sharp.  The  passions  of  a  secular  despotism 
are  often  savage  enough,  but  they  are  generally  less 
relentless  when  they  stand  alone  than  when  they  are 
inspired  by  the  religious  passions  of  ecclesiastics. 
Both  were  combined  under  Charles  n.  A  vindictive 
voluptuary  hounded  on  by  a  fanatical  priesthood,  was 
indeed  a  terrible  alliance.  They  determined  to  try 
to  bend  to  their  purpose  that  very  power  of  Owner- 
ship to  which  the  Parliament  of  Scotland  had 
appealed  with  a  nobler  aim.  They  determined  to  call 
upon  the  Barons  and  the  Proprietors  of  the  Western 
Counties  to  put  down  the  Presbyterian  Covenanters. 
For  this  purpose  a  Bond  was  presented  to  them  all, 
by  which  they  engaged  to  turn  out  of  their  farms 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  225 

and  from  off  their  lands,  all  Tenants  who  should 
attend  the  hated  Conventicles.  But  the  powers  of 
Ownership  had  already  brought  about  in  those 
counties  that  sympathy  of  feeling  and  identity  of 
interests  which  are  deeper  seated  than  the  ties  of 
a  traditional  brotherhood  in  blood  and  arms.  The 
Lowlanders,  as  we  have  seen,  had  also  been  related 
to  each  other,  not  less  than  the  Highlanders  as  Chiefs 
and  Clans.  But  only  enough  of  this  old  relationship 
remained  to  give  warmth  and  zeal  to  the  growing 
and  deepening  relationships  of  a  peaceful  and  settled 
industry.  The  Barons  and  the  Gentlemen  of  the 
Western  Counties  were  thrown  into  mutiny  against 
the  Government.  In  vain  were  they  threatened 
with  all  the  vengeance  of  the  Crown,  and  with  the 
quartering  upon  them  of  a  lawless  soldiery.  In  vain 
were  the  King's  forces,  then  employed  in  the  north  of 
Ireland,  ordered  to  concentrate  upon  the  coast  near- 
est to  the  shores  of  Ayr  and  Galloway.  Some,  with 
loud  remonstrances  against  the  legality  and  justice 
of  such  a  bond — some,  with  silent  and  passive  but 
effective  resistance — a  few  only  with  even  a  nominal 
compliance — but  all  with  one  heart  and  mind,  either 
refused  to  take,  or  avoided  to  act,  upon  this  infamous 
engagement.  The  Government  then  bethought  them 
of  one  other  resource.  They  could  invoke  the  Clans. 
The  powers  of  Chartered  Ownership  had  failed  them. 
They  determined  to  appeal  to  Celtic  Feudalism. 
And,  sad  to  say,  Celtic  Feudalism  answered  with  a 
bound. 

The  letter  of  Charles  n.,  approving  of  this 
infamous  proposal,  was  signed  on  the  llth  Decem- 
ber 1677.  Presbyterian  historians,  apparently  on 
solid  grounds  of  contemporary  evidence  and  know- 
ledge, universally  ascribe  this  idea  to  the  suggestion 
of  the  Bishops  and  their  clergy.  The  Govern- 
ment at  this  time  was  dominated  by  the  spirit 
of  religious  persecution,  and  as  Wodrow  quaintly 
expresses  it,  "  almost  entirely  in  the  hands  of 
Prelates,  grated  by  the  growth  of  those  who  dis- 


226  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

owned  them."  l  The  Proprietors  in  the  Western 
Counties  were  told  that  unless  they  complied,  the 
well-known  predatory  Clans  of  the  Highlands 
would  be  armed,  assembled,  and  let  loose  upon 
them.  This  atrocious  threat  was  carried  into  exe- 
cution. Chiefs  were  found  who  were  base  enough 
to  use  their  traditional  power  over  their  vassals 
and  retainers  for  the  purpose  of  invading  the  Low- 
lands like  a  foreign  army — of  living  at  free  quarters 
upon  the  property  of  their  countrymen,  and  by  the 
licensed  licence  of  an  undisciplined  soldiery,  of  com- 
pelling all  Proprietors  to  become  the  instruments  of 
tyranny  over  their  Tenants.  The  old  obligations  of 
Celtic  Feudalism  in  respect  to  "Hosting"  were 
called  into  operation,  and  a  force  of  no  less  than 
6000  men  was  launched  upon  the  Western  Counties 
to  punish  the  patriotism  and  humanity  of  Owners 
through  the  servility  and  despotism  of  Chiefs.  This 
force  is  known  in  the  history  of  Scotland  as  "  The 
Highland  Host/'  During  several  weeks,  from  the 
end  of  January  to  the  beginning  of  March  1678,  it 
devastated  some  of  the  most  prosperous  districts  in 
the  counties  of  Lanark,  Renfrew,  and  Ayr,  until  at 
last  its  own  Chiefs  and  the  Government  began  to 
be  ashamed  of  the  results,  and  the  Highlanders  were 
ordered  home.  They  returned  laden  with  plunder, 
and  with  such  hatred  from  the  Lowlanders  that 
even  unarmed  men  mobbed  them  on  the  way,  and 
the  students  of  the  University  of  Glasgow  turned 
out  to  oppose  their  passage  of  a  bridge  over  the 
swollen  Clyde.  Some  of  their  heavier  plunder  they 
were  compelled  to  sacrifice.  But  the  damage  which 
they  had  done  in  three  districts  of  Ayr  called  Kyle, 
Cunninghame,  and  Carrick,  was  estimated  at  above 
£137,000 — an  enormous  sum  in  those  days.  When, 
besides  all  this  mere  damage  to  property,  we  add  the 
insults  and  outrages  which  long  dwelt  in  the  memory 
of  the  people,  we  cannot  be  surprised  at  the  fierce 
counter-passions  which  such  methods  of  government 

1  Wodrow's  History,  ed.  1837,  vol.  ii.  p.  378. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  227 

awoke,  and  which  culminated  early  in  the  following 
year  in  the  savage  murder  of  Archbishop  Sharp. 

The  blame — the  infamy  indeed — attaching  to  the 
action  of  this  Highland  Host  must  be  laid  entirely 
on  the  Government  and  on  the  Chiefs  who  were  its 
authors.  The  poor  Highlanders  employed  had  no 
understanding  of  the  cause  in  which  they  were 
enlisted,  nor  did  their  habits,  history,  or  training 
enable  them  to  form  any  estimate  of  the  immorality 
of  their  proceedings.  Many  of  them  were,  doubt- 
less, "broken  men"  who  lived  habitually  on  the 
plunder  of  neighbouring  Lowlands,  whilst  others 
were  bound  by  Celtic  usages  to  follow  the  leader  of 
their  Sept,  who  again  was  probably  bound  under  a 
Bond  of  Manrent  to  follow  his  greater  Chief  in  all 
his  "lawful  emprises/'  What  more  lawful  quarrel 
could  there  be  than  against  Lowlanders  who  would 
not  do  the  Lord's  bidding  in  religious  as  well  as  in 
secular  matters  ?  What  more  legitimate  than  to 
have  their  predatory  habits  gratified  under  the 
direct  sanction  of  the  Crown  and  of  their  own 
Chiefs  ?  All  this  is  true,  and  serves  to  concentrate 
our  censure  on  other  men  than  the  natives  who 
came  from  the  banks  of  the  Earn  and  the  Dochart, 
the  slopes  of  Lennox  and  Lochaber,  or  the  glens  of 
the  Mounth  and  Drumalban.  But  all  the  more  on 
this  account  is  our  attention  fixed  on  the  striking 
contrast  between  the  tendencies  and  working  of 
Celtic  Feudalism,  as  compared  with  the  tendencies 
and  working  of  Chartered  Ownership.  All  the  more 
does  it  condemn  the  Government  which  reversed 
the  long-standing  national  appeal  made  and  per- 
petually renewed  during  many  centuries,  from 
unwritten  and  licentious  usages,  to  defined,  and 
lawful,  and  recorded  rights. 

Most  fortunately  this  contrast,  although  sharp 
and  violent  in  this  manifestation  of  it,  was  not  a 
contrast  marked  by  any  line  of  geographical  division. 
As  in  the  Lowlands  old  feelings  of  Clanship,  and  of 
at  least  memories  of  common  blood,  were  not  want- 


228  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

ing  to  sweeten  and  consolidate  the  purely  indus- 
trial relations  of  Landlord  and  of  Tenant,  so  in  the 
Highlands  no  man  ever  owned  land  merely  because 
he  was  a  Chief,  nor  did  any  man  ever  occupy  land 
as  a  Tenant  merely  because  he  was  a  Clansman. 
Any  man  at  any  time  might  become  a  Clansman  by 
merely  changing  his  name  and  addicting  himself  to 
a  new  master,  or  without  any  change  of  name  by 
submitting  to  the  bondages  of  Manrent.  But 
neither  of  these  very  easy  processes  could  give  any 
right  to  the  occupation  of  land  unless  his  new  Chief 
in  his  other  capacity  of  Owner  chose  to  give  him  a 
"rowm"  or  a  farm.  Everywhere,  all  over  the  High- 
lands, and  ever  since  the  dawn  of  history,  the  legal 
rights  both  of  Ownership  and  of  Occupation  were 
founded  on  Charters  and  on  Covenants.  These  and 
these  only  could  be  pleaded  for  the  security  of  either. 
The  powers  of  Celtic  Feudalism  were  constantly 
exercised  in  disturbing  both  kinds  of  tenure  by  law- 
less violence.  But  in  the  worst  days  of  Chiefs  and 
Clans  they  had  not  pretended  to  supplant  the  rights 
of  Ownership  or  to  supersede  the  laws  of  the  Healm 
as  the  foundations  of  civil  rights.  Even  among  the 
lawless  Islanders  the  conditions  of  tenure  were  recog- 
nised as  founded  on  Charters  and  on  Covenants. 
For  all  civil  purposes  these  had  been  known,  and 
legally  established,  for  many  centuries  all  over  the 
Highlands,  and  had  been  every  day  becoming  more 
supreme  in  exact  proportion  as  each  district  became 
more  settled  and  more  secure  from  violence. 

There  is  a  striking  illustration  of  this  in  a  trans- 
action which  arose  out  of  the  meeting  of  Chiefs 
held  at  lona  under  the  direction  of  James  vi.  in 
1609.  No  two  Clans  had  a  more  ferocious  feud,  or 
one  of  longer  standing,  than  the  Macdonalds  of 
Sleat  and  the  Macleods  of  Harris.  But  in  the 
temper  of  reconciliation  and  of  repentance  which 
was  then  brought  about  amidst  the  sacred  memories 
and  associations  of  Colutnba's  Isle,  the  Chiefs  of 
those  two  Clans  entered  into  a  covenant  of  peace. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  229 

All  their  slaughters,  murders,  and  ravages  com- 
mitted against  each  other  were  to  be  forgotten  and 
forgiven, — "all  their  respective  friends,  servants, 
tenants,  and  dependars"  being  answered  for  by 
their  respective  Lords.  But  lest  this  abnegation  of 
all  mutual  hostility  or  revenge  should  be  held  to 
include  or  to  imply  any  sacrifice  on  the  part  of 
either  of  them  of  their  perfect  freedom  over  the 
disposal  of  their  own  estates  as  regards  the  letting 
of  them  to  whom  they  would,  we  have  in  the 
middle  of  the  document  this  emphatic  reservation 
of  the  rights  of  Ownership  : — "  Without  prejudice 
to  either  of  the  aforesaid  parties  to  set  (let)  what- 
soever lands  alleged  pertaining  to  either  of  them 
lying  within  the  other's  bounds  as  law  will."  Here 
we  see  that  even  in  these  Insular  districts  of  the 
Highlands  where  Celtic  Feudalism  and  the  Clan 
organisation  had  reached  its  highest  and  most 
destructive  development,  it  was  still  the  acknow- 
ledged right  of  every  Owner  of  land  to  let  his  Farms 
independent  of  it,  and  that  this  right  of  the  free 
letting  of  land  by  covenant  always  emerged  as  the 
fundamental  condition  of  tenure  whenever  violence 
was  suspended  and  law  resumed  its  sway. 

The  same  fact  is  evidenced  in  a  still  more  defi- 
nite form  by  numerous  documents  among  my  own 
family  papers.  These  show  how  the  traditional  and 
legally  established  system  of  letting  land  for  fixed 
periods  of  time,  and  for  definite  rents,  was  actually 
worked  in  the  district  of  Kintyre— not  as  regards 
the  Lowland  settlers  only,  but  also  as  regards  the 
native  Highland  population,  which  remained  in  large 
numbers  when  the  Macdonalds  had  fled  to  Ireland. 
This  district  had  always  been  essentially  Insular, 
not  less  in  its  social  state  than  in  its  geographical 
position.  It  had,  indeed,  been  specially  exposed  to 
the  ordinary  abuses  of  Celtic  customs.  The  Leases 
given  by  the  Argyll  family,  soon  after  it  came  into 
possession  of  it,  show  that  the  cultivating  classes 

1  De  Relus  Albanicis,  pp.  204-5. 


230  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

reaped  an  immediate  advantage  in  respect  to  those 
usages  which  were  everywhere  the  overpowering 
grievance  of  their  lives, — namely,  the  uncertain 
and  arbitrary  exactions  to  which  they  had  been 
liable.  Agricultural  rents,  indeed,  could  not  even 
yet  be  wholly  paid  in  money,  because  money  was 
too  scarce,  and  because  the  burden  of  turning 
produce  into  money  would  have  been  often  too 
heavy  a  burden  for  the  Tenant  to  bear.  A  great 
portion  of  the  rent  was  therefore  generally  still 
paid  in  produce,  so  as  to  take  that  burden  on  the 
Landlord.  But  the  quantity  of  produce  was  always 
definitely  stated  in  the  Lease.  In  like  manner,  old 
feudal  dues  and  services  in  seed-time  and  harvest  "in 
hunting,  in  watching,  and  in  warding"  were  not  yet 
wholly  dropped,  but  some  of  them  are  evidently  mere 
formal  repetitions,  whilst  others  are  referred  to  as 
limited  by  a  well-known  scale  of  use  and  wont. 

In  the  earliest  Lease  now  in  my  possession, 
given  in  Kintyre,  there  is  a  significant  clause  indi- 
cative of  the  condition  of  things  from  what  the 
people  had  suffered  under  their  former  Chiefs. 
This  Lease  refers  to  a  small  holding  which  would 
now  be  called  a  "  Croft,"  and  the  clause  referred 
to  guarantees  to  the  Tenant  "  to  be  free  from  any 
payment  of  other  presents  whatsumever  where- 
with the  rest  of  the  country  is  burdened  and 
charged." 1  On  the  other  hand,  in  this,  and  in  all 
the  Leases  granted  during  the  rest  of  the  Seven- 
teenth Century  in  this  district,  as  in  all  others, 
however  purely  Highland,  there  is  a  correspond- 
ing precision  in  the  obligations  undertaken  by 
the  Tenants.  In  particular,  the  duration  of  the 
occupancy,  sometimes  for  five,  sometimes  for  twenty- 
one  years,  is  strictly  limited,  and  fortified  by  the 
most  specific  covenants  as  to  the  conditions  in 
which  the  Tenants  were  to  leave  the  houses,  and 
the  fences  of  the  farm,  "at  their  removing."  They 

1  Lease  by  James,  Lord  of  Kintyre,  second  son  of  the  seventh  Earl  of 
Argyll,  dated  November  1631. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  231 

are  secured  in  the  enjoyment  of  the  land  only  until 
the  specified  time  is  "  completed  and  outrun."  They 
are  allowed  generally  to  sublet,  but  always,  and 
only,  to  Subtenants  who  shall  "  be  of  no  higher 
degree  than  themselves,"  so  that  the  tenure  of  both 
should  expire  together.  Above  all,  agricultural 
Tenants  were  universally  bound  to  obey  the  statutes 
and  regulations  of  the  Courts  of  the  Barony.  It 
was  through  these,  as  we  have  seen,  that  many 
regulations  for  agricultural  improvement  were  laid 
down  and  enforced.  In  the  Leases  themselves, 
however,  some  of  these  obligations  are  inserted, 
as  for  example  in  respect  to  the  planting  of  trees. 
In  these  Leases,  moreover,  there  is  one  very  clear 
indication  of  a  substantial  advance  in  agriculture, 
namely,  in  the  fact  that  a  certain  number  of  loads 
of  hay  and  straw  are  among  the  produce  payable  as 
rent.  Neither  of  these  articles  was  produced,  in 
sufficient  quantities  to  be  so  dealt  with,  in  the 
more  backward  districts  or  in  previous  centuries. 
But  the  main  interest  of  these  Leases  lies  in  their 
very  definite  and  strictly  legal  character.  They  dis- 
prove the  ignorant  notion  that  land  was  ever  let  in 
the  Highlands,  any  more  than  in  the  Lowlands,  on 
the  slovenly  conditions  of  mere  usage  and  tradition, 
or  as  it  is  now  loosely  called,  the  "footing  of 
status."  This  would  have  been  a  footing  not  more, 
but  greatly  less,  favourable  to  the  Tenant,  because 
it  would  have  been  a  footing  outside  the  law ;  and 
outside  the  law,  in  all  previous  centuries,  there  had 
been  nothing  but  the  indefinite  exactions  of  Celtic 
Chiefship.  It  was  everywhere  the  great  work  of 
Ownership,  and  its  inevitable  tendency,  to  induce 
Landlords  to  carry  down  into  their  own  relations 
with  their  Tenants  the  same  spirit  of  legality,  de- 
finiteness,  and  limitation,  which  they  valued  so 
highly  in  their  own  Charters  from  their  own 
Superiors.  Hence  it  is,  that  in  every  Lease  which 
has  been  preserved  to  us  from  the  earliest  times,  the 
same  precision  of  mutual  agreement  is  always  aimed 


232  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

at.1  Hence  it  is  that  the  wording  of  these  Kintyre 
Leases,  granted  in  a  district  not  only  Highland  but 
almost  purely  Insular,  was  as  elaborate,  but  not 
much  more  so  than  we  have  seen  the  wording  to 
have  been  in  the  case  of  the  Scone  Lease,  granted  in 
the  reign  of  Hobert  the  Bruce,  and  indicates  a 
perfect  continuity  of  practice,  and  a  perfect  identity 
of  law  all  over  Scotland  during  a  period  of  nearly 
400  years. 

But  this  is  not  all  that  can  be  shown  in  illus- 
tration of  the  value  and  of  the  working  of  that  great 
change  which  the  Parliament  of  Scotland  promoted, 
when  in  1587  it  made  its  urgent  appeal  from 
Chiefs  to  Owners.  We  have  spoken  hitherto  of  that 
class  of  Tenant  which  held  Leases.  But  in  those 
Leases  themselves  another  class  is  often  mentioned, 
namely,  the  Subtenants  and  Cottars.  What  was 
their  tenure  and  what  was  their  condition  ?  In 
the  Scone  Lease  it  was  expressly  stipulated  that 
when  the  Tacksman  removed,  at  the  end  of  his 
term,  his  Subtenants  should  remove  also.  We  have 
seen  that  in  all  later  Leases  the  same  understand- 
ing is  sustained  in  the  carefully  guarded  provision 
that  Tacksmen  should  not  sublet  to  men  of  any 
"higher  degree"  than  themselves.  It  is  almost 
needless  to  add  that  in  that  reasonable  and  logi- 
cal interpretation  of  men's  mutual  rights  and  obli- 
gations towards  each  other  in  which  all  law 
essentially  consists,  and  upon  which  its  mainte- 
nance depends,  it  is  not  according  to  reason  or 
justice  that  the  man  who  hires  land  from  another 
should  be  able  to  dispose  of  it  to  others  beyond 
the  term  which  is  the  limit  of  his  own  rights 
concerning  it.  It  is  therefore  clear  that  the  foot- 
ing on  which  Subtenants  and  Cottars  were  placed 
under  the  Scone  Lease,  granted  so  formally  in 
1311,  was  the  footing  on  which  they  continued  to 
hold  under  Tacksmen  during  all  the  intervening  cen- 

1  One  example  of  a  sub-lease  is   given  in  the  Book  of  Grant,  dated 
1514. 


THE  APPEAL  FROM  CHIEFS  TO  OWNERS.  233 

turies.  But  as  the  Leases  never  did  place  the  Tacks- 
man  under  restrictions  as  to  the  rent,  whether  in 
produce  or  in  services,  which  he  might  be  able  to 
get  from  his  Subtenants,  it  follows  that  this  class 
of  men  were  under  no  protection  either  from 
Charter  or  from  Lease,  and  must  have  been  longer 
exposed  than  any  other  class  to  the  abuses  inse- 
parable from  the  old  and  arbitrary  usages  of  the 
Celtic  Clans.  Just  as  most  of  the  greater  Landlords 
combined  the  characters  of  Chief  and  Owner,  so  did 
the  Tacksman  combine  for  a  limited  time  as  much 
of  these  two  kinds  of  authority  as  his  Lease  might 
give  to  him.  But  as  a  mere  Tacksman  differs  essen- 
tially from  an  Owner,  and  cannot  be  moved  by  the 
same  long  range  of  motive,  since  he  has  not  the  same 
permanence  of  interest,  he  would  be  under  stronger 
temptation  than  the  Owner  to  stretch  his  power 
over  his  Subtenants.  Clearly,  therefore,  it  is  in  the 
relation  of  these  two  classes  to  each  other  that  we 
should  expect  to  find  the  last  relics  of  unwritten 
Celtic  customs,  and  the  latest  exhibitions  of  their 
effect. 

And  as  it  might  have  been  expected,  so  it 
is.  Moreover,  as  might  have  been  expected  also, 
the  remedy  here  likewise  lay  in  the  same  appeal 
from  the  spirit  and  the  interests  of  Celtic  Feu- 
dalism to  the  spirit  and  the  interests  of  legal 
Ownership. 

Although,  on  this  subject,  the  evidence  is 
abounding,  it  is  not  evidence  that  has  come  much 
under  the  notice  of  the  Historian.  It  has  lain  hid 
among  the  dusty  documents  connected  with  the 
management  of  Estates.  The  significance  and  in- 
terest of  the  subject  has  escaped  the  attention  of 
those  who  grub  among  old  papers  to  hunt  a  pedigree 
or  to  picture  manners.  Fortunately  I  am  in  pos- 
session of  some  of  these  documents  which  are  of  the 
highest  interest,  both  as  regards  the  authority 
of  those  from  whom  they  emanate — the  time  to 
which  they  refer — and  the  lands  and  people  they 


234  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

describe.  Some  words  of  explanation,  however, 
are  required  in  respect  to  each  of  these  points, 
especially  on  the  point  of  time,  and  the  significance 
which  belongs  to  them  on  account  of  their  place  in 
History. 


CHAPTER  VI. 

THE    RESPONSE   OF    OWNERSHIP. 

THERE  is  a  theory  very  prevalent  in  the  popular 
literature  of  Scotland  that  the  last  Jacobite  Rebel- 
lion, which  arose  in  July  1745  and  was  quelled  on 
the  Moor  of  Culloden  in  April  1746,  marks  the 
date  of  a  great  change  in  the  landed  tenures  of  the 
Highlands.  The  notion  is,  that  before  that  date 
the  old  native  population  of  the  country  lived  in 
some  condition  of  Arcadian  bliss,  founded  on  the 
relation  between  Celtic  Clansmen  and  their  Chiefs, 
whilst  subsequent  to  that  date  their  position  became 
soon  changed,  and  lowered  into  the  modern  relation 
between  Tenant  and  Landlord,  or  between  Owners 
and  Occupiers  of  the  soil. 

The  facts  and  documents  which  have  been  already 
dealt  with  in  these  pages,  prove  that  this  theory  is 
a  dream  built  up  out  of  two  separate  delusions. 
One  of  these  delusions  is  in  respect  to  the  true 
nature  of  the  change  which  was  involved  in  the 
passage  from  Celtic  dues  and  services  to  rents 
fixed  by  contract  or  agreement.  The  other  delu- 
sion is  in  respect  to  the  causes  of  that  change, — 
to  the  areas  of  country  over  which  it  passed, — and 
to  the  dates  at  which  it  became  established.  As 
regards  the  nature  of  that  change,  the  theory 
not  only  mistakes  but  reverses  the  facts,  whilst 
as  regards  the  districts  it  affected,  and  the 
times  of  its  arising,  the  popular  idea  is  not  less 
erroneous. 

Systematic  hardship  and  oppression  was  insepar- 


236  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

able  from  the  condition  of  the  native  population 
under  the  unlimited  exactions  of  Celtic  Feudalism. 
The  change  from  those  exactions  to  definite  and  stipu- 
lated rents,  lasting  for  definite  and  stipulated  times, 
was  not  a  change  for  the  worse,  but  a  change  immea- 
surably for  the  better.  On  the  other  hand,  the  last 
Jacobite  Rebellion — "  The  Forty-Five/'  as  it  is  still 
called  in  Scotland — marks  no  epoch  in  the  history 
and  progress  of  that  change,  which  is  to  be  compared 
in  importance  with  other  epochs  of  much  older  date. 
The  Jacobite  Rebellion  of  1745  catches  the  super- 
ficial eye  merely  because  it  happens  to  have  been 
the  last  occasion  on  which  the  Clans  were  mar- 
shalled in  open  war  against  the  Government.  But 
wars  and  rebellions  of  this  kind  were  quite  separate 
from  those  standing  and  permanent  evils  of  the 
Clan  system  which  affected  most  powerfully  the 
condition  of  the  people.  Open  wars  against  the 
Government — occurring  almost  always  at  distant 
intervals,  and  never  of  long  duration, — had  no  other 
effect  than  some  local  devastations,  and  the  loss  of 
a  few  hundred  lives.  It  was  the  perennial  feuds 
between  Clan  and  Clan,  or  rather  between  Chief 
and  Chief, — it  was  the  numerous,  nameless,  and 
desolating  usages  of  daily  life  under  the  full-blown 
system  of  Celtic  Feudalism,  that  kept  down  the 
people,  and  prevented  the  possibility  of  any  advance 
in  industry  or  in  wealth.  The  change  from  this 
system  to  the  system  of  definite  agricultural  rents 
dates,  in  the  Eastern  and  in  the  Middle  Lowlands 
of  Scotland,  from  the  foundation  of  the  Monarchy, 
— from  the  first  introduction  of  Law,  and  from  the 
first  settlement  of  the  races  out  of  whose  amalgama- 
tion Scotland  grew.  The  history  of  its  progress  is 
the  history  of  our  civilisation.  In  the  Border  High- 
lands the  great  epoch  of  its  accomplishment  is  that 
of  the  Union  of  the  Crowns.  In  the  Western 
Highlands  and  the  Hebrides  the  most  memorable 
date  is  1609,  only  a  few  years  later,  when  the  Celtic 
usages  were  condemned  as  the  root  of  the  misery 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  237 

and  barbarism  which  confessedly  prevailed,  and 
when  the  fundamental  demands  of  peace  and  of  law 
were  recorded  in  the  "Statutes  of  lona."  From 
that  date  all  over  the  Western  Highlands  it  made 
somewhat  slow,  but,  on  the  whole,  steady  and  con- 
tinuous progress,  in  proportion  as  the  rebellious 
Clans  were  broken  up,  and  those  Chiefs  became  firmly 
established  who  were  loyal  to  the  Government. 
Their  interest  and  inclination  alike  induced  them 
to  merge  their  lawless  character  as  Chiefs,  in  their 
lawful  character  as  the  protectors  and  promoters  of 
peaceful  industry,  in  virtue  of  being  great  Owners 
and  improvers  of  the  soil. 

The  distances  of  History  are  foreshortened  to  us 
like  the  distances  of  Space.  We  forget  the  long 
intervals  of  time  that  really  separate  events  which, 
in  perspective,  seem  now  close  together.  Thus 
to  us  looking  back  it  seems  as  if  almost  the  whole 
time  between  the  Union  of  the  Crowns  and  the 
second  Jacobite  Rebellion  in  1745  was  a  time  full  of 
wars.  And  so  it  was — but  with  long  intervals  be- 
tween those  wars,  during  which  the  silent  processes 
of  change  and  of  advance  had  time  to  lay  down  and 
to  consolidate  the  growing  structures  of  Society. 
Thirty -six  years  elapsed  between  the  accession  of 
James  I.  and  the  first  shedding  of  blood  in  the  great 
Civil  Wars  of  his  son's  reign,  in  1639.  During  the 
whole  of  that  interval  progress  was  being  made  in 
the  civilisation  of  the  Highlands.  The  worst  period 
of  those  wars  for  that  portion  of  the  country,  was 
the  period  occupied  by  the  brilliant  but  savage  and 
unscrupulous  campaign  of  Montrose,  and  this  only 
lasted  about  eighteen  months,  from  April  1644, 
when  he  erected  his  standard  at  Dumfries,  to  Sep- 
tember 1645,  when  he  was  finally  defeated  by 
General  Leslie  at  Philiphaugh.  It  is  a  memorable 
fact,  too,  that  in  this  campaign  the  original  nucleus 
of  the  army  of  Montrose  was  not  composed  of  Scoto- 
Celts,  but  of  the  Irish  Celts,  whom  he  recruited 
through  the  Macdonalds  of  Antrim, — whom  he  joined 


SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

only  after  a  journey  in  disguise  in  the  heart  of  the 
Highlands, — and  without  whose  help  he  does  not 
appear  to  have  had,  or  to  have  hoped  for,  any  pro- 
spect of  success.  They  were  employed  to  ravage 
the  western  portions  of  Argyllshire  upon  their  way. 
The  courage,  resource,  and  agility  of  Montrose,  with 
the  enjoyments  of  violence  and  plunder  which  were 
held  out  to  all  his  followers,  did  at  last  rouse  the 
passions  and  attract  the  cupidity  of  some  Northern 
Clans,  so  that  before  his  defeat  his  army  is  said  to 
have  accumulated  to  the  number  of  6000  men.  But 
their  dispersion,  as  usual,  was  complete  ;  and  when, 
after  an  interval  of  six  years,  Montrose  made  his  last 
and  fatal  attempt  in  1650,  he  again  made  it  trusting 
to  a  body  of  German  mercenaries  whom  he  landed 
in  the  North.  But  the  Highlanders  did  not  flock 
to  his  standard,  and  it  was  a  Chief  of  the  purest 
Celtic  blood — Macleod  of  Assynt, — who  surrendered 
him,  or  in  Jacobite  language,  "  betrayed"  him  to  the 
Government. 

Again,  after  this  rebellion  there  was  a  long  inter- 
val of  repose  in  the  Highlands,  and  during  part  of  it, 
under  the  rule  of  the  great  Protector,  for  seven  or 
eight  years,  from  1650  to  1658,  an  important  stride 
was  made  towards  the  final  settlement  and  civilisa- 
tion of  the  country.  The  master  eye  and  the  master 
hand  of  Cromwell  saw  and  touched  the  root-evil  of 
the  Clans ;  and  he  made  his  dealings  with  it  so 
conspicuous  that  they  have  caught  the  eye  even  of 
compilers  who,  with  no  special  knowledge  of  this 
subject,  write  School  Primers  upon  the  History  of  the 
time.  Thus  we  are  told  in  one  of  these,  with  some 
looseness  of  expression,  but  with  substantial  truth, 
that  "  in  order  to  improve  the  state  of  the  people,  all 
feudal  dues  were  taken  away.  A  fixed  rent  in  money 
was  substituted  for  all  the  services  and  restric- 
tions to  which  the  land  had  been  hitherto  liable."1 

1  I  quote  from  the  History  of  Scotland,  by  Margaret  Macarthur — an 
excellent  Book  of  its  class,  belonging  to  the  series  edited  by  Edward 
A.  Freeman,  D.C.L. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  239 

The  Restoration  in  1660  restored  everything 
that  was  corrupt  and  bad  wherever  its  power 
reached,  and  we  have  seen  the  wicked  purpose  with 
which  its  appeal  to  Celtic  Feudalism  was  made  in 
1677.  But  the  work  of  the  "Highland  Host" 
lasted  only  for  a  few  months,  and  no  raiding  expe- 
dition of  this  kind  could  affect  the  permanent  causes 
which  were  steadily  at  work  all  over  the  Highlands 
ever  since  the  Clans  had  ceased  to  fight  among  them- 
selves. The  Rebellion  which  was  raised  in  1685 
by  my  own  unfortunate  ancestor,  the  ninth  Earl 
of  Argyll,  attempting,  in  concert  with  the  Duke  of 
Monmouth  in  England,  to  anticipate  by  a  few  years 
the  Great  Revolution  which  was  at  hand,  was  a 
Rebellion  suppressed  in  a  few  weeks.  He  brought  no 
bands  of  Irish  Celts  to  ravage  his  native  country. 
He  brought  no  Dutch  or  German  mercenaries  to  fight 
the  battles  of  Scottish  freedom.  He  achieved  no 
immediate  success  to  attract  plundering  Caterans 
always  ready  to  flock  to  those  who  promised  booty. 
He  represented  a  Cause  and  not  a  Person.  The 
Cause  was  one  which  Highlanders  had  never  valued. 
His  own  lands  had  already  become  largely  occupied 
by  peaceful  Farmers,  whilst  only  a  remainder  of  the 
Subtenants  belonged  to  the  old  idle  and  fighting 
classes.  Celtic  Feudalism  therefore  completely 
failed  him.  He  did  not  appeal  either  to  the  rude, 
or  to  the  sentimental,  incitements  which  alone  had 
ever  moved  it.  He  was  joined  by  a  mere  handful — 
about  1800  men — and  nothing  came  of  his  attempt 
except  the  sacrifice  of  his  own  life,  and  the  ravage 
of  his  own  estates.  Yet  he  spoke  in  the  light  of 
prophecy  when  in  his  last  hours  he  said,  "  I  have  a 
strong  impression  on  my  spirit  that  deliverance  will 
come  very  suddenly."1 

Three  years  later,  the  great  Revolution  of  1688, 
which  was  peaceably  accomplished  elsewhere,  in- 
volved once  more  that  appeal  to  the  Clans — with 
as  usual  an  Irish  contingent — which  was  raised  by 

1  Macaulay's  History  of  Enc/land,  vol.  i.  p.  563-4. 


240  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

John  Graham  of  Claverhouse,  Viscount  Dundee. 
In  1689,  at  Killiecrankie,  the  Highlanders  showed 
what  they  could  do  in  fighting.  But  the  death 
of  their  leader  was,  as  usual,  fatal  to  them,  for 
mere  fighting  is  only  one  part  of  the  art  of  war. 
This  rising  again  was  speedily  suppressed,  but  for 
several  years  a  great  part  of  the  Highlands  con- 
tinued in  a  troubled  state — till  in  1692,  the  Govern- 
ment insisted  on  the  formal  submission  of  every 
suspected  Chief.  In  that  year  the  massacre  of  the 
Macdonalds  of  Glencoe  cast  indelible  disgrace  on  the 
Government  of  King  William.  But  the  execration 
with  which  this  deed  was  denounced  when  its  real 
nature  came  to  be  understood,  is  a  satisfactory  indi- 
cation of  the  change  which  had  been  long  in  progress. 
Such  a  revival,  imitation,  and  even  exaggeration  by 
a  civilised  Government,  of  the  worst  features  of  Celtic 
intertribal  treachery  and  murder,  revolted  the  public 
conscience,  and  the  feeling  it  excited  brings  out  as 
nothing  else  could  do,  how  fast  and  far  Society  had 
advanced  from  the  typical  Epoch  of  the  Clans.  It 
is  remarkable,  however,  that  this  atrocious  murder 
was  perpetrated  and  defended,  not  as  a  mere  act  of 
vengeance  against  men  who  were  rebels,  but  as  a 
sentence  of  execution  against  men  who  were  irre- 
claimable marauders.  And  this,  beyond  all  doubt, 
they  actually  were.  Macaulay  has  expended  all  the 
resources  of  his  eloquence  in  explaining  how  impos- 
sible it  was  that  they  could  be  anything  else,  living 
as  they  did  in  Glencoe.  "  All  the  science  and 
industry  of  a  peaceful  age,"  he  says,  "  can  extract 
nothing  valuable  from  that  wilderness  :  but  in  an 
age  of  violence  and  rapine  the  wilderness  itself  was 
valued  on  account  of  the  shelter  which  it  afforded 
to  the  plunderer  and  the  plunder.  Nothing  could 
be  more  natural  than  that  the  Clan  to  which  this 
rugged  desert  belonged  should  have  been  noted  for 
predatory  habits.  For,  among  the  Highlanders, 
generally,  to  rob  was  thought  at  least  as  honourable 
an  employment  as  to  cultivate  the  soil ;  and  of  all 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  241 

the  Highlanders  the  Macdonalds  of  Glencoe  had  the 
least  productive  soil,  and  the  most  convenient  and 
secure  den  of  robbers."1  This  great  crime,  which 
has  justly  entailed  upon  its  perpetrators  the  severest 
judgment  of  posterity,  was  due  to  the  combination 
of  two  of  the  strongest  incitements  which  existed 
at  the  time,  first,  the  indignation  of  a  civilised 
Government  against  men  who,  in  the  midst  of  a 
peaceful  society,  lived  avowedly  and  notoriously  a 
life  of  plunder ;  and  secondly,  the  fierce  and  vin- 
dictive passions  of  a  neighbouring  Clan,  to  whose 
hands  the  punishment  was  committed,  and  whose 
lands  and  houses  had  been  ravaged  and  destroyed 
by  the  unhappy  victims.  The  massacre  of  Glencoe 
is  therefore  to  be  regarded  as  one  of  the  last,  and 
one  of  the  most  signal  examples  of  the  old  evils 
which  we  have  traced  from  the  days  of  the  Wolf  of 
Badenoch,  in  the  power  of  Celtic  Feudalism  to  rouse 
ferocious  passions — in  the  cruel  and  treacherous 
deeds  which  men  comparatively  civilised  and  enlight- 
ened could  persuade  themselves  to  defend  and  even 
to  adopt  when  they  came  into  contact  with  it. 

Another  interval  of  twenty -three  years  separates 
the  massacre  of  Glencoe  from  the  first  Jacobite  rising 
of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  in  1715.  This  rising 
was  so  short,  and  so  easily  suppressed,  that  its  effects 
were  altogether  evanescent,  and  can  hardly  have 
interrupted  in  the  smallest  degree  the  gradual  and 
steady  processes  of  change  which  were  happily 
bringing  to  an  end  the  terrible  abuses  and  miseries 
of  the  Clans.  The  Rebellion  was  suppressed  within 
Five  Months.  There  were  the  usual  incidents — the 
treachery  of  Chiefs — the  gallantry  of  their  Highland 
followers.  The  Earl  of  Mar  attended  a  Levee  of 
George  i.  on  the  day  before  he  left  London  to  raise 
the  standard  of  the  Pretender  in  the  valley  of  the 
Dee.  In  their  invasion  of  England,  where,  as  is 
well  known,  they  penetrated  as  far  as  Preston,  they 
were  miserably  led.  On  the  other  hand,  at  the 

1  Macaulay's  History  of  England,  vol.  iv.  p.  192. 

Q 


242  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Battle  of  Sheriffmuir,  the  Clans  fought  with  their 
accustomed  courage,  and  won  quite  half  of  the 
honours  of  the  day.  But  for  more  than  a  single 
battle  the  military  power  of  Celtic  Feudalism 
was  nearly  gone.  Their  surrender  in  England  at 
Preston,  and  their  dispersion  in  Scotland,  after 
Sheriffmuir,  mark  the  low  point  to  which  it  had 
already  fallen. 

Again,  we  have  another  long  interval,  from  the 
Rebellion  of  1715  to  that  of  "The  Forty-Five,"  an 
interval  of  no  less  than  thirty  years — or,  as  it  is 
usually  reckoned,  a  whole  generation.  This  is  one 
of  those  many  intervals  between  conspicuous  events, 
over  which  the  eye  of  the  historian  often  passes 
with  a  careless  and  unobservant  glance,  seeing 
nothing  that  catches  his  attention,  or  at  least  nothing 
of  a  large  class  of  facts  which,  nevertheless,  are  of 
far  higher  interest  and  importance  than  the  cycle  of 
rebellions.  Now  it  is  in  respect  to  this  interval  of 
time — an  interval  during  which  a  whole  generation 
was  born  and  rose  to  manhood,  before  the  last  of 
our  civil  wars — before  "  The  Forty-Five  " — that  I 
am  in  possession  of  documents  which  singularly 
illustrate  the  continuity  of  Scottish  history,  and  the 
identity  of  the  processes  of  change  through  which 
our  civilisation  had  been  steadily  advancing  over  the 
whole  Kingdom  from  the  days  of  Malcolm  Canmore. 

Having  now  indicated  the  period  to  which  these 
documents  refer,  and  its  importance  in  an  historical 
point  of  view,  I  must  add  a  few  words  in  explana- 
tion of  the  men  whose  evidence  they  contain.  The 
management  of  great  Baronial  Estates  in  those 
days  was  an  object  of  ambition  among  men  of  the 
highest  position  in  society.  It  was  an  employment 
which  had  all  the  dignity,  and  variety  of  interest, 
and  extent  of  power,  which  belonged  to  the  govern- 
ment of  a  Province.  Smaller  Proprietors  of  land  of 
the  oldest  families,  Clansmen  nearly  related  to  their 
Chief,  and  men  of  high  public  positions,  even  on  the 
Bench  and  at  the  Bar,  were  among  the  number  of 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  243 

those  who  undertook  such  duties,  and  who  devoted 
to  them  all  the  knowledge  and  culture  of  their  day. 
Such  was  the  character  and  position  of  the  two  men 
whose  narratives  and  reports  I  am  about  to  cite. 

Nor  is  it  less  important  to  observe  the  position  of 
the  districts  respecting  which  their  evidence  is  sup- 
plied. We  have  seen  how  long  and  how  late  the 
worst  evils  of  Celtic  Feudalism  lingered  in  those 
Western  Isles  of  Scotland,  which  had  always  been 
most  inaccessible  to  the  central  government,  and 
amongst  which  savage  intertribal  wars  had  for  many 

f  Derations  kept  the  people  in  poverty,  and  the 
ingdom  in  frequent  uneasiness  and  alarm.  We 
have  seen,  nevertheless,  from  the  Conferences  of 
lona,  held  in  1609,  that  all  these  habits  and  customs 
were  confessed  and  acknowledged  by  the  Chiefs 
themselves  to  be  barbarous  and  illegal,  and  that 
reversion  to  the  system  of  regular  rents  and  of 
tenures  known  to  the  law,  was  the  admitted  remedy, 
and  the  promised  reform.  We  have  seen  that  in 
Kintyre  the  system  of  agricultural  Leases  and 
generally  all  the  relations  of  Landlord  and  Tenant 
came  naturally  into  full  operation  the  moment 
that  district  was  freed  from  the  Clan  Donnel, 
the  last  representatives  of  the  old  Lords  of  the 
Isles,  and  of  a  family  which  for  centuries  had 
upheld  and  handed  down  the  picturesque  but 
savage  customs  and  traditions  of  the  Clans.  We 
have  seen,  too,  that  the  tenure  by  Lease  which 
had  been  enjoyed  for  centuries,  even  in  the 
Hebrides,  by  the  blood-relations  of  the  Chiefs,  was 
now  in  that  district  extended  to  those  poorer  men 
who  constituted  the  great  bulk  of  the  population, 
but  who  formerly  were  only  Subtenants,  without 
any  tenure  except  that  which  arose  out  of  the  neces- 
sity of  having  men  who  could  render  "  services." 
These  services  never  were  exclusively  military. 
The  spade-plough1  was  more  constantly  needed  than 

1  The   "cascroira,"  the  ancient  implement  of  Celtic  agriculture — a 
heavy  spade  driven  by  the  foot.     The  word  means  "  crooked  foot." 


244  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  sword  or  the  pike.  They  included  every  kind  of 
labour,  and  every  kind  of  exaction  by  which  the 
produce  of  labour  could  be  made  to  support  the 
power,  or  minister  to  the  rude  but  lavish  and  waste- 
ful expenditure  of  the  Chiefs.  This  great  process  of 
the  emergence  of  law  and  order  from  under  the  over- 
lying burden  of  Celtic  violence  and  confusion,  is  a 
process  which  we  have  thus  seen  in  its  earliest  results, 
but  which  hitherto  we  have  not  seen  in  the  details 
and  methods  of  its  operation.  Yet  it  is  these  details 
which  are  the  most  interesting  facts  of  all  in  the 
history  of  civilisation — the  steps  by  which  so  great 
a  reform  was  made — the  action  of  those  who  were 
agents  in  it — the  exact  condition  of  things  with  which 
they  had  to  deal — and  the  nature  of  the  powers 
which  were  the  instruments  of  their  work. 

All  this  is  precisely  the  information  supplied  to 
us  by  papers  connected  with  the  management  of 
certain  estates  which  fell  into  the  possession  of  the 
Clan  Campbell,  along  with  or  soon  after  the  acquisi- 
tion of  Kintyre.  These  estates  were  purely  Hebri- 
dean — lying  in  the  Islands  of  Mull  and  of  lona,  and 
in  the  adjoining  peninsula  of  Morven,  with  one  of 
the  outer  Islands,  Tyree,  which  had  from  the  most 
ancient  times  been  closely  connected  with  lona.  All 
these  lands  had  for  centuries  been  dominated  by 
the  Clan  Maclean,  whose  brave  but  fierce  and  law- 
less Chiefs  now  sleep  in  numbers,  beneath  the 
sheltering  stories,  and  the  rude  knightly  effigies  of 
the  Reilig  Oran.1  In  1732,  about  half-way  between 
the  two  Jacobite  risings  of  1715  and  1745,  Camp- 
bell of  Stonefield,  Sheriff  of  the  County,  was  sent  to 
examine  and  report  on  their  condition.  From  that 
Report  we  learn  that  these  lands  were  universally 
held  in  Lease  by  gentlemen  who  were  themselves 
either  members  of  the  Clan  Campbell,  or  in  some 
cases  were  Macleans,  or  by  others  who,  according  to 

1  This  is  the  Celtic  name  of  probably  the  oldest  place  of  burial  still 
used  in  the  British  Islands — that  surrounding  the  walls  of  St.  Oran's 
Chapel,  near  the  Cathedral  of  lona.  It  dates  from  the  Columban  age, 
the  7th  century.  "  Oran  "  was  one  of  Columba's  followers. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  245 

the  common  habit  of  the  Celts,  had  submitted  to 
the  new  Chief  who  was  also  the  new  Proprietor. 
Under  these  gentlemen  came  the  families  of  the 
native  population,  who  were  called  Tenants,  but 
who  were  only  Subtenants,  holding  at  the  will  of  the 
Leaseholders  or  Tacksmen,  and  complaining  bitterly 
of  the  oppressions  under  which  they  laboured.  It 
was  the  first  business  of  the  Sheriff  to  inquire  into 
the  truth  of  these  complaints  ;  and  though  he  indi- 
cates that  they  were  exaggerated,  yet,  in  the  most 
practical  of  all  ways,  he  supports  them  by  suggest- 
ing the  only  remedy.  The  old  Celtic  exactions 
levied  by  the  Chiefs  and  Chieftains  upon  their  Sub- 
tenants, rested  and  could  only  rest  upon  the 
ultimate  power  of  removal.  The  Subtenants  were 
not  protected  in  respect  to  rent  or  services  by  any 
definite  covenant  or  bargain,  nor  were  they  pro- 
tected in  respect  to  tenure  by  holding  for  any 
definite  time.  Very  often  the  Tacksmen  had  brought 
them  in  upon  the  lands  when  these  Tacksmen  them- 
selves obtained  their  Lease,  just  as  we  have  seen 
that  this  was  the  actual  case  when  the  De  Hays 
took  a  farm  from  the  Abbot  of  Scone  in  1312. 
Moreover,  as  in  that  case  so  in  many  others,  there 
was  an  express  stipulation  in  the  Lease  that  the 
Tacksman  should  remove  these  men  when  he  himself 
removed.  In  all  cases  of  "Tacks"  during  all  the 
intervening  centuries  the  Leaseholding  Clansman 
and  Tenant  held  the  complete  power  of  the  Owner 
over  all  his  Subtenants,  unless  this  power  was  re- 
strained by  the  terms  of  his  own  Lease  on  behalf  of  the 
Proprietor.  But  any  such  restriction  does  not  appear 
to  have  been  common,  and  in  the  Western  Isles,  where 
the  powers  of  Celtic  Feudalism  had  been  widest  and 
most  unchecked,  it  was  probably  unknown.  There 
the  dependence  of  the  Subtenant  upon  the  Tacks- 
man, who  alone  represented  the  power  and  position 
of  the  Proprietary  Chief  and  the  authority  of  the 
Clan,  was  complete  and  absolute.  The  proper 
remedy  then  was  clear, — now  that  men  were  giving 


246  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

up  the  life  and  the  habits  of  the  Clans,  and  were  be- 
ginning to  look  steadily  to  the  improvement  of  the 
country,  and  to  the  increase  of  its  value,  founded 
upon  the  increased  produce  of  settled  industry. 
The  remedy  was  to  give  to  the  Subtenants  the 
same  kind  and  degree  of  security  which  had  long 
been  given  to  the  relatives  of  the  Chief — that  is,  the 
security  of  a  Covenant  or  Lease.  This  accordingly 
was  the  policy  recommended  by  Sheriff  Campbell. 
The  Leases  of  certain  Tacksmen  were  about  to  expire. 
He  advised  that  they  should  not  be  renewed  except 
upon  new  conditions.  Their  Subtenants  should 
have  the  same  kind  of  protection  which  they  them- 
selves enjoyed.  The  rents  and  services  of  these 
men  should  be  fixed  and  definite,  and  their  tenure 
should,  in  like  manner,  be  of  a  specified  duration. 
Nay  more,  the  larger  Tenants  should  be  bound  in 
their  Leases  to  cause  better  houses  to  be  built  for 
the  smaller  class  of  holders,  where  these  men  con- 
tinued to  be  Subtenants  at  all.  Many  of  them, 
however,  were  to  be  lifted  out  of  this  category  alto- 
gether. They  were  to  have  Leases  directly  from  the 
Proprietor,  and  to  become  themselves  "  Tacksmen," 
with  the  full  status  and  security  of  that  class. 

It  is  important  to  observe  that  this  proposed  re- 
form rested  entirely  on  the  possession  and  on  the  exer- 
cise of  the  fullest  powers  of  Ownership  on  the  part  of 
the  Proprietor.  Moreover,  it  rested  on  these  powers 
as  exercised  over  the  very  pick  of  those  who  repre- 
sented and  indeed  constituted  the  Clan.  It  was 
the  old  class  of  Tacksmen,  who  held  whatever  rights 
belonged  by  Celtic  usages  to  the  blood  and  personal 
following  of  the  Chief.  Yet,  we  see  here  that  when 
these  Leases  came  to  an  end,  the  Proprietor  of  the 
lands  they  held  could  tell  them  that  unless  they 
agreed  to  entirely  new  conditions,  they  must  make 
way  for  other  men.  This  was  the  only  power  of 
enforcement  which  the  Proprietor  could  hold  or 
could  exert  in  modifying,  reforming,  or  extirpating 
the  oppressive  usages  which  had  become  established 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  247 

among  the  Celts.  Nor  was  this  power  of  removing 
Clansmen  from  Farms  at  the  end  of  their  Leases  a 
power  which  was  used  as  a  threat  only,  without 
being  actually  exerted.  It  was  used,  as  we  see, 
from  the  Report  of  Sheriff  Campbell,  in  a  great 
number  of  cases  where  the  lands  were  re-let  directly 
to  the  old  Subtenants,  or  to  new  men  who  were 
more  likely  than  their  predecessors  to  work  the  new 
system  with  intelligence  and  fidelity.  Although 
this  Report  was  written  thirteen  years  before  "  The 
Forty-Five,"  which  is  popularly  supposed  to  repre- 
sent an  epoch  of  change  in  tenures,  and  although  it 
goes  back  to  a  previous  condition  of  things  which 
implies  an  unbroken  history  of  many  centuries, 
there  is  not  even  a  hint  or  an  expression  which 
implies  that  any  doubt  existed  in  the  minds  of  any 
of  the  various  classes  concerned,  that  the  Proprietor 
was  exercising  any  other  powers  than  those  which 
were  not  only  known  to  the  law  but  were  also 
familiar  to  the  people. 

And  as  this  power  was  the  only  engine  which 
could  be  used  to  redeem  the  poorer  classes  from  the 
oppression  of  others,  so  also  was  it  the  only  engine 
which  could  be  used  to  redeem  them  from  the  con- 
sequences of  their  own  ignorant  and  barbarous 
customs.  Just  as  the  prohibition  and  abandonment 
of  some  usages,  traditional  among  them,  was  im- 
posed upon  the  Tacksmen  under  the  penalty  of 
removal,  so  the  prohibition  and  abandonment  of 
other  usages,  as  old  and  as  firmly  established,  was 
imposed  upon  the  class  of  Subtenants — under  the 
same  penalty  of  having  to  leave  the  estate  if  they 
were  unwilling  to  accept  the  new  conditions.  In 
both  cases,  equally,  the  first  steps  towards  a  civilised 
condition,  and  towards  agricultural  improvement, 
were  taken,  and  could  only  be  taken,  on  the  strength 
of  the  fullest  powers  and  rights  of  Ownership.  No- 
thing short  of  those  powers  could  have  overcome 
the  desperate  tenacity  of  the  people  in  resisting 
every  change  and  clinging  to  habits  which,  originally 


248  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

bad,  had  gone  from  bad  to  worse  through  that  great 
law  which  determines  the  development  of  corruption. 
It  is  proved  by  the  whole  tenor  of  Sheriff  Camp- 
bell's Report  that  the  domestic  economy  of  the 
people  in  this  part  of  Scotland  had  remained  worse 
than  stationary  for  more  than  a  thousand  years. 
Although  they  lived  in  a  country  where  rock  and 
stone  were  abundant,  and  in  general  easily  accessible 
— although  a  whole  Island l  of  the  finest  limestone 
lay  off  both  Mull  and  Morven,  and  was  separated 
from  them  only  by  a  narrow  strait — although  the 
people  had  before  their  eyes  for  more  than  six 
hundred  years  the  rough  but  massive  and  splendid 
masonry  of  the  Cathedral  of  lona  and  of  St.  Oran's 
Chapel, — yet  they  continued  to  live  in  hovels  com- 
posed of  nothing  more  solid  than  turf  lined,  and 
perhaps  propped  on  the  inside,  by  wattled  branches 
of  birch,  oak,  and  hazel.  These  were  the  lineal 
descendants  of  the  houses,  dating  from  prehistoric 
times,  which  sheltered  Columba  and  his  brethren 
in  the  Sixth  Century,  and  on  which  it  seems  that 
no  step  of  advance  had  been  made  near  the  middle 
of  the  Eighteenth,  or  during  an  interval  of  about 
eleven  hundred  years.  The  rapid  decay  of  such 
structures,  the  constant  necessity  of  removal,  was 
leading  to  the  destruction  of  the  scanty  and  shaggy 
brushwoods  which  alone  represented  the  ancient 
Caledonian  forests.  This,  however,  was  by  no 
means  the  worst  feature  of  the  case.  Huts  of  turf 
and  wattled  twigs  may  be  quite  as  warm  and  com- 
fortable as  many  of  the  hovels  which  in  Ireland  and 
in  some  of  the  Hebrides  are  now  always  built  of 
loose  stones  without  cement. 

But  in  a  much  more  important  and  vital  matter, 
namely,  the  husbandry  of  the  people,  there  is  clear 
evidence  of  a  ruinous  decline.  It  is  impossible 
to  read  the  details  given  in  Adamnan's  Life  of 
Columba  of  the  agricultural  operations  of  his 
Monks  in  lona,  and  to  compare  them  with  the 

1  The  Island  of  Lismore. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  249 

facts  given  in  Sheriff  Campbell's  Report,  without 
seeing  that  there  had  been  a  terrible  and  a  truly 
barbarous  decline.  It  had  become  the  universal 
custom  of  the  people  to  cut  their  corn  crops  of 
oats,  or  an  inferior  barley,  high  above  the  ground. 
The  considerable  portion  of  straw  which  remained 
attached  to  the  ear  was  then  destroyed  by  fire,  the 
ear  itself  being  much  wasted  in  the  process.  This 
was  the  only  process  by  which  they  knew  how  to 
get  at  the  grain  free  from  husks,  the  half-roasted 
grain  falling  out  during  the  combustion,  and  being 
afterwards  roughly  ground  by  the  hand  between 
two  stones,  a  primitive  form  of  Mill,  called  Querns, 
which  has  survived  to  our  own  day  in  some  of  the 
remoter  Hebrides.  The  remaining  straw  which  had 
been  left  upon  the  ground,  instead  of  being  used  for 
the  food  of  cattle,  or  for  manure,  was  used  for  thatch 
—the  whole  of  this  valuable  product  being  thus 
practically  lost — because  fern  and  heath,  which  was 
in  "  great  plenty  "  all  over  the  country,  would  have 
made  better  thatch,  and  was  useless  for  other  pur- 
poses. All  these  barbarous  and  wasteful  usages  had 
been  the  natural  and  inevitable  result  of  the  inse- 
cure life  which  all  classes  had  led  in  these  countries 
under  the  system  of  the  Clans.  Men  will  not  even 
think  of  building  substantial  houses,  nor  barns  with 
threshing-floors,  nor  mills,  when  such  erections, 
together  with  their  owners,  were  constantly  exposed 
to  destruction  by  fire  and  sword.  It  was  a  positive 
advantage,  under  such  conditions,  to  have  no  build- 
ings except  such  as  could  be  raised  in  a  couple  of 
days  out  of  materials  delved  with  the  spade  and  cut 
by  the  hatchet.  As  usual,  men  being  such  creatures 
of  habit,  very  soon  lost  all  sense  of  the  want  of 
better  things.  In  1 723  the  gradual  settlement  of  the 
country  had  so  far  proceeded  that  one  or  two  of  the 
Tacksmen  had  built  Corn  Mills.  But  the  people 
persisted  in  using  the  old  Querns.  So  it  was  with 
everything.  No  improvement  could  gain  even  a 
momentary  footing,  except  when  imposed  upon  the 


250  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

people  by  the  authority  of  those  from  whom  alone 
their  tenure  came.  Accordingly  throughout  Sheriff 
Campbell's  Report  every  proposal  he  makes  is 
founded  on  the  unquestioned  right  of  the  Owner  of 
an  estate  to  let  it  to  whomsoever  he  liked,  and  on 
whatever  terms  he  could  get  Tenants  to  accept  pos- 
session. Moreover,  we  see  that  this  power  was  used 
not  only  sometimes  and  in  a  few  cases,  but  system- 
atically over  large  areas  of  land.  It  involved  very 
often  no  less  than  the  old  immemorial  work  of 
"  planting"  the  country  with  selected  men. 

In  making  this  selection  political  ends  were  in- 
separably blended  with  economic  considerations. 
The  Clans  of  the  mainland  had  been  longer  in 
contact  with  the  advancing  civilisation  of  the 
Low  Country.  They  were  both  the  most  loyal 
men  and  the  men  best  acquainted  with  such  im- 
proved methods  of  agriculture  as  were  known 
in  that  day.  Accordingly  when  a  Clansman  secured 
a  Lease  of  some  large  tract  of  land  in  the  Western 
Islands,  it  was  often  his  first  care  to  plant  it 
with  Campbells,  or  others  of  his  own  dependants 
brought  from  the  mainland  of  Argyllshire.  Thus 
the  Sheriff  reports  of  three  well-known  such  tracts 
in  the  Island  of  Mull,  that  having  been  formerly  let 
on  Lease  to  gentlemen  of  the  name  of  Campbell, 
these  Tacksmen  "  had  gone  a  good  length  to  plant 
there  several  districts  with  people  of  the  same  name, 
or  their  friends,  and  that  it  must  be  acknowledged 
the  Tenants  were  beginning  to  manage  those  lands 
better  than  the  rest  of  the  country."  In  marked 
contrast  with  this  result,  he  reported  in  respect  to 
another  district,  that  it  had  been  let  to  one  of  the 
old  Clan  of  M'Lean,  and  that  he,  in  true  Celtic 
fashion,  "  kept  a  swarm  of  poor  people  of  his  own 
name  around  him  who  had  neither  the  skill  nor  the 
substance  (capital)  to  manage  the  land  to  any  pur- 
pose." The  "keeping"  of  those  people  on  the  farm 
is  not  ascribed  by  the  Sheriff  to  any  difficulty  in 
removing  them  arising  out  of  Tenure,  but  expressly 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  251 

to  the  "  lenity  "  of  the  Tacksman.  The  truth  pro- 
bably was  that  he  followed  the  traditions  of  his 
class,  which  encouraged  a  crowd  of  dependants,  who 
performed  for  the  Tacksmen  all  the  services  they 
required,  and  were  content  themselves  with  a  bare 
subsistence.  This,  with  occasional  plenty,  could 
generally  be  obtained  in  former  times  by  plunder, 
and  in  1723  it  was  only  beginning  to  be  felt  by 
these  poor  people  that  even  a  bare  subsistence 
could  not  be  secured  when  plunder  had  been 
stopped,  and  before  industry  had  begun. 

There  is  no  indication,  however,  in  the  Sheriff's 
Report  that  he  saw  or  even  thought  of  any  excess 
of  population  over  the  resources  of  the  country.  On 
the  contrary,  one  of  the  stipulations  he  recommends 
for  the  new  Leases  was  that  the  Tenant  should  be 
bound  to  bring  into  the  country,  and  plant  a  certain 
number  of  men  as  Subtenants,  who  should  cultivate 
what  was  then  practically  waste.  These  men,  thus 
introduced  and  planted  by  the  power  and  care  of  the 
Proprietors,  together  with  those  other  Subtenants 
to  whom  he  gave  Leases,  and  redeemed  from  the 
exactions  of  the  larger  Tacksmen,  are  the  progeni- 
tors of  the  men  now  known  as  "  Crofters."  They 
have  been  mythically  represented  as  a  native  popu- 
lation inheriting  for  centuries  a  certain  fixity  of 
tenure,  independent  of  the  Owner,  whereas  the  his- 
torical fact  is  that  the  process  by  which  they  were 
"  planted  "  is  in  many  cases,  as  we  shall  see  further 
on,  later  even  than  1737  by  more  than  half  a 
century. 

There  is,  moreover,  another  part  of  the  Sheriff's 
Report  which  shows  the  unquestioned  power  then 
exercised  by  the  Landlord  in  the  disposal  of  his  pro- 
perty. This  part  relates  to  the  question  of  rents. 
It  was  no  easy  question  under  the  circumstances  of 
the  case.  The  money  rents  previously  paid  by  the 
Subtenants  to  the  Tacksmen  were  ascertained  by  an 
examination  on  oath.  The  services  exacted,  too,  as 
well  as  any  fines  or  feudal  dues,  were  found  out  as 


252  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

nearly  as  possible  by  the  same  method.  But  as  it 
was  one  great  object  to  put  an  end  to  Services,  and 
to  all  dues  or  exactions  merely  arbitrary,  the  diffi- 
culty remained  as  to  the  additional  rent  which  the 
commutation  of  these  Services  would  be  fairly  worth. 
All  these  points  resolved  themselves  at  last  into  the 
value  of  the  produce  of  land  under  the  existing  con- 
ditions of  agriculture,  but  taking  into  account  such 
of  the  new  conditions  as  would  tell  at  once  on  the 
profit  of  the  Tenant.  But  here  again  the  Sheriff 
was  met  with  the  difficulty  that  he  was  accustomed 
to  consider  land  values  only  on  the  mainland,  and 
did  not  know  enough  of  the  local  circumstances 
to  estimate  such  values  in  the  Islands.  This  pro- 
blem could  only  be  solved  by  taking  the  values  set 
upon  the  land  by  the  people  themselves.  In  other 
words,  it  could  only  be  solved  by  putting  the  lands 
up  to  local  competition.  As  soon  as  the  people 
were  assured  that  they  would  be  protected  by 
Leases  and  by  the  authority  of  the  Proprietor, 
from  the  resentment  and  vengeance  of  their  old 
masters,  the  Tacksmen,  it  was  found  that  they 
came  forward  and  offered  freely  for  their  small 
possessions. 

Here  we  have  an  example — not  of  conduct  being 
governed  by  abstract  theories,  but — of  an  abstract 
principle  emerging  out  of  the  practical  necessities 
of  conduct,  and  seeking  expression  in  a  "  rugged 
maxim  hewn  from  life."  The  worthy  Sheriff  was  not 
thinking  of  any  science  of  Political  Economy  when 
he  said  that  until  the  Subtenants  could  be  persuaded 
to  offer  frankly  "he  could  have  no  tolerable  informa- 
tion of  the  value  of  the  country,  since  it  is  by  the 
competition  of  tenants  that  the  value  of  land  can  be 
known."  Political  Economy,  as  a  science,  had  not 
risen  above  the  horizon  in  Scotland  in  1732.  Adam 
Smith  was  then  a  weakly,  but  a  studious  and 
absent  little  boy,  nine  years  of  age,  doing  his  les- 
sons in  the  grammar-school  of  Kirkcaldy,  and  forty- 
four  years  were  yet  to  elapse  before  the  epoch  of 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  253 

his  immortal  Inquiry  into  the  Wealth  of  Nations. 
The  Sheriffs  aphorism  on  the  only  method  of 
ascertaining  values  was  nothing  more  than  the  half- 
conscious  expression  of  a  general  rule  drawn  directly 
from  observation  and  experience.  None  the  less  is 
this  sentence  an  emphatic,  because  an  unconscious, 
testimony  to  the  doctrine  and  the  practice  of  the 
time  :  and  none  the  less  was  the  conduct  of  the 
people  in  those  Insular  Estates  a  testimony  equally 
emphatic  to  their  own  recognition  of  the  practice, 
not  as  an  oppression  but  as  a  privilege.  It  implied 
of  course  that  the  Owner  of  the  Estate  had  the 
right  of  freely  disposing  of  his  lands,  as  an  in- 
separable part  of  the  right  of  Ownership.  It 
implied  also  that  they  themselves  had  no  other 
right  of  tenure  than  that  of  agreement,  and 
that  failing  such  agreement  they  were  liable  to 
removal.  But  no  doubt  or  question  as  to  either 
of  these  facts  had  ever  entered  their  heads. 
Nothing  in  their  own  past  history  or  traditions 
could  have  raised  it.  Some  of  them  probably  knew 
that  their  fathers  had  moved  from  the  lands  of  one 
Chief  who  could  not  protect  them,  to  the  lands  of 
another  who  could.  Others  of  them  perhaps  knew 
that  their  progenitors  had  at  no  very  distant  date 
enlisted  under  the  Chief  of  the  Macleans  as 
soldiers  enlist  under  a  famous  Captain,  and  had 
been  allowed  to  settle  on  his  lands  as  his  "men" 
and  retainers.  Others  again,  doubtless,  had  them- 
selves been  removed  at  the  end  of  a  Lease  from 
the  farm  of  one  Tacksman  Tenant  to  the  farm  of 
another.  All  of  them  knew  by  daily  experience 
that  upon  these  Tenants  they  themselves  were 
absolutely  dependent,  and  could  and  would  be 
removed  if  they  failed  in  dues  or  services.  Lastly, 
they  all  knew  that  those  who  were  above  them — the 
Tacksmen,  their  masters,  and  often  their  oppressors 
— who  were  the  very  aristocracy  of  the  Clan, — them- 
selves held  their  lands  by  no  independent  right,  but 
by  Leases  terminating  at  certain  dates,  and  freely 


254  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

granted  by  the  Proprietor.  It  was  not  a  loss,  but 
an  immense  gain  to  them  to  be  raised  from  tenancy- 
at-will  to  tenancy  under  Lease.  For  the  first  time 
in  their  history  they  were  free  to  bargain  for  their 
farms.  For  the  first  time  they  could  be  sure  that 
nothing  would  be  exacted  from  them  beyond  the 
terms  of  that  bargain,  and  that  their  removal  could 
not  take  place  except  for  breach  of  covenant,  or 
until  the  expiry  of  a  certain  time.  Accordingly  the 
Sheriff  reported  that  when  they  were  fully  assured 
of  protection  they  came  in  and  offered  for  these 
new  and  great  advantages  a  considerable  augmen- 
tation of  rent. 

We  have  here  the  clearest  evidence  of  the  per- 
fect continuity  of  law  and  of  practice  in  respect  to 
the  Ownership  and  Occupation  of  land  which  has 
marked  the  progress  of  Scotland  over  the  whole  of 
its  area  and  from  the  earliest  centuries.  We  see 
the  fullest  powers  of  Ownership  assumed  and  recog- 
nised as  undoubted  and  unquestioned,  and  we  see 
its  functions  in  promoting  the  civilisation  of  the 
country  as  clearly  as  we  have  already  seen  it  at 
earlier  periods  when  Parliament  appealed  to  it  for 
the  suppression  of  intolerable  evils.  Lest,  however, 
this  evidence  of  Sheriff  Campbell  should  be  in 
any  way  subject  to  detraction  from  his  relations 
with  his  Chief,  by  a  fortunate  accident  we  have, 
a  few  years  later,  the  same  evidence  confirmed  and 
amplified  on  the  authority  of  an  independent  and 
a  very  celebrated  man. 

Among  the  names  of  illustrious  Scotchmen  at 
this  critical  period  of  our  history,  there  is  no 
name,  perhaps,  which  shines  with  a  purer  lustre 
than  that  of  Duncan  Forbes  of  Culloden.  Him- 
self a  Highlander  of  Highlanders,  with  an  inti- 
mate knowledge  of  their  character  and  habits,  he 
was  able  to  sympathise,  so  far  as  mere  feeling 
was  concerned,  with  the  personal  attachments 
which  made  them  Jacobite.  But  his  religion, 
and  his  culture,  and  the  noble  profession  of  the 


THE  .RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  255 

Law — of  which  he  was  a  distinguished  ornament, 
and  of  which  he  rose  to  be  the  head  in  his  native 
country — kept  him  true  to  the  historical  develop- 
ments of  the  Scottish  people.  He  used  all  his 
influence,  and  strained  every  nerve  to  prevent  the 
Rebellion ;  and  when  it  was  suppressed,  by  the 
bloody  battle  fought  upon  his  own  Estate,  he 
exerted  himself  with  equal  energy  to  mitigate  the 
vengeance  of  the  Government  against  the  van- 
quished. As  a  Statesman,  as  a  Lawyer,  and  as  a 
Highlander  belonging  to  another  and  a  distant 
Clan,  he  had  pre-eminent  qualifications  for  giving 
wise  advice  on  the  difficult  questions — partly  politi- 
cal and  partly  economic — which  were  involved  in 
the  management  of  such  Estates  as  those  which 
had  come  into  the  hands  of  the  Argyll  family  in 
the  Islands.  The  possessor  of  them  at  that  time 
was  John,  the  Second  Duke  (1678-1743),  who  as 
a  Soldier  played  an  illustrious  part  in  the  wars 
of  Marlborough,  and  at  home  as  a  Statesman  took 
a  share  not  less  illustrious  in  the  Councils  which, 
at  the  death  of  Queen  Anne  in  1714,  secured 
the  Protestant  Succession.1  These  two  men  were 
intimate  friends.  Their  sympathies  were  the  same 
in  the  great  Constitutional  questions  of  their  day, 
and  they  were  not  less  alike  in  those  dispositions 
of  character  on  which  so  much  depends  in  the 
management  of  affairs.  Difficulties  had  evidently 
arisen  in  carrying  into  effect  all  the  recommenda- 
tions of  Sheriff  Campbell.  He  had  said  in  his 
Report  that  the  people  seemed  "bewitched" 
in  the  tenacity  of  their  adherence  to  their  waste- 

1  Lecky's  History  of  England,  vol.  i.  p.  164.  It  is  a  curious  illustra- 
tion of  the  power  of  genius  in  Sir  Walter  Scott's  immortal  works,  that 
this  Duke — the  companion  in  arms  of  Marlborough  and  Eugene — the 
friend  of  Pope  and  Thomson,  and  sung  by  both — is  nevertheless  now 
commonly  identified  as  "  Jeanie  Deans'  Duke "  from  the  beautiful  and 
touching  story  in  the  Heart  of  Midlothian.  The  additional  Dukedom 
of  Greenwich  was  granted  to  him  by  Queen  Anne  for  his  public  services. 
As  this  Duke  had  no  sons,  the  Title  of  Greenwich  lapsed  with  his  life. 
The  present  Duke  of  Buccleuch  is  his  only  direct  descendant,  through  a 
daughter. 


256  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

ful  customs.  The  Tacksmen  had  opposed  a  pas- 
sive but  combined  resistance  to  changes  which 
affected  so  much  their  own  power ;  and  they  had 
easily  succeeded  in  persuading  the  simple  and 
ignorant  people  under  them  that  old  customs  were 
better  than  new  conditions.  Under  these  circum- 
stances, and  in  view  of  the  expiry  of  a  number  of 
existing  Leases,  Forbes  of  Culloden,  in  the  same 
year  in  which  he  attained  the  dignity  of  Lord 
President  of  the  Supreme  Court  of  Law  in  Scot- 
land, 1737,  undertook  for  his  friend  a  mission  to 
his  Island  Estates  in  Mull,  Morven,  and  Tyree. 

The  account  of  his  journey,  and  the  Report  of 
what  he  saw  and  encountered,  is  one  of  the  most 
interesting  and  authentic  documents  we  possess  in 
respect  to  the  condition  of  the  people  of  the  Western 
Coast  and  Islands  at  that  time.1  It  confirms  the 
previous  account  of  Sheriff  Campbell  in  every  par- 
ticular. The  Lord  President  is  emphatic  in  his 
testimony,  and  severe  in  his  language  as  to  the  use 
made  by  the  Tacksmen  of  the  absolute  power  they 
held  over  the  subordinate  tenants.  He  speaks  of 
their  "tyranny"  and  "oppression."  He  speaks  of 
their  "unmerciful  exactions."  He  speaks  of  the 
land  even  lying  waste  by  reason  of  these  exactions, 
and  declares  that  "  if  the  system  had  continued  but 
a  few  years  longer,  the  Islands  would  have  been 
entirely  unpeopled."  He  reports  that  within  the 
previous  seven 'years  "above  one  hundred  families 
had  been  reduced  to  beggary  and  driven  out  of  the 
Island/'  Yet  these  Tacksmen  were  the  genuine 
representatives  of  the  Clan  system.  They  con- 
stituted, in  fact,  what  was  called  the  Clan — for 
those  below  them  had  long  ceased  to  be  treated  or 
regarded  as  more  than  "  the  men  "  under  them  ;  it 
is  plain,  that  both  by  law  and  by  continuous  usage, 
the  Leaseholding  Clansmen  ruled  with  absolute 

1  It  has  been  now  published  in  Appendix  A  to  the  "  Crofter  Report," 
1884,  vol.  i.  p.  387.  It  was  recovered  among  the  papers  of  Lady  Mary 
Coke,  daughter  of  John  Duke  of  Argyll  and  Greenwich,  by  the  present 
Earl  of  Home,  who  most  kindly  presented  it  to  me. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  257 

power — that  is  to  say,  so  far  as  the  possession  of 
the  land  was  concerned.  , 

Historically  speaking,  the  existence  of  this  power 
—more  than  the  use  made  of  it — is  the  important 
point.  The  use  made  of  it  must  have  varied  in 
different  districts,  and  still  more  in  the  hands  of 
different  men.  But  the  fact  is  all-important  that 
this  absolute  power  is  referred  to  as  universally 
existing  in  the  hands  of  the  Tacksmen  over  all 
who  held  land  under  them.  No  doubt  on  this 
fact  is  even  thought  of.  Throughout  the  narrative 
there  is  not  one  single  indication  of  any  limita- 
tions or  obstacles  in  the  way  of  this  power,  arising 
out  of  any  independent  or  customary  rights  of 
subordinate  tenure.  The  Tacksman  held  over  the 
whole  of  his  Farm,  and,  during  the  term  of  his  Tack, 
the  whole  powers  of  Ownership,  in  so  far  as  they 
were  delegated  by  the  Lease.  Amongst  these 
powers  there  was  of  necessity  the  power  of  remov- 
ing those  who  would  not,  or  could  not,  pay  the 
rents  or  perform  the  services  which  the  Tacksman 
might  demand  as  the  condition  of  possession. 
But  since  that  demand  was  indefinite,  and  variable 
from  year  to  year,  the  condition  of  the  Subtenants 
was  necessarily  precarious.  For  such  evils  there 
could  be  only  one  remedy.  They  arose  from  the 
powers  of  Ownership  being  separated  from  its  special 
interests,  and  therefore  from  its  natural  motives. 
They  were  delegated  to  men  whose  own  possession 
was  not  permanent,  and  whose  interests  were 
therefore  not  identified  with  the  growing  wealth  and 
permanent  prosperity  of  the  people.  The  remedy 
clearly  was  to  go  back  to  a  connection  founded 
on  the  nature  of  things — to  keep  in  the  hands  of 
the  Proprietor,  and  in  his  alone,  the  power  of  removal 
—to  deal  directly  with  the  Subtenants — to  give  to 
them  the  same  measure  of  security  which  the  Tacks- 
men  had  themselves  enjoyed.  It  was,  as  Culloden1 

1  I  adopt  here  the  Highland  custom  of  calling  Forbes  by  the  name  of 

his  estate. 

R 


258  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

expressed  it,  "to  deliver  them  from  the  tyranny 
of  Tacksmen,  to  free  them  from  the  oppression  of 
Services  and  Herezelds,  and  to  encourage  them 
to  improve  their  farms  by  giving  them  a  sort  of 
property  in  their  grounds  for  nineteen  years  by 
Leases,  if  they  showed  themselves  worthy  of  the 
intended  favour  by  offering  frankly  for  their  farms 
such  rent  as  fairly  and  honestly  they  could  bear." 
If  farms  with  Subtenants  on  them  were  to  be  let 
at  all  to  the  old  class  of  Tacksmen,  these  Sub- 
tenants were  to  get  a  separate  tenure,  subsisting 
for  the  same  period  as  the  Lease. 

Such,  accordingly,  was  the  policy  adopted  by 
Culloden,  as  it  had  been  already  recommended  by 
the  Sheriff.  Culloden,  however,  came  not  only  to 
recommend,  but  also  armed  with  authority  to  act 
upon  his  opinion.  Accordingly,  he  announced  to 
the  Subtenants  that  he  was  prepared  to  let  their 
lands  to  them  upon  Leases,  and  he  invited  them  to 
offer.  To  the  Tacksmen  he  made  the  like  proposal, 
under  the  stipulated  restrictions  and  conditions. 
To  his  surprise  he  found  himself  met  by  an 
organised  combination  not  to  offer  at  all,  or  to  offer 
only  very  inadequate  rents.  The  Tacksmen  had 
persuaded  the  Subtenants  to  regard  with  fear  and 
with  suspicion  the  proposals  made  to  them.  The 
first  thing  to  be  done  was  to  break  up  a  combination 
which  rested  on  the  cunning  and  selfishness  of  a 
few,  and  on  the  ignorance  and  prejudice  of  the 
many.  And  this  Culloden  was  prepared  to  do  at 
any  cost.  During  some  days  of  explanation  and 
persuasion,  he  found  the  most  effectual  argument 
to  be  a  warning  that  he  would  leave  them  in  their 
former  subjection  to  the  Tacksmen.  At  last  the 
truth  dawned  on  the  minds  of  some  of  them, 
and  he  induced  a  certain  number  of  the  small 
Tenants  to  make  tolerably  fair  offers  for  their 
holdings.  These  offers  he  immediately  accepted, 
and  concluded  a  bargain  with  those  who  made 
them.  Dealing  with  the  Tacksmen,  he  was  more 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  259 

peremptory  and  severe.  He  had  in  his  own  suite 
some  gentlemen  of  the  same  Highland  class,  but 
who,  from  living  on  the  mainland,  were  better 
acquainted  with  the  essential  conditions  of  agricul- 
tural progress.  Some  of  these  were  induced  to 
make  fair  offers  for  the  larger  farms,  whose  former 
Tenants  were  manoeuvring  so  unscrupulously  to 
thwart  the  most  necessary  reforms.  Suddenly 
several  of  these  men  found  that  their  farms  were 
re-let  to  others,  and  that  they  themselves  were 
dispossessed.  Such  examples  speedily  had  the 
desired  effect.  The  Subtenants,  when  they  found 
that  any  reasonable  offer  of  their  own  was  at  once 
accepted,  and  that  they  ran  no  risk  of  being  relegated 
to  the  dominion  of  the  Tacksmen  because  of  a  higher 
offer,  came  in  readily,  and  became  themselves  regular 
Tacksmen — relieved  from  all  but  a  few  stipulated 
services,  and  possessed  for  the  first  time  of  a  definite 
tenure  of  their  small  possessions.  The  remaining 
Tacksmen  also  became  more  reasonable,  and  in 
the  final  result  Culloden  had  the  satisfaction  of 
reporting  that  those  large  Insular  Estates  had  been 
re-let,  with  some  little  immediate  increase  of  rent, 
and  under  such  new  conditions  as  would  lay 
the  foundations  of  indefinite  improvement  for  the 
future. 

The  Leases  which  were  given  at  this  time  carried 
fully  into  effect  the  great  reform  which  it  was 
their  object  to  attain.  Many  of  them  were  given 
directly  to  men  who  had  been  Subtenants.  Amidst 
the  almost  universal  neglect  and  destruction  which 
have  overtaken  old  Leases,  a  fortunate  accident  has 
preserved  some  few  specimens  of  those  which  were 
drawn  up  by  Culloden,  and  signed  by  him  as  Com- 
missioner over  the  Duke's  Estate,  at  a  time  when 
he  himself  had  become  Lord  President  of  the  Court 
of  Session.  They  are  of  considerable  interest  on 
more  points  than  one.  The  application  to  Sub- 
tenants, who  had  always  been  Tenants-at-will,  of 
the  old  law  and  practice  of  Scotland  in  respect  to 


260  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Leases  of  Farms,  was  not  without  some  difficulties. 
Not  only  in  the  Highlands,  but  all  over  Scotland, 
this  class  of  Occupier  lived  in  clusters,  groups, 
villages,  or  "  Clachans."  Some  parts  of  the  Farm 
they  generally  held  in  common.  Other  parts  they 
held  in  various  shares,  generally  divided  on  the 
"  runrig  "  system  by  yearly  lots.  Partly,  no  doubt, 
for  facilities  of  defence,  partly  as  a  traditional 
survival  of  mere  habit  from  the  far-distant  day 
of  Village  Communities,  this  method  of  occupa- 
tion was  nearly  universal.  But  never  in  historic 
times  had  these  Townships  any  corporate  existence 
either  in  law  or  in  usage.  For  centuries  the 
Proprietors  had  been  moving  some,  and  planting 
Others,  whilst  individuals  were  brought  in  from 
time  to  time  by  the  same  authority,  with  the 
grant  of  "  rooms,"  or  of  shares  or  portions  of  the 
Farm.  To  whom  then,  were  the  new  Leases  to  be 
given  ?  To  the  group,  or  to  the  individual  Tenants 
of  whom  the  group  actually  consisted  at  the  time  ? 
Culloden  was  not  a  man  to  be  foiled  by  speculative 
difficulties,  nor  was  he  a  man  to  make  any  changes 
not  really  needed  for  his  purpose.  He  solved  the 
difficulty  by  taking  things  as  they  actually  stood, 
by  changing  as  little  as  possible,  and  by  applying 
the  principle  of  the  Lease  to  the  actual  Occupiers, 
and  according  to  their  actual  methods  of  occupation. 
Thus  in  the  case  of  one  Farm  occupied  by  six 
Tenants,  but  unequally  divided,  a  Lease  of  1739 
was  granted  by  name  to  each  of  them,  but  with 
a  specification  of  the  share  belonging  to  each  man 
or  woman.  The  whole  Farm  as  known  by  its 
name,  with  all  its  pertinents  as  known  by  use  and 
wont,  is  let  to  the  six  Tenants,  for  the  term  of 
nineteen  years,  in  the  proportions  specified — one- 
half  to  Hugh  M'Lean,  one -sixth  to  Rachel  Mac- 
Arthur,  one-twelfth  to  Donald  Macdonald,  and  so 
on.  Thus  far,  the  Tenants  were  dealt  with  sepa- 
rately, and  the  Lease  was  given  to  each  in  his 
individual  capacity.  That  which  the  Lease  assured 


THE  BESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  261 

to  each  of  them  was  the  "  peaceable  possession " 
of  the  Farm,  in  the  specified  shares,  "during  the 
space  (of  time)  aforesaid."  Subletting,  or  assigning, 
was  excluded,  but  each  Tenant  could  leave  his 
share  to  his  natural  heirs.  On  the  other  hand,  there 
was  a  clause  which  recognised  all  the  Tenants  as  in 
some  sense,  and  for  some  purposes,  a  Community, 
because  in  some  practices  they  were  so  of  necessity, 
from  living  so  close  together,  and  from  possessing 
more  or  less  grazing  land  in  common.  This  clause 
was  a  special  provision,  that  in  case  of  the  failure 
of  any  one  of  the  Tenants,  the  others  were  bound 
either  to  take  up  his  share  themselves,  or  else  to 
find  another  fit  Tenant  who  could  do  so  on  the 
same  conditions.  The  rent  was  a  fixed  sum  for  the 
Farm  as  a  whole,  for  which  all  the  Tenants  were 
bound  as  a  Community,  jointly  and  severally. 
Failure  in  the  payment  of  rent  voided  the  Lease, 
and  the  Proprietor  was  then  free  to  re-let  the  Farm 
to  others.  The  share  payable  by  each  was  left 
apparently  to  their  own  arrangement,  but  the  ar- 
rangement would  naturally  follow  the  proportions 
specified  in  the  Lease.  Then,  after  the  clause  fix- 
ing the  rent,  comes  the  new  clause  which  constituted 
the  great  reform  in  favour  of  this  class  of  Tenant — 
the  clause  in  respect  to  Services.  The  words  are 
these  (following  the  sum  of  rent)  : — "and  that 
(sum)  in  full  satisfaction  of  all  Herezelds  and  other 
prestations  (obligations)  and  services  whatsoever, 
which  are  hereby  discharged, — except  the  services 
of  Tenants  for  repairing  harbours,  mending  high- 
ways, or  making  or  repairing  Mill  Leads  (conduits) 
for  the  general  benefit  of  the  Island."  l 

In  these  words  we  see  the  symbol  and  consum- 
mation of  a  change  which  amounted  to  a  revolution. 
In  the  abolition  of  all  Services,  except  a  few  strictly 
limited  and  defined,  which  were  for  purposes 
directly  connected  with  the  benefit  of  a  whole  district 
and  of  a  large  community,  we  see  the  last  step,  or 

1  This  Lease,  with  explanatory  notes,  is  given  in  Appendix  I.  p.  485., 


262  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

almost  the  last,  from  the  mediaeval  to  modern  con- 
ditions of  society.  In  the  admission  of  a  class  to 
the  benefit  of  Leases  who  had  hitherto  been  always 
merely  Tenants -at- will,  and  had  in  practice  been 
often  compelled  to  move  from  the  necessity  either 
of  seeking  protection  or  of  rendering  service,  we  see 
the  elevation  of  a  large  portion  of  the  people  from  a 
state  of  complete  uncertainty  and  dependence,  to  a 
state  in  which  they  could  themselves  rely,  and 
could  make  others  rely,  upon  definite  engagements. 
Nor  is  the  significance  of  these  Leases  given  to 
Subtenants  some  years  before  "  The  Forty-Five " 
exhausted,  when  we  have  noted  the  clauses  which 
they  do  contain.  Hardly  less  remarkable  than  the 
insertion  of  some  of  these  clauses,  is  the  omission  of 
other  clauses  which  in  such  Instruments  had  been 
almost  universal.  Services  of  a  military  kind  had 
for  many  hundred  years  been  among  the  fundamental 
obligations  of  those  to  whom  the  occupation  of  land 
had  been  lent  or  given.  Even  in  the  Kintyre 
Leases,  which  we  have  seen  were  granted  about  one 
hundred  years  before  the  Leases  framed  by  Culloden, 
there  were  at  least  some  surviving  echoes  of  the 
Military  Ages.  In  the  full  stream  of  those  Ages, 
when  we  put  our  ear  to  the  language  of  such 
Instruments,  we  hear,  as  it  were,  always  the  sound 
of  fighting — the  atmosphere  of  war.  If  it  was  not 
always  being  actually  waged,  it  was  at  least  always 
in  habitual  contemplation.  In  the  Leases  of  about 
1639  there  are  only  a  few  customary  phrases, 
coming  from  the  old  days — phrases,  which  were 
even  then  little  more  than  survivals  of  a  time 
drawing  to  its  close.  Under  the  influence  of  the 
alarm  which  was  occasioned  by  the  first  Jacobite 
Hebellion  of  1715,  Parliament  had  in  that  year1 
prohibited,  as  contrary  to  public  policy,  all  clauses 
in  Charters  or  Leases  which  imposed  the  ancient 
obligations  of  "  Personal  Attendance,  Hunting, 
Hosting,  Watching,  and  Warding."  These  had 

1  First  of  Geo.  i.  cap.  54. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  263 

been  the  last  survivals,  but  they  had  long  been 
practically  obsolete.  They  now  became  illegal. 
Accordingly  in  the  Leases  of  Culloden  in  1739, 
there  is  not  even  a  whisper  of  the  kind.  We  have 
entered  finally  on  the  times  of  peaceful  industry. 

But  there  is  another  feature  of  these  Leases 
which  is  remarkable.  Just  as  some  old  customary 
clauses  were  dropped,  both  as  obsolete  and  as  no 
longer  lawful,  so  also  some  other  clauses  which 
were  soon  to  become  universal,  had  not  yet  come 
to  be  introduced.  I  refer  to  what  are  called  the 
"  cropping  clauses " — stipulations  to  secure  good 
husbandry,  and  to  prevent  the  deterioration  of  the 
land  by  gross  violations  of  its  rules.  In  those 
Leases  of  1739,  there  is  not  a  word  upon  the  sub- 
ject. Doubtless  this  was  due  to  the  fact  that  the 
attention  of  Culloden  was  concentrated  on  the  one 
great  fundamental  reform  of  establishing  in  the 
class  of  Subtenants  the  principle  of  tenure  by 
Lease  and  at  a  fixed  rent,  instead  of  tenure  at  Will, 
and  subject  to  services  vague,  indefinite,  and  un- 
limited. One  step  at  a  time — seems  to  have  been 
his  motto  and  his  method  of  proceeding. 

But  curious  and  instructive  as  these  facts  are,  in 
respect  to  the  first  steps  then  taken  for  improving  the 
condition  of  the  Western  Highlands,  they  would  be 
incomplete  without  giving  some  account  of  the 
evidence  we  derive  from  the  same  distinguished 
man  as  to  the  depths  of  ignorance  and  of  barbarism 
into  which  the  people  had  actually  fallen,  and  on 
the  necessity  for  further  steps  of  remedy  and  reform. 
Culloden  was  not  content  with  visiting  Mull  and 
Morven — districts  which  were  near  to  the  mainland 
and  comparatively  accessible.  He  determined  to  in- 
spect personally  the  Island  of  Tyree,  which  lies  from 
twenty  to  thirty  miles  farther  out  into  the  Western 
Ocean.  Unlike  the  nearer  Hebrides,  this  Island  is 
not  mountainous  but  low  and  flat,  with  large  areas 
of  very  fine  land,  capable  of  raising  excellent  crops 
of  corn.  Its  very  name  is  said  to  be  derived  from 


264  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 


its  agricultural  richness — the   lona  Monks  having 
called  it  "  Terra  Ethica,"  the  land  of  corn  ;:  and  its 
Celtic  name  still  retaining  the  letters  of  this  deriva- 
tion in  the  form  of  Thirithe.     The  climate  is  better 
than   on   the    mainland,    because    the    heavy   rain 
clouds  which  shed  their  torrents  on  Ben  More  and 
the  other  hills  of  Mull,  pass  over  without  notice  the 
unobtrusive  levels  of  Tyree.     An  old  Gaelic  poem 
calls  the  Island  "  the  Low-lying  Land  of  Barley." 
Even  without  any  culture  the  natural  grasses  and 
pastures  of  the  Island  are  exceptionally  green  and 
rich,  so  that  cattle  can  live  and  thrive  upon  it  with 
less  help  than  is  generally  required  in  the  Highlands 
from  food  prepared  and  stored  by  human  foresight. 
Yet  on  this  Island,  so  favoured  by  nature,  Culloden 
found  the  people  far  poorer  than  in  the  Isle  of  Mull, 
where  soil  and   climate  were  all  greatly  inferior. 
The  conditions  of  agricultural  knowledge  and  prac- 
tice   which    he   found   prevailing   may   well   seem 
incredible  in  a  country  where,  undoubtedly,  a  far 
higher  civilisation  had  given  lessons  to  the  people 
more  than  a  thousand  years  before.       Barley  was 
the   staple   produce  of  Tyree,  but  the  land,  from 
never  being  allowed  to  rest  and  from  being  never 
manured,  was  so  overrun  with  rank  strong  weeds 
that   it  was  an  absolute  impossibility  to  drive  a 
sickle  through  it.    Culloden  never  saw  fields  covered 
with  a  greater  load  of  herbage  than  the  corn-fields 
in  Tyree,  but  when  this  herbage  was  examined  not 
one-tenth  part  was    corn,  the  rest  being  all  wild 
carrot,    mustard,    and    other    weeds.       The    poor 
creatures    who   depended   on   these  crops  did  not 
know  how  to  clear  the  land  of  this  vegetation,  into 
which  all  the  natural  fertility  of  the  soil  was  allowed 
to  pass.     As  they  could  not  cut  their  corn  they 
knew  no  other  mode  of  gathering  it  than  by  pulling 
it  up  by  the  roots.     Then  they  sacrificed  the  straw 

1  The  word  "  ech"  or  "  ich"  signifies  corn  or  barley,  and  the  name  of 
the  Island  passed  through  several  stages  of  decay  during  the  Fourteenth 
and  Fifteenth  Centuries.  See  Reeves's  Adamnan,  p.  48. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  265 

by  burning,  whilst  the  grain,  from  being  half 
roasted,  became  unsaleable.  Even  this  operation 
could  not  be  performed  until  the  noxious  seeds 
had  ripened  before  the  corn,  and  had  time  to 
be  shed  upon  the  land  to  the  still  more  complete 
suffocation  of  each  succeeding  crop.  These  were 
but  samples  of  innumerable  other  practices,  equally 
barbarous,  which  Culloden  had  not  time  to  specify 
or  describe,  but  which  he  dismisses  with  the  signifi- 
cant general  description,  "all  the  other  ridiculous 
processes  of  husbandry  which  almost  utterly  destroy 
the  Island."  He  traces  all  these  evils  to  the 
ignorance  and  poverty  of  the  people,  consequent  on 
the  exactions  of  the  Tacksmen.  He  found  himself 
encountered  by  the  same  kind  of  combination  as  in 
Mull.  The  remedy  he  recommended  was  also  the 
same,  and  the  measures  he  took  to  break  down  an 
interested  and  ignorant  opposition,  were  identical 
in  both  cases.  With  equal  difficulty  he  at  last  per- 
suaded some  of  the  small  Tenants  to  accept  the 
security  of  Leases,  and  several  of  the  larger  Farms 
he  re-let  to  gentlemen  from  the  mainland,  who  came 
under  the  new  reformed  conditions. 

The  graphic  and  authentic  picture  thus  drawn  of 
the  condition  of  a  Hebridean  Estate  in  the  second 
quarter  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  is  a  picture  of 
the  whole  of  the  Highland  area,  with  such  local 
modifications  as  were  due  to  the  comparative 
nearness  of  each  district  to  the  old  centres  of 
civilisation  and  of  law.  It  is  the  picture  of  Celtic 
Feudalism  dying  hard.  But  it  was  dying — and  it 
had  been  dying  for  a  long  time  from  causes  with 
which  the  Jacobite  rebellions  had  nothing  whatever 
to  do.  In  principle  it  was  already  dead  when  Culloden 
wrote,  eight  years  before  "  The  Forty-Five."  Every- 
thing he  says  implies  that  nothing  of  it  was  left 
except  a  few  traditions.  Some  of  its  worst  evils 
had  already  been  put  an  end  to,  even  in  the 
Hebrides,  where  it  had  attained  its  most  rank 
development.  The  ferocious  feuds  and  fightings  of 


266  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  Clans  had  ceased  for  more  than  a  hundred  years. 
Helving  and  thieving  had  not  been  ended,  for  this 
was  carried  on  systematically  to  a  somewhat  later 
period,  and  was  still  indeed  the  habitual  resource  of 
the  Clans  wherever  they  were  in  proximity  to  richer 
lands  which  could  be  plundered.  But  the  same  re- 
source was  not  open  to  the  poor  people  of  the  distant 
Hebrides.  Nothing  of  the  Clan  system  remained 
to  them  except  the  old  power  of  unlimited  exactions, 
in  the  hands  of  Tacksmen  who  had  come  to  represent 
the  Chiefs  and  Chieftains  of  other  days.  In  the 
ages  of  intertribal  war  and  plunder  this  power  had  its 
compensations,  of  a  kind,  to  those  who  lived  under  it. 
But  in  the  dawning  age  of  peace  and  industry,  it 
was  a  practice  of  the  Clan  system  which  presented  an 
insuperable  obstacle  to  progress.  The  transformation 
of  this  power  for  evil  into  a  power  for  good,  had  been 
the  great  work  of  reformation  all  over  Scotland.  For 
this  purpose  nothing  was  required  except  to  carry 
back  the  power  to  the  only  legal  foundation  on  which 
it  had  ever  rested,  namely,  the  power  of  Ownership, 
and  so  to  evoke  the  higher  motives  which  must  in- 
evitably give  to  it  a  wise  direction.  Accordingly,  no- 
thing is  more  remarkable  in  the  Report  of  Culloden, 
as  it  had  been  in  the  Report  of  the  Sheriff,  than  the 
undoubting  certainty  with  which  he  assumed,  and 
everybody  else  assumed,  that,  even  in  those  distant 
centres  of  Celtic  Feudalism,  the  Proprietors  of  the 
land  had  the  fullest  right  to  let  it  to  all  comers. 
Without  this  right,  Culloden  could  have  done  nothing 
and  advised  nothing.  If  the  Occupiers  could  have 
insisted  on  remaining,  they  could  have  insisted  on 
continuing  all  the  barbarous  customs  to  which  they 
were  ignorantly  but  passionately  attached.  To  this 
day  they  might  have  been  living  on  crops  of  which 
one-tenth  was  corn  and  nine-tenths  were  weeds. 
They  might  have  been  pulling  them  up  by  the  roots, 
consuming  all  the  valuable  straw,  and  damaging  by 
fire  the  little  residue  of  grain.  The  improvement 
of  the  country  would  certainly  have  been  postponed 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  267 

for  generations.  Those  only  who  know  the  desperate 
and  almost  superstitious  tenacity  with  which  they 
clung,  and  in  some  places  do  even  now  cling,  to 
customs  and  usages  of  the  most  injurious  kind, 
can  estimate  what  the  West  Highlands  would  have 
been  if,  in  the  last  century,  they  had  been  separated 
in  law,  as  they  had  long  been  separated  in  lawless- 
ness, from  the  redeeming  agencies  at  work  in  the 
hands  of  Ownership  for  the  improvement  and  civili- 
sation of  the  Scottish  Kingdom. 

On  one  point  I  have  repeated  the  language  of 
Culloden  almost  with  a  feeling  of  compunction. 
His  Report  is  expressed  with  great  severity  as 
respects  the  conduct  and  the  habits  of  a  class  which 
was  then,  and  had  long  been,  one  of  the  most  essen- 
tial elements  of  society  in  the  Highlands — the  class 
of  gentlemen  Tenants  who  held  farms  under  Leases 
or  Tacks  from  the  Proprietor.  The  remnants  of 
this  class  survived  down  to  our  own  times.  I  have 
a  personal  recollection  of  some  of  them,  all  of  whom 
were  excellent,  and  some  of  them  even  distinguished, 
men.  Not  a  few  were  old  soldiers,  and  many  were 
descendants  from  collateral  branches  of  the  family 
of  their  Chief.  None  of  them  were  Farmers  in  the 
modern  sense  of  the  word,  although  some  of  them 
acquired  a  taste  for,  and  knowledge  of,  the  breeding 
of  cattle,  by  which  they  made  an  adequate  profit 
and  lived  mainly  on  the  produce  of  the  farm. 
Beyond  this,  and  perhaps  the  making  of  some 
fences,  very  few  of  them  were  agricultural  im- 
provers, and  I  know  of  no  case  in  which  any  great 
step  was  taken  by  men  of  this  class  in  introducing 
into  the  Highlands  those  reforms  in  the  cultivation 
of  land  of  which  the  country  stood  so  much  in  need. 
On  the  other  hand,  all  those  whom  I  have  known 
or  heard  of  as  belonging  to  this  class,  were  gentle- 
men in  the  best  meaning  of  the  term — men  incap- 
able of  a  dishonourable  action,  and  disposed  to  deal 
as  justly  and  humanely  with  their  inferiors  as  was 
consistent  with  the  standard  of  obligation  univer- 


268  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

sally  recognised  in  their  day  and  generation.  It  is 
possible  that  Culloden,  though  himself  a  Highlander, 
may  not  have  kept  fully  in  mind  what  that  stan- 
dard of  obligation  was  in  the  remoter  parts  of  the 
country  where  the  progress  of  law  and  of  legally 
defined  rights  had  not  yet  broken  down  the  vague 
customs  and  usages  which  had  come  down  to  them 
through  many  generations.  It  is  well,  however, 
that  the  glamour  which  fiction  and  romance  have 
cast  around  these  usages  should  be  dispelled  by  the 
broad  daylight  of  Culloden's  evidence,  and  that  the 
incompatibility  of  those  customs  with  the  first 
elements  of  our  modern  civilisation  should  be  seen 
now  as  it  was  seen,  not  after,  but  before  the  "  Forty- 
Five,"  by  a  great  Lawyer  and  a  great  Statesman, 
brought  into  personal  contact  with  the  whole  con- 
ditions of  society  which  had  been  moulded  by  them. 
Culloden  does  not  explain  the  nature  of  the 
"  services  "  or  "  exactions  "  which  were  imposed  on 
the  Subtenants  by  the  Tacksmen  or  Leaseholders. 
But  this  omission  can  be  supplied  from  other  sources. 
They  were  doubtless  the  same  as  those  usually  paid 
to  Proprietors  where  there  were  no  Tacksmen,  or 
where  such  Proprietors  were  of  the  smaller  class,  liv- 
ing on  the  spot  as  the  Tacksmen  did.  They  are  to 
be  found  given  in  detail  in  a  very  instructive  paper, 
drawn  up  in  1795  by  Sir  John  Sinclair,  for  the 
Board  of  Agriculture.  That  paper  refers  especially 
to  the  northern  counties  of  Cromarty,  Ross,  Suther- 
land, and  Caithness,  with  the  Islands  of  Orkney 
and  Shetland.  But  the  same  customs  prevailed 
everywhere  in  the  Highlands,  and,  indeed,  at  a  still 
older  date,  over  the  whole  British  Islands.  Specie 
or  money  being  very  rare,  the  rents  of  the  small 
Tenants  were  principally  paid  in  grain — that  is,  in 
Bear  or  Oats.  "  In  addition  to  the  rent,"  says 
Sir  John,  "  the  Tenants  of  that  description  were 
bound  to  pay  the  following  services,  namely,  tilling, 
dunging,  sowing,  and  harrowing  a  part  of  an  exten- 
sive farm  in  the  Proprietor's  (or  Tacksman's)  posses- 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  269 

sion,  providing  a  certain  quantity  of  peats  for  his 
fuel,  thatching  a  part  of  his  houses,  furnishing 
straw-ropes,  or  ropes  of  heath  for  that  purpose,  and 
for  securing  his  corn  in  the  barnyard,  weeding  the 
land,  leading  a  certain  quantity  of  turf  from  the 
common  for  manuring,  mowing,  making,  and  in- 
gathering the  hay,  the  spontaneous  produce  of  the 
meadow  and  marshy  ground,  cutting  down,  harvest- 
ing, threshing  out,  manufacturing,  and  carrying  to 
market  or  seaport  a  part  of  the  produce  of  the 
farm."  Besides  these  services,  the  Tenants  paid  in 
kind  the  following  articles  under  the  name  of  cus- 
toms, namely,  straw  bags,  ropes  made  of  hair  for 
drawing  the  plough,  reeds  used  for  similar  purposes, 
tethers,  which,  being  fixed  in  the  ground  by  a  peg 
or  small  stake,  and  the  cattle  tied  to  them,  pre- 
vented them  from  wandering  over  the  open  country, 
straw  for  thatching,  etc.  The  Tenants  also,  accord- 
ing to  the  extent  of  their  possessions,  kept  a  certain 
number  of  cattle  during  the  winter  season — paid 
vicarage  on  the  smaller  tythes ;  as  of  lamb,  wool, 
etc.,  a  certain  number  of  fowls  and  eggs,  veal,  kid, 
butter,  and  cheese ;  and  on  the  sea-coast  the  tythe 
of  their  fish  and  oil,  besides  assisting  in  carrying 
sea-ware  for  manure.  Sometimes,  also,  a  certain 
quantity  of  lint  was  spun  for  the  lady  of  the  house, 
and  a  certain  quantity  of  woollen  yarn  annually 
exacted.  Sir  J.  Sinclair  tells  us  that  such  were  the 
"  services  "  "  which  almost  universally  prevailed  "  in 
the  county  of  Caithness,  so  late  as  thirty  or  forty 
years  before  he  wrote — that  is,  so  late  as  (say) 
1760,  or  twenty-four  years  later  than  the  Eeport  of 
Culloden.1 

It  is  needless  to  say  that  payments  and  services 
so  numerous,  so  various,  and  so  indefinite  in  amount, 
might  be  so  worked,  and,  indeed,  could  not  fail  to 
be  so  worked  as  to  leave  the  small  Tenant  no 
certain  time  for  the  cultivation  of  his  own  land  on 
any  improved  system. 

1  Agricultural  Reports,  Scotland,  vol.  iv.,  part  iv.,  County  Caithness. 


270  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Now,  it  is  important  to  observe,  that  most  of 
these  services  and  exactions,  even  when  due,  never 
could  have  been  actually  imposed  by  the  great 
Landowners,  because  they  had  no  farms  in  their 
own  hands  scattered  all  over  the  country  upon 
which  alone  such  labour  could  be  of  any  value. 
But  the  smaller  Proprietors  could,  and  did,  exact 
them,  at  least  near  their  own  residences ;  and  when 
Tacksmen  were  allowed  to  sub-let  without  restric- 
tions, these  services  must  have  become  widely 
oppressive  and  destructive  to  industry. 

The  reform,  therefore,  which  consisted  in  the 
double  operation  of  letting  farms  directly  to  those 
who  had  been  Subtenants,  and  of  limiting  or  abol- 
ishing the  power  of  imposing  services  in  the  hands 
of  individual  Tacksmen,  was  a  reform  of  the  first 
order  of  importance. 

As  I  am  in  possession  of  some  of  the  Leases  which 
were  granted  nineteen  and  twenty  years  later  by 
Archibald,  third  Duke  of  Argyll,  I  am  able  to 
explain  the  general  nature  of  the  further  steps  then 
taken  in  pursuance  of  the  same  principles.  This  is 
an  interval  which  overleaps  the  famous  "  Forty- 
Five,"  and  at  the  end  of  it  we  find  nothing  but  the 
quiet,  continuous  progress  of  a  change  which  had 
been  commenced  before.  As  the  Lord  President 
Forbes  was  quite  as  intimate  a  friend  of  this  Duke 
as  he  had  been  of  his  more  illustrious  brother,  it 
is  probable  that  Duke  Archibald's  Leases  embodied 
the  latest  recommendations  of  Culloden.  In  the 
first  place,  the  "  Tacks"  or  Leases  given  in,  and  sub- 
sequent to,  1755,  to  the  larger  class  of  Tenants,  that 
is,  to  the  old  class  of  Tacksmen,  prohibited  all  sub- 
letting upon  "precarious  tenures,"  that  is,  tenures 
at  Will,  with  dues  as  uncertain  as  the  tenure.  In 
the  second  place,  the  smaller  Leaseholder  himself, 
although  still  bound  to  perform  for  the  Proprietor 
certain  services  as  part  of  his  rent,  had  these  services 
not  only  strictly  defined  and  limited,  but  also  made 
redeemable  at  a  fixed  and  specified  rate  of  commu- 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  271 

tation.  So  many  days'  service  each  year — twelve 
or  twenty-four  days — was  the  usual  stipulation,  and 
it  is  a  curious  illustration  of  the  enormous  change 
in  the  value  of  labour,  as  well  as  in  the  value  of 
money,  that  one  day's  labour  was  commutable  at 
the  rate  of  one  penny,  so  that  twelve  days'  service 
in  the  year  was  redeemable  by  the  addition  of  one 
shilling  sterling  to  the  rent.  It  was,  moreover,  a 
special  part  of  the  stipulation  that  the  labour  or 
service  could  not  be  exacted  either  at  seed-time  or 
at  harvest.  In  this  modified  form,  the  rendering 
of  a  certain  fixed  amount  of  service  or  of  day's 
labour  each  year  has  been  a  stipulation  surviving 
in  some  cases  down  to  the  present  day. 

Between  the  Report  of  Culloden  and  the  potato 
failure  and  consequent  famine  of  1846-7,  I  am  in 
possession  of  a  continuous  series  of  documents 
showing  the  progress  of  affairs  in  the  Island  of 
Tyree.  They  prove  in  the  greatest  detail  that 
every  single  step  towards  improvement  which  has 
been  taken  during  the  last  150  years  has  been 
taken  by  the  Proprietor,  and  not  by  the  people. 
Not  only  so,  but  every  one  of  these  steps,  with- 
out exception,  has  been  taken  against  the  pre- 
vailing opinions  and  feelings  of  the  people  at  the 
time.  "  All  in  this  farm  very  poor,  and  against  any 
change  " — such  is  the  description  repeated  over  and 
over  again  in  a  detailed  Heport  on  each  Farm  sent 
to  my  grandfather,  John,  sixth  Duke,  in  1803, 
when  he  was  contemplating  certain  changes  to 
which  I  shall  afterwards  refer.  Great  poverty  and 
great  ignorance  are  always  "  against  any  change." 
They  are  invariably  associated  with  a  languor  of 
mind  which  is  incompatible  with  the  possibility  of 
improvement.  The  very  desire  of  better  things  is 
absent,  and  even  if  the  desire  existed  the  means 
would  still  be  wanting.  Under  such  conditions 
every  reform  must  begin  outside  the  people,  and 
absolutely  requires  to  be  pressed  upon  them.  I  am 
not  speaking  merely  of  the  outlays  of  money,  which 


272  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

come  from  capital.  I  am  speaking  of  those  exer- 
cises of  mind — of  foresight,  and  of  authority — which 
come  from  Ownership,  and  cannot  be  enforced 
without  the  possession  of  its  fullest  rights.  The 
abolition  of  the  Run-rig  system  was  always  most 
unpopular  in  the  Highlands.  In  Tyree,  as  else- 
where, it  was  abolished,  and  could  only  be  abolished 
by  the  authority  of  Ownership.  Again — illicit  dis- 
tillation, with  the  worse  than  waste  of  an  immense 
quantity  of  grain, — was  another  inveterate  habit, 
suppressed  with  the  greatest  difficulty  by  the  same 
power.  Every  subsequent  measure  of  improve- 
ment— the  regular  division  of  individual  holdings — 
the  fencing  of  them — the  selection  of  the  best  can- 
didates for  the  occupation  of  them — the  prohibition 
of  cultivation  on  land  liable  to  destructive  sand-blow- 
ing— the  building  of  a  better  class  of  houses — the 
introduction  of  ploughs  in  substitution  for  the  primi- 
tive "  crooked  spade  " — the  introduction  of  carts — 
of  grain  of  a  better  kind — of  superior  stock — of  dairy 
farming ;  in  short,  every  single  item  of  progress  in 
agriculture  has  been  the  work,  and  often  the  arduous 
and  expensive  work,  of  the  Proprietor.  Moreover, 
even  all  these  would  have  been  useless  without  the 
arrest  laid  upon  reckless  sub-division,  and  the  steady 
progress  made  towards  the  establishment  of  more 
adequate  and  comfortable  possessions. 

The  legislative  measures  which  followed  the  sup- 
pression of  the  Kebellion  of  1745 — the  disarming 
of  the  people,  and  the  prohibition  of  the  native 
dress,1  except  as  a  uniform  in  the  Forces  of  the 
Crown — were  blows  struck  at  Celtic  Feudalism  with 
a  special  view  to  extinguish  its  political  danger, 
along  with  its  spirit  and  its  military  power.  These 
measures  were  needless,  and  if  they  had  stood  alone, 
would  probably  have  had  nothing  but  a  bad  effect. 
Causes,  however,  far  deeper  seated  than  any  legis- 
lative measures  of  this  kind,  had  long  been  operating 
in  the  right  direction,  and  these  had  already  almost 

1  20  Geo.  ii.  cap.  51. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  273 

completed  what  no  mere  statute  could  effect.  There 
was,  however,  one  Act  of  Parliament  passed  at  this 
time  which  marks  the  consummation  of  a  great 
change,  and  which  raised  a  hot  discussion  closely 
connected  with  the  subject  of  the  present  work. 
This  was  the  abolition  of  the  Heritable  Jurisdictions. 
Accidental  events  had  given  this  question  an  impor- 
tance which  it  did  not  really  possess.  The  Rebellion 
of  1745  had  made  a  deep  impression  on  the  public 
mind  both  in  England  and  in  the  Lowlands  of  Scot- 
land. Englishmen  had  seen  a  Highland  army 
invading  their  country,  and  marching  in  triumph 
through  Preston  and  Manchester  as  far  south  as 
Derby.  London  for  a  time  had  been  in  a  state  of 
panic.  Scotsmen  had  seen  their  Capital  taken, 
and  a  Popish  Pretender  holding  his  court  at  Holy- 
rood.  Both  England  and  Scotland  could  not  but 
take  serious  note  of  the  fact  that  the  Jacobite  forces 
had  twice  defeated  the  Royal  army  in  pitched  battles 
in  the  open  field — first,  on  the  20th  September  1745 
at  Prestonpans,  near  Edinburgh,  where  Sir  John 
Cope  was  badly  beaten,  with  the  loss  of  his  artillery 
and  stores;  a  second  time  at  Falkirk  on  the  17th 
January  1746,  where  General  Hawley  was  routed  not 
less  completely.  And  this  was  the  second  of  these 
Jacobite  Rebellions  within  30  years.  The  victory 
at  Culloden,  therefore,  although  it  seemed  to  be  for 
the  time  complete,  did  not,  and  could  not  set  men's 
minds  .at  rest.  They  were  disposed  to  look  with 
anger  and  alarm  into  the  causes  and  the  system 
which  enabled  a  few  great  Nobles  to  raise  armies  of 
ten  and  twelve  thousand  men,  and  at  such  frequent 
intervals,  to  contend  on  almost  equal  terms  with  the 
armies  of  the  Kingdom.  In  this  state  of  mind  they 
confounded  together,  as  men  are  very  apt  to  do  under 
such  conditions,  two,  or  more  than  two,  very  differ- 
ent things.  They  confounded,  amongst  others,  the 
power  of  Clanship  or  of  Chiefship  with  the  power 
of  Heritable  Jurisdictions.  In  this  they  were  not 
only  completely  mistaken,  but  altogether  wide  of 


274  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  truth.  The  power  of  the  Chiefs  of  Clans  was 
wholly  independent  of  Charters  or  of  Law.  The 
Heritable  Jurisdictions,  on  the  contrary,  were 
entirely  founded  on  Charters  and  on  Law.  They 
were  grants  by  the  Crown  of  Judicial  power  given 
to  individual  men,  not  because  they  were  Chiefs  of 
Clans,  but  because  they  were  the  chartered  Owners 
of  great  territorial  Estates.  These  powers  were 
given  to  Ownership,  and  not  to  "  Chiefery."  Many 
of  the  most  powerful  Rebels  were  men  who  had  no 
Heritable  Jurisdiction ;  many  of  the  great  Land- 
owners who  did  possess  extensive  legal  Jurisdictions, 
were  the  most  loyal  and  the  most  energetic  sup- 
porters of  the  Government.  On  the  other  hand, 
not  a  few  Rebel  Lords  who  had  chartered  Jurisdic- 
tions found  in  them  no  help  at  all.  The  Parliament 
of  Scotland  had  for  centuries  been  attacking  and 
denouncing  the  power  of  Chiefs;  whilst,  on  the 
contrary,  in  the  Treaty  of  Union  with  England 
in  1707,  the  Scottish  Parliament  had  inserted 
two  special  articles l  saving  the  Heritable  Juris- 
dictions of  the  Barons,  and  the  analogous  privi- 
leges of  Royal  Burghs,  as  Chartered  rights  of 
Property. 

When,  therefore,  the  British  Parliament  in  1746 
and  1747  came  to  consider  what  they  were  to  do 
against  Celtic  Feudalism,  they  soon  found  that  the 
Heritable  Jurisdictions  formed  no  part  of  it,  and  had 
nothing  to  do  with  the  political  dangers  which  had  so 
alarmed  the  Kingdom.  Yet  feeling  that  these  Juris- 
dictions were  for  other  reasons  open  to  objection, 
and  had  long  been  abolished  in  England,  they  fol- 
lowed the  judicious  course  of  taking  the  opinion  of 
a  learned,  wise,  and  patriotic  man — applying  to  his 
knowledge  for  the  facts,  and  to  his  wisdom  and 
patriotism  for  advice.  In  January  and  August  1746, 
the  House  of  Lords,  in  two  Orders,  applied  to  the 
Court  of  Session  in  Scotland  for  a  Report  on  the 
different  kinds  of  Heritable  Jurisdiction,  and  for  the 

1  Articles  xx.  and  xxi.,  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  xi.  Append,  p.  204. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  275 

draft  of  such  a  Bill  as  they  would  recommend  to  the 
adoption  of  Parliament.1  The  Lord  President  of  that 
Court  was  then  the  same  Duncan  Forbes  of  Culloden 
of  whom  we  have  seen  so  much  acting  in  another 
character.  His  Report  is  dated  January  9,  1747. 
Like  everything  he  wrote  it  was  clear,  concise, 
and  eminently  judicial  in  its  tone.  He  explained 
and  defended  the  Heritable  Jurisdictions  in  the 
light  of  the  times  in  which  they  had  been  introduced. 
He  recommended  the  abolition  of  them  (with  a  few 
important  reservations)  in  the  light  of  the  new  con- 
ditions of  society  which  had  now  arisen.  "  One  of 
the  principal  causes,"  he  says,  "  of  lodging  High 
Jurisdictions  in  powerful  Families  heretofore  was  the 
great  difficulty  the  Government  was  under,  of  bring- 
ing offenders  to  justice,  and  executing  the  laws, 
when  the  country  was  yet  uncivilised,  and  the 
necessity  of  committing  that  charge  to  such  as  were 
able  to  execute  the  same ;  and  as  that  part  of  the 
United  Kingdom  commonly  called  the  Highlands  of 
Scotland  has  at  all  times  been,  and  is  at  this  day, 
in  a  state  so  unsettled,  that  offenders  are  not  from 
thence  easily  amenable  to  justice,  nor  can  Process 
of  Law  have  free  course  through  it,  due  care  must 
be  taken  to  bring  that  part  of  the  country  under 
subjection  to  the  law,  and  to  secure  the  Execution 
of  Process  of  all  kinds  within  it,  before  any  hopes 
can  be  entertained  of  seeing  a  regular  administration 
of  Justice  by  the  King's  Courts  and  Judges  there." 
Assuming,  however,  that  the  essential  preliminary 
would  be  otherwise  secured,  he  sent  up  to  the  Lords 
the  draft  of  a  Bill  for  the  desired  purpose,  and  on 
this  draft  the  Act  which  abolished  the  Heritable 
Jurisdictions  was  drawn  and  passed  in  the  same 
year.2  To  a  very  large  extent  it  was  a  mere  statu- 
tory acknowledgment  of  changes  which  had  already 
been  practically  established.  In  the  preamble  to 

1  A  most  admirable  precedent,  which  might  perhaps  still  be  followed 
with  advantage  on  some  occasions. 

2  20  Geo.  IT.  cap.  43. 


276  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  1 7th  clause  the  Act  narrated  as  a  matter  of  fact 
that  Heritable  Jurisdiction  affecting  the  higher 
criminal  offences,  and  the  penalty  of  death,  had 
"  long  been  discontinued,  or  had  fallen  into  disuse 
as  to  the  exercise  thereof."  In  general  and  sweep- 
ing terms  all  Heritable  Jurisdictions,  both  civil 
and  criminal,  were  now  "  abrogated,  taken  away, 
totally  dissolved,  and  extinguished."  They  were 
resumed  and  re-annexed  to  their  original  source — 
the  Crown. 

And  yet  some  valuable  and  significant  reserva- 
tions were  made  by  subsequent  clauses  in  accord- 
ance with  the  recommendation  of  the  Lord  Pre- 
sident— in  accordance,  not  less,  with  important 
usages  at  that  time  still  in  full  activity,  and  with 
the  traditional  policy  of  the  native  Parliaments  of 
Scotland.  These  reservations  affected  only  the 
lower  jurisdiction  of  the  Baronial  Courts,  or,  as  they 
were  called,  the  "Baron  Baillie  Courts,"  for  the 
framing  and  enforcement  of  Estate  regulations,  and 
for  the  recovery  of  rents  due  by  contract.  The  view 
taken  by  the  Lord  President  of  the  Heritable 
Jurisdictions  as  a  whole  evidently  was,  that  so  far 
from  having  been  one  of  the  strengths  of  Celtic 
Feudalism,  they  had  been,  on  the  contrary,  the  only 
means  by  which  that  dangerous  power  could  be 
restrained  and  resisted.  They  had  been  a  strength 
in  the  hand  of  Ownership,  for  the  defence  and  en- 
forcement of  legal  obligation.  But  now  the  govern- 
ment of  the  Crown  was  in  a  condition  to  undertake 
this  great  duty  over  the  whole  Kingdom.  The  Lord 
President,  however,  had  seen  how  much  still  remained 
to  be  done  in  the  cause  of  civilisation  which  could 
be  done  by  no  other  power  whatever  than  the  power 
of  Ownership  in  the  management  of  landed  property. 
For  centuries  this  power  had  been  exercised  to  a 
large  extent  through  the  lower  jurisdiction  of  the 
Baronial  Courts,  presided  over  by  "  Bailies,"  as 
representatives  of  the  Proprietor  or  Lord.  It  was 
most  desirable  to  retain  an  Institution  which  was 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  277 

still  in  full  working  order,  which  had  in  it  some  strong 
popular  elements  of  unbroken  usage  and  tradition, 
and  without  which  the  progress  of  agricultural 
improvement  might  be  seriously  impeded. 

In  accordance,  therefore,  with  the  advice  of  the 
highest  Court  in  Scotland,  and  of  its  distinguished 
President,  the  old  Baronial  Courts  were  allowed  to 
retain  a  petty  jurisdiction  in  civil  cases  affecting 
values  up  to  Forty  shillings,  and  in  all  cases  what- 
ever for  the  recovery  of  "  rents,  mails,  and  duties," 
arising  out  of  Charters,  Leases,  or  other  Instruments 
under  which  land  was  occupied.1  This  Act,  therefore, 
made  no  change  in  the  general  practice  which  had 
been  long  established  of  inserting  a  clause  in  all 
Leases  of  agricultural  land,  binding  the  Tenant  to 
attend  and  to  serve  on  the  Courts  of  the  Barony  in 
which  his  Farm  lay.  This  was  not  an  onerous  but  an 
honourable  service,  analogous  to  that  of  serving  as 
Jurymen  in  the  King's  Courts.  It  associated  all 
the  Tenants  in  the  administration  both  of  law  and 
of  equitable  jurisdiction  arising  out  of  the  most 
important  relations  of  the  society  in  which  they 
lived.  It  was  only  very  gradually  that  these  Courts 
fell  into  desuetude.  The  clause  providing  for 
attendance  upon  them  survived  in  Leases  down  to 
our  own  days.  I  have  myself  signed  many  Leases 
out  of  which  this  old  clause  had  not  yet  dropped. 
The  changes  which  gradually  extinguished  these 
Courts  were  many.  The  class  of  men  who  took 
Farms  gradually  changed.  Farms,  themselves,  be- 
came more  and  more  individual  possessions — less 
and  less  associated  with  that  uniformity  of  customs 
and  of  habits  which  always  dies  under  an  active 
spirit  of  improvement.  Then,  the  King's  Courts, 
the  Sheriffs,  and  the  Sheriff-Substitutes,  penetrated 
everywhere,  and  the  inevitable  tendency  of  reforms 
of  every  kind  was  to  concentrate  all  Jurisdiction  in 
the  highest  and  most  responsible  administrators  of 
justice  and  of  law.  But  none  the  less  were  the 

1  Clause  17. 


278  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Baronial  Courts  a  valuable  institution  during  an 
important  time,  and  their  value  lay  especially  in  the 
facilities  they  lent  to  Ownership  in  rendering  its 
full  response  to  the  appeal  which  had  been  made  to 
it  by  Parliament  and  the  Crown. 

Belonging  strictly  to  the  same  category  of 
Legislation  another  Act  of  the  same  Session  deserves 
our  notice.  Amid  the  fear  and  hatred  roused  by 
the  Jacobite  Rebellions  against  all  that  was  sup- 
posed to  be  connected  with  Celtic  Feudalism, 
another  loud  clamour  arose  against  certain  incidents 
of  Feudal  Tenure  which  had  been  developed  in 
Scotland.  These  were  the  incidents  affecting  all 
Vassals  or  Feuars  connected  with  Fines,  Wardships, 
and  other  occasional  dues  to  their  "Superiors," 
which  in  Scotland  were  called  "  Casualties/'  Some 
of  these  were  open  to  great  objection — not  as  con- 
nected in  the  slightest  degree  with  the  power  of 
Celtic  Chiefs,  but  on  the  contrary  as  hampering  and 
embarrassing  the  great  antagonist  power  of  landed 
Ownership.  It  was  in  the  hands  of  the  Vassals,  and 
not  of  the  Superiors,  that  the  real  powers  and 
virtues  of  Ownership  lay.  It  was  the  Vassals,  not 
the  Superiors,  who  possessed  the  "  Dominium 
utile  " — the  dominion  which  incited  men  to  the  im- 
proved and  more  profitable  use  of  land.  It  was  a 
matter  therefore  of  public  interest  that  they  should 
be  able  to  exercise  that  power  upon  conditions 
which  were  known  and  calculable.  Upon  the 
narrative,  accordingly,  that  certain  specified  kinds  of 
Casualties  "  had  been  much  more  burdensome, 
grievous,  and  prejudicial  to  the  Vassals,  Proprietors 
of  the  Lands  held  by  these  Tenures,  than  they  had 
been  beneficial  to  the  Superiors,"  an  Act1  was 
passed  abolishing  them  for  the  future,  and  for  the 
past  requiring  them  to  be  commuted  into  a  fixed 
feu-duty,  either  by  agreement  between  the  parties, 
or  by  valuation  through  the  Court  of  Session. 

We   cannot   be   mistaken   in  seeing    here  the 

1  20  Geo.  ii.  cap.  50. 


THE  RESPONSE  OF  OWNERSHIP.  279 

handiwork  of  the  same  enlightened  Judge  and 
Statesman  who  drafted  the  Act  abolishing  the 
Heritable  Jurisdictions,  when  we  ascribe  to  him 
an  important  clause  in  this  further  Statute  which 
extended  to  Agricultural  Tenants  under  Lease  the 
same  principle  of  certainty  in  obligations  which  the 
other  clauses  secured  for  the  Proprietors  under 
whom  they  held.  This  clause1  was  in  strict  accord- 
ance with  the  principle  he  had  embodied  in  the 
new  Leases  which  he  had  drawn  up  for  the  Tenants 
on  the  Argyll  Estates.  It  did  not  abolish  Services 
as  a  part,  or  as  a  concomitant,  of  rent.  He  knew 
that  some  of  them  were  reasonable  and  even 
necessary.  Neither  did  it  assume  to  Parlia- 
ment the  task  of  specifying  the  particular  services 
it  might  be  expedient  to  retain.  He  knew  that 
local  circumstances  and  mutual  interests  must 
determine  this.  But  it  did  abolish,  and  render 
illegal  for  the  future,  all  Services  which  were  in- 
definite and  unrestricted  in  nature  and  amount. 
The  Tenant  and  the  Proprietor  might  bargain  for 
such  Services  as  they  pleased  ;  but  these  Services 
must  be  named,  and  specified.  Uncertainty- 
vagueness — the  want  of  definition  had  been  the 
ruin  and  oppression  of  the  cultivating  classes  under 
Celtic  Feudalism.  The  Lord  President  struck  at 
this  feature  of  the  system,  and  extended  by  law  to 
those  classes  that  same  remedial  principle  to  which 
a  wider  range  had  been  just  given  on  behalf  of 
chartered  Ownership.  And  so  the  new  clause 
declared  that  no  Tenant  or  Tacksman  should  in 
future  be  obliged  or  liable  to  perform  any  Services 
whatsoever  other  than  such  as  shall  be  expressly 
and  particularly  reserved  and  specified,  with  the 
number  and  kinds  thereof  enumerated  in  some 
written  Instrument,  signed  by  both  the  parties 
thereto  —  "  any  former  Law  or  usage  notwith- 
standing." 

This  was  indeed  wise  and  sound  Legislation,  and 

1  Clause  21. 


280  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

it  was  only  another  item  in  the  Response  of  Owner- 
ship to  the  long-standing  appeals  of  the  old  Parlia- 
ments of  Scotland.  For  it  is  to  be  observed  that  these 
new  Statutes  were  passed  in  the  united  or  British 
Parliament,  forty  years  after  the  Union,  in  special 
consultation  with  the  highest  Court  of  Law  in 
Scotland,  and  with  the  full  assent  of  the  Scottish 
Peerage  and  of  the  Scottish  Proprietors.  It  is 
indeed  curious  to  observe  that  although  the 
privilege  of  recording  Protests  by  minorities  in  the 
House  of  Lords  was  exercised  on  the  passing 
of  the  Bill  for  the  abolition  of  the  Heritable  Juris- 
dictions, that  Protest  was  not  signed  by  a  single 
Scotch  Peer.  It  was  signed  by  only  six  Peers — all 
of  them  Englishmen.  It  is  true  that  the  Chartered 
Proprietors  of  the  Heritable  Jurisdiction  were  to 
receive  a  compensation.  But  the  amount  of  this 
compensation  was  left  absolutely  to  the  decision  in 
each  case  of  the  Court  of  Session — and  this  was 
made  a  point  of  objection  by  the  Protesting  English- 
men. 

And  now,  disembarrassed  on  the  one  hand  of 
powers  which  had  outlived  their  time,  and  emanci- 
pated on  the  other  hand,  from  liabilities  which 
discouraged  the  use  of  capital,  the  Ownership  of 
Land  in  Scotland  was  ready  to  go  forward  faster, 
and  with  redoubled  energy,  on  a  career  which 
indeed  was  by  no  means  new,  but  which  was  now 
to  be  pursued  under  more  favourable  conditions  and 
with  an  immense  development  of  industrial  results. 

Before,  however,  we  can  enter  upon  a  review  of 
these  results,  we  must  go  back  for  a  little  upon  the 
Past,  and  estimate  from  authentic  sources  of  in- 
formation what  the  condition  of  Scotland  was  in 
the  beginning  of  the  second  half  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  as  well  as  attend  to  some  events  which 
arose  during  that  period,  and  which  exerted  an 
influence  upon  the  people  more  powerful  than  either 
new  laws  or  ancient  usages. 


CHAPTER   VII. 

BEFORE   THE    DAWN. 

VERY  nearly  a  century  and  a  half — 144  years- 
had  now  elapsed  since  the  Union  of  the  Crowns, 
and  the  condition  of  Scotland,  as  compared  with 
its  condition  at  that  time,  presented  at  least  one 
curious  parallel,  and  one  not  less  striking  contrast. 
In  1603  the  Cateran  of  the  Highland  Glens  was  the 
fellow  and  the  counterpart  of  the  Moss  Trooper  of 
the  Border  Dales.  Both  were  the  children  of  the 
Clan  system — the  product  of  its  degeneration  and 
decay.  The  men  who  swarmed  from  the  Hills  fall- 
ing into  the  sources  of  the  Leven,  the  Earn,  the 
Tay,  the  Dee,  the  Spey,  and  the  Beauly  Firth,  led 
substantially  the  same  life  as  those  who  mustered  in 
the  wider  valleys  or  on  the  gentler  slopes  which  shed 
their  waters  into  the  Solway  and  the  Tweed.  The 
Scoto-Saxon  and  the  Celtic  Clans  were  then  in  the 
same  stage  of  progress.  The  habits  of  both  races 
had  been  equally  uncivilised  and  destructive.  But 
now  the  armed  horseman  of  the  Border  had  not  only 
disappeared,  but  had  been  long  almost  forgotten. 
When  one  only  of  these  facts  absorbed  attention, 
and  when  the  other  had  fallen  out  of  mind — when 
the  Cateran  was  still  a  terror,  and  the  Moss  Trooper 
had  become  a  mere  tradition — it  was  only  natural 
that  the  causes  which  had  been  common  to  both 
should  be  popularly  confounded  and  confused. 
Only  the  calmer  spirits,  trained  in  the  knowledge  of 
History  and  of  Law,  appreciated  those  causes,  and 
perceived  the  remedies  which  could  alone  prevail 
over  them,  in  the  one  case,  as  they  had  already  pre- 


282  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

vailed  over  them,  in  the  other.  But  in  the  midst 
of  the  anger  which  swelled  around  the  last  Jacobite 
Rebellion,  there  were  some  writers  of  the  time  who 
saw  clearly  that  as  regarded  the  dangers  of  Clanship 
the  new  Statutes  of  1747  could  only  have  an  in- 
direct effect.  One  of  these  writers  pointed  out  that 
in  all  the  Border  Counties  Clanship  had  once  been 
as  powerful  and  as  destructive  to  industry  as  it 
still  appeared  to  be  in  any  part  of  the  Celtic  High- 
lands. He  urged  that  after  the  Union  of  the 
Crowns,  without  any  meddling  with  the  Heritable 
Jurisdictions  of  the  great  Landowners  of  the  Low- 
lands, and  without  any  modification  of  the  Feudal 
"casualties,"  those  evils  of  Clanship  had  been 
eradicated  in  the  Southern  Highlands  so  completely 
"  that  civility,  good  order,  and  industry  super- 
vened among  them,  and  Clanship  wore  off  by 
degrees,  and  at  last  totally  ceased,  so  that  no  such 
thing  has  been  known  in  those  parts  within  the 
memory  of  man."  l 

Although  this  phrase,  "the  memory  of  man," 
has  not  a  meaning  which  is  precise,  yet  it  has  a 
meaning  which  is  of  measurable  scope.  It  must 
indicate  a  period  of  more  than  a  century,  seeing 
that  every  generation  has  inherited  the  memory  of 
its  fathers  for  at  least  that  period  of  time.  This, 
then,  would  take  us  back  to  1647,  since  which  it 
was  asserted  as  a  matter  of  notoriety  that  no 
memory  remained  of  the  Border  Clans — a  date  only 
forty-four  years  after  the  Union  of  the  Crowns. 
Within  that  short  period,  then,  representing  little 
more  than  a  single  generation,  the  whole  system 
must  have  been  broken  up,  extinguished,  and  almost 
forgotten.  How  had  this  great  change  been  so 
speedily  effected  ?  Of  the  universal  prevalence  of 
Clanship  in  the  Southern  Counties  of  Scotland  up 
to  the  Union,  and  of  all  the  worst  habits  of  life 
inseparable  from  it,  there  can  be  no  doubt  whatever. 

1  An  Essay  upon  Feudal  Holdings,    etc.,  in  Scotland  (anonymous). 
London,  1747.     One  of  a  collection  of  pamphlets  of  this  date. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  283 

We  have  the  detailed  evidence  of  the  Parliament 
of  Scotland  in  1587,  only  sixteen  years  before,  and 
of  many  a  Tale  and  Ballad  which  illustrates  that 
evidence  in  forms  more  picturesque  and  equally 
authentic.  Sir  Walter  Scott,  the  latest  and  most 
illustrious  Minstrel  of  the  Borders,  who  himself 
belonged  to  one  of  the  most  powerful  of  the  Southern 
Clans,  has  said  of  his  native  districts  that  "for  a 
long  series  of  centuries  the  hands  of  rapine  were 
never  folded  in  inactivity,  nor  the  sword  of  violence 
returned  to  its  scabbard."1  The  truth  is,  that  his 
account  represents  a  condition  of  society  more  per- 
manently bad  than  had  prevailed  in  any  portion  of 
the  Highlands.  All  down  the  Eastern  Coasts  of 
Scotland,  indeed,  there  had  always  been  a  broad 
belt  of  low  country  which  was  the  seat  of  industry 
and  of  peace.  But  the  whole  area  embraced  by  the 
Middle  and  the  Western  Marches  had  been  nothing 
but  the  strongholds  of  fighting  and  marauding 
Clans.  Scott  tells  us  that  until  after  the  Union, 
land  in  those  regions  had  hardly  ever  been  suffi- 
ciently cultivated  to  afford  any  rent  at  all.  In  one 
respect  only  had  an  advance  been  made  beyond  the 
northern  portions  of  the  Kingdom.  The  great 
Landowners  of  the  Southern  Counties  had  long  ago 
discovered  that  sheep  could  graze  upon  their  moun- 
tains as  well  as  cattle  upon  the  lower  grounds ; 
and  it  is  recorded  of  James  v.  that  he  had  a  flock 
of  10,000  of  these  animals  in  the  Forest  of  Ettrick 
alone.  But  the  bulk  of  the  people  raised  no  crops 
sufficient  to  feed  themselves,  far  less  to  afford  a 
surplus  for  the  purposes  of  exchange.  Yet,  as  there 
was  a  large  population,  it  lived,  and  could  only  live 
on  the  plunder  of  its  neighbours. 

This  is  the  only  explanation — and  even  this  is 
hardly  sufficient — of  the  formidable  levies  which  the 
Border  Chiefs  seem  always  to  have  been  able  to 
command  in  frays,  forays,  and  sometimes  in  auda- 
cious enterprises  against  the  Crown.  Not  seldom 

1  Border  Minstrelsy.     Preface  by  Sir  W.  Scott  (ed.  1802),  p.  48. 


284  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

these  levies  were  made  so  suddenly  and  so  secretly, 
that  the  power  of  collecting  them  indicates  an 
abundance  of  population  far  greater  than  the  pro- 
duce of  their  own  country  could  habitually  sustain. 
James  vi.  himself,  with  all  his  Parliament,  had  sud- 
denly found  himself,  when  a  boy,  in  the  hands  of 
the  "Bold  Buccleuch,"  who  in  the  year  1571 
made  a  dash  at  Stirling  with  300  infantry  and 
200  horsemen.1  But  this  was  a  mere  squadron  of 
the  great  force  which  could  be  called  forth  when 
occasion  required  a  real  "  Summoning  of  the  Array." 
We  are  told  that  "  at  the  blaze  of  their  beacon-fires 
the  Borderers  could  assemble  10,000  horsemen  in 
the  course  of  a  single  day."5  How  came  such  long 
ancestral  habits  to  be  so  suddenly  exchanged  for 
others  ?  How  came  this  great  military  population 
to  be  disposed  of  in  favour  of  the  ploughman  and  the 
farmer  ?  It  had  to  be  done, — for  the  old  life  could 
be  led  no  longer.  He  whom  the  Borderers  had  called 
in  contempt  the  King  of  Fife  and  of  the  Lothians, 
had  become  King  of  Great  Britain  and  Ireland. 
The  "Marches"  and  the  "Borders"  had  disap- 
peared, and  now  there  was  only  one  United  King- 
dom, with  a  strong  Government  surrounding  on  all 
sides  the  Southern  Clans. 

There  were  but  two  ways  of  meeting  such  a  com- 
plete revolution  in  the  facts  of  life.  One  remedy 
was  sudden  and  temporary,  but  was  a  necessary 
preliminary  to  another  remedy  which  would  be 
gradual  and  permanent.  That  portion  of  the  popu- 
lation which  could  not  adapt  itself  to  the  new 
life — and  this  was  a  large  portion — must  go  else- 
where. The  other  remedy — that  which  must  be 
more  slow  and  more  gradual — would  spring  up  of 
itself,  out  of  the  new  motives  which  were  inseparable 
from  the  new  conditions.  All  other  "  measures  " 
must  be  weak  or  futile.  Such  measures,  however, 
were  tried ;  for  men  are  slow  to  recognise  or  under- 
stand what  the  real  influences  are  which  the  human 

1  Border  Minstrel*?/.,  Preface,  p.  37.  2  Ibid.  p.  69. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  285 

Will  steadily  obeys.  Legislative  measures  similar  to 
those  which  were  tried  against  the  Highlanders  in 
1747,  prohibiting  their  dress,  and  the  carrying  of 
their  arms,  had  been  tried  against  the  Borderers — 
with  this  difference  only,  that  as  their  accoutrements 
and  equipments  were  different,  the  things  aimed  at 
were  not  the  same.  For  the  most  part,  the  Border 
Clans  were  horsemen,  and  not  foot  soldiers.  With 
wonderful  ingenuity  they  had  trained  their  horses 
to  go  upon  morasses  by  throwing  themselves  down 
on  their  bellies  and  their  houghs,  and  thus  gaining 
an  artificial  breadth  of  support,  to  cross,  by  short 
floundering  leaps,  ground  in  which  ordinary  horses 
were  instantly  bogged.  Accordingly,  one  of  the 
measures  aimed  against  the  Borderers  was  a  prohi- 
bition against  the  possession  of  horses  above  the 
size  of  ponies.  But  the  real  remedies  were  begun 
when  the  native  Chiefs  and  Landowners  recruited 
a  Legion  of  men  who,  having  known  no  other  life 
than  fighting,  were  incapable  of  industry,  and  were 
glad  to  offer  the  service  of  their  lances  to  countries 
which  were  as  glad  to  have  them.  This  Legion 
repaired  to  Holland,  and  was  absorbed  in  the  wars 
of  the  Low  Country.1  One  whole  Clan  of  Graemes, 
specially  intractable,  were  deported  to  Ireland, 
where  they  did,  and  where  their  descendants  are 
now  doubtless  doing,  well.2 

But  the  great  remedy — the  permanent  remedy 
—was  the  immediate  opening  up  of  the  ordinary 
channels  of  peaceful  industry.  This  was  the  final 
and  irresistible  response  to  the  old  appeal  from  the 
power  of  Chiefs  to  the  power  of  Ownership.  The 
effect  was  immediate, — such  as  might  be  produced 
by  the  sudden  rising  of  a  new  atmosphere,  and  of 
a  new  climate  upon  the  vegetation  of  the  world. 
The  proper  seeds  were  all  there — for  these  are  every- 
where stored  in  the  nature  of  Man,  and  in  the 
nature  of  his  more  civilised  desires.  From  the 
moment  peace  and  security  were  established,  Land- 

1  Border  Minstrelsy,  Preface,  p.  49  2  Ibid. 


286  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

owners  began  to  value  their  estates  as  they  had 
never  valued  them  before.  They  now  valued  them 
not  for  the  precipitous  ravines, — the  impenetrable 
thickets, — the  treacherous  morasses, — on  the  edges 
of  which  they  could  build  castles,  or  in  which  they 
could  hide  cattle,  or  behind  which  they  could  retreat 
from  a  pursuing  enemy.  They  valued  them  for  the 
corn  they  could  produce,  and  for  the  share  of  it 
which  was  due  to  those  to  whom  the  cultivator 
owed  his  tenure, — this  being  his  only  right  of  exclu- 
sive occupation.  So  immediate  was  this  effect  that 
within  three  or  four  years  of  the  Union  proprietors 
began  to  look  closely  over  their  own  private 
"  marches,"  and  to  claim  from  each  other  portions  of 
territory  which,  before,  it  had  been  rather  a  burden 
to  defend.1  This  was  all  that  was  required.  No 
special  legislation  was  needed.  Old  motives  had 
been  killed.  New  motives  had  taken  possession  of 
Society.  There  must  have  been  a  great  exodus  from 
the  Dales  of  the  old  fighting  classes.  And  more  im- 
portant still,  after  this  exodus  had  been  accom- 
plished, there  was  a  free  current  of  migration  to  and 
from  the  surrounding  districts  of  the  oldest  Scottish 
civilisation.  There  was  no  barrier  of  race.  There 
was  no  barrier  of  language.  The  population  came 
and  went  as  agriculture  gradually  developed,  and 
as  the  mutual  interests  of  men  led  them  to  bargain 
with  each  other  for  what  each  could  give  towards 
the  profitable  occupation  and  cultivation  of  the 
soil.  Within  less  than  half  a  century,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  Moss  Trooper  cavalry  had  been  forgotten, 
and  the  grazier  and  the  farmer  reigned  in  their 
stead.2 

And  now  let  us  turn  from  the  parallel  to  the 
contrast.  The  Union  of  the  Crowns  was  a  great 
epoch  in  the  Celtic  Highlands,  as  well  as  in  the 
Marches  of  the  Border.  It  closed  almost  completely 

1  Border  Minstrelsy,  Preface,  p.  44. 

2  Statutes  against  Moss  Troopers  on  the  Border  continued  to   be 
passed  down  to  a  much  later  date.     But  the  old  name  had  come  to  be 
attached  to  mere  robbers  and  banditti. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  287 

the  ages  of  internal  war.     One  of  the  last  ferocious 
battles  of  the  Clans,  the  famous  and  bloody  fight 
between  the  Macgregors  and  Colquhouns  in  Glen 
Fruin,  was  fought  in  1603.     Thenceforward  blood- 
shed had  nearly  ceased.     But  there  was  no  exodus 
from  the  Highlands  of  the  fighting  classes  as  there 
was  from  the  Borders,  neither  was  there  any  con- 
tinuous outflow  and  inflow  between  the  Celtic  and 
the  Scottish  populations,  to  and  from  their  respec- 
tive  districts,  like  to   that   which  had  arisen   on 
the  Borders.     More  impassable  than  the  mountain 
barriers,  there   still   remained  between  the  High- 
landers and  the  Lowlanders  the  antipathies  of  race, 
and   the   differences   of  language.     From   all   this 
the  fact  arose  that  the  Highland  Caterans  lived  on 
and  multiplied  in  their  glens,  leading  to  a  very  large 
extent,  as  they  could  only  lead,  a  life  of  plunder. 
Instead  of  becoming  a  thing  of  the  past  within  little 
more  than  a  single  generation,  as  the  Clans  of  the 
Border  had  become,  they  continued,  on  the  contrary, 
to  be  a  living  and  a  very  terrible  reality  for  more 
than  a  century  and  a  half.    Although,  during  this 
time,  there  was  little  or  no  advance  in  agriculture, 
there  was  a  cessation  of  deaths  in  battle,  and  it  is 
certain  that  population  within  the  Highland  line 
was  pressing  more  and  more  closely  upon  the  limits 
of  subsistence.      It  could  not  be  otherwise.     Many 
parts  of  Scotland  which  are  now  among  the  richest, 
were  then  miserably  poor.     Thirty  years  after  the 
Union,  in  Charles  the  First's  Parliament  of  1633,  a 
Bill  was  brought  in  providing  "  that  all  impositions 
for  restraining  the  inbringing  of  victual  may  be  dis- 
charged," and  this  was  desired  upon  the  ground 
that  the  "whole  Sheriffdoms  of  Dumbarton,  Ren- 
frew, Argyll,  Ayr,  Wigtown,  Nithsdale,   Stewartry 
of  Kirkcudbright,  and  Annandale  are  not  able  to 
entertain  themselves  in  the  most  plentiful  years  that 
ever  fell  out  without  supply  from  foreign  parts." 

1  Act.  Parl.  Scot.  vol.  v.  p.  49. "     My  attention  was  called  to  this  re- 
markable fact  by  the  late  Mr.  Cosmo  Innes. 


288  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

If  this  was  true  at  that  time  of  comparatively 
fertile  districts  of  the  Lowland  country,  it  must 
have  been  still  more  true  of  all  the  wilder  portions 
of  the  Highlands.  The  land  was  a  land  capable 
of  yielding  adequate  means  of  support,  even  to 
a  limited  number,  only  as  a  return  to  capital, 
industry,  and  skill.  The  life  was  a  life  in  which 
industry  was  impossible,  and  in  which  both  capital 
and  agricultural  skill  were  unattainable  and  un- 
known. Accordingly  one  eminent  authority  has  said 
of  the  old  inhabitants  of  the  Highlands  that  "  they 
were  always  on  the  verge  of  famine,  and  every  few 
years  suffering  the  horrors  of  actual  starvation." : 

It  is  curious  how  completely  this  fact  is  now 
forgotten  or  ignored.  In  part  this  forgetfulness 
arises  out  of  one  of  the  most  blessed  laws  of  nature 
— that  the  memory  of  pain  is  transient,  whilst  the 
memories  of  pleasure  are  enduring.  Especially 
would  this  be  true  of  a  highly  imaginative  people, 
feeding  on  Legend,  and  having  no  literature  of  its 
own  except  the  literature  of  Song.  There  is  no 
poetic  or  inspiring  element  in  the  fight  with 
Famine.  Yet  the  moment  we  examine  in  detail  the 
historical  documents  of  greatest  value,  which  are 
Family  Papers  and  the  records  of  Parliament,  we 
find  abundant  evidence  of  the  extreme  poverty 
of  Scotland  and  of  her  people.  From  century  to 
century  the  same  complaint  is  repeated,  and  gener- 
ally in  tones  which  imply  not  so  much  any  sudden 
scarcity  from  adverse  seasons,  as  a  standing  defi- 
ciency of  food  for  the  adequate  support  of  the  popu- 
lation. In  the  reign  of  James  in.,  in  1476,  this 
complaint  is  so  worded  as  to  declare  expressly  that 
Scotland  was  then  dependent  on  the  Foreigner 
for  its  living.  "  Because,"  says  this  Statute, 
"  Victuals  are  right  scant  within  the  country,  and 
the  most  supportation  that  the  Realm  has  is  by 
strangers  of  diverse  nations  that  bring  victuals."2 

1  Sketches  of  Early  Scotch  History,  p.  434.     By  Cosmo  Innes. 

2  18  James  in.  c.  5;  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  ii.  p.  118. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  289 

Five  years  later,  in  1483,  the  continued  pressure  of 
this  condition  of  things  opened  the  eyes  of  the 
Legislature  to  a  truth  as  affecting  the  Foreign 
Importer,  to  which  they  continued  curiously  blind 
as  affecting  equally  the  Home  Producer, — the  truth, 
namely,  that  any  attempt  to  regulate  the  price  of 
imported  victuals  by  law  could  only  do  harm,  by 
driving  away  the  Foreigner  on  whom  so  much 
depended.  An  Act  of  that  year  therefore  provided 
that  in  order  to  induce  Foreigners  to  come  for  the 
benefit  of  the  King's  lieges,  they  should  enjoy  the 
benefit  of  free  bargains,  and  that  "no  price  be  set 
upon  their  goods,  except  by  buying  and  selling  with 
their  own  consent."1  The  span  of  a  single  human 
life  had  not  yet  elapsed,  when  Parliament  returned 
to  the  subject  in  a  yet  more  serious  mood.  It 
had  in  the  meantime  been  doing  its  best  to  dis- 
courage production  by  arbitrary  limitations  on  price. 
But  now  it  did  more  in  the  same  direction  by 
putting  arbitrary  limits  on  consumption.  Industry 
is  sometimes  recouped  for  a  small  price,  by  exten- 
sive custom.  But  this,  too,  was  to  be  checked. 
The  nation  had  recourse  to  a  Sumptuary  Law. 
It  treated  itself  as  if  it  were  a  ship  at  sea,  with 
only  a  limited  store  of  food  which  could  not  be 
increased,  but  which  might  be  made  to  serve 
longer  by  everybody  on  board  being  put  on 
rations.  The  idea  was  embodied  in  a  law  with 
grotesque  inconsistencies.  It  denounced  excess  in 
eating  as  "  voluptuosity."  But  it  did  not  put  all 
men  on  equal  fare.  It  established  a  scale  corre- 
sponding to  men's  rank  in  life.  The  consequence 
was,  the  highest  Ministers  of  the  Christian  Church 
were  put  highest  on  the  scale  of  eating,  and  there- 
fore lowest  on  the  scale  of  self-denial.  Archbishops, 
Bishops,  and  the  highest  ranks  of  the  Peerage  were 
allowed  a  maximum  of  eight  dishes,  whilst  the  scale 
descended,  through  the  various  degrees  of  station 
and  wealth,  to  a  maximum  of  three.  To  avoid  eva- 

1  22  James  in.  c.  10;  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  ii.  p.  144. 
T 


290  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

sion  it  was  specified  that  each  "  dish"  must  contain 
"one  kind  of  meat"  only.1  Illogical  and  childish 
as  this  Statute  must  appear  to  us  now,  I  am  not 
sure  that  it  is  more  childish  than  many  theories  pre- 
valent in  our  own  time  upon  the  subject  of  "luxury." 
There  is  no  rational,  or  indeed  intelligible  definition 
of  this  word  which  does  not  include  within  its 
meaning  all  that  exceeds  the  bare  necessities  of  life. 
The  food  of  a  convict — the  apparel  of  a  convict— 
the  lodging  of  a  convict — is  the  standard  with  which 
we  must  begin.  All  the  comforts  and  conveniences 
of  life — all  that  refines  and  elevates  the  course  and 
the  enjoyment  of  it — belongs  to  the  class  of  luxuries, 
and  the  Industries  which  are  employed  in  the  pro- 
duction of  them  are  the  profitable  employments  of 
the  people.  These  Industries  cannot  be  separated 
from  the  consumption  of  their  products.  "  Volup- 
tuosity  "  must  be  marked  off  by  a  higher  and  more 
spiritual  touch  than  the  coarse  one  of  Parliamentary 
enactments,  or  even  of  intellectual  definitions.  The 
characteristics  of  it  can  only  be  recognised  by  those 
moral  faculties  which  establish  contact  between  the 
Individual,  with  all  his  specialities  of  circumstance, 
and  the  duty  he  owes  to  the  Giver  of  every  good 
and  every  perfect  gift.  We  enter  here,  however, 
upon  other  fields  of  discussion,  from  which  we  must 
retire  again. 

The  interest  of  this  Statute  for  our  present 
purpose  lies  in  its  remarkable  preamble  :  "  Hav- 
ing respect  to  the  great  and  exorbitant  dearth 
risen  in  this  Realm  of  victuals  and  other  stuff 
for  the  sustentation  of  mankind,  and  daily  in- 
creasing." It  is  a  common  but  erroneous  notion 
that  the  Highlanders,  like  the  inhabitants  of  other 
wild  countries,  had  at  least  always  an  abundant 
supply  of  game.  But  neither  was  this  source 
extensively  available.  The  country  swarmed  with 
Foxes,  Eagles,  Hawks,  and,  at  an  earlier  period,  as 

1  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  1551,  vol.  ii.  p.  488.     Of  course,  ''meat"  meant  ali 
kinds  of  food,  and  not  animal  food  exclusively. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  291 

we  have  seen,  with  Wolves.  These  animals  effec- 
tually prevented  any  abundance  of  game.  Even 
the  Deer  being  often  wholly  unprotected,  killed  out 
of  season,  driven  about  and  allowed  no  rest,  were 
reduced  extremely  in  number,  and  in  the  Seven- 
teenth Century  were  found  only  in  the  highest  and 
least  accessible  mountains  of  the  country.1  When 
we  remember  that  this  language  was  used  by  men 
living  in  the  richest  portions  of  the  country,  in  or 
near  which  there  was  free  access  to  the  Foreign 
Merchant,  we  can  form  some  idea  of  the  much 
greater  dearth  which  must  have  prevailed  elsewhere. 
These  repeated  Statutes  during  several  centuries 
indicate  beyond  all  doubt  the  great  poverty  of  the 
nation,  and  the  deep  distress  which  must  have  been 
frequent,  if  not  habitual,  among  the  poorer  classes, 
in  districts  where  no  imports  could  ever  penetrate. 

This  state  of  things  is  not  astonishing.  The  only 
matter  of  astonishment  is  how  any  considerable 
population  could  have  lived  at  all.  Let  us  remem- 
ber, in  the  first  place,  that  the  food  which  now  for 
several  generations  has  been  the  principal  food  of 
all  poor  agricultural  populations,  was  not  then 
available.  There  were  no  potatoes.  Let  us  re- 
member, in  the  second  place,  that  the  climate  is  a 
wet  one,  and  that  artificial  drainage  was  absolutely 
unknown.  Let  us  remember,  in  the  third  place, 
that  although  potatoes  will  grow  on  damp  and 
even  wet  soils,  barley  and  oats  will  not  grow  except 
on  land  which  is  comparatively  dry.  Let  us 
remember,  in  the  fourth  place,  that  in  a  mountain- 
ous country,  with  a  wet  climate  and  no  artificial 
drainage,  the  best  land  in  the  bottoms  of  the 
valleys  must  have  been  very  wet,  and  that  even 
the  sides  of  the  hills  were  often  covered  with  a 
boggy  and  spongy  soil.  It  follows  from  all  these 
considerations  that  corn  could  only  be  raised  on 
those  spots  and  portions  of  land  which  were  dry  by 
natural  drainage.  Sometimes  these  may  have  been 

1  Sketches  of  Early  Scotch  History,  p.  424,  by  C.  Innes. 


292  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

in  the  bottoms  of  the  valleys  where  the  soil  happened 
to  be  light  and  shingly,  but  more  often  they  were 
on  the  steepest  sides  of  the  hills,  on  the  banks  of 
streams,  and  among  the  naturally  dry  and  even 
stony  knolls.  Accordingly  nothing  is  more  com- 
mon in  the  Highlands  than  to  see  old  marks  of 
cultivation  upon  land  so  high  and  so  steep, 
that  no  farmer  in  his  senses  would  now  consider 
it  as  arable  at  all.  When  these  marks  catch 
the  eye  of  the  stranger,  full  of  sentiment,  but 
deficient  in  knowledge,  he  looks  upon  them,  and 
quotes  them  as  the  melancholy  proofs  of  ancient 
and  abandoned  industry,  of  the  decay  of  agricul- 
ture, in  short  of  a  stagnant  or  declining  state. 
Whereas,  in  truth,  these  are  the  most  sure  and 
certain  indications  of  the  low  and  rude  condition 
of  agriculture  in  former  times.  They  prove  that 
the  better  lands  which  are  now  drained  and  cleared 
and  ploughed,  must  have  been  then  under  swamp 
and  tangled  wood."  When  again  we  remember  that 
such  dry  spots  and  patches  of  land  as  were  then 
capable  of  bearing  corn,  were  used  for  that  purpose 
year  after  year ;  when  we  remember  that  there  was 
no  such  a  thing  known  as  a  rotation  of  crops,  since 
all  the  green  varieties  were  wanting  ;  when  we  con- 
sider further,  that  even  the  rudiments  of  a  system 
of  manuring  land  were  also  unknown,  it  is  impos- 
sible to  be  surprised  that  the  population  of  the 
Highlands  was  exposed  to  frequent  and  severe 
famines,  and  we  may  well  even  wonder  how  any 
considerable  population  was  maintained  at  all. 

Sir  Walter  Scott,  in  one  of  the  most  powerful  of 
his  immortal  Tales,  the  novel  of  Rob  Roy,  has  put 
into  the  mouth  of  Bailie  Jar  vie  an  accurate  descrip- 
tion of  the  over-population  of  the  Highlands,  as 
compared  with  the  actual  resources  of  the  country 
in  the  time  of  that  noted  Cateran,  who  is  the  hero  of 
the  story :  "  The  military  array  of  this  Hieland 
country,  were  a'  the  men-folk  between  aughteen 
and  fifty-six  brought  out  that  could  bear  arms, 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  293 

couldna  come  weel  short  of  fifty-seven  thousand  and 
five  hundred  men.  Now,  sir,  it 's  a  sad  and  awfu' 
truth,  that  there  is  neither  wark,  nor  the  very 
fashion  nor  appearance  of  wark,  for  the  tae  half 
of  thae  puir  creatures ;  that  is  to  say,  that  the 
agriculture,  the  pasturage,  the  fisheries,  and  every 
species  of  honest  industry  about  the  country,  can- 
not employ  the  one  moiety  of  the  population,  let 
them  work  as  lazily  as  they  like,  and  they  do  work 
as  if  a  pleugh  or  a  spade  burned  their  fingers. 
Aweel,  sir,  this  moiety  of  unemployed  bodies 
amounting  to  one  hundred  and  fifteen  thousand 
souls,  whereof  there  may  be  twenty- eight  thousand 
seven  hundred  able-bodied  gillies  fit  to  bear  arms, 
and  that  do  bear  arms,  and  will  touch  or  look  at  nae 
honest  means  of  livelihood  even  if  they  could  get  it 
— which,  lack-a-day !  they  cannot.  .  .  .  And  mair 
especially  mony  hundreds  o'  them  come  down  to 
the  borders  of  the  low  country,  where  there 's  gear 
to  grip,  and  live  by  stealing,  reiving,  lifting  cows, 
and  the  like  depredations — a  thing  deplorable  in 
ony  Christian  country,  the  mair  especially  that 
they  take  a  pride  in  it," l  etc.  In  this  passage 
Scott  did  not  speak  at  random.  In  an  article 
contributed  to  the  Quarterly  Review  in  January 
1816,2we  have  his  picture  of  the  historical  facts 
embodied  in  Rob  Roy.  In  that  paper  he  pointed 
out  that  the  most  remarkable  fact  connected 
with  the  Highlands  about  a  hundred  years  before 
he  wrote,  was  the  rapid  increase  of  the  popula- 
tion, which,  pent  up  within  narrow  and  unfertile 
valleys,  could  neither  extend  itself  towards  the 
mountains,  on  account  of  hostile  Clans,  nor  to- 
wards the  Lowlands,  because  the  civilised  country, 
though  unable  to  prevent  occasional  depredations, 
was  always  too  powerful  to  admit  of  any  permanent 
settlement  being  gained  upon  the  plains  by  the 
mountaineers.  But  limited  to  its  own  valley,  each 
Clan  increased  in  numbers  in  a  degree  far  beyond 

1  Rob  Roy,y.  291  :   1870.  2  Vol.  xiv.  pp.  283-333. 


294  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

proportion  to  the  means  of  supporting  them.  Each 
little  farm  was,  by  the  tenant  who  cultivated  it, 
divided  and  sub-divided  among  his  children  and 
grandchildren,  until  the  number  of  human  beings 
to  be  maintained  far  exceeded  that  for  whom,  by 
any  mode  of  culture,  the  space  of  ground  could 
supply  even  the  poorest  nourishment.  In  illustra- 
tion of  this  general  description,  Sir  Walter  parti- 
cularises the  rugged  district,  now  so  well  known  to 
tourists,  between  Loch  Katrine  and  Loch  Lomond, 
in  the  neighbourhood  of  Inversnaid,  where  150 
families  were  living  upon  ground  which  did  not  pay 
£90  a  year  of  rent,  or  in  other  words,  where  each 
family  on  an  average  rented  land  at  twelve  shillings 
a  year  as  their  sole  source  of  livelihood.1 

It  is  well  to  have  this  prosaic  testimony  to  a 
memorable  economic  fact,  not  from  any  cold-blooded 
Statistician,  but  from  the  greatest  Poet  of  History 
that  has  ever  adorned  the  literature  of  any  country. 
The  only  error  that  can  be  detected  in  this  picture 
drawn  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  is,  that  in  some  ways  it 
is  probably  an  under-statement  rather  than  any 
over-statement  of  the  case.  The  terrible  and  then 
increasing  disproportion  between  the  old  Celtic 
population  and  their  legitimate  means  of  subsist- 
ence, is  as  powerfully  as  it  is  accurately  expressed. 
But  the  contrast  between  these  two  quantities  be- 
comes all  the  more  indicative  of  the  extreme  un- 
productiveness of  the  country,  arising  out  of  the 
ignorant  agriculture  and  idleness  of  the  people, 
when  we  discover  that  the  actual  amount  of  the 
population  which  was  so  poor,  and  which  was  driven 
to  such  expedients  for  support,  was  in  all  probability 
a  much  smaller  amount  than  the  figures  indicated 
by  Sir  Walter.  The  fighting  power  exhibited  in 
the  short  but  dashing  Rebellions  of  1715  and  of 
L745  has  led  very  generally  to  an  estimate  of  the 
number  of  fighting  men  turned  out  by  the  High- 
landers, which  is  almost  certainly  exaggerated.  It 

1  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  xiv.  p.  296-7. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  295 

will  surprise  many  to  be  told  that  the  greatest 
number  of  men  in  arms  against  the  Government  in 
the  Rebellion  of  1745,  from  the  beginning  to  the 
end  of  it,  did  not  exceed  11,000  men.1  In  1715 
the  Earl  of  Mar  had  entered  Stirling  with  only 
5000,  and  the  doubling  of  his  force  at  the  Battle 
of  Sheriffmuir  was  due  to  Irish  reinforcements.  Of 
course  it  is  to  be  remembered  that  some  of  the 
most  powerful  Clans  were  loyal  to  the  Government, 
so  that  the  Rebel  forces  never  represented  the  full 
power  of  the  Highland  population.  Some  of  them 
remained  neutral.  Robert  Macgregor,  the  famous 
"  Rob  Roy,"  hung  upon  the  outskirts  of  this  battle 
at  Sheriffmuir  with  a  contingent,  which  took  no 
part  in  the  engagement — its  astute  leader  being  a 
waiter  on  Providence  and  a  watcher  of  the  tide. 
This  broad  fact,  however,  remains  undoubted,  that 
although  many  great  Nobles  and  Proprietors  in  the 
Lowlands  joined  in  the  Rebellion  of  1745,  the  whole 
military  force  which  supported  the  Pretender  was 
entirely  raised  by  the  Highland  Proprietors,  although 
at  least  one-half  the  value  of  the  whole  Estates 
afterwards  forfeited  belonged  to  the  Lowland 
Rebels.2  The  explanation,  of  this  is  obvious.  It 
was  in  the  Highlands  alone  that  a  large  surplus 
population  survived  over  and  above  those  whose 
time  was  occupied  with  any  industrial  pursuits, 
and  over  and  above  the  number  which  could  be 
supported  by  them.  In  the  Lowlands  the  old 
military  population  had  disappeared, — having  been 
dispersed  from  their  original  seats,  and  absorbed 
into  the  ranks  of  peaceful  industry, — some  of  them 
in  the  country,  some  of  them  in  connection  with 
the  rising  commerce  of  the  Towns. 

At   last   one  outlet  was  opened  for  the  High- 
landers which  had  been  opened  for  the  Border  Clans 

1  I  take  this  from  an  interesting  MS.  in  the  Brit.  Mus.,  No.  104,  in 
the  "King's  Collection,"  written  by  a  gentleman  who  travelled  over  all 
the  Highland  Counties  soon  after  the  Rebellion  of  1745,  and  seems  to 
have  been  employed  by  the  Government  to  report  upon  them. 

2  Observations  on  the  Highlands,  by  the  Earl  of  Selkirk,  1805,  App*.  A. 


296  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

more  than  a  hundred  years  before — the  outlet, 
namely,  of  lawful  military  service.  It  is  constantly 
repeated  that  the  idea  of  enlisting  Highland  Hegi- 
ments  was  due  to  the  genius  of  the  elder  Pitt, 
the  Earl  of  Chatham,  when  he  came  into  power  in 
December  1756,  and  undertook  the  conduct  of 
the  war  with  France  in  America  and  in  Europe. 
This,  however,  is  a  mistake.  That  great  man 
has  enough  of  glory  without  ascribing  to  him  the 
merit  of  a  suggestion  which  unquestionably  came 
from  two  native  Scotchmen,  who  were  also  native 
Highlanders.  There  is  conclusive  evidence  that  the 
policy  of  enlisting  Highlanders,  as  such,  in  the 
regular  military  service  of  the  Crown,  was  due  to 
the  common  counsels  of  these  two  intimate  and 
hereditary  friends,  Archibald,  third  Duke  of  Argyll, 
better  known  as  Earl  of  Islay,1  and  Duncan  Forbes 
of  Culloden.  Indeed,  a  beginning  had  been  made 
at  a  still  earlier  date.  No  less  than  twenty-seven 
years  before  the  famous  ministry  of  Pitt,  this  policy 
had  been  inaugurated,  so  far  as  regarded  the  pur- 
poses of  a  local  Militia  for  keeping  the  peace  of 
the  Highlands,  by  the  formation  in  1730  of  the 
six  Independent  Companies  which,  from  the  con- 
trast of  their  dark  clothing  with  the  red  uniform 
of  the  Army,  came  to  be  known  as  the  Black 
Watch.2  These  six  separate  Companies,  numbering 
in  all  510  men,  were  constituted  as  closely  as 
possible  on  the  same  system  as  that  which  had  long 
been  the  system  of  the  Clans.  The  officers  were 
taken  from  the  loyal  Clans,  the  Campbells,  Grants, 
Munros,  etc.,  but  the  men  were  recruited  from  all 
Highlanders  who  would  enlist.  The  "Broken  Men" 
of  the  Highlands  were  as  willing  to  join  these  Com- 
panies as  they  had  always  been  to  join  any  powerful 
Chief.  These  bodies  of  men  were  in  the  strictest 

1  He  succeeded  his  brother  John,  Duke  of  Argyll  and  Greenwich,  in 
1743,  and  died  in  1761.  During  the  whole  of  the  Ministry  of  Walpole, 
and  some  succeeding  Ministries,  he  was  intrusted  with  the  chief  conduct 
of  affairs  in  Scotland. 

a  Stewart's  Sketches  of  the  Highlanders,  vol.  i.  part  iii.,  pp.  240-248. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  297 

sense  of  the  word  new  Clans,  formed  precisely  as 
any  other  Clan  might  have  been  begun,  in  the 
palmy  days  of  Celtic  Feudalism.1  We  know  the 
actual  constitution  of  at  least  one  of  the  Jacobite 
Clans  engaged  in  the  Rebellion  of  1745,  and  we 
see  that  essentially  it  was  a  mere  military  body 
with  only  the  flavour  of  family  or  blood  connection 
arising  out  of  relationship  between  the  officers.  It 
was  the  contingent  which  represented  the  Stewarts 
of  Appin.  In  this  gallant  corps,  numbering  up- 
wards of  300  men,  there  were  only  six  families  who 
were  genuine  inheritors  of  the  name  and  blood  of 
Stewart.  Of  the  killed  and  wounded  in  all  the 
battles  of  the  campaign,  only  47  belonged  to 
them,  whilst  109  belonged  to  "  Macs  "  of  almost 
every  sort  and  kind  existing  in  the  Highlands.  Yet 
nothing  could  exceed  the  courage  and  fidelity  of  the 
men  to  their  leaders.  They  contributed  much  to 
the  defeat  of  Sir  John  Cope  at  Prestonpans,  and 
to  the  rout  of  General  Hawley  at  Falkirk.  At 
Culloden  they  broke  the  Royal  regiment  opposed  to 
them,  until  it  was  rallied  behind  supports.2 

The  Statesmen  who  in  1730  first  enrolled  the 
original  Companies  of  the  Black  Watch  upon  exactly  % 
the  same  principle,  must  have  been  native  Scotch- 
men, knowing  intimately  the  habits  of  the  people 
whom  these  companies  were  formed  at  once  to 
watch,  to  employ,  and  to  keep  in  order.  Between 
1730  and  1738  they  seem  to  have  exercised  an 
excellent  effect  upon  the  Highlands,  and  it  was 
perhaps  due  to  them  that  the  Rebellion  of  1745  was 
not  far  more  formidable  even  than  it  actually  proved 
to  be.  In  the  last  of  these  years — 1738 — the  same 
year  in  which  Culloden  gave  such  wise  advice  for 
the  agricultural  settlement  of  the  population  on 

1  Col.   Stewart  says  "their  service  seemed  merely   that  of  a  Clan 
sanctioned  by  legal  authority  "  (Sketches,  vol.  ii.  p.  254). 

2  These  interesting  details  are  given  by  Mr.  Gregory,  editor  of  De  Rebus 
Albanicis,    and   author   of   the  History  of  the  Highlands.      They  were 
derived  from  Charles  Stewart  (Fasnacloich),  who  was  private  secretary 
to  Prince  Charles  Edward. 


298  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

his  friend's  Hebridean  estates, — he  drew  up  a 
paper  recommending  an  extension  of  the  policy 
of  enlisting  Highlanders  in  the  regular  Army.1 
Through  Lord  Islay  it  was  laid  before  Sir  Robert 
Walpole,  who  approved  and  sanctioned  the  idea. 
Although  this  scheme  was  not  immediately  carried 
into  effect  on  any  great  scale,  yet  a  beginning  was 
at  once  made,  for  it  must  have  been  in  consequence 
of  the  advice  of  Islay  and  Culloden  that  in  the 
following  year,  1739,  the  Independent  Companies 
of  the  Black  Watch  were  formed  into  a  Regiment 
— the  famous  "  Forty-Second." :  The  Letters  of 
Service  for  the  formation  of  this  Hegiment,  dated 
October  25,  1739,  directed  that  the  corps  should  be 
"  raised  in  the  Highlands,"  the  men  to  be  natives  of 
that  country,  and  none  other  to  be  taken.3 

The  steps  by  which  this  famous  body  of  men 
passed  from  mere  Companies,  representing  the  Clan 
organisation,  into  regular  Regiments  of  the  British 
Army  are  curious,  and  some  of  them  are  painful. 
The  original  Companies  were  raised  strictly  for 
local  service  among  the  mountains.  They  were 
scattered  over  the  Highlands,  but  principally 
.stationed  along  the  line  of  the  Great  Glen  from 
which,  on  either  side,  they  could  keep .  their  watch 
and  maintain  the  law.  When  they  were  "  regi- 
mented "  the  men  did  not  clearly  understand  the 
change  from  local  to  general  service,  although  the 
"Letters  of  Service"  distinctly  stated  that  the 
Regiment  was  to  take  its  place  in  the  Royal  Army, 
"  according  to  the  establishment  thereof."  4  When 
it  was  marched  to  London  in  1743,  and  Jacobite 
agents  told  them  they  might  be  sent  to  America, 
there  was — not  a  mutiny — but  a  wholesale  deser- 
tion. Following  the  frequent  example  of  their 
ancestors,  they  retreated  in  a  body  from  London, 
about  May  16  in  that  year,  and  tried  to  regain 

1  Culloden  Papers,  Introd.  p.  31. 

2  Originally,  and  for  a  few  years,  numbered  the  "Forty-Third." 

3  Stewart's  Sketches,  vol.  i.  p.  244.  *  Ibid. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  299 

the  Highlands  by  marching  through  the  centre 
of  England.  Surrounded  and  obliged  to  sur- 
render their  arms,  when  they  had  got  as  far  as 
Oundle  in  Northamptonshire,  they  were  soon  re- 
stored to  order,  and  transferred  to  Flanders  to  serve 
in  the  never-ending  wars  waged  upon  that  great 
battlefield  of  Europe.  There,  during  the  two  years 
1743  and  1744,  they  won  golden  opinions  by  their 
civility,  trustworthiness,  and  conduct ;  and  there, 
in  1745,  at  the  bloody  and  disastrous  fight  of  Fon- 
tenoy,  the  Highlanders  established  their  renown, 
first  by  their  dash  during  the  battle,  and  then  by 
their  discipline  and  courage  at  the  most  difficult 
and  dangerous  post  of  honour,  that  of  covering  the 
rear  of  an  army  in  retreat.1 

Not  indeed  even  then  for  the  first  time  had  the 
soldiers  of  Scotland  and  of  the  Highlands  become 
known  to  the  Continental  States.  For  many  hun- 
dred years  they  had  been  honoured  in  France,  and 
during  the  Seventeenth  Century  they  had  borne 
a  distinguished  part  in  the  wars  of  the  Low  Country. 
In  the  great  Civil  War  at  home  between  Charles  I. 
and  the  Parliamentary  Forces,  the  Highlanders  had 
been  called  on  for  a  contingent,  and  the  M'Leods  of 
Skye,  whose  chiefs  were  zealous  Royalists,  had  lost 
in  the  war,  and  especially  at  Worcester,  so  many  men 
that,  by  the  general  consent  of  the  Northern  Clans, 
it  was  agreed  that  they  should  have  a  respite  from 
military  service  till  their  numbers  should  increase.2 
Nevertheless  the  conduct  of  the  Black  Watch,  as 
one  of  the  regular  Regiments  of  the  British  Army 
at  Fontenoy,  attracted  the  universal  notice  of  the 
world.  And  this  was  still  twelve  years  before  the 
measure  commonly  ascribed  to  Pitt.  So  far,  indeed, 
was  he  from  having  any  merit  in  this  matter,  that 
so  late  as  1744  he  was  denouncing  on  principle  any 
additions  to  a  standing  army,  and  declaring  that 
"  the  man  who  solely  depends  upon  arms  for  bread 

1  Stewart's  Sketches,  vol.  ii.  pp.  269-70  ;  Culloden  Papers,  pp.  200-3. 

2  MSS.  Brit.  Mus. 


300  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

can  never  be  a  good  subject,  especially  in  a  free 
country." l  It  is  clear,  therefore,  that  the  honour  of 
this  measure  is  an  honour  to  be  ascribed  to  the 
Statesmen  who  were  then  at  the  head  of  affairs 
in  Scotland.  Moreover,  in  the  legislation  of 
1747,  the  Act  which  forbade  the  use  of  the 
Highland  dress,  specially  excepted  that  use  as  a 
regimental  uniform.  This  clearly  indicated  not 
a  temporary  or  accidental  expedient,  but  a  per- 
manent policy.  Accordingly  the  Forty-Second  was 
employed  on  all  kinds  of  service,  both  at  home,  in 
Ireland,  and  abroad,  during  the  eleven  years 
between  the  battle  of  Fontenoy  and  its  embark- 
ation for  Canada  in  1756.  Not  even  the  first  idea 
of  using  Highlanders  for  the  reinforcement  of 
the  Army  in  America  can  be  justly  ascribed  to 
the  initiative  of  Pitt.  The  Forty-Second  had  been 
under  orders  for  Canada,  and  had  actually  em- 
barked in  1748,  when  they  were  accidentally  driven 
back  by  storms.  But  the  Forty-Second  formed  part 
of  the  Force  sent  out  under  General  Abercromby 
in  1756,  and  which  landed  at  New  York  in  June 
of  that  year.2  The  Ministry  of  Pitt  was  not  formed 
till  the  following  month  of  December,  so  that 
the  policy  of  employing  Highland  Hegiments  in 
the  struggle  with  France  for  supremacy  in  the  New 
World,  cannot  possibly  be  ascribed  to  him. 

The  scheme  of  adding  largely  to  the  Highland 
element  in  the  regular  army  by  the  addition  of  two 
new  Regiments  of  1200  men  each,  and  of  sending 
them  out  to  America,  seems  to  have  been  renewed 
by  Archibald,  Duke  of  Argyll,  on  the  same  prin- 
ciple of  Clan  enlistment  which  had  been  found  so 
successful  in  the  case  of  the  Black  Watch.3  The 
only  merit  due  to  Pitt  in  this  matter,  was  that 
when  he  came  into  power  in  December  1756,  at 
a  time  marked  by  great  national  depression  and 

1  Thackeray's  Life  of  Pitt,  vol.  i.  p.  127. 

2  Stewart's  Sketches,  vol.  i.  p.  294. 

3  Beatson's  Military  and  Naval  Memoirs,  vol.  ii.  (ed.   1804),  under 
date  1757. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  301 

disaster,  having  himself  previously  denounced  the 
use  of  Hanoverian  troops,  he  rose  above  all  his 
former  prejudices  about  "  Standing  Armies/'  and 
directed  the  immediate  execution  of  the  scheme. 
The  truth  is,  that  the  defeat  of  Fontenoy  and 
the  Jacobite  Kebellion  happening  in  the  same  year, 
had  put  an  end  to  the  nonsense  of  political  tra- 
dition on  this  subject.  Pitt  had  now  entered 
upon  a  great  war,  and  he  was  almost  driven  by 
necessity,  in  January  1757,  to  resort  still  more 
largely  to  that  recruiting  ground  of  a  fighting 
race  in  the  Highlands,  the  value  of  which  had 
been  tested  on  the  most  famous  fields  of  Europe, 
and  had  then  already  come  to  be  universally 
recognised.1  During  the  rest  of  the  century, 
and  during  the  next  century  down  to  the  Battle 
of  Waterloo  in  1815,  this  recruiting  ground  was 
more  and  more  largely  drawn  upon — so  that  be- 
tween 1740  and  1815  no  less  than  fifty  Battalions 
had  been  raised  mainly  from  the  Highlands,  irre- 
spective of  smaller  corps,  and  many  "  Fencible  "  or 
Militia  Regiments 2  besides. 

The  effects  of  this  great  opening  of  military 
service  upon  the  population  of  the  Highlands  were 
very  great,  both  directly  and  indirectly.  The  in- 
direct effects  cannot  be  measured  by  the  mere 
diminution  of  numbers  from  the  casualties  of  war. 
These  were  never  excessive ;  indeed  they  may  be 
said  to  have  been  trifling  compared  with  those 
accompanying  the  murderous  conflicts  of  our  own 
day,  in  which  arms  of  precision,  and  of  enormous 
range,  mow  down  men  as  the  ears  of  corn  fall 
before  the  reaping-knives.  Fontenoy  was  reckoned 
a  bloody  battle  at  the  time,  and  the  severest  fight- 
ing fell  to  the  lot  of  the  Black  Watch ;  yet  they  lost 
in  killed  only  30  men,  with  86  wounded.  Fontenoy 

1  Mr.  Lecky,  one  of  the  most  careful  and  philosophical  of  our  living 
historians,  has  recognised  the    "  exaggeration "  of  the  merit  commonly 
ascribed  to  Pitt ;  but  he  still  leaves  to  that  Statesman  more  than  is  his 
due  (History  of  England,  vol.  ii.  p.  458). 

2  Stewart's  Sketches,  vol.  ii.  p.  293. 


302  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

was  described  by  an  officer  concerned  in  both  actions 
as  "nothing"  to  the  disastrous  fight  against  the 
French  and  Indians  at  Ticonderoga  in  1758,  when 
the  Highlanders  encountered  the  brave  Montcalm,1 
and  when  their  killed  numbered  297,  and  the 
wounded  306.  This  was  more  than  one-half  the 
whole  Regiment.  During  the  remaining  service  of 
this  splendid  corps,  from  its  embodiment  in  1740 
to  the  Peace  of  1815 — a  period  of  seventy-five 
years — in  all  the  wars  in  which  it  was  engaged, 
in  Flanders,  Canada,  America,  the  Peninsula,  and 
Waterloo — its  total  losses  in  killed  only  came  to 
778  men  (rank  and  file),  and  2291  wounded. 
The  proportion  of  officers  killed  and  wounded  was 
immensely  greater.2  At  this  rate  of  loss,  taking 
even  the  whole  of  the  Hegiments  which  came  to  be 
recruited,  chiefly  but  no  longer  exclusively,  from 
the  Highlands,  the  drain  upon  the  population  was 
not  very  heavy,  and  probably  much  less  than  would 
have  arisen  from  such  intertribal  wars  and  devas- 
tations as  those  which  marked  the  Fifteenth  and 
Sixteenth  Centuries. 

But  the  indirect  effect  of  the  Highland  Regi- 
ments was  enormous.  Men  from  every  part  of  the 
Highlands  became  acquainted  with  other  regions 
of  the  world — with  higher  standards  and  modes  of 
living, — with  other  pursuits  than  breeding  a  few 
half-starved  cattle,  and  raising  a  few  bolls  of  poor 
Oats  and  Bear.  They  resumed  that  foremost  rank 
in  the  military  annals  of  their  country  which  they 
had  not  held  since  the  days  of  Bannockburn  and 
Byland.  In  particular,  they  became  familiar,  during 
the  war  in  Canada  and  in  the  American  Colonies, 
with  those  "  Plantations  "  which  sounded  so  dreadful 
in  the  ears  of  the  Forty-Second  when  they  first 
heard  of  them,  that  the  men  rushed  off  in  a  panic  to 
regain  their  hills.  They  had  now  the  opportunity 


No.  I. 


1  Mante's  History  of  the,  War  in  North  America,  1754-1764,  p.  148. 

2  The  figures  are  given  in  detail  in  Stewart's  Sketches,  vol.  ii.,  App. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  303 

of  seeing  the  glorious  lands  which  are  drained  by 
the  St.  Lawrence  and  the  Hudson.  Allotments  in 
the  Province  of  New  York  to  the  amount  of  2000 
acres  each  were  given  by  the  Government  to  such 
officers  as  had  occasion  to  leave  the  Service.1 
Thus  so  early  as  1765  the  American  Plantations 
had  become  a  home  both  to  Highland  gentlemen 
and  to  Highland  soldiers.  Not  a  few  of  them  retired 
from  the  Army  and  settled  there,  and  those  who 
came  home  recounted  round  the  peat  fires  of  Mull, 
Skye,  the  Lewis,  and  of  all  the  glens  of  the  main- 
land, the  adventures  they  had  met  with  in  the 
Forests  of  the  Mohawk,  of  Lakes  George  and  Cham- 
plain,  and  beside  the  broad  waters  of  Ontario.  The 
love  of  adventure  and  the  love  of  fighting  all  over 
the  world,  were  incitements  thus  brought  into  com- 
petition with  the  rival  love  of  idleness  at  home. 
And  as  the  possibility  of  fighting  had  come  to  an 
end  there,  whilst  the  necessity  of  industry  grew 
more  imperative,  even  old  habits,  so  powerful  with 
all  primitive  races,  became  less  and  less  competent 
to  counteract  the  attractions  of  the  New  World. 

Powerful  as  the  external  influences  were  which 
thus  came  into  operation,  their  action  was  rendered 
still  more  powerful  by  some  new  internal  causes 
which  about  the  same  time  began  to  crowd  the 
people  inconveniently  at  home.  These  new  causes 
did  not  arise  from  political  events  of  any  kind.  They 
arose  especially  from  the  concurrence  of  some  dis- 
coveries, very  different  in  kind,  but  all  belonging 
to  that  class  of  agencies  which  often  tell  on  the 
progress  of  the  world  and  on  the  destiny  of  nations, 
far  more  deeply  than  the  valour  of  soldiers,  or  the 
policy  of  statesmen.  The  fields  of  Nature  are  very 
wide  fields,  and  of  boundless  fertility  to  those  who 
walk  on  them  with  an  eye  to  see,  and  a  mind  to 
question.  Every  now  and  then,  from  one  or  more 
of  her  vast  domains,  there  is  a  rush  of  new  Products, 
or  of  new  Inventions.  Then,  suddenly,  within  per- 

1    Memoir  and  Correspondence  of  Mrs.  Grant  of  Laggan,  vol.  i.  p.  8. 


304  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

haps  the  space  of  a  few  years,  the  Human  Family 
finds  itself  "  endowed  with  new  mercies,"  and  the 
whole  conditions  of  life  are  changed  over  large 
areas  of  the  world.  Such  a  time,  undoubtedly,  was 
the  latter  half  of  the  Eighteenth  Century.  Among 
many  others  there  were  in  particular  Three  dis- 
coveries, during  those  fifty  years,  two  of  which  told 
upon  the  whole  of  Europe,  and  one  of  which  told 
especially  upon  the  poorest  population  of  the  High- 
lands. Let  us  stop  for  a  moment  to  look  at  these 
discoveries,  for  a  whole  volume  of  philosophy 
belongs  to  each. 

In  the  dim  and  far-distant  East, — in  centuries  as 
remote  from  ours  as  the  country  or  the  race, — more 
than  a  thousand  years  before  the  Christian  era, — one 
of  those  terrible  diseases  had  arisen  which  belong 
to  the  class  of  Plagues.  So  sweeping,  so  fatal,  and 
at  the  same  time  so  loathsome  was  it  that  we 
might  almost  suppose  King  David  must  have 
alluded  to  it  when  he  sang  of  deliverance  from  the 
"noisome  pestilence."1  Yet  there  is  reason  to 
believe  that  the  mysterious  isolation  of  that 
curious  people  the  Chinese,  amongst  whom  it 
originated,  kept  the  great  nations  of  Western  Asia 
uncontaminated  for  hundreds  of  years  later  than 
the  latest  days  of  the  Jewish  Monarchy.  The 
Jews  did  indeed  profit  from  the  commerce  of  the 
East.  The  imagery  of  their  literature  is  full  of 
allusion  to  its  products,  and  to  the  love  they  had 
for  the  employment  of  them.  But  neither  the 
"Ivory  Palaces"  which  "made  them  glad,"2  nor 
the  "Apes  and  Peacocks"3  which  ministered  to 
their  amusement,  or  to  their  sense  of  gorgeous 
colour,  indicate  any  access  to  countries  farther  east 
than  Hindostan.  It  was  not,  apparently,  until 
the  last  quarter  of  the  Sixth  Century  of  the  Chris- 
tian era  that  Persian  merchants  brought  the  Small- 
pox from  the  far  East  into  Arabian  ports.4  But  this 

1  Ps.  xci.  3.  2  Ps.  xlv.  8.  3  1  Kings  x.  22. 

4  See  Art.  on  "Smallpox,"  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  xix.  p.  361. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  305 

was  in  572 — the  very  year  of  the  birth  of  Mahomet. 
And  so  it  happened  that  this  great  scourge  was 
planted  in  the  Arabian  Peninsula  at  the  very  time 
when,  in  the  course  of  a  few  years,  it  could  not  fail 
to  spread  into  all  the  regions  which  were  soon  to 
be  penetrated  by  the  great  Conqueror  who  had  just 
been  born.  The  basin  of  the  Mediterranean  Sea, 
girdled  as  it  was  by  all  that  remained  of  the  oldest 
civilisations  of  the  world,  could  not  be  a  barrier, 
but  became  rather  a  channel  and  a  road.  The  Moors 
took  this  new  Pest  with  them  when  they  crossed 
into  Europe,  and  established  their  short  but  brilliant 
culture  in  the  Palaces  of  Seville,  Cordova,  and 
Granada.  Again,  when  they  passed  the  Pyrenees, 
and,  invading  France,  were  defeated  by  Charles 
Martel,  Christian  Europe  was  indeed  delivered  from 
an  Infidel  conquest;  but  even  victorious  battles 
could  only  spread  the  contagion  of  disease.  And  so, 
from  that  date  onwards,  the  Eastern  Pestilence  was 
established  in  the  Western  World,  and  at  frequent 
intervals  it  mowed  down  its  thousands  among  all  the 
races  which  had  settled  there.  It  penetrated  every- 
where, and  was  indiscriminate  in  its  attacks  upon 
Celt  and  Saxon.  No  place  was  too  secluded,  no 
shore  was  too  remote.  From  time  to  time  it  deci- 
mated even  the  lonely  Hebrides.  It  is  strange  how 
entirely  this  is  forgotten  now.  But  we  have  the 
abundant  evidence  of  a  generation  which  remem- 
bered it  only  too  well.  Of  the  parish  of  Kilmuir 
in  Skye  the  Minister  writes  in  1792  that  up  to  a 
time  beyond  the  middle  of  the  century  Smallpox 
prevailed  to  a  very  great  extent,  and  almost  de- 
populated the  country.1  Of  the  parish  of  Snizort 
the  Minister  records  that  when  this  disease  did 
visit  the  Island  it  sometimes  swept  whole  families 
away,  or  left  only  one,  or  two,  or  three  survivors.2 
The  same  tale  is  repeated  from  such  secluded 
parishes  as  Durness  in  Sutherland,3  and  Glassary 

1  Old  Stat.  Ace.,  vol.  ii.  p.  551.  2  Ibid.  vol.  xviii.  p.  182. 

3  Ibid.  vol.  iii.  p.  582. 

U 


306  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

in  Argyll,  where  it  is  mentioned  as  having  been 
specially  fatal  among  the  children.1  The  effect  of 
such  a  disease  in  checking  population  must  have 
been  very  great. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  when,  in  1716,  an 
Englishwoman  of  high  education  and  lively  wit, 
going  as  the  wife  of  the  British  Ambassador  to  Con- 
stantinople, and  spending  her  holiday  among  the 
villages  around  that  city,  heard  of  the  strange  idea 
which  had  long  been  established  among  Turkish 
mothers,  that  by  "grafting"  this  terrible  disease 
upon  their  own  healthy  children  they  could  be 
made  to  take  the  infection  in  a  mild  form,  and 
could  be  practically  ensured  against  its  more  dan- 
gerous attacks  in  after  life.  Singularly  free  from 
prejudice  herself,  and  having  that  best  gift  of 
genius,  the  willingness  to  accept  a  new  idea,  Lady 
Mary  Wortley  Montagu  did  not  content  herself 
with  ciiriosity  and  wonder,  but  carefully  examined 
the  evidence,  and  became  convinced  of  the  result.2 
Yielding  to  this  conviction  she  gave  proof  of  her 
courage  and  of  her  intelligence  by  "  grafting  "  this 
terrible  disease  upon  her  own  child  in  April  1718. 
Returning  to  England  in  1719  she  spared  no  exer- 
tion in  trying  to  convince  others  of  the  safety  of 
this  method  of  escape  from  a  great  scourge,  and 
in  1720  was  able  to  tell  a  friend  that  the  practice 
had  been  generally  adopted  by  the  highest  classes 
in  London.3  Through  some  vicissitudes  of  fortune 
it  made  on  the  whole  steady  progress,  and  in  1754 
gained  the  sanction  of  a  most  conservative  profession 
in  the  verdict  of  the  Royal  College  of  Physicians.4 
It  is  a  signal  proof  of  the  terror  with  which  the 
pestilence  of  Smallpox  must  have  inspired  the 
people  who  had  suffered  from  it,  that  a  race  so 
hostile  to  all  novelties  as  the  Highlanders  was 

1  Old  Stat.  Ace.,  vol.  xiii.  p.  658. 

2  Her  first  account  of  it  is  given  in  a  letter,  April  1,  1718.      Work*, 
vol.  j.  p.  391.     Ed.  1837. 

3  Lady  M.  W.  Montagu's  Works,  vol.  ii.  p.  129. 

4  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  xix.  p.  366. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  307 

nevertheless  quickly  moved  to  try  a  remedy  not 
only  so  new,  but  in  itself  so  repulsive  to  feelings 
the  most  natural  and  the  most  deeply  seated.  It 
appears  to  have  been  introduced  into  the  Highlands 
and  Islands  about  1760,  and  was  almost  univer- 
sally practised  by  the  people  "with  surprising 
success  "  even  in  the  remote  island  of  North  Uist,1 
long  before  the  close  of  the  Eighteenth  Century. 
The  plague  was  stayed.  This  is  the  universal  testi- 
mony of  all  authorities.  And  it  is  remarkable  that, 
in  a  few  districts  where  adverse  prejudices  could  not 
be  overcome,  the  disease  continued  to  be  destructive 
down  to  a  much  later  date.  In  1777-8  no  less  than 
77  children  perished  in  one  Ross -shire  parish,  and 
the  minister  declares  that  the  disease  had  been 
wont  to  revisit  the  district  every  seven  years,  or 
even  oftener.2  Here  we  have  a  striking  measure 
of  the  great  effect  on  population  produced  by  the 
general  cessation  of  a  check  so  long  established, 
and  so  tremendous  in  its  operation. 

Thus  the  First  of  the  Three  great  discoveries  to 
which  I  have  referred  was  one  which  promoted  the 
increase  of  population  by  greatly  lowering  the  death- 
rate.  The  Second  was  a  discovery  which  still  more 
powerfully  promoted  population  by  raising  the 
supply  of  food.  Our  knowledge  of  the  circumstances 
attending  this  great  change  is  all  the  more  interest- 
ing from  its  contrast  with  our  profound  ignorance 
as  to  the  origin  and  development  of  the  older  staples 
of  human  subsistence.  We  know  absolutely  nothing 
of  the  first  cultivation  of  the  Cereals,  although  it  is 
certain  that  this  must  have  had  a  definite  beginning 
and  long  stages  of  development. 

The  rapidly  expanding  commerce  of  the  Eigh- 
teenth Century  added  immensely,  and,  in  some  cases, 
very  suddenly,  to  the  variety  of  human  food.  But 
in  most  cases  these  additions  came  in  the  form  of 
products  which  could  only  be  grown  in  distant 
climates,  and  the  use  of  which  had  long  been 

1  Old  Stat.  Ace.,  vol.  xiii.  p.  312.  2  Ibid.  vol.  i.  pp.  262-3. 


308  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

established  among  other  nations.  Tea  was  among 
the  first  and  most  remarkable  of  these,  and  it  is 
curious  to  observe  that  the  use  of  this  beverage 
made  such  rapid  progress  in  Scotland  in  the  first 
half  of  the  century,  that  even  a  man  so  enlightened 
as  Culloden  regarded  it  with  positive  alarm,  and 
actually  recommended  that  the  Legislature  should 
take  measures  to  restrain  the  poorer  classes  in  their 
addiction  to  it.1  From  1730  onwards  it  was  already 
wholly  displacing  the  native  beverage  of  beer,  and 
this  so  widely  in  the  Towns  of  Scotland  and  in  the 
Low  Country  as  seriously  to  affect  the  revenue.  To 
a  large  extent,  however,  the  other  new  and  varied 
articles  of  import  were  rather  condiments  and  luxu- 
ries, than  staple  articles  of  food.  It  is  all  the  more 
curious,  therefore,  that  until  long  past  the  middle 
of  the  century  we  hear  little  or  nothing  of  one  new 
product  of  the  vegetable  world  which  was  destined 
in  a  few  years  to  bring  about  the  most  prodigious 
effects  upon  population  that  have  ever  arisen  from  a 
like  cause.  Nor,  indeed,  is  there  any  wonder  that 
little  attention,  and  no  expectation,  should  have 
been  drawn  to  the  Potato  as  at  all  likely  to  play 
any  important  part  in  adding  to  the  resources  of 
human  sustenance.  Although  coming  from  the 
New  World,  it  belonged  to  a  family  of  plants  which 
was  well  known  in  the  Old,  and  which  was  most 
familiarly  represented  in  Europe  by  the  beautiful 
flowers  and  the  tempting  berries  of  the  Deadly 
Nightshade.  So  well  known  had  been  the  noxious 
properties  belonging  to  the  Solanum,  that  when  the 
fruit  of  another  member  of  the  group  was  first 
introduced  into  Europe  for  edible  purposes  from  the 
African  Coast,  the  story  of  a  miracle  arose  to 
account  for  its  innocence  or  its  wholesomeness.  To 
this  day  when  the  Peasant  of  Provence  includes  the 
Tomato  in  his  vegetable  diet,  he  tells  his  children 
that  originally  it  had  been  introduced  by  the  Infidel 
Saracens  as  a  means  of  poisoning  the  Christians, 

1  Culloden  Papers,  p.  190. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  309 

but  that  the  "  Bon  Dieu  "  had  interfered,  and  had 
converted  it  into  a  delicious  fruit.     Although  the 
American  Solanum  had  been  brought   home  from 
Virginia  in  connection  with  one  of  the  immortal 
names  of  English  History,  Sir  Walter  Raleigh,  it 
had  remained  for  150  years  in  comparative  neglect, 
cultivated  only  by  a  few  botanists  or  gardeners  as 
an  object  rather  of  curiosity  than  of  use.     Nobody 
could  well  have  guessed  its  extraordinary  proper- 
ties, as,  indeed,  none  of  us  can  ever  fully  fathom 
or  anticipate  the  wonderful  alchemies  of  Nature. 
That  a  root  belonging  to  a  well-known  and  poison- 
ous order  of  plants  should  turn  out  not  only  to  be 
nutritious,  but  to  be  richer  in  life-sustaining  power 
than  any  known  substance  of  like  composition,  and 
that  it  should  turn  out  to  be  easily  cultivated  in  our 
own  climate  and  in  the  least  fertile  of  our  own  soils, 
— were  results  not  to  be  foreseen  by  any  science. 
But  when  this  discovery  was  at  last  made,  it  was 
naturally   seized   upon   by   the   population,   which 
wanted  above  all  things  a  crop  which  should  be  at 
once  abundant,  and,  at  the  same  time,  capable    of 
cultivation  with  a  minimum  of  labour.     The  Celts 
of  Ireland  very  soon  began  not  only  to  use  it  as 
an  adjunct  to  other  food,  but  to  live  upon  it  as  their 
main   subsistence.     From  them  it  passed  over  to 
the  Celts  of  the  Hebrides,  having  been  introduced 
into  the  Island  of  South  Uist  so  early  as  1743  by 
Macdonald  of  Clanranald.     Suspicious  of  all  novel- 
ties, the  Highlanders  resisted  the  use  of  the  Potato 
for  some  years,  and  it  did  not  reach  the  neighbour- 
ing Island  of  Bernera  till  1752.     Yet  within  ten 
years  of  that   date  the   Potato  crop  had  come  to 
support   the   whole    inhabitants   for   at   least   one 
quarter  of  the  year.    Very  soon  it  was  found  that  it 
would  grow  luxuriantly  almost  everywhere — on  land 
little  better  than  sand  and  shingle,  and  in  bogs, 
where  it  only  required  to  be  planted  in  those  patches 
of  ditched-off  land  which  all  over  the  Highlands 
came  to  be  appropriately  known  as  "  lazy  beds." 


310  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

To  the   two  great  discoveries  just   described — 
one  of  them  eradicating  a  destructive  disease,  and 
the  other  supplying  a  new  and  prolific  source  of 
sustenance — there  now  came  to  be  added  yet  an- 
other— the  Third — discovery,  one  which  afforded  all 
along  the  Western   Coasts   a  new   manufacturing 
industry  which  was  at  once  lucrative  and  desultory— 
an  industry  which  yielded  a  large  return,  and  yet  did 
not  need  any  steady  or  continuous  labour.     This  dis- 
covery was  so  curious  and  so  almost  unique  in  its  his- 
tory and  results,  that  we  must  dwell  on  it  for  a  little. 
The  men  whom  the  world  calls  Thinkers  are 
often    curiously    thoughtless, — else    the     attempt 
would  never   have   been  made  to  distinguish  be- 
tween the  additions  of  value  which  are  "  earned  "  by 
Owners  or  Producers,  because  of  some  meritorious 
action  of  their  own,  and  certain  different  additions 
which  come  to  them  from  the  exertions  of  other 
men,   or  from   the   general   conditions   of  Society. 
For    the  distinction  breaks  down  the  moment  we 
look  into  it,  and  the  moment  we  grasp  the  fact  that 
all  kinds  and  degrees   of  value  come  largely,  and 
sometimes  exclusively,  from  causes  with  which  the 
Owners  or  Producers  of  valuable  things  have  nothing 
to  do.      And  most  especially  is  this  the  case  with 
those  who  live  by  the  labour  of  their  hands.     The 
value  of  that  which  alone  they  have  to  sell,  depends 
entirely  on  the  desires,  or  on  the  knowledge,  or  on 
the  powers  of  other  men  ;  and  it  constantly  happens 
that  sudden  and  great  additions  accrue  to  them 
upon  that  value,  which  they  have  not  only  done 
nothing  to  secure,  but  which  it  has  been  entirely  out 
of  their  power  either  to  expect  or  to  foresee.     There 
is  no  phrase   so  rich  in   fallacies  as  the   common 
phrase  that  Labour  is  the  only  source  of  Wealth. 
It  has  no  truth  in  it  whatever — except  when  Labour 
is  understood  as  including  every  form  and  variety  of 
human  influence  and  exertion,  and  especially  the 
forms  which  are  purely  intellectual.     Moreover,  all 
these   forms   and   kinds   and  degrees  of  influence 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN. 


311 


must  be  included,  not  only  as  operating  in  our  own 
time,  but  as  they  have  been  exerted  continuously 
in  all  preceding  generations.  These  generations 
have  been  the  stages  of  our  own  growth,  and  each 
of  them  has  contributed  something  to  the  store  on 
which  we  are  living  now.  In  the  sense  in  which 
Labour  is  commonly  understood,  which  is  physical 
labour,  nothing  can  be  more  erroneous  than  the  idea 
that  it  is  the  only,  or  the  ultimate  source  of  Wealth. 
Mind  comes  before  Matter ;  Brain  comes  before 
Muscle  ;  Head  comes  before  Hands.  This  is  the  law 
of  Nature,  and  this  is  the  order  of  precedence  in  her 
eternal  Hierarchy.  We  have  seen  how,  during  the 
Military  Ages,  this  complete  subordination  and 
dependence  of  the  lower  upon  the  higher  kinds  of 
human  energy  was  evidenced  in  the  enlisting  of  whole 
tribes  of  men  under  Chiefs  of  known  capacity  and 
power.  In  the  Industrial  Ages  on  which  we  have 
now  entered  the  same  great  law  of  Nature  was 
illustrated  continually  in  the  unlooked-for  benefits 
which  were  daily  and  hourly  accruing  to  the  owners 
of  Muscle  from  the  owners  of  Brain,  and  from  the 
new  desires  and  demands  started  by  their  work  in 
the  community  at  large. 

Never,  perhaps,  was  this  order  of  precedence 
more  signally  shown  than  in  the  great  increase  in 
the  value  of  their  labour  which  came  to  the  poorer 
classes  of  the  Western  Coasts  of  Scotland  from  the 
new  industry  to  which  I  have  referred.  We  have 
seen  that  the  Founders  of  new  nations  in  the  reign 
of  Elizabeth, — Botanists,  and  Gardeners,  and  Pro- 
prietors ever  since, — had  all  been  concerned  in  giving 
them  a  new  product  from  the  Land.  Chemists  and 
Manufacturers  were  now  at  work  to  give  them  a 
new  product  from  the  Sea.  And  in  this  case,  too, 
nothing  could  have  been  more  unexpected,  or  less 
connected  with  any  kind  of  exertion  of  their  own. 
The  Ocean  is  fertile  beyond  all  conception  in  animal 
life — immensely  more  fertile  than  the  dry  land. 
But,  on  the  other  hand,  it  holds  within  its  vast 


312  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

domains  nothing  of  the  vegetable  world,  except  the 
lowest  of  its  forms.  Moreover  its  vegetation,  such 
as  it  is,  is  almost  entirely  confined  to  two  narrow 
areas  of  shallow  depth — one  which  finds  its  limit 
between  high  and  low  water  mark,  called  the 
Littoral  Zone,  and  the  other  an  area  close  to  shores 
which  is  known  to  naturalists  as  the  Laminarian 
Zone.  But  in  these  two  Zones  between  high  water 
mark  and  a  maximum  depth  of  about  fifteenfathoms,1 
wherever  there  are  rocks  or  stones  for  attachment, 
sea-weeds  grow  in  beds  and  masses  which  are  often 
luxuriant  and  dense.  Some  of  the  smaller  species, 
especially  those  belonging  to  the  Green  and  Red 
series,  are  among  the  most  beautiful  Forms  in  nature. 
But  the  Olive-coloured  series  are  not  attractive  in 
appearance,  although  they  are  the  richest  in  useful 
products.  Torn,  slimy,  and  unsightly,  when  out  of 
the  water,  and  fetid  in  their  decay,  their  multitu- 
dinous cells  of  organic  structure  are,  nevertheless,  so 
many  batteries  for  eliminating  and  fixing  in  their  own 
walls  many  of  the  inorganic  elements  of  our  world, 
which  are  held  in  solution  by  the  Sea.  In  particular, 
the  salts  of  Sodium  and  Potassium  are  richly  con- 
centrated in  the  stems  and  fronds  of  some  of  them, 
besides  such  rarer  substances  as  Iodine  and  Bromine. 
Chemists  in  the  service  of  the  rising  Industries  of 
the  Low  Country  soon  found  that  from  those  sea- 
weeds which  grew  between  the  tides,  a  plentiful 
supply  could  be  extracted  of  the  Carbonate  of  Soda. 
In  the  manufacture  of  Soap  and  of  Glass  established 
at  Whitby  and  at  Newcastle,  this  product  was 
valuable.  There  are  many  maritime  countries  to 
which  this  discovery  would  have  brought  no  great 
source  of  wealth,  because  the  Sea  Coast  is  very 
often  but  a  single  border  line,  and  much  of  it  occu- 
pied by  sandy  shores,  destitute  of  sea- weeds.  But 
of  all  countries,  probably,  in  the  worJd,  the  Western 
Coasts  of  Scotland  present  the  rare  physical  charac- 
teristics which  could  give  to  this  discovery  a  maxi- 

1  Balfour's  Botany — Algae. 


BEFOBE  THE  DAWN.  313 

mum  value.  These  coasts  are  wonderfully  indented 
—the  Ocean  sending  out  innumerable  arms  which 
extend  far  among  the  hills — so  far,  and  into  such 
sheltered  reaches,  that  the  hazel-nut  and  the  acorn 
drop  ripe  into  waters  continuous  with  the  poles. 
The  shore  lines  of  the  County  of  Argyll  alone,  with 
its  Islands,  extend  to  2289  miles1 — lines  which,  if 
unrolled,  would  almost  reach  the  shores  of  the  New 
World.  Along  the  whole  extent  of  the  outer 
Hebrides,  sea  and  land  are  intermixed  through  a 
thousand  channels,  so  that  within  the  space  of  a 
few  miles  they  often  constitute  a  labyrinth  of  creeks, 
rocks,  and  islets — generally  exposed  to  a  great  rise 
and  fall  of  tide.  From  this  last  cause  the  Littoral 
Zone  was  unusually  ample  for  the  growth  of  Fuci. 
Such  was  the  country  of  which  its  barren  shores 
were  suddenly  converted  into  a  fruitful  field,  and 
its  natural  growths  could  be  turned  into  money,  by 
a  kind  of  work  the  most  simple,  and  not  very 
laborious.  The  weed  had  only  to  be  cut,  gathered, 
and  spread  to  dry  upon  the  rocks  or  turf.  Then  a 
few  stones,  arranged  somewhat  in  the  manner  of  a 
prehistoric  grave,  forming  a  low  and  a  loose  enclosure, 
was  all  that  was  dignified  by  the  name  of  a  kiln. 
Within  this  little  enclosure  a  lighted  peat  or  bit  of 
wood  was  used  to  set  on  fire  a  few  fronds  of  the 
half-dried  weed,  and  when  it  burst  into  a  crackling 
flame,  fresh  weed  had  to  be  added  so  as  to  keep  it 
down.  In  this  way  the  weed  was  rather  melted 
than  burnt  into  a  hot  and  pasty  mass,  which  finally 
cooled  and  consolidated  into  a  glassy  and  brittle 
substance  not  unlike  the  resin  of  commerce  which 
is  derived  from  pine-trees.  For  this  substance  so 
easily  prepared,  from  a  natural  supply  of  raw  mate- 
rial needing  no  labour  in  its  cultivation,  there  arose 
an  active  demand  during  the  latter  part  of  the 
Eighteenth  Century.  It  was  first  established  on  the 

1  I  derive  this  curious  fact  from  an  Abstract  of  Geographical  Statistics 
of  the  County,  drawn  up  by  the  late  Captain  Bedford,  K.N.,  who  directed 
the  Admiralty  Survey. 


314  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

shores  of  the  Firth  of  Forth,  so  early  as  1720, 
whence  it  passed  to  the  Orkneys  in  1723.  In  the 
Hebrides,  it  was  introduced  into  the  Island  of  Tyree 
only  in  1746.  But  the  price  was  then  trifling.  In 
1768  the  industry  had  become  general  and  import- 
ant,—the  produce  of  the  Western  Coast  being 
estimated  at  about  5000  tons.  The  price  was  then 
about  £6,  10s.  at  the  Glass  manufactory  of  New- 
castle. The  price  varied  much  during  the  rest  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century.  But  every  rise  in  price 
was  met  by  increased  production.  For  a  short  time 
during  the  French  war  the  price  is  said  to  have 
reached  the  high  figure  of  £20  per  ton.1  Among 
my  family  estate  accounts  I  find  no  record  of  any 
such  price,  and  down  to  1822  the  average  was 
probably  less  than  half  that  amount.2  Of  this 
valuable  material  the  Hebrides  alone  produced, 
when  the  trade  was  at  its  height,  about  6000  tons 
annually — representing  in  good  years  a  value  which 
was  a  great  deal  more  than  double  the  whole  of  the 
agricultural  rental  of  some  of  the  estates  on  which 
it  was  produced. 

Coming,  as  this  new  manufacture  did,  in  addition 
to  the  two  other  causes  tending  to  increase  popula- 
tion, the  trade  in  Kelp  had  a  prodigious  effect.  It 
employed  at  various  seasons  an  immense  quantity 
of  labour,  the  calculation  being  that  every  300  tons 
of  Kelp  gave  employment  to  200  men  during  several 
months  in  the  year.  This  is  intelligible  enough 
when  we  understand  that  for  every  ton  of  Kelp  not 
less  than  20  tons  of  wet  weed  had  to  be  cut, 
dried,  and  melted, — so  that  the  total  produce  of  the 
Hebrides  represented  the  preparation '  of  120,000 

1  Macculloch's   Western  Islands,  vol.  i.  p.   120.     In  1803  I  find  that 
the  price  obtained  for  Tyree  and  Mull  kelp  was  only  £8,  8s.  per  ton. 

2  This  account  of  the  Kelp  trade  I  have  taken  partly  from  a  MS.  .Report 
on  the  subject  drawn  up  for  my  grandfather,  John,  sixth  Duke  of  Argyll, 
in  1788,  and  from  a  paper  read  before  the  Society  of  Arts  in  1884  by  Mr. 
Edward  Ed.  C.  C.  Stanford,  through  whose  chemical  skill  and  enterprise 
I  succeeded  in  partially  reviving  the  Trade  when  almost  extinct  in  1863, 
and  through  whose  recent  discovery  of  a  new  Product,  which  he  has  called 
"  Algine,"  a  further  development  may  now  be  hoped  for. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  315 

tons  of  the  raw  material.  It  brought  in  wages 
which  had  never  been  heard  of  before  in  the  districts 
where  it  prevailed.  In  many  places  it  encouraged 
families  to  settle  and  to  multiply  where  the 
resources  of  agriculture  were  of  the  poorest ;  whilst 
it  made  both  Proprietors  and  people  blind  to  the 
dangers  of  unlimited  subdivision.  The  price  paid 
to  the  workers  for  the  Kelp  they  made  amounted 
very  often  to  a  great  deal  more  than  the  whole 
rent  they  paid  for  their  holdings — so  that  as 
regarded  these  they  sat  practically  rent  free.  Under 
such  conditions,  the  temptations  and  inducements 
to  early  marriage,  and  a  stationary  and  dreamy 
existence,  were  insuperable — and  the  characteristics 
of  Highland  life  which  we  have  seen  so  graphically 
described  by  Sir  Walter  Scott,  as  applicable  to  the 
disposition  and  distribution  of  the  people  at  the 
close  of  the  Military  Ages,  were  repeated  and  even 
exaggerated  all  along  the  Western  Coasts  long  after 
the  Industrial  Ages  had  begun. 

It  would  have  been  astonishing  indeed,  if  under 
such  a  combination  of  causes,  all  coming  more 
or  less  together,  and  all  stimulating  population  in 
different  manners  and  degrees,  the  Highlanders,  and 
especially  the  Islanders,  had  not  rapidly  multiplied 
in  number.  Never,  perhaps,  in  the  history  of  nations, 
had  such  unexpected  and  bounteous  fountains  of 
supply  been  opened  to  any  people — unless,  indeed, 
to  Tribes  who  by  conquest  had  come  into  possession 
of  some  wealthy  land.  But  in  this  case  the  new 
resources  had  arisen  without  any  exertion  of  their 
own.  An  arrest  laid  upon  the  hand  of  disease 
and  death — a  new  and  abundant  supply  of  food — 
and,  along  all  the  lines  of  coast,  a  new  manu- 
facture, bringing  money  where  money  was  almost 
unknown  before  : — such  were  the  additions  to  the 
value  of  life  and  to  the  fruits  of  the  simplest  manual 
labour,  which  were  brought  to  the  Highlands  from 
outside  themselves — from  the  genius  of  some,  and  the 
invention  of  others — and  the  advancing  knowledge  of 


316  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  human  family.  All  these  were  brought  to  bear 
upon  a  people  which  had  already  been  increasing 
rapidly  beyond  the  limits  of  their  subsistence,  and  the 
previously  known  resources  of  the  land  they  lived 
in.  The  result  was  that  they  multiplied  at  a  ten- 
fold rate,  and  any  temporary  abundance  was  soon 
turned  to  want. 

The  effect  of  such  gifts  as  these  upon  any  society 
of  men,  must  always  depend  upon  its  preparation  to 
receive  them.  Here,  again,  we  come  upon  the  con- 
trast between  the  Highlands  and  the  country  of  the 
Border  Clans.  In  no  part  of  the  Lowlands  of  Scot- 
land did  the  use  of  the  Potato  lead  to  any  undue 
increase  of  the  population.  Here  and  there,  for  a 
little  while,  it  may  have  prolonged  old  conditions. 
But  population  had  already  in  the  Lowlands  become 
almost  everywhere  redistributed  by  the  great  cur- 
rent of  industrial  interests  which  first  set  in  after 
the  union  of  the  Crowns  in  1603,  and  which  had 
gathered  head  and  power  after  the  union  of  the 
Parliaments  in  1707.  The  military  classes  had  been, 
or  were  being,  rapidly  absorbed  into  the  ranks  of 
commerce,  of  manufacture,  and  of  an  agriculture 
which  was  at  least  beginning  to  be  scientific.  The 
Potato  came  too  late  to  stop  the  migrations  which 
were  determined  by  these  new  conditions.  It  was 
a  pure  gain  with  no  drawbacks  or  temptations  to 
abuse.  The  Potato  was  used  as  an  adjunct  and  a 
supplement  to  higher  kinds  of  food,  and  not  as  a 
staple  article  of  subsistence.  Its  place  in  agriculture 
was  a  corresponding  place.  It  took  rank  among  the 
new  Boot  Crops  which  afforded  the  means  of  a  profit- 
able rotation  with  the  Cereals.  It  became  an  im- 
portant article  of  commerce,  and  sometimes  brought 
higher  prices  than  any  other  produce  of  the  soil.. 
In  all  these  circumstances  the  effect  of  the  Potato  in 
the  Lowlands  was  in  contrast  with  its  effect  in  the 
Highlands.  There  the  old  military  classes,  the 
"  broken  men,"  were  still  occupying  the  ground  in 
the  manner,  to  the  extent,  and  with  all  the  effects 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  317 

described  by  Sir  Walter  Scott  in  Rob  Roy.  The 
raising  of  the  Highland  Regiments  had  indeed  opened 
a  door  for  the  entering  of  new  motives.  But  the 
mere  number  of  men  temporarily  removed  was  but  a 
fraction  of  the  numbers  which  were  steadily  tending 
to  swell  in  every  glen,  and  to  swarm  on  every  shore. 
Among  them  the  Potato  was  seized  upon  as  a  new 
support  for  a  life  of  inaction.  It  gradually  grew  to 
be  the  main  food  of  the  people  during  a  great  por- 
tion of  the  year.  It  was  but  little  sold  or  exported. 
It  induced  no  rise  in  the  standard  of  living.  It 
brought  no  increase  of  accumulated  wealth.  It  was 
simply  eaten.  And  not  only  did  it  feed  the  people, 
but  it  unquestionably  made  them  more  prolific. 
When  to  this  was  added  a  manufacture  such  as  that 
of  Kelp,  of  which  the  raw  material  lay  around  their 
own  doors,  and  in  the  possession  of  which  they  had  a 
practical  monopoly  as  compared  with  all  the  Southern 
and  all  the  inland  portions  of  the  Kingdom,  the 
Highlanders  or  Hebrideans  were  naturally  encour- 
aged to  feel  that  they  could  live  in  increasing 
numbers  in  the  enjoyment  of  a  rude  and  a  low 
abundance,  derived  from  a  few  productions  of  the 
soil  and  of  the  sea.  They  were  thus  caught,  so  to 
speak,  by  powerful  causes  tending  to  stereotype  and 
aggravate  the  poverty  of  old  conditions,  before  they 
had  time  to  be  brought  within  the  stream  of  the 
nation's  industrial  life,  as  it  had  been  developed  in 
the  Low  country,  and  among  the  Border  High- 
lands. It  was  not  possible  for  them  to  think  of  or 
to  foresee  that  the  one  new  industry  on  which  they 
so  much  depended  was  an  industry  depending 
absolutely  on  the  continuance  of  foreign  wars,  or 
upon  the  continued  maintenance  of  special  taxes 
limiting  or  prohibiting  the  import  of  raw  materials 
far  richer  than  seaweed  in  the  products  it  afforded. 

The  result  was  one  which  has  been  almost  for- 
gotten, and  which  at  first  sight  may  well  seem 
extraordinary.  The  poorest  portion  of  the  Kingdom 
became  by  far  the  most  populous  in  proportion  to 


318  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

its  resources,  and  speedily  exhibited  a  rate  of 
increase  far  greater  than  that  which  could  be  seen 
in  the  richest  and  most  advancing  rural  districts  of 
the  country.  The  latter  half  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century  witnessed  in  the  Highlands,  more  especially 
in  the  Islands — districts  purely  rural — a  swelling  of 
population  which  seems  almost  incredible,  and  yet 
the  evidence  of  it  is  abundant  and  detailed. 

There  are  two  large  Islands  and  two  small  Islands 
lying  south  of  the  long  promontory  of  Kintyre,  and 
all  closely  connected  with  the  Firth  of  Clyde.  These 
are  Arran,  Bute,  and  the  two  Cumbraes.  We  do 
not  now  think  of  any  of  these  Islands  as  belong- 
ing to  the  Hebrides  or  to  the  Highlands — although 
there  is  no  wilder  mountain  scenery  in  Scotland 
than  Glen  Rosa  and  Glen  Sannox  in  Arran.  But  the 
stream  of  commerce,  and  of  the  industrial  life  of  the 
Kingdom,  has  now  so  long  circled  round  them,  and 
has  so  penetrated  through  them,  that  all  the  con- 
ditions are  the  settled  conditions  of  the  Lowlands. 
But  we  must  remember  that  in  the  last  century  this 
was  not  so.  At  that  time  they  contained  Gaelic - 
speaking  populations  whose  habits  of  life  were  the 
same  as  those  of  the  other  Western  Isles.  Counting 
this  southern  group,  then,  among  the  Hebrides,  there 
were  in  all  ninety-five  inhabited  Islands  and  Islets, 
including  the  lonely  St.  Kilda,  on  the  Western  Coasts 
of  Scotland.  There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  in 
the  year  1755  the  total  population  of  these  Islands 
was  about  52,200.  During  the  sixteen  years  be- 
tween 1755  and  1771  the  increase  amounted  to 
10,538.  During  the  next  twenty-four  years,  from 
1771  to  1795,  the  further  increase  amounted  to 
12,728 — so  that  taking  the  forty  years  between 
1755  and  1795  the  total  increase  was  23,266,  or 
not  far  short  of  one-half  of  the  original  number  of 
inhabitants.1  Considering  that  the  whole  of  this 
Insular  area  may  be  said  to  have  been  almost  purely 
rural, — since  two  or  three  so-called  Towns  were  then 

1  Walker's  Hebrides,  1808,  vol.  i.  pp.  24-6. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  319 

nothing  but  insignificant  villages, — this  is  a  rate  of 
increase  which  was  probably  unknown  in  any  part 
of  Europe,  seeing  that  it  arose  from  breeding  only, 
and  included  no  element  of  immigration.  More- 
over, it  is  all  the  more  remarkable  when  we  com- 
pare it  with  the  rate  of  increase  in  the  kindred 
population  of  the  mainland  during  the  same  period. 
In  1755  the  Gaelic-speaking  Parishes  on  the  main- 
land had  a  total  population  of  237,598,  yet  on  this 
much  larger  number  the  increase  in  1795  was  little 
more  than  one-half  of  the  increase  on  the  smaller 
population  of  the  Islands.  Although  several  causes 
contributed  to  keep  down  the  rate  of  increase  on  the 
mainland  as  compared  with  the  Islands,  yet  we 
cannot  mistake  the  one  cause  which  operated  most 
powerfully  as  an  artificial  stimulus  to  population 
in  the  Hebrides.  Beyond  all  question,  it  was  the 
Kelp  manufacture.  It  is  true  that  many  Parishes 
on  the  mainland  were  extensively  bounded  by  the 
sea-shores.  But  the  purity  and  strength  of  the 
water  in  the  open  Ocean,  and  the  tumult  of  its  un- 
contaminated  waves,  are  required  to  stimulate  the 
growth  of  the  richest  seaweeds.  Apart,  therefore, 
from  their  immensely  more  extended  lines  of  coast 
there  were  chemical  causes  at  work  to  concentrate 
the  Kelp  trade  in  the  hands  of  the  Hebrideans ; 
and  it  was  on  the  strength  mainly  of  this  tempting, 
but  dangerous,  because  precarious,  industry  that 
these  people  multiplied  so  fast.  This  conclusion  is 
confirmed  when  we  look  into  the  details.  The 
Insular  Parishes  in  which  the  population  increased 
fastest  between  1755  and  1795  are  almost  always 
the  Parishes  which  had  the  most  productive  shores 
for  seaweed.  Thus  the  Parish  of  the  Small  Isles 
(Rum,  Canna,  Eigg,  etc.)  rose  from  858  to  1339; 
Stornoway,  in  the  Lewis,  from  1836  to  2639  ;  Kil- 
muir  (Skye)  from  1581  to  2500  ;  Tyree  from  1602 
to  2416.  These  are  but  individual  examples  of  a 
general  fact.  On  the  mainland  the  largest  increase 
was  in  the  Parishes  which  had  the  longest  boundary 


320  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

of  open  sea,  whilst  in  some  of  the  inland  Parishes 
there  was  no  increase  at  all,  and  even,  in  some 
cases,  an  actual  decline  in  numbers.  Thus  the  in- 
land Parish  of  Farr,  in  Sutherland,  diminished  by 
200,  whilst  its  coast  neighbour,  Tongue,  with  a  long 
line  of  shore,  increased  by  more  than  400.1 

It  was  impossible  that  there  could  be  such 
a  rapid  and  extraordinary  increase  of  population 
without  results  specially  dangerous  among  men  who 
were  the  poorest  in  the  Kingdom,  and  who  were  the 
least  qualified  to  provide  against  it  by  the  resources 
of  a  various  and  an  advancing  industry.  Under 
such  conditions  there  could  not  fail  to  be  a  tremen- 
dous and  frequent  pressure  upon  the  limits  of  a  bare 
subsistence.  Accordingly  the  evidence  is  abundant 
which  proves  the  extreme  poverty  of  the  country, 
and  the  frequency  with  which  its  people  were  ex- 
posed to  the  severest  scarcity,  and  sometimes  to 
the  dangers  of  actual  famine.  There  are  ample 
sources  of  information  which  fill  up  all  the  time 
between  the  date  spoken  of  in  Sir  Walter  Scott's 
tale  of  Rob  Roy  and  the  close  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century.  We  have  the  famous  Letters  of  Captain 
Burt  written  about  1730  by  an  Officer  who  was 
stationed  at  Inverness,  and  travelled  often  through 
the  Central  Highlands  on  his  way  to  and  from  the 
Capital  of  the  North.  We  have  the  Tour  of  Mr. 
Pennant,  who,  in  1769  and  1772  visited  not  only 
the  mainland,  but  the  Hebrides,  and  saw  every- 
thing with  the  eye  that  belongs  to  the  Naturalist 
and  the  Scientific  Observer.  We  have  the  system- 
atic and  admirable  work  of  Professor  Walker,  the 
result  of  successive  journeys  through  every  part  of 
the  country  undertaken  at  various  intervals  between 
the  years  1760  and  1790.  We  have  the  Statistical 
Account  of  Scotland,  organised  by  Sir  John  Sinclair 
in  the  last  decade  of  the  Century — 1792-5 — in  which 
we  have  all  the  information  which  occurred  to  the 
best  educated  men  in  the  country, — the  Minister  of 

1  Table  of  population  in  Walker's  Hebrides,  vol.  i.  pp.  28-9. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  321 

each  Parish  giving  as  complete  an  account  as  he  could 
of  its  history  and  of  its  actual  condition.  Lastly, 
we  have  the  Professional  Reports  drawn  under  the 
direction  of  the  Board  of  Agriculture  about  the 
same  time.  The  great  advantage  of  all  these  books 
is,  that  they  were  written  before  many  modern  con- 
troversies had  arisen,  and  when  the  view  taken  of 
facts  was  unbiassed  by  the  social  theories  and  the 
political  passions  of  a  later  day.  The  burden  of 
their  song  is  uniformly  the  same,  and  the  earliest 
of  these  writers,  Captain  Burt,  illustrates  his 
picture  of  the  condition  of  the  people  by  details  and 
incidents  which  are  often  more  instructive  than  any 
general  statements,  however  accurate. 

There  is,  for  example,  no  indication  of  the  con- 
dition of  industry,  and  of  the  standard  of  living,  in 
any  country,  more  significant  and  more  accessible  to 
observation,  than  the  scene  presented  by  its  Market- 
places. If  its  natives  have  any  produce  at  all  to  sell, 
it  must  be  brought  to  these  places,  and  the  range  of 
variety,  of  quantity,  and  of  price  to  be  met  with 
there,  is  an  infallible  index  of  plenty  or  of  want. 
Inverness,  though  a  mere  village  in  1730,  was  still 
not  only  the  most  important  place  in  the  Highlands, 
but  the  only  Town  existing  in  the  country.  Yet 
Captain  Burt's  account  of  its  Market-days  is  an 
account  of  almost  incredible  poverty.  One  man 
might  bring  under  his  arm  a  small  roll  of  linen, 
another  a  piece  of  coarse  plaiding.  Such  men  were 
quite  considerable  Dealers.  Others  would  bring  two 
or  three  cheeses  of  about  3  or  4  Ib.  weight.  A  kid 
sold  for  sixpence,  or  eightpence  at  the  best.  Small 
quantities  of  butter,  tied  up  in  bladders,  were  set 
down  in  the  dirt  of  the  street.  Here  were  a  few 

f oat-skins — there  a  piece  of  wood  for  a  cart-wheel, 
he  price  of  such  articles  when  sold  was  spent  by 
the  natives  in  purchasing  a  horn,  or  a  few  wooden 
spoons,  or  a  wooden  platter,  or  some  such  rude 
plenishing  for  their  huts.  One  Highlander  might  be 
seen  near  eating  a  large  onion  without  salt  or  bread 

x 


322  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

— another  gnawing  a  carrot — or  other  such  vegetable 
rarities,  none  of  which  were  then  produced  in  the 
country.1  Nor  can  we  encourage  the  sentimental 
comfort  that  although  little  was  sold,  yet  plenty 
was  produced,  everything  being  consumed  at  home. 
Poverty  in  marketable  surplus  is  an  infallible  indica- 
tion of  a  corresponding  poverty  in  home  consumption, 
and  in  home  production.  Where  there  is  habitually 
little  or  no  surplus,  not  even  a  bare  sufficiency  can 
ever  be  secure.  There  may  be  years  of  plenty ;  but 
there  are  quite  sure  to  be  many  years  of  scarcity, 
and  some  of  famine.  Accordingly,  Captain  Burt 
tells  an  anecdote  "  of  the  time  of  one  great  scarcity 
here," — as  if  the  full  record  of  such  times  would 
include  a  number.  And  the  anecdote  he  does  tell  of 
that  one  time,  brings  pathetically  before  us  the  tre- 
mendous difference  between  that  kind  of  destitution 
which  affects  individuals  alone  from  the  want  of 
money,  and  that  other  kind  of  destitution  which 
affects  a  whole  people  from  the  want  of  food.  A 
woman  came  to  the  wife  of  the  Officer  in  command 
at  Fort- William,  imploring  her  to  get  for  her  a  single 
peck  of  oatmeal  from  the  Military  Stores,  to  save  her 
children  from  starvation.  But  even  the  Military 
Stores  were  at  a  low  ebb,  from  the  impossibility  of 
buying  meal  in  the  country,  and  the  detention  of 
some  expected  vessels.  The  poor  woman  was  there- 
fore offered  a  shilling  as  a  mark  of  sympathy.  After 
looking  at  it  for  a  moment,  she  burst  into  tears- 
laid  the  useless  coin  down — and  exclaimed,  "Madam, 
what  am  I  to  do  with  this  ?  my  children  cannot  eat 
it."  The  peck  of  meal  was  given  to  her,  and  Cap- 
tain Burt  says  he  never  saw  such  joy.  But  what 
must  have  been  the  condition  of  the  people  who 
were  not  near  any  Military  Stores,  and  had  no 
importing  vessels  to  look  to  when  storms  had 
passed  ? 

Some  forty  years  had  elapsed  from  that  date  to 
the  date  of  Pennant's  Tour.      There  was  no  change 

1  Burt's  Letters,  vol.  i.  (ed.  1876)  pp.  83-4. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN. 


323 


for  the  better.  The  use  of  Potatoes  had  extended, 
and  the  manufacture  of  Kelp  had  become  universally 
established  wherever  the  materials  existed.  But 
population  had  pressed  hard  on  the  heels  of  every 
new  resource.  During  even  a  portion  of  that 
interval — during  even  one  quarter  of  it — the 
number  of  mouths  to  be  fed  had  in  many  Parishes 
increased  not  by  dozens,  or  by  scores,  but  by 
hundreds.  The  consequences  were  what  might 
have  been  expected  where  there  had  been  absolutely 
no  corresponding  advance  in  the  knowledge  or 
practice  of  a  higher  agriculture.  Pennant  saw 
poverty  everywhere,  with  scarcity  at  the  very  doors. 
In  the  great  and  fertile  Island  of  Islay  he  saw  "  a 
people  worn  down  with  poverty  " — raising  wretched 
crops  of  Bear,  and  "  drinking  more  of  it  in  the  form 
of  whiskey  than  eating  of  it  in  the  form  of  bannocks." 
In  their  smoky  cabins  "  pot-hooks  hung  from  the 
middle  of  the  roofs,  with  pots  pendent  over  a 
grateless  fire,  filled  with  fare  that  might  rather  be 
called  a  permission  to  exist  than  a  support  of 
vigorous  life"-— the  inmates  lean,  withered,  dusky, 
and  smoke-dried.  Notwithstanding  the  excellency 
of  the  land,  above  £1000  worth  of  meal  was  annually 
imported.  A  famine  was  threatened  at  the  time 
of  his  visit,  but  was  prevented  by  the  seasonable 
arrival  of  a  meal-ship.1  Of  the  Island  of  Rum  he 
wrote  that  the  people  were  a  well-made,  well-look- 
ing race,  but  carried  famine  in  their  aspect."5  Of 
Skye  he  said  that  the  produce  of  the  crops  was 
very  rarely  "  in  any  degree "  proportioned  to  the 
wants  of  the  inhabitants.  Golden  seasons  had 
happened,  when  they  had  superfluity.  But  "  the 
years  of  famine  were  as  ten  to  one."£  It  is  nearly 
the  same  story  everywhere.  In  Sutherland  he 
found  the  people  almost  torpid  with  idleness  and 
most  wretched,  the  whole  tract  seeming  the  very 
"  residence  of  sloth."  Until  famine  pinched,  they 

1  Pennant's  Tour,  1771  (ed.  1776),  Parti,  pp.  261-2. 

2  Ibid.  p.  319.  3  Ibid.  p.  353. 


324  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

would  not  bestir  themselves ;  but  crowds  were  pass- 
ing when  he  was  there,  emaciated  with  hunger,  to 
the  eastern  coast,  on  the  report  of  a  ship  being  there 
loaded  with  meal.1 

In  all  descriptions  written  by  an  English  stranger 
some  allowance  is  to  be  made  on  account  of  the  much 
higher  standard  of  living  to  which  he  was  accus- 
tomed among  the  agricultural  population  of  the 
South.  As  regards  certain  particulars,  this  allow- 
ance may  be  large ;  as,  for  example,  when  such 
strangers  speak  with  horror  and  disgust  of  the 
Highland  huts  and  hovels  with  no  chimneys,  the 
fire  made  in  the  middle  of  the  floor  ;  or  when,  in 
respect  to  food,  the  people  are  described  as  repair- 
ing to  the  shores  to  live  on  shell-fish.  Such  houses 
were  not  very  much  poorer  than  those  which  the 
Chiefs  themselves  had  inhabited  only  a  few  years 
before ;  whilst  the  habitual  use  of  shell- fish  as  one 
article  of  diet  was  no  evil  at  all,  and  had  certainly 
descended  by  unbroken  usage  from  prehistoric  times. 
Shell-fish  are  now  among  the  luxuries  most  enjoyed 
by  the  most  comfortable  artisans  in  our  largest  Towns. 
To  be  driven  to  live  upon  shell-fish  almost  exclusively 
is,  however,  a  very  different  condition  of  things.  On 
the  other  hand,  we  must  remember  that  this  low 
standard  of  dwellings  and  of  food,  as  compared  with 
the  same  classes  in  the  South,  is  part  of  the  case 
which  illustrates  and  establishes  the  dangerous 
position  of  the  Highland  people  up  to  the  close  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  when,  in  the  face  of  such 
poverty,  they  were  nevertheless  increasing  at  the 
rate  which  has  been  shown.  Moreover,  we  have 
such  evidence  as  that  of  Pennant  more  than  con- 
firmed by  men  from  whose  language  no  deduction 
whatever  can  be  made  on  account  of  their  being 
strangers,  or  on  the  ground  of  unfamiliarity  with 
traditional  and  poor  conditions  of  habitation,  or  of 
food.  The  truth  is,  that  the  language  of  Pennant, 
spoken  of  the  years  preceding  1772,  falls  far  short 

1  Pennant's  Tour,  1771  (ed.  1776),  Part  I.  p.  365. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN. 


325 


of  the  descriptions — although  less  eloquent  and  sen- 
sational in  form — which  are  given  of  some  following 
years  by  the  native  Ministers,  whose  invaluable 
Reports  constitute  the  First  Statistical  Account. 
Only  ten  years  after  Pennant's  Tour,  in  1782-3, 
there  was  a  great  failure  of  the  Oat  and  Bear  crop 
all  over  Scotland,  and  the  scarcity  told,  of  course, 
with  double  severity  in  the  Highlands.  Thus,  even 
in  Easter  Ross,  a  district  comparatively  fertile,  the 
Minister  reports  that  the  resources  of  the  sea  in 
fish,  and  especially  in  shell-fish,  were  the  main  sup- 
port of  the  people  in  his  own  Parish  of  Fearn,  and 
in  all  the  neighbouring  Parishes  ;  "  so  that  hundreds 
of  men  and  women,  with  their  horses,  were  seen 
daily  coming  home  with  great  burdens  and  loads  of 
the  best  cockles."  But  bad  as  this  was,  it  was 
better  than  forty  years  before,  when  (in  1740), 
many  people  were  starved  to  death.1  The  same 
Minister,  writing  in  1791,  declares  that  the  terrible 
year  of  1781  was  only  the  beginning  of  a  series  of 
bad  seasons,  which  had  then  continued  ever  since, 
so  that  nothing  like  a  good  crop  had  been  raised 
among  them  during  the  ten  intervening  years.2 
Another  Minister  in  the  same  County  says  that  the 
scarcity  of  1782  had  impaired  the  constitution  of 
some  of  the  poor  for  the  rest  of  their  life.3  From 
Orkney  we  hear  that  in  some  "late  bad  years" 
the  people  lived  very  miserably,  mostly  upon  milk 
and  cabbage,  although  none  had  actually  died.4 
But  within  the  memory  of  then  living  men,  in 
1739-41,  the  years  had  been  so  bad  that  many  had 
died  of  want.5  In  Mull  the  memory  had  survived 
of  a  terrible  famine  about  a  hundred  years  before, 
in  the  reign  of  William  in.,  which  had  almost 
depopulated  the  whole  Parish.  On  one  extensive 
line  of  shore  only  two  families  had  survived.6 

The  great  interest   of  these  facts   lies  in  this, 


1  Old  Stab.  Ace.,  vol.  iv.  p.  300. 
3  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  262. 
5  Ibid.  p.  319.   „ 


2  Ibid.  p.  299. 

4  Ibid.  vol.  xiv.  p.  332. 

6  Ibid.  p.  188. 


326  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

that  they  reveal  a  principle  and  a  law.  A  people 
which  has  little  or  nothing  to  sell  is  quite  sure 
to  be  a  people  liable  at  times  to  have  little  or 
nothing  to  eat.  It  is  a  common  sentiment  to 
admire  the  olden  times,  and  the  primitive  condi- 
tions in  which  small  communities  lived  for  them- 
selves only,  consumed  all  that  they  produced, 
and  produced  only  what  they  could  consume.  But 
though  this  is  a  common,  it  is  nevertheless  an  ignor- 
ant sentiment.  Where  there  is  no  surplus,  there 
can  be  no  storage,  no  saving,  no  accumulation. 
And  where  there  is  none  of  these  there  can  be  no  se- 
curity against  the  vicissitudes  of  the  seasons.  The 
production  must  be  without  knowledge,  and  the 
consumption  without  foresight.  It  would  be  pre- 
sumptuous, indeed,  to  say  that  great  civilised  com- 
munities, in  the  possession  of  skill  and  capital,  can 
never  be  liable  to  famines.  It  is  easy  to  imagine, 
and  even  to  specify,  contingencies  under  which  the 
richest  populations  might  be  overwhelmed.  If,  for 
example,  any  disease  comparable  in  destructiveness 
with  that  which  in  1846  attacked  the  Potato, 
were  to  attack  the  Wheat  plant,  or  still  more  the 
Cereals  in  general,  nothing  could  avert  a  desolating 
famine.  It  is  well  that  we  should  remember  such 
possibilities,  and  that  we  should  recognise  the 
dependence  which  they  imply.  But  as  a  matter 
of  historical  fact  the  prevalence  of  scarcities  and 
famines  has  steadily  diminished  over  the  world  in 
proportion  to  the  establishment  of  civilised  condi- 
tions. And  the  very  first  of  these  conditions  is  the 
working  of  all  Producers  beyond  the  mere  getting 
of  a  subsistence  for  themselves.  In  the  making  of 
some  surplus,  and  in  the  storing  of  it,  or  of  its  value, 
lies  the  origin  of  Capital.  Both  are  the  direct  result 
of  Mind — of  Mind  in  the  form  of  knowledge,  or  of 
invention,  or  of  skill  in  working ;  and  of  Mind  in 
the  form  of  intention  and  foresight  in  the  use 
to  which  gains  a,re  put.  A  people  that  is  consuming 
almost  all  that  it  produces,  can  be  contributing 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  327 

nothing  to  the  progress  of  the  world,  and  is  quite 
sure  to  be  pressing  very  hard  and  very  dangerously 
on  the  limits  of  its  own  subsistence.  There  may  be 
cases  in  which  this  is  at  least  comparatively  un- 
avoidable, because  of  the  barrenness  of  the  land 
they  live  in,  and  the  poverty  of  its  resources.  But 
in  the  vast  majority  of  cases  it  arises  simply  from 
ignorance,  and  from  mental  lethargy. 

The  Human  Species  presents  in  this  matter  a  great 
enigma.  It  is  the  high  prerogative  of  Man  to 
subdue  Nature — by  knowledge  to  find  out  her  fruits, 
and  by  skill  to  cultivate  and  to  improve  them.  But 
whole  generations,  and  even  centuries,  may  pass 
over  particular  portions  of  the  Human  Family  during 
which  this  prerogative  seems  to  fall  with  them  into 
complete  abeyance.  In  matters  purely  physical  it 
becomes  literally  true  that  seeing,  they  see,  and  do 
not  perceive — that  hearing,  they  hear,  and  do  not 
understand.  No  suggestion,  however  obvious,  seems 
ever  to  occur  to  them.  They  tread  upon  with  their 
feet,  and  fumble  in  their  hands,  many  of  the  most 
bounteous  gifts  of  the  organic  world,  each  one  of  them 
with  immense  possibilities  of  development — and  yet 
not  a  single  hint  is  taken — not  a  single  seed  is  sown 
— not  a  single  germ  is  tended.  Even  the  slender 
inheritances  of  former  ages  are  hardly  preserved,  or 
are  actually  suffered  to  fell  into  ruinous  decay.  It 
is  the  frequency  of  this  phenomenon  that  gives  force 
to  the  argument  of  Archbishop  Whately  that  no 
race  of  Man  has  ever  risen  from  the  lowest  stages, 
except  by  contact  with  some  Intelligence  other  than, 
and  higher  than,  their  own.  Nor  is  this  a  question 
of  race.  All  races  have  exhibited  this  condition 
during  long  periods  of  stagnant  life,  and  some  of  them, 
too,  in  combination  with  high  qualities  of  imagina- 
tive and  lively  wit.  Such  was  the  condition  of  the 
Highlanders  in  respect  to  their  knowledge  of  the 
agricultural  resources  of  their  own  country,  not  only 
during  all  the  Military  Ages,  but  down  close  to  the 
times  in  which  we  are  now  living.  The  detailed 


328  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

accounts  of  it  which  we  have  from  the  most  authen- 
tic sources,  and  that  which  some  of  us  could  give 
from  our  own  observation,  seem  really  to  be  hardly 
credible.  And  yet  it  is  always  to  be  remembered 
that  the  same  thing  was  true  of  the  Lowlands  at  an 
earlier  date.  The  Highlanders  were  from  one  to 
two  centuries  behind  in  almost  everything.  Many 
causes  contributed  to  this — distance,  language,  the 
habits  and  the  usages  of  Celtic  Feudalism. 

It  is,  however,  a  great  mistake  to  count  among 
these  causes  any  natural  barrenness  of  soil.  The 
Highland  country  is  not  a  poor  one  as  regards  some 
great  natural  productions.  Its  climate,  though  un- 
favourable for  certain  fruits  of  the  earth,  is  pre- 
eminently fitted  for  others,  and  these  of  a  highly 
valuable  kind.  The  truth  is  that  it  yields  some 
such  products  in  a  rich  abundance  with  which 
few  other  countries  can  compare.  The  native  crop 
of  the  country  is  its  natural  Grasses,  which  are 
luxuriant  beyond  description — covering  with  ver- 
dure the  steepest  mountains,  and  the  loftiest  table- 
lands, insinuating  themselves  among  the  barest 
rocks,  and  carpeting  the  sandy  levels  along  the 
margins  of  the  sea.  Some  parts  of  the  country, 
which  have  been  reputed  to  be  the  poorest,  and  in 
which  the  inhabitants  have  been  most,  and  longest 
poverty-stricken,  are  now  well  known  to  be  naturally 
the  richest  in  the  quality  of  their  Grasses.  The 
Hebridean  pastures  are  of  the  very  finest  quality. 
From  the  earliest  times  all  over  the  Highlands  the 
people  had  been  possessed  of  a  native  breed  of 
Cattle,  and  of  a  native  breed  of  Sheep — domestic 
animals  through  which  these  Grasses  could  be  con- 
verted into  the  most  coveted  forms  of  human  food, 
the  very  best  of  meat,  and  the  very  best  of  cheese 
and  butter.  Yet  they  did  not  know  the  methods 
of  breeding  or  of  feeding,  which  to  us  now  seem  the 
most  obvious  and  elementary.  For  example,  it  never 
occurred  to  the  people  that  the  over-abundant  herb- 
age of  summer  could  be  cut  and  dried,  so  as  to 


BEFOKE  THE  DAWN.  329 

furnish  provender  for  the  winter.  The  consequence 
was  that  their  Cattle  died  by  thousands  in  every 
season  which  was  at  all  severe.  All  the  surplus 
grass,  which  might  have  been  made  into  hay,  was 
allowed  to  rot  in  absolute  waste.  Those  which 
survived  the  winter  were  miserably  small, — not 
because  the  breed  was  a  bad  one,  or  because 
it  was  incapable  of  improvement,  for  even  now 
it  is  a  favourite  in  the  market, — but  simply  because 
the  animals  were  neither  bred  nor  fed  with  the 
slightest  knowledge  of  the  simplest  methods. 

But  more  than  this  : — strange  to  say,  whilst  no 
natural  hints  or  suggestions  in  the  direction  of  im- 
provement seem  ever  to  have  been  taken,  even  the 
most  accidental  causes  in  the  direction  of  decline, 
were  not  only  yielded  to  without  resistance,  but  were 
accepted  and  cherished  under  ridiculous  arguments 
and  superstitions.  Thus,  the  pressure  of  famine  had 
driven  the  people  occasionally  to  resort  to  the  bar- 
barous and  destructive  expedient  of  bleeding  their 
Cattle  for  the  purpose  of  mixing  blood  with  the  pro- 
duce of  their  scanty  grain,  and  so  making  cakes 
more  sustaining  than  oatmeal  and  water.  They  had 
forgotten  the  origin  of  this  custom,  and  they  did 
not  know  that  it  must  tend  to  aggravate  the  feeble- 
ness and  exhaustion  which  affected  their  animals 
from  poverty  of  winter  food.  The  idea  arose  that 
the  Cattle  were  the  better  for  being  bled,  and  the 
practice  was  continued  when  the  original  necessity 
had  ceased.  I  have  myself  spoken  with  men  still 
alive,  and  not  of  extreme  age,  who  recollect  having 
eaten  those  cakes  when  they  were  children,  and 
who  seemed  to  regret  the  loss  of  them  among  other 
Celtic  blessings  which  a  remorseless  civilisation  has 
swept  away.  The  miserable  size  and  condition  of 
the  Highland  Cattle,  even  when  they  survived  the 
winter  at  all,  is  described  by  many  writers.  Captain 
Burt  likened  them  in  size  to  "Northampton  Calves." 
And  yet  these  Cattle  were  the%only  produce  of  the 
country  which  was  ever  sent  to  southern  markets. 


330  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

They  were  the  staple  of  the  whole  area  of  the 
Highlands,  the  only  produce  on  which  the  people 
could  depend  for  any  surplus,  or  any  means  of 
purchasing  the  fruits  of  other  lands. 

The  same  story,  but  with  some  circumstanoes  of 
special  aggravation,  has  to  be  told  of  the  treatment 
in  the  Highlands  of  that  other  domestic  animal  which 
constitutes  one  of  the  very  chiefest  resources  of  Man- 
kind. The  native  breed  of  Sheep,  like  the  native 
breed  of  Cattle,  was  small  and  degenerate.  It  is 
now  wholly  extinct.  But  there  seems  good  reason 
to  believe  that  it  might  have  been  improved  by  the 
same  methods  which  in  later  years  made  the  Black 
Cattle  of  the  Highlands  so  excellent  and  so  profit- 
able. Sheep  were  never  an  article  of  sale.  The 
people  had  never  discovered  that  any  breed  of  Sheep 
could  live  at  large  upon  the  mountains.  They  were 
treated  as  delicate  and  tender  animals — folded  and 
housed  at  night.  In  this  way,  of  course,  they  were 
kept  in  small  flocks  only,  and  wholly  for  domestic 
use.  Hence,  in  the  Highland  code  of  honour,  they 
were  not  generally  "lifted,"  or  stolen,  like  Cattle., 
which  were  considered  always  as  lawful  prey.  The 
wool  of  the  Sheep  was  worked  up  into  homespun 
clothing,  and  the  deficiency  of  milk  from  the  half 
starved  Cows  was  eked  out,  as  it  still  is  in  Italy,  by 
the  milk  of  Ewes.  Yet,  with  all  the  care  which  such 
valuable  uses  did  ensure,  the  care  was  so  little  allied 
with  knowledge,  that  the  treatment  of  the  Sheep  was 
even  more  ruinous  and  destructive  than  the  treat- 
ment of  the  Cattle.  Their  pasture  was  the  poorest, 
and  often  at  a  great  distance.  They  were  folded  in 
summer  and  harvest,  and  housed  in  winter  and 
spring.  No  attention  was  paid  to  the  choice  of 
Rams,  and  they  were  left  to  nature  as  regarded  the 
breeding  season.  Consequently  the  Lambs  came 
before  the  grass, — all  being  stinted,  and  many 
starved.  From  the  middle  of  May  they  were 
deprived  of  half  their  mothers'  milk,  by  separation 
during  the  night,  so  that  the  Ewes  might  be  milked 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  331 

for  human  use  in  the  morning.  About  the  end  of 
June  the  Lambs  were  weaned — sometimes  in  a  most 
barbarous  manner,  by  tying  a  small  stick  across 
their  mouths,  which  not  only  prevented  them  from 
sucking,  but  even  from  pasturing  with  any  toler- 
able ease.1  No  wonder  that  the  breed  decayed, — 
that  they  were  considered,  perhaps  erroneously,  as 
incapable  of  recovery,  and  were  soon  everywhere 
supplanted  by  another  breed,  which,  for  some  cen- 
turies, had  been  more  skilfully  treated  in  the  Low 
Country. 

These  miserable  conditions  of  pastoral  economy, 
in  a  country  by  nature  pre-eminently  pastoral, 
explain  and  justify  an  observation  made  by  those 
who  first  came  to  examine  and  report  upon  the 
Highlands.  Generally,  they  said,  the  natives  of 
most  countries,  even  the  least  advanced,  have  some- 
thing to  teach  others, — some  local  product  in  which 
their  own  land  abounds,  and  in  the  cultivation  of 
which  they  show  a  skill  from  which  strangers  can 
learn  something.  But  in  the  agriculture  of  the 
Highlands  nothing  of  the  kind  was  to  be  found 
among  the  people.2  They  did  not  know  how  to 
utilise,  with  even  tolerable  economy,  the  natural 
and  spontaneous  resources  of  their  Hills  and  Glens. 
They  treated  with  similar  simplicity  even  that  most 
ancient  and  immemorial  gift — the  cultivation  of  the 
Cereals.  The  grey  Oat,  and  the  Bear,  and  the  Bye, 
which  they  grew,  were  all  of  inferior  sorts,  and 
bore  every  mark  of  having  degenerated  in  their 
hands.  So  little  did  they  know  that  most  elemen- 
tary of  all  principles  in  the  improvement  of  the 
fruits  of  the  earth, — the  selection  of  the  best  seed 
for  propagation, — that  they  were  actually  known 
to  select  the  worst,  on  the  idea  that  the  best 
should  be  used  as  food,  and  that  the  worst  was 
good  enough  for  casting  into  the  ground.  There 

1  Agricultural  Survey  of  Argyllshire,   1798,  p.  240.     By  James  Mac- 
donald,  A.M.,  1811.     Drawn  up  for  the  Board  of  Agriculture. 

2  Walker's  Hebrides,  Introduction,  p.  4. 


332  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

are  a  few  places  in  the  Hebrides  where  a  light 
sandy  soil  so  drinks  in  the  rays  of  the  sun,  and  so 
retains  the  heat,  that  they  used  sometimes  to  yield 
a  large  and  an  extraordinary  early  harvest,  even 
from  twenty  to  twenty -five  fold.  But  the  general 
return  of  arable  land  in  the  Grey  Oat  of  the  country 
did  not  average  more  than  from  three  and  a  half  to 
four  fold,  although  neither  the  soil  nor  the  climate 
could  be  blamed  for  this.  Nowhere  in  Europe  was 
equal  labour  bestowed  on  such  an  inconsiderable 
crop.1  And  to  the  scantiness  of  their  harvests  in 
respect  to  quantity  was  added  the  loss  constantly 
arising  from  the  difficulty  of  securing  them.  This 
was  almost  entirely  due  to  the  inveterate  habit  of 
sowing  so  late  in  the  spring  that  the  grain  rarely 
ripened  before  the  early  autumnal  gales.  Further- 
more, the  people,  before  the  introduction  of  the 
Potato,  had  not  a  single  garden  vegetable,  or  any 
vegetable  product  whatever,  except  their  grain. 

Yet  it  was  in  the  face  of  all  this  poverty  of  know- 
ledge, and  consequent  scantiness  of  production,  that 
the  population  was,  nevertheless,  increasing  at  the 
tremendous  rate  which  has  been  shown.  On  almost 
every  farm  there  were  double,  sometimes  treble,  or 
quadruple  the  number  of  hands  which  were  required 
for  the  labour  to  be  expended.  And  this  too,  in 
spite  of  implements  and  methods  of  handling 
them,  which  were  as  primitive  and  as  wasteful  as 
their  customs  in  respect  to  the  breeding  and  feeding 
of  Cattle  and  of  Sheep.  Their  Plough  was  a  rude 
machine,  to  which  four  horses,  or  sometimes  in  the 
Eastern  Counties,  eight  oxen,  were  yoked  abreast, 
and  which  were  tended  by  at  least  three  men. 
One  of  these  had  the  strange  function  of  walking 
backwards  in  front  of  the  animals,  and  striking  them 
in  the  face,  "  to  make  them  proceed  forwards." 

1  Walker's  Hebrides,  vol.  i.  pp.  212-213. 

2  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  123.     The  real  object  of  this  arrangement  seems  to 
have  been  to  enable  the  man  to  stop  the  team  at  a  moment's  notice, 
lest  the  least  check  from  a  stone  or  a  root  might  carry  away  the  whole 
rickety  gear. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  333 

But  this  was  not  all.  The  Plough  was  often  preceded 
by  another  archaic  machine,  called  a  Reestle,  for 
cutting  the  fibrous  roots  which  the  Plough  was 
incompetent  to  deal  with.  One  or  two  more  horses 
were  required  for  this,  and  two  additional  men. 
Thus,  from  four  to  six  horses,  and  from  three  to 
five  men  were  performing,  and  performing  very  ill, 
the  work  which  could  have  been  better  done  by 
two  horses  and  one  man.1  There  was  thus  all  over 
the  country  a  great  superfluity  of  hands,  which  it 
was  impossible  fully  to  employ,  and  of  mouths 
which  it  was  quite  as  difficult  adequately  to  feed. 
There  were  few  farms  in  the  Highlands  which 
could  not  be  equally  well  cultivated  with  one-third, 
and  some  with  one-half  fewer  men-servants  and 
horses  than  were  actually  used.2  Two  Parishes  are 
mentioned  which  afforded  more  than  500  men  to  the 
Regiments  in  the  American  War  of  1755-63,  and  yet 
all  their  cultivation  went  on  as  before.  In  one  district 
of  these  two  Parishes,  of  which  the  rent  was  £700, 
there  were  700  women,  all  of  necessity  half  idle. 

The  perfect  similarity  between  many  Highland 
and  many  Lowland  Parishes,  as  regarded  soil, 
climate,  and  character  of  surface,  made  the  con- 
trast all  the  more  striking  between  their  rural 
economy  in  these  respects.  In  the  South,  there 
was  no  such  waste  of  labour,  no  such  extravagant 
superfluity  of  horses  and  of  hands.  There  the 
population  had  become  adjusted  to  the  industry 
and  the  known  resources  of  the  country.3  Hence 
the  contrast,  too,  between  the  two  portions  of 
Scotland,  in  respect  to  the  activity  of  the  people. 
The  language  which  Sir  Walter  Scott  puts  into  the 
mouth  of  the  Glasgow  Bailie  respecting  the  habitual 
idleness  of  the  Highland  people,  is  language  which 
was  perfectly  correct  as  the  description  of  an 
hereditary  habit,  but  would  be  wholly  incorrect  as 
a  description  of  any  peculiarity  of  race.  Thousands 
of  the  people  who  were  so  industrious  in  the 

1  Walker's  Hebrides,  vol.  i.  p.  125  and  p.  83.        2  Ib.  p.  84.        3  Jb.  p.  82. 


334  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Lowlands  were  quite  as  much  of  Highland  blood 
as  any  of  those  who  remained  among  the  mountains. 
The  people  in  the  Highlands  were  idle  simply 
because  they  had  little  or  nothing  to  do,  and  thus 
idleness  had  become  with  them,  as  it  will  become 
with  all  men  under  like  conditions,  habitual  and 
hereditary.  They  had  long  been  multiplying 
beyond  the  opportunities  and  the  calls  for  labour 
which  could  be  afforded  by  the  knowledge  and  by 
the  habits  of  the  society  to  which  they  belonged. 

Such  was  the  state  of  things  when  some 
acquaintance  with  more  civilised  conditions  began 
to  stir  the  minds,  and  elevate  the  desires  of  the 
Highlanders.  Men  returning  from  the  more 
plenteous  lands  in  which  they  had  fought  and  bled 
with  unsurpassed  courage,  discipline,  and  devotion, 
could  not  but  feel  the  nakedness  of  their  own 
country,  and  the  poverty  of  their  own  hereditary 
modes  of  life.  The  same  influence  arose  in  number- 
less districts  from  men  who  went  to  service  in  the 
Low  Country.  Restlessness,  and  a  sense  of  discom- 
fort arose  among  them.  They  did  not  see  any 
means  of  improvement  in  their  own  country, 
because  its  poverty  was  inseparable  from  those 
very  habits  and  institutions  to  which  they  them- 
selves had  always  been  most  devotedly  attached. 
On  the  other  hand,  they  had  seen  the  New  World. 
The  men  of  the  Forty- Second  had  been  quartered 
for  many  months  in  Albany,  the  Capital  of  the 
Province  of  New  York.  There  they  had  been  the 
admired  of  all  admirers,  petted  and  caressed  by  the 
old  Dutch  families  who  had  founded  the  Colony,  as 
well  as  by  the  English  settlers ;  and  there,  among 
the  still  uncleared  forests  of  the  Hudson,  they  had 
taken  part  in  happy  excursions  of  camp  life,  which 
must  have  recalled  the  summer  Shealings  of  the 
Highlands.1  Along  with  several  other  Highland 
Regiments  they  had  revenged  the  defeat  of  Ticon- 
deroga  on  the  Heights  of  Abraham.  New  scenes, 

1  Memoirs  of  an  American  Lady,  by  Mrs.  Grant  of  Laggan,  p.  57. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  335 

and  with  them,  new  visions,  had  opened  up  before 
them. 

The  consequences  were  natural  and  inevitable. 
Within  a  few  years  of  the  close  of  that  war 
in  1763,  a  steady  stream  of  emigration  to  the 
Colonies  poured  out  from  many  parts  of  Scotland, 
but  especially  from  the  Highlands.  It  began,  as 
all  important  movements  must  begin,  with  the 
most  intelligent  and  educated  classes — those  who 
had  occupied  the  position  of  Tacksmen,  and  had 
been,  as  it  were,  the  officers  and  non-commissioned 
officers  of  the  Military  Clans.  It  extended  rapidly 
among  all  the  subordinate  classes  of  the  tenantry — 
embracing,  in  some  places,  a  large  number  of  those 
who,  by  selling  their  stock,  could  realise  a  sum  suf- 
ficient to  cover  the  expense  and  to  start  the  family 
with  some  little  capital  in  America.  This  move- 
ment began  about  1762,  and  became  general  and 
extensive  about  1770.1  Indeed,  forty  years  before, 
as  early  as  1722,  no  difficulty  had  been  found  in 
recruiting  a  considerable  number  of  Highlanders  at 
Inverness  to  emigrate  to  Georgia.  These  dates  are 
important.  Even  the  latest  of  them  is  before  the 
new  system  had  time  to  operate,  by  which  the 
wasted  and  neglected  mountains  of  the  country 
were  for  the  first  time  turned  to  account  by  the 
grazing  of  Sheep.  The  earliest  of  these  dates  is 
long  before  that  immense  work  of  reclamation  had 
been  even  thought  of.  The  movement  was  purely 
spontaneous  and  instinctive,  and  it  spread  steadily 
among  all  the  most  congested  populations  of  the 
Western  Coasts  and  Islands.  From  Duirinish,  in 
Skye,  between  1771  to  1790,  no  less  than  eight  large 
Transport  Ships  had  sailed  with  Emigrants  for 
American  settlements.  They  carried  off  at  least 
2400  souls;2  yet  so  tremendous  was  the  multiply- 
ing power  that,  in  1792,  the  total  population  of  the 
Parish  was  as  great  as  in  1772.  From  Glensheil, 

1  Earl  of  Selkirk's  Observations  on  Emigration,  1805,  p.  171. 

2  Old  Statistical  Account,  vol.  iv.  pp.  132-3. 


336  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

on  the  opposite  mainland,  the  movement  had  been 
led,  in  1769  and  1773,  by  men  who  were  substantial 
farmers.1  In  the  latter  year  it  reached  the  remote 
parish  of  Reay  in  Sutherland,2  and  the  far  Island  of 
South  Uist,  from  which  "  vast  numbers  "  are  said 
to  have  followed  during  the  next  twenty  years.3 
Jura  and  Colonsay  lent  their  contingent  at  the 
same  time.4  The  Small  Isles  followed  a  little  later 
—the  Minister  in  this  case  specially  reporting  that 
these  little  fragments  of  a  broken  land  were  "  over- 
stocked with  people "  from  the  fruit  of  early  mar- 
riages, and  an  area  of  soil  which  was  "able  to 
supply  them  but  scantily  with  the  necessaries  of 
life."5  The  parents  often  divided  with  a  newly 
married  son  their  holdings,  already  of  necessity 
very  small,  which  "  reduced  both  to  poverty  and 
misery."  From  Appin,  one  of  the  oldest  seats  of 
the  Military  Clans,  and  a  Parish  with  a  very  small 
area  of  arable  land  as  compared  with  the  vast  and 
steep  mountain  surfaces  which  were  then  almost 
useless,  the  emigration  began  in  1775,  and,  in 
spite  of  it,  the  Minister  reports,  in  1790,  that  the 
inhabitants  were  then  so  crowded  that  "  some 
relief  of  this  sort  seemed  absolutely  necessary." £ 

This  was  a  rush  indeed.  Some  of  the  Ministers 
who  refer  to  it  call  it  a  "rage."  It  was  purely 
spontaneous,  and  in  some  of  its  circumstances  was 
marked  by  the  special  characteristics  of  popular 
waywardness  and  impulse.  The  selection  made 
of  particular  Plantations  for  the  new  home,  seems 
curiously  capricious,  but  it  was  in  reality  determined 
by  accidents  connected  with  the  clannish  instincts 
of  the  race.  Wherever  some  friends  or  Clansmen 
from  the  same  glens  or  Islands  had  happened  to 
precede  them,  there  the  rest  followed,  when  they 
moved  at  all.  Thus  almost  each  separate  district 
of  the  Highlands  had  its  own  preference.  The 

1  Old  Statistical  Account,  vol.  vii.  pp.  131-3.         ~  Ibid.  p.  574. 

3  Ibid.  vol.  xiii.  p.  298.  *  Ibid.  vol.  xii.  p.  324. 

5  Ibid.  vol.  xvii.  p.  281.  6  Ibid.  vol.  i.  p.  488. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  337 

people  of  Inverness  had  formed  an  early  connec- 
tion in  Georgia.  From  Perthshire,  Badenoch,  and 
Strathspey  the  Highland  Regiments  had  been 
largely  recruited  for  Chatham's  war  against  the 
French,  and  the  people  of  those  districts  of  the 
Central  Highlands  naturally  resorted  to  the  great 
Province  of  New  York,  and  formed  Settlements  on 
the  Delaware,  the  Mohawk,  and  the  rivers  of  Con- 
necticut. Argyllshire  with  its  Islands,  Skye  and 
the  Outer  Hebrides,  as  also  Sutherland  and  Ross, 
all  sent  their  earlier  emigrants  to  North  Carolina, 
where  they  formed  a  Settlement  noted  in  the 
subsequent  American  war  for  its  loyalty  and  mis- 
fortunes. The  outbreak  of  that  war  checked  the 
tide  of  emigration  during  the  seven  years  (1776- 
1783)  of  its  duration,  and  diverted  what  remained 
of  it,  to  Canada,  Nova  Scotia,  and  Prince  Edward's 
Island.  But  there  a  home  was  found  for  those  who 
moved  from  Lochaber,  Glengarry,  Moydart  and 
some  other  parts  of  the  County  of  Inverness.1 

The  thoroughly  popular  nature  of  the  movement 
is  curiously  illustrated,  moreover,  by  the  methods 
which  were  taken.  When  in  any  part  of  the 
country  any  considerable  number  of  people  had 
determined  to  emigrate,  some  leading  man  circu- 
lated a  subscription  paper,  and  a  regular  contract 
was  entered  into  between  the  subscribers,  and  some 
one  of  their  own  number  who  acted  as  agent  and 
contractor  for  the  rest.2  The  emigrants  did  not 
generally  go  to  any  of  the  Lowland  ports.  They 
did  not  wish  to  attract  attention.  They  knew  that 
the  movement  was  not  favoured  by  those  above 
them.  Perhaps  they  themselves  had  even  a 
strangely  surviving  feeling  of  military  desertion. 
Vessels  were  engaged,  which  came  round  to  the 
solitary  bays  and  arms  of  the  sea,  which  everywhere 
sent  their  waters  close  up  to  the  doors  of  the 
overcrowded  homes.  In  these  the  Transports 
spread  their  sails  quietly  and  unobserved,  and 

1  Lord  Selkirk's  Observations,  etc.,  pp.  166-7.  2  Ibid.  pp.  143-4. 

Y 


338  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

were  soon  hull  down  on  the  neighbouring  and 
friendly  Ocean.  On  the  other  side  of  it,  as  quietly 
and  as  unobserved,  they  landed  their  invaluable 
freight — spreading  broadcast  the  seed  of  a  noble 
race  over  immense  and  fruitful  lands. 

It  is  indeed  a  most  curious  fact  that  when  this 
movement  of  the  Highlanders  first  came  to  be 
widely  known  it  excited  not  only  general  regret, 
but  even  general  irritation  and  alarm.  The  know- 
ledge of  it  was  spread  by  the  Parochial  Heports 
in  the  Statistical  Account  organised  by  Sir  John 
Sinclair  in  1790.  These  began  to  be  published 
in  1791,  and  continued  to  appear  in  successive 
volumes  during  the  five  following  years.  The 
Ministers  who  drew  up  those  Heports  were,  of 
course,  men  of  very  various  abilities.  Some  of 
them  regarded  the  emigration  with  a  passive  but 
grudging  resignation ;  most  of  them  with  regret ; 
some  of  them  with  angry  denunciation, — a  few 
only  with  a  clear  and  enlightened  estimate  of 
its  causes  and  its  probable  results.  Yet  the 
evidence  of  these  men  was  in  reality  uniform  and 
unanimous  as  to  the  social  conditions  of  which  the 
emigration  was  the  natural  and  inevitable  result. 
They  all  testified  to  the  scanty  and  decreasing  re- 
turns of  the  soil,  to  the  lean  and  half-starved 
Cattle,  to  the  frequent  returns  of  scarcity  and 
famine,  and  in  the  face  of  all  this,  to  the  steady, 
general,  and,  in  some  cases,  enormous  increase  of 
the  population  between  1755  and  1791.  On  the 
other  hand,  in  a  limited  number  of  Highland 
Parishes,  the  new  Tables  showed  a  diminution. 
The  panic  and  the  outcry  which  arose  on  this  dis- 
covery is  one  of  the  strangest  phenomena  of  our 
national  history.  It  is  all  the  more  remarkable 
when  we  observe  that  the  very  first  volumes  of 
the  Statistical  Account  showed  in  many  Lowland 
Parishes  a  diminution  quite  as  great,  and  in  some 
cases  very  much  greater.  Moreover,  some  of  the 
most  conspicuous  of  these  cases  of  "depopulation" 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  339 

were  in  Parishes  close  to  Edinburgh,  such  as  Tester, 
Cramond,  and  Dalmeny, — cases  in  which  the  de- 
crease amounted  to  18  and  25  per  cent.1  Nay, 
more — the  slightest  examination  would  have  shown 
that  great  diminution  was  taking  place,  as  a  rule, 
in  all  Parishes  which  were  purely  rural  and  agricul- 
tural. Hardly  anywhere  was  the  population  in- 
creasing, except  in  Parishes  with  villages,  towns, 
manufactories,  or  mines.  Everywhere  the  first 
step  in  agricultural  reform  was  the  division  of 
labour,  and  the  consequent  migration  of  super- 
numerary hands.  An  excellent  account  of  this 
was  given  by  the  Minister  of  Dalmeny,  whose 
Parish  had  been  largely  benefited.  Subdivided 
farms  with  bad  husbandry,  puny  crops,  and  both 
men  and  beasts  almost  starving,  had  given  place  to 
thriving  tenancies  and  well-fed  labourers.2  Not  the 
slightest  outcry  or  alarm  was  raised  by  this  con- 
temporaneous depletion  of  Parishes  in  the  Low 
Country,  nor  was  the  least  attempt  made  to  combat 
the  reasoning  by  which  it  was  so  satisfactorily 
explained. 

This  difference  of  feeling  would  hardly  have 
been  rational  even  if  it  had  been  true  that  the 
diminution  had  been  the  result  of  mere  Migra 
tion  in  one  case,  as  compared  with  Emigration  in 
the  other.  It  was  not  very  wise  or  intelligent  to 
think  or  feel  that  men  moving  off  to  our  own 
Colonies  were  less  happy,  or  less  useful  to  the 
world  than  men  moving  off  to  our  own  Towns. 
But,  as  a  matter  of  fact,  even  this  distinction  was 
by  no  means  an  universal  characteristic  of  the 
movement  as  between  the  Highlands  and  the  Low- 
lands. The  Lowland  Counties  during  the  same  years 
sent  many  Emigrants  to  the  Colonies,  whilst  the 
Highland  Counties  sent  many  thousand  Migrants 
to  the  great  centres  of  industry  in  the  south. 
The  Highlanders  were  undoubtedly  more  attracted 
than  others  by  the  possession  of  land,  and  they  were 

1  Old  Statistical  Account,  vol.  i.  pp.  345,  224,  232.  2  Ibid.  pp.  232-3. 


340  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

notoriously  less  accustomed  than  others  to  con- 
tinuous labour.  Nevertheless,  Highlanders  as  well 
as  other  Scotchmen  had  long  been  induced  by  the 
high  wages  of  the  Low  Country  to  settle  in  great 
numbers  there.  The  excitement  and  agitation, 
therefore,  which  arose  when  men  discovered  that 
some  Highland  Parishes  were  less  crowded  than  they 
had  once  been,  and  the  complete  indifference  with 
which  the  same  result  in  Lowland  Parishes  was 
regarded,  are  an  indication  of  one  of  the  most  rapid 
changes  of  sentiment  that  has  ever  perhaps  been 
exhibited  by  any  people.  Forty  years  earlier  the 
Highlanders  were  universally  regarded  in  the  Low- 
lands with  mingled  feelings  of  hatred  and  of  fear. 
Now  they  seemed  to  be  as  universally  valued  as 
the  main  defence  and  the  principal  ornament  of  the 
nation.  Beyond  all  doubt  this  great  change  of 
feeling  had  a  just  and  an  honourable  cause.  It 
arose  out  of  the  memories  of  Fontenoy,  Ticon- 
deroga,  and  Quebec.  It  had  been  confirmed  by  the 
known  opinion  of  General  Washington,  who  having 
served  first  with  the  Highlanders  and  then  against 
them,  carefully  acted  on  the  principle  that  the  High- 
land Hegiments  must  be  confronted  with  special 
caution  as  the  strongest  point  of  the  British 
line.1 

But  amidst  all  that  was  natural  and  praise- 
worthy in  the  outcry  against  Highland  Emigra- 
tion there  was  also  an  element  of  selfishness.  It 
was  not  right  to  think  of  the  Highlands  as 
nothing  but  a  recruiting-ground  for  soldiers,  or  to 
think  of  its  people  as  fit  for  no  other  function 
than  that  of  fighting.  It  was  not  rational  to  expect 
that  the  Highland  population  would  be  long  con- 
tented to  live  without  any  share  in  the  growing 
wealth  and  comfort  of  their  countrymen  in  the 
Lowlands.  If  the  public  had  looked  carefully  into 
the  reports  of  the  Parish  Ministers,  they  would  have 
seen  that,  even  as  regarded  the  love  of  military 

1  Marshall's  Life  of  Washington,  vol.  iv.  p.  84.     (Ed.  1805.) 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  341 

service,  a  great  change  had  already  set  in .  During  the 
war  with  France  in  Canada  and  America,  the  High- 
land Regiments  had  been  true  Clans — military  bodies 
exclusively  Highland,  alike  in  men  and  officers. 
Many  of  the  rank  and  file  were  gentlemen  by  birth 
and  by  position,  and  all  the  officers  had  personal  and 
local  connection  with  the  men  whom  they  com- 
manded. But  no  such  Corps  had  ever  been,  or  ever 
could  be  formed  again.  Even  so  soon  as  in  the 
subsequent  war  of  American  Independence,  the 
character  of  the  Highland  Regiments  had  begun  to 
change.  They  were  no  longer  exclusively  recruited  in 
the  Highlands  ;  and  in  some  Parishes  the  Ministers 
now  reported,  in  1791,  that  few  recruits  for  foreign 
service  could  be  got.  This  was  a  change  which  went 
on  increasing.  Just  as  in  the  Military  Ages,  now 
departing,  it  had  been  "  broken  men  "  out  of  whom 
many  of  the  old  Clans  had  been  formed,  so  hence- 
forth it  was  chiefly  among  those  Highlanders  who 
had  already  left  their  own  country,  that  enlistment 
continued  to  be  successful.  Notwithstanding  the 
frequency  of  great  wars,  the  Military  Ages  were 
coming  to  a  close.  The  new  institution  of  Standing 
Armies  was  completely  changing  the  nature  of 
Military  service.  It  was  no  longer  a  pastime.  It 
had  become  a  profession.  Highlanders  could  no 
longer  rush  off  to  short  campaigns  with  old  friends 
and  old  companions  ;  and  then  rush  back  again  to 
live  as  before  on  the  milk  of  Ewes,  on  the  blood  of 
Cattle,  and  on  cakes  of  oatmeal.  If  they  were  to 
move  away  from  home  permanently,  or  for  long  and 
indefinite  periods  of  time,  they  might  as  well  try 
for  something  better  than  the  pay  of  a  soldier,  and 
the  monotony  of  a  barrack.  They  had  seen  and 
heard  enough  of  higher  conditions  of  life  to  make 
them  desirous  of  sharing  in  them. 

The  American  War  of  Independence  had  ar- 
rested Emigration.  But  the  last  year  of  that 
war,  and  the  first  of  peace — 1783 — was  coincident, 
as  we  have  seen,  with  a  terrible  time  of  scarcity 


342  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

and  almost  of  famine.  What  had  been  called 
the  "rage"  for  Emigration  naturally  revived,  and 
in  1801-2-3  a  whole  fleet  of  Transports  had  been 
carrying  off  loads  of  Highlanders  from  the  Western 
Coasts.  The  ignorant  jealousy  and  alarm  with 
which  the  movement  was  regarded,  swelled  apace. 
It  affected,  almost  as  much  as  any  other  class, 
the  Proprietors  of  land  in  the  Highlands.  It  is 
a  vulgar  error  very  commonly  entertained  that 
these  early  Emigrations  were  incited,  or  even 
encouraged  by  Landowners.  They  had  just  formed 
a  Society,1  of  which  my  grandfather,  John,  fifth 
Duke  of  Argyll,  was  the  first  President,  full  of 
Celtic  enthusiasms ;  one  of  whose  aims  it  was  to 
watch  over  every  interest  connected  with  the  High- 
lands. In  1801  this  Society  appointed  a  Committee 
to  consider  the  wonderful  phenomenon  of  the  emi- 
gration of  a  half-starving  people.  They  spoke  of  it 
not  only  with  sorrow,  but  with  positive  bitterness, 
and  suggested  every  kind  of  theoretical  scheme,  by 
which  it  might  be  discouraged  and  prevented.  So 
keen  was  the  sentimental  and  benevolent  spirit 
displayed,  that  Landowners  were  unjustly  accused 
of  a  desire  to  keep  up  their  supply  of  cheap  labour 
for  the  manufacture  of  Kelp,  or  of  indulging  their 
old  pride  in  a  multitude  of  idle  retainers.  False, 
and  indeed  absurd,  as  such  an  accusation  was,  it  is 
at  least  worth  remembering  as  an  antidote  to  the 
opposite  accusation,  that  they  were  driving  off*  the 
people  from  their  Estates.  It  is  an  unquestionable 
fact,  that  at  this  early  period  the  Landowners  of 
the  Highlands  and  Islands  disliked  the  Emigra- 
tions, and  did  not  fully  comprehend  the  meaning 
or  the  causes  of  them.  That  meaning  lay 
deeper  than  anything  of  which  they  were  con- 
scious. Sheep-farming  had  indeed  begun,  but  it 
had  not  reached  many  of  the  Highland  Parishes 

1  The  Highland  and  Agricultural  Society,  an  admirable  body,  which 
has  ever  since  exercised  a  salutary  influence  on  the  progress  of  Agricul- 
ture, not  only  in  the  Highlands,  but  all  over  Scotland. 


BEFORE  THE  DAWN.  343 

from  which  the  Emigration  was  most  copious  and 
persistent.  Neither  had  it  reached,  nor  did  it  ever 
reach,  many  of  the  Lowland  Parishes  which  Migra- 
tion had  depopulated  with  even  greater  sweep. 

And  yet,  however  unconsciously,  the  Proprietors 
of  land  had  long  been  contributing  gradually  and 
steadily  to  the  great  change  which  led  irresistibly 
to  these  movements  of  the  people.  They  had  made 
this  contribution  in  every  step  they  had  taken  to- 
wards a  higher  civilisation — when  they  began  to 
think  of  increasing  the  produce  of  the  soil — when 
they  ceased  to  give  farms  to  men  who  knew 
nothing  of  farming — when  they  sent  forth  their 
own  sons  and  kinsmen  to  officer  the  Army  and 
the  Navy,  or  to  serve  the  Crown  as  Governors 
and  Founders  of  the  Colonies — when  they  abolished 
or  commuted  Services  at  home — when  they  granted 
Improvement  Leases — when  they  persuaded  their 
Tenants  no  longer  to  cast  lots  every  year,  each 
man  for  patches  of  arable  ground  no  bigger  than 
a  tablecloth — when  they  built  enclosures — when 
they  showed  their  people  how  to  make  hay,  and 
how  to  improve  their  Cattle,  and  how  to  manure 
their  land,  and  how  to  alternate  their  crops.  There 
is  such  a  deep-seated  and  searching  Unity  in 
Nature,  which  includes  the  Mind  of  Man  and  the 
habits  of  Society — that  not  one  single  new  idea,  or 
one  single  new  desire,  can  be  introduced  or  followed 
without  carrying  with  it  a  host  of  consequences. 
Every  one  of  these  steps  in  the  path  of  new  duties 
and  of  new  inclinations,  tended  to  break  up  an  old 
world,  and  to  usher  in  another  which  was  different 
in  everything.  One  Highland  Minister  pathetically 
epitomised  it  all.  He  complained  that  the  people 
in  his  Parish,  round  their  peat  fires,  instead  of  dis- 
cussing, as  of  old,  feuds  and  deeds  of  war,  were  now 
tamely  discussing  how  they  could  better  tend  their 
Sheep,  and  improve  their  wool.1  But  as  yet  the 
Proprietors  did  not  see  the  inevitableness  of  the 

1  Old  Statistical  A  ccount,  vol.  iv.  p.  576. 


344  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

results  which  were  typified  by  the  lessening  sails  of 
Transport  Ships,  as  their  topmasts  disappeared 
behind  the  waves  into  the  splendours  of  the  West. 
And  so  their  Committee  talked  of  the  "malignant" 
spirit  of  Emigration  as  if  it  were  hardly  less  wicked 
than  Military  Desertion.  They  even  succeeded  in 
persuading  the  Government  of  the  day  to  pass  an 
Act  which,  under  the  guise  of  sanitary  regulations 
as  to  food  and  ventilation  in  ships,  was  strongly, 
though  perhaps  unjustly,  suspected  of  an  intention  1 
to  prevent  it.  Lord  Selkirk,  who  favoured  emigra- 
tion, speaks  in  his  Work  upon  the  subject,  of  the  j 
"jealous  antipathy  "  against  it  which  he  found  "  in  j 
the  minds  of  the  more  considerable  Proprietors 
of  the  Highlands/'1  It  was  in  this  spirit  that 
the  Committee  of  the  Highland  Society  drew  up 
their  Eeports  in  1802  and  1803.  And  yet  in 
that  very  document  they  showed  their  complete 
knowledge  of  the  fundamental  fact  on  which 
everything  depended.  The  first  cause  to  which 
they  attribute  the  Emigration  is  "  such  an  increase 
of  population  as  the  country  in  its  present  situa- 
tion, and  with  a  total  want  of  openings  for  the 
exertion  of  industry,  cannot  support." 2  Every 
other  cause  was  a  mere  consequence  of  this  one 
cause — which  was  in  itself  all-embracing  and  all- 
sufficient.  It  was  not  peculiar  to  the  Highlands, 
but  was  operating  quite  as  powerfully  in  every 
Lowland  Parish  under  like  conditions.  Only,  in 
the  Islands  and  Western  Highlands  the  stream 
had  been  pent  up  longer,  and  was  overflowing 
with  a  rush.  One  simple  explanation — one  great 
natural  analogy — would  have  spared  the  Committee 
all  their  sorrow.  A  great  Hive  was  swarming. 
Chiefs  and  Landowners,  Field  Marshals,  Poets,  and 
Philosophers  were  standing  round  the  "Skep," 
gaping,  staring,  wondering,  and  scolding,  at  the 
naughty  instinct  of  the  Bees. 

1  Observations,  etc.,  1805,  p.  130.  2  Ibid.  p.  137. 


CHAPTER    VIII. 

THE   BURST    OF    INDUSTRY. 

THERE  is  one  scene  in  Scotland  which,  more  than 
any  other,  groups  within  a  single  landscape  so 
many  features  identified  with  the  history  of  the 
Country  and  of  the  Nation,  that  there  is  hardly  an 
age  in  all  its  Past,  which  has  not  some  striking 
memorial  in  sight.  It  is  the  scene  lying  all  around 
that  reach  of  the  Firth  of  Clyde  which  not  very 
many  years  ago  was  the  site  of  a  small  fishing 
village,  and  is  now  occupied  by  the  Quays,  the 
Harbour,  and  Roadstead  of  Greenock.  Splendid 
as  the  view  is  on  a  clear  day,  it  is  not  less  remark- 
able on  account  of  the  immense  variety  of  interests 
which  belong  to  all  its  features.  The  hills  that 
sweep  round  from  West  to  North,  falling  steeply 
into  the  Firth  along  its  opposite  shores,  are  the 
southern  extremity,  or  escarpment,  of  the  High- 
land mountains.  From  these  shores  they  stretch 
without  a  break,  except  their  own  glens  and  fissures, 
to  the  boundary  line  between  Sutherland  and  Caith- 
ness. There  is  good  reason  to  believe  that  these 
mountains,  although  very  far  from  being  among  the 
highest,  are  among  the  oldest  in  the  world — older 
than  the  Alps,  or  the  Pyrenees,  or  the  Apennines  in 
Europe, — older  than  the  great  range  of  the  Hima- 
layah  in  the  Asiatic  Continent.  The  Geologist  must 
ever  regard  them  with  curiosity,  as  suggesting  many 
hard  questions  in  his  science,  which  have  not  yet 
been  solved.  The  sudden  depression  in  this  line  of 
Hills,  which  is  a  conspicuous  feature  in  the  land- 


346  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

scape  immediately  opposite  to  Greenock,  marks  the 
boundary  line  of  the  Grampian  ranges  towards  the 
East, — a  line  which  runs  almost  straight  from  that 
depression  on  the  Clyde  to  the  North-East  Coast 
of  Scotland  at  Stonehaven.  These  are  interests 
which  concern  not  the  Nation  but  the  Land,  and 
carry  us  back  to  times  before  the  birth  even  of  the 
"  everlasting  hills." 

Turning  our  eyes  now  up  the  course  of  the  River 
Clyde  every  feature  in  the  landscape  is  crowded 
with  human  memories.  In  the  farther  perspective 
we  see  the  point  at  the  foot  of  the  Kilpatrick  Hills, 
where  the  soldiers  of  Agricola  terminated  the  line 
of  Forts  which  then  was,  and  long  continued  to  be, 
the  northern  boundary  of  the  Roman  Empire.  Fifty- 
six  years  later  the  same  line  was  occupied  by  the 
continuous  Wall  of  Antoninus  Pius.1  In  all  history 
there  is  perhaps  110  more  striking  contrast  than  the 
blaze  of  light  which  shines  upon  that  Wall  and  on 
those  who  built  it,  as  compared  with  the  profound 
darkness  that  encompasses  the  Tribes  against  whom 
it  was  erected.  We  know,  indeed,  that  our  ances- 
tors were  brave,  and  that  they  were  formidable  even 
in  the  eyes  of  Rome.  We  know  that  they  were 
defeated,  but  by  no  means  easily  defeated,  in  open 
battle  with  the  Mistress  of  the  World,  against 
whom  they  fought  with  Chariots  and  with  Horse- 
men ;  nay,  more — we  know  that  although  they  lost 
in  the  battle,  they  won  in  the  campaign.  Agricola 
retired  from  their  country  into  the  Province  he  had 
gained  and  fortified.  Yet  some  of  them  seem  to 
have  been  so  savage  that  Gibbon  sees  no  reason  to 
doubt  the  story  that  they  were  cannibals.2  This, 
however,  is  a  story  of  events  later  by  about  280 
years  than  the  battles  of  Agricola.  It  is  the  story 
of  a  mercenary  Tribe  in  the  pay  of  Rome  and  trans- 
ported into  Gaul.  Time  does  not  always  mellow 
or  improve.  Sometimes  it  develops  Savagery.  It 

1  Irving's  History  of  Dumbartonshire,  ch.  i. 

2  Ibid.  p.  6  ;  and  Gibbon's  Decline  and  Fall,  ch.  xxv. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  347 

certainly  did  so  among  the  Csesars  during  the  same 
time.  The  brutal  cruelty  of  Valentinian  is  not  a 
greater  contrast  with  the  virtue  and  wisdom  of 
Marcus  Aurelius  and  of  Antoninus  Pius,  than  the 
alleged  cannibalism  of  the  Attacotti,  with  the  noble 
eloquence  ascribed  to  Galgacus.  The  condition  of 
the  Tribes  he  led,  remains  a  mystery.  Of  their  habits, 
of  their  manners,  of  their  polity,  of  their  habitations, 
and  of  their  dress,  we  know  practically  nothing,  or 
so  little,  that  it  all  seems  equally  perplexing  and 
inconsistent.  We  cannot  believe  that  the  Cale- 
donian Chief  really  addressed  his  army  before  the 
battle  of  the  Mons  Grampius  in  a  speech  the  least 
like  that  which  is  put  into  his  mouth  by  Tacitus.1 
It  bristles  with  epigram,  and  with  the  results  of 
philosophic  reflection.  It  expresses  these  results  in 
words  so  vigorous  and  terse  that  one  of  its  sentences 
has,  through  all  later  ages,  become  proverbial.2  In 
short  it  is  a  speech  breathing  the  most  cultivated 
eloquence  of  Rome.  Yet  neither,  on  the  other 
hand,  can  we  believe  that  Tacitus  would  have  put 
such  a  speech  into  the  mouth  of  Galgacus,  if  that 
Chief  had  been  known  to  be  a  Savage.  We  are 
left,  therefore,  in  darkness  that  can  be  felt.  On  the 
other  hand,  of  the  people  who  built  that  Wall  from 
the  Clyde  to  the  Forth,  and  whose  dominion  ex- 
tended southwards  to  the  Pillars  of  Hercules,  we 
may  be  said  to  know  everything  in  the  most  minute 
detail.  Such  is  the  power  of  Literature.  The  con- 
trast is  all  the  more  striking  when  we  remember 
that  this  was  the  epoch  when  the  Roman  Empire 
was  at  its  best.  The  well-known  and  splendid 
panegyric  of  Gibbon  represents  the  age  of  the 
Antonines  as  the  Golden  Age  of  the  whole  Roman 
world.  Remembering  these  things,  this  land- 
scape on  the  Clyde  acquires  a  special  interest. 
Looking  at  the  Kilpatrick  Hills  we  can  see,  in 
imagination  at  least,  the  Standards  of  the  Sixth 
and  of  the  Second  Legions  covering  the  men 

1  Tacitus's  Life  of  Agricola.  z  "  Omne  ignotum  pro  magnifico." 


348  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

who  worked  at  that  famous  Rampart.  Nor  are 
surviving  monuments  wanting  to  fill  up  the 
picture.  The  artificers  and  the  artists  of  Rome 
have  everywhere  left  some  lasting  records  of  their 
sense  and  feeling  for  the  Empire  which  they  served. 
When  the  Engineers  of  our  own  day  were  set  to 
join  the  Clyde  and  Forth  by  a  Canal,  they  found 
that  they  could  do  no  better  than  follow  the  Wall 
of  Antonine.  At  frequent  intervals  the  pick  and 
the  spade  struck  upon  its  foundation  stones.  Here 
and  there  some  massive  Tablet  told  how  many 
thousand  paces  had  been  accomplished  by  each 
laborious  Legion.  Occasionally,  too,  some  sculpture 
more  elaborate  and  more  beautiful  than  the  rest, 
embodied  the  natural  feelings  of  satisfaction  and  of 
pride  with  which  the  Roman  Generals  regarded 
every  extension  of  the  Imperial  dominion.  Such 
were  the  Tablets  found  at  Kilpatrick,  representing 
Winged  Victories  in  majestic  attitudes  of  triumph 
and  of  repose.1 

A  very  little  nearer  to  us  than  the  foot  of  the 
Kilpatrick  Hills,  and  seen  against  them — at  the 
junction  of  the  Leven  with  the  Clyde — rises  another 
feature  in  the  landscape  inseparable  from  the  history 
of  Scotland — the  great  Rock  Fortress  of  Dumbarton. 
There  could  not  be  a  more  striking  symbol  of  the 
passage  from  Roman  to  Mediaeval  times.  It  is  not 
certain  whether  it  was  or  was  not  included  within 
the  Wall  of  Antonine.  This  uncertainty  is  itself 
significant.  It  arises  from  the  fact  that  Rock  For- 
tresses were  despised  by  Rome.  They  did  not  enter 
into  her  military  system.  Roving  tribes  and  rude 
barbarians  had  need  of  natural  Strengths.  But 
Rome  had  none.  If  a  Roman  General  wished  for 
some  sudden  hollow  for  the  purpose  of  fortification, 
he  did  not  hunt  for  a  ravine ;  he  dug  it  with  the 
spade ;  he  made  a  Fossa.  If  he  wished  for  some 

1  Three  Sculptured  Stones,  one  of  great  beauty,  are  engraved  in 
Irving's  History  of  Dumbartonshire,  p.  1 1,  and  are  preserved  in  the  Museum 
of  Glasgow. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  349 

Steep  around  his  position,  he  did  not  go  out  of  his 
way  to  find  a  precipice.  He  threw  up  a  Vallum,  or 
he  built  a  Wall.  The  lofty  rock,  therefore,  which 
the  southern  Celts  or  Britons  of  Strathclyde  made 
the  capital  of  their  territory, — which  they  called 
"  Alcluid,"  and  which,  in  another  Celtic  dialect,  has 
since  been  called  after  them,  "  Dun-briton," — does 
not  seem  to  have  been  valued  or  thought  of  by 
Agricola  or  by  Antonine.  If  they  included  it  at  all 
in  their  lines,  it  was  for  the  purpose  of  covering 
a  ford  across  the  Clyde,  which  at  that  time  would 
have  given  easy  access  to  the  Imperial  Province 
on  the  southern  bank.  But  when  the  Romans 
retired,  the  great  "Dun "of  the  Strathclyde  Britons 
resumed  its  military  importance.  Its  very  name 
reminds  us  of  the  mixture  of  races  from  which  we 
spring.  For  centuries  it  was  one  of  the  Strengths 
of  the  Scottish  Kingdom — captured  and  recaptured 
— used  alternately  as  a  retreat,  as  a  palace,  and  as 
a  prison.  More  than  once  it  was  both  of  these  in 
the  pathetic  career  of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots.  It  was 
to  gain  its  friendly  shelter  that  in  May  1568  she  set 
out  from  Hamilton  to  the  fatal  battle  of  Langside  ; 
and  it  had  been  from  the  short  grassy  slope  which 
dips  into  the  river  on  the  western  face,  that  twenty 
years  before,  in  her  early  childhood  (1548),  with  her 
attendant  "  Four  Maries,"  she  had  been  carried  into 
the  Barge  which  bore  her  off  to  be  the  Bride  of 
France.  It  is  not  easy  for  us  now  to  realise  the 
importance  which  in  those  days  was  set  on  the  Eock 
Fortress  of  Dumbarton.  Another  revolution  in  mili- 
tary science,  quite  recent,  has  brought  us  back  to 
the  sentiment  of  the  Homans.  In  the  face  of  our 
new  Artillery,  Hill  Forts  have  lost  their  value.  But 
in  the  Seventeenth  Century  the  dearest  interests  of 
the  future  were  concerned  in  the  possession  of  that 
precipitous  mass  of  volcanic  rock.  Scotland  was 
a  special  scene  of  contest  between  the  Catholic 
Reaction  and  the  interests  of  the  Reformed  all  over 
Europe.  It  was  through  Scotland  that  the  attack 


350  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

could  best  be  made  on  "  Great  Elizabeth/'  The 
House  of  Guise  was  encouraged  when  they  heard 
that  Dumbarton  was  held  for  Mary.  The  English 
Queen  wrote  personal  letters  of  congratulation  when 
she  heard  it  was  captured  for  James  vi.1  John  Knox, 
in  the  last  year  of  his  life  and  in  physical  decay, 
which  left  untouched  his  indomitable  spirit,  heard 
with  joy  of  the  daring  escalade  of  Crawford  of  Jordan- 
hill,  by  which  it  fell  to  the  Protestant  cause  in  1571. 

This,  however,  is  not  by  any  means  the  only  or 
even  greatest  historic  memory  which  is  recalled  by 
the  same  prospect  up  the  Valley  of  the  Clyde.  There 
is  another  time,  much  earlier  and  much  more  noble 
in  all  the  influences  it  has  left.  Again,  a  little 
nearer  to  us  than  Dumbarton,  on  the  declivity  of 
the  hills  of  Cardross,  which  here  form  the  right  bank 
of  the  Leven,  King  Robert  the  Bruce  chose  his  place 
of  residence  during  the  last  years  of  his  glorious 
reign.  There  he  spent  his  time  governing  his  King- 
dom, now  and  again  hunting  and  hawking,  or  sailing 
and  rowing  in  his  royal  Galley  on  the  two  beautiful 
and  then  unsullied  rivers  which  flowed — one  on  each 
side — beneath  his  Castle  walls.  The  high  but  flat- 
topped  ridges  of  the  Kilpatrick  Hills,  the  rocky 
precipices  of  Dumbarton,  and  the  far-off  blue  sum- 
mit of  Benlomond,  formed  the  scene  on  which  King 
Eobert  looked  when  he  sickened  prematurely  under 
the  weight  of  a  memorable  life,  and  when  dying  he 
bequeathed  his  heart  to  be  carried  to  the  Holy 
Land,  in  the  pathetic  scene  recorded  in  verse  by 
Barbour,  and  by  Froissart  in  prose  not  less  poetic.2 

The  long  and  troubled  Centuries  which  followed 
the  death  of  Bruce — the  relapse  of  a  large  part  of  the 
Kingdom  into  comparative  barbarism — the  ferocious 
Epoch  of  the  Clans — have  each  and  all  their  memo- 
rials in  the  scene  before  us.  The  whole  length  of 
shores  opposite  to  Greenock  are  those  of  the  old 
Province  of  the  Lennox,  half  Highland,  half  Low- 

1  Irving's  History  of  Dumbartonshire,  p.  1 32. 

2  Froissart's  Chronicles,  chap.  xx. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  351 

land,  full  of  the  sites  on  which  Celtic  Feudalism 
yielded,  slowly  but  steadily,  to  the  higher  Feudalism 
of  Civilisation  and  of  Law.  It  so  happens  that 
immediately  fronting  Greenock  there  is  one  feature 
in  the  physical  geography  of  the  country  which 
stands  in  sad  connection  with  the  close  of  that 
struggle.  The  high  ridge  which  slopes  somewhat 
steeply  into  the  Firth  of  Clyde  is  backed  by 
another  ridge,  in  some  lights  hardly  separate,  but 
which  on  a  clear  day  is  seen  to  be  higher  and  steeper 
than  the  nearer  summit.  This  division  between  two 
parallel  ranges  marks  the  hollow  in  which  lies  Glen- 
fruin.  Although  so  close  to  one  of  the  great  centres 
of  our  modern  life,  few  wilder  or  more  solitary  Glens 
are  to  be  found  in  all  the  Highlands.  It  was  in 
this  Glen  that  on  the  7th  February  1603  was  fought 
the  last  of  the  savage  and  bloody  battles  of  the 
Clans.1  The  Colquhouns  of  Luss  were  beaten  and 
decimated  in  resisting  a  blood-feud  raid  of  the  Clan 
Gregor.  The  horror  of  the  scene  was  brought  home 
to  the  rising  civilisation  of  the  Lowlands  not  only 
by  the  death  of  several  gentlemen  of  distinction  from 
the  valley  of  the  Leven,  near  Dumbarton,  amongst 
whom  was  Tobias  Smollet,  ancestor  of  the  novelist, 
but  also  by  the  butchery  in  cold  blood  of  some 
student  lads  and  boys  of  that  Burgh  who  had  been 
induced  from  curiosity  to  watch  the  fight.2  There 
can  be  no  more  curious  contrast  than  that  between 
the  prospect  from  the  nearer  summit,  then,  and  the 
prospect  from  it,  now.  On  the  northern  side  lie  the 
deep  shadows  and  the  wild  but  peaceful  pasturages 
of  Glenfruin.  On  the  southern  side  lie  the  reclaimed 
fields  of  modern  agriculture,  and  all  the  various  and 
busy  industries  of  the  Clyde. 

And  yet  even  this  contrast  is  less  striking  and 

less  instructive  than  the  change^the  transformation 

—which  was  wrought  as  if  by  magic,  in  the  character 

1  Irving's  History  of  Dumbartonshire,  pp.  147-50. 

2  The  doubt  which  has  been  cast  on  this  ghastly  story  seems  to  me  to 
be  dispelled  by  the  evidence.     Ibid.  p.  150. 


352  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

of  the  celebrated  Clan  which  on  that  and  on  many 
previous  occasions  had  been  pre-eminent  in  ferocity. 
Sentiment  is  an  excellent  thing.  It  is  indeed  the 
salt  of  the  world— the  cheap  defence  of  nations. 
But  Sentiment  may  be  bad  as  well  as  good  ;  and  then 
if  the  light  that  is  in  us  be  darkness,  that  dark- 
ness is  intense  !  It  is  a  bad  sentiment,  and  not  a 
good  one,  that  can  make  any  man  look  back  with 
sympathy  to  the  Epoch  of  the  Clans.  Sentiment — 
deep  and  even  enthusiastic — may  well  be  felt  for  those 
changes  in  our  national  history  which  broke  down 
that  Epoch,  and  which  brought  back  the  character 
and  the  genius  of  Highlanders  within  the  advancing 
influences  of  our  national  civilisation.  They  soon 
showed  that  there  they  had  a  part — and  a  great 
part — to  play.  And  perhaps  never  was  there  a  case 
of  it  more  signal  than  the  case  of  the  Clan  Gregor. 
James  vi.  was  shocked  and  scandalised,  as  well  he 
might  be,  by  this  massacre  in  Glenfruin,  occurring 
as  it  did  in  a  part  of  his  native  Kingdom  where  it 
could  not  be  concealed,  and  just  at  the  moment 
when  he  was  mounting  the  throne  of  England.1  The 
Clan  Gregor  were  proscribed  and  pursued  as  a 
Blood  and  as  a  Race,  in  a  manner  hardly  less  savage 
than  their  own  slaughter  of  the  Colquhouns. 

Yet  it  was  not  their  race  nor  their  blood,  but  the 
system  under  which  they  lived,  which  had  made  them 
savage.  The  Savage  is  close  under  the  skin  with  all 
of  us.  Our  humanity  and  our  civilisation  depend 
entirely  on  our  inherited  ideas — on  our  loyal  accept- 
ance of  them — and  on  these  ideas  being  themselves 
consistent  with  the  historical  developments  of  an 
advancing  Commonwealth.  The  Clan  Gregor,  like 
other  Clans,  had  been  taught  to  believe  that  the 
robbery  of  Cattle  was  not  immoral.  The  Robber  Clans, 
when  they  condescended  to  reason  or  to  think  at  all 
on  such  matters,  had  a  theory  of  their  own.  Cattle  in 
Scotland  had  originally  been  an  indigenous  animal. 

1  Queen  Elizabeth's  death  took  place  on  the  24th  of  March  1 603— 
or  forty-five  days  after  the  massacre  of  Glenfruin. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  353 

They  said  that  God  made  the  Cattle — that  He  also 
made  the  grass  upon  the  hills,  and  therefore  their 
conclusion  was  that  Cattle — the  very  earliest  form  of 
human  property — could  not  be  considered  as  rightful 
property  at  all.1  The  strongest  might  always  take 
it,  and  those  who  defended  it  could  only  hold  it  by 
success  in  battle.  This  theory  is  not  perhaps  quite 
so  incoherent  as  the  modern  form  of  it  which  applies 
the  same  reasoning  to  property  in  land,  but  shrinks 
from  applying  it  to  property  in  the  produce.  The 
old  Highland  Reivers,  on  the  contrary,  applied  it 
only  to  the  produce,  and  did  not  think  of  apply- 
ing it  to  the  soil  from  which  the  produce  came. 
Anarchical  doctrines  and  slovenly  reasonings — 
when  not  translated  into  deeds — were  little  re- 
garded in  those  days.  But  the  doings  of  the  Clan 
Gregor  in  Glenfruin  were  a  little  too  tangible  to  be 
suffered.  Their  own  methods  were  the  only  methods 
which  Society  could  take  to  confound  their  doc- 
trines. And  so,  however  cruelly,  yet  with  the 
universal  consent  of  all,  they  were  proscribed,  and 
their  very  name  forbidden.  But  their  dispersion, 
and  the  transplantation  of  many  of  them  into 
another  country  and  another  atmosphere  of  custom 
and  opinion,  proved  but  the  beginning  of  a  nobler 
reputation.  In  the  Church,  in  the  Army,  and  in 
the  Civil  Professions,  Macgregor  has  long  been, 
and  is  now,  a  familiar  and  an  honoured  name.  But 
there  is  one  branch  of  the  old  Clan  Alpine  which 
more  than  any  other  has  exhibited  the  qualities  of 
a  reclaimed  and  ennobled  Eace.  Here,  again,  the 
rights  of  legal  Ownership  proved  to  be  the  suc- 
cessful remedy  for  the  illegal  powers,  and  the  dan- 
gerous influences  of  "  Chiefery. "  The  Earl  of  Murray 
transplanted  three  hundred  of  the  proscribed  Mac- 
gregors  from  Menteith,  and  settled  them  as  a 
barrier  against  another  turbulent  Clan,  the  Mack- 
intoshes, in  Aberdeenshire.2  There,  under  the 

1  MS.  Brit.  Mus.  1748. 

2  Sir  Walter  Scott's  Introduction  to  Rob  Roy. 

Z 


354  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

name  of  Gregory,  these  descendants  of  the  Clan 
Alpine  gave  birth  not  only  to  some,  but  to  a  whole 
galaxy  of  the  most  distinguished  men  that  Scotland 
has  produced.  One  of  them  was  the  friend  of  Sir 
Isaac  Newton,  and  among  the  earliest  teachers  of 
his  Philosophy.  Another  of  them  was  the  Patri- 
arch of  a  whole  dynasty  of  Professors  of  the  highest 
scientific  and  literary  distinction  in  several  of  the 
Universities,  both  of  Scotland  and  of  England. 
One  of  them  was  the  inventor  of  the  Reflecting  Tele- 
scope. Another  was  at  the  head  of  the  Medical  Pro- 
fession in  Edinburgh,  when  Society  there  was  at 
its  best,  and  where,  from  the  combination  of  many 
charms  of  genius  and  of  virtue,  he  reigned  supreme 
as  the  "Beloved  Physician."  With  one  of  the  last 
of  this  distinguished  family  I  had  the  honour  of  being 
intimate  in  early  life — the  late  Dr.  William  Gregory, 
Professor  of  Chemistry  in  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh— a  man  of  the  utmost  refinement  of  character, 
and  of  the  most  liberal  and  cultivated  mind. 

The  continuity  of  our  national  history  is  not  less 
remarkable  than  its  changes,  and  this  characteristic 
is  not  less  visibly  represented  in  the  scene  before 
us.  In  looking  at  the  mountains  which  enclose 
Glenfruin,  we  are  looking  at  a  district  which  is  still 
the  property  of  the  Colquhouns  of  Luss.  There 
they  have  been — traceable  without  a  break — for 
some  700  years,1  and  there  they  are  at  the  present 
day.  The  thriving  Town  of  Helensburgh,  which 
stretches  its  gardened  Villas  up  the  slope  of  the 
hill  leading  to  Glenfruin,  is  built  upon  land 
acquired  and  held  from  the  Colquhouns  by  feudal 
Charters,  granted  under  the  rights  and  powers  on 
which  property  has  rested  in  Scotland  since  before 
the  days  of  Malcolm  Canmore. 

And  now  letting  our  eyes  fall  from  the  hills  in 
front  of  us,  to  rest  upon  the  broad  water  at  our  feet, 
there  can  be  no  doubt  of  the  multitude  of  objects 

1  See  The  Chiefs  of  Colquhoun  and  their  Country,  by  William  Fraser, 
C.B.,  LL.D.     Edinburgh,  1869. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  355 

which  are  representative  of  the  latest  developments 
of  our  national  life.  We  are  standing  in  the  birth- 
place of  James  Watt,  and  we  have  before  us,  in  all 
their  amplitude,  the  triumphs  of  his  genius,  and  of 
the  genius  of  his  successor,  Henry  Bell.  There  is 
not  a  sight  or  a  sound  among  the  many  which  fill 
the  eye  and  the  ear  from  one  of  the  greatest  com- 
mercial centres  of  the  world,  which  is  not  a  monu- 
ment, direct  or  indirect,  to  the  memory  of  these  two 
men — of  Watt,  who,  in  1765,  by  the  inspiration  of 
one  new  idea,  which  flashed  upon  him  on  the  Green 
of  Glasgow,  that  of  the  "  Separate  Condenser/' 1 
started  the  Steam-engine  on  the  path  of  its  immense, 
and  yet  unfulfilled  developments  ;  and  of  Bell,  who 
on  these  waters,  in  1812,  was  the  first  in  Europe  to 
apply  it  to  the  purposes  of  Locomotion.  It  does  in- 
deed seem  almost  incredible,  when  we  remember  that 
there  are  men  not  only  now  living,  but  keeping  a 
front  place  in  the  contests  of  active  life,  who  were 
born  several  years  before  a  single  steam- vessel  had 
moved  in  British  Waters.  It  is  but  seventy-four 
years  ago  since  the  "  Cornet''  was  launched  by  Bell 
upon  the  Clyde,  whilst  now  its  harbours  and  its 
bays  are  crowded  with  Liners  which  keep  up  com- 
munication with  America  more  frequently — more 
regularly — and  with  more  safety — than  sailing  ferry- 
boats then  kept  up  communication  with  the  neigh- 
bouring Sea-lochs  of  Dumbarton  and  Argyll.  . 

But  the  shipping  and  the  harbour  of  Greenock 
are  the  standing  memorials  of  another  epoch  in  our 
national  history  which  preceded  the  epoch  of  Watt 
and  Bell,  and  in  which  the  way  was  prepared  be- 
fore them.  That  was  the  epoch  of  the  Legislative 
Union  in  1707.  The  Union  of  the  Crowns  in  1603 
had  put  an  end  to  such  horrors  as  the  massacre  of 
Glenfruin.  But  it  was  not  until  after  the  Union  of 
the  Legislatures  in  1707,  that  such  sights  of  commer- 
cial enterprise  as  that  presented  by  the  Clyde  were, 
or  could  be  seen.  I  have  already  observed  upon  the 

1  Smiles's  Lives  of  Boulton  and  Watt,  1865,  pp.  127-8. 


356  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

greatly  exaggerated  importance  often  ascribed  to 
the  defeat  of  the  Jacobite  Rebellion  of  1745.  On 
the  other  hand,  as  an  Epoch,  the  Legislative  Union 
with  England,  accomplished  in  1707,  is  almost  as 
immensely  undervalued.  It  was  not  only  the  be- 
ginning, but  it  was  the  one  indispensable  foundation, 
of  all  the  later  progress  of  Scotland  in  industry  and 
in  wealth. 

The  Clyde  bears  witness  to  this  truth  with 
a  loud  voice.  The  only  foreign  commerce  which 
Scotland  enjoyed  before  the  Union  was  some  tradi- 
tional and  old-standing  trade  with  France  and 
Flanders.  A  stringent  Navigation  Law  had  been 
passed  by  the  Scottish  Parliament  just  after 
the  Restoration,  in  1661,  which  proceeded  on  a 
preamble  that  trade  and  navigation  had  terribly 
declined  during  the  Civil  Wars,  and  it  is  remark- 
able that  one  of  the  clauses  of  this  Act  confesses 
that  Scotland  had  then  no  shipping  to  pro- 
tect in  any  Trade  with  any  part  of  Asia,  Africa, 
or  America,  nor,  in  Europe,  with  Russia  or  Italy.1 
Not  very  much  of  the  world  was  left  to  us 
after  these  subtractions.  All  the  vast  and  grow- 
ing Dominions  and  Plantations  of  the  British 
race  in  India  and  in  the  New  World  were  under 
the  Government  of  the  English  Parliament. 
Commerce  at  that  time  was  universally  regulated 
by  the  accepted  doctrines  of  restriction  and 
monopoly.  Scotland  was  as  jealously  excluded 
from  the  privileges  of  English  merchants  and  of 
English  shipowners,  as  if  she  were,  as  in  deed 
she  was,  a  foreign  country.  In  her  own  protecting 
Navigation  Law  of  1661  she  had,  indeed,  offered  free 
trade  with  England  and  with  Ireland,  provided  the 
privilege  were  made  reciprocal.1  But  her  compara- 
tive poverty,  and  the  smallness  of  her  demand,  did 
not  commend  this  to  the  English  as  an  equal  bargain. 
On  the  other  hand,  Scotchmen  had  an  aptitude,  and 
even  a  genius  for  commercial  pursuits  which  had 

1  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  vii.  p.  258  (1  Carol,  n.  c.  277). 


(THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  357 

begun  to  appear  in  every  direction.     The  Bank  of 
England  was  founded   by  a    Scotchman — William 
Paterson  ; — and  it  was  in  the   desperate   efforts  of 
Scotland  to  get  some  outlet  for  her  rising  spirit  of 
enterprise  that  her  Parliament  and  people  were  led, 
in    1695,  by  the  same  remarkable   man,  to  throw 
themselves  with  enthusiasm  into  the  famous  Darien 
scheme.      Founded  on  the  most  enlightened   com- 
mercial principles,  and    intended   to  open   and   to 
establish  a  new  Trade  Route  to  the  Indies  which  will 
be  one  of  the  triumphs  of  our  own  day,  this  great 
scheme  of  a  Scotchman,  who  was  far  in  advance  of 
his  time,  was  thwarted  and  ruined — as  it  seemed, 
entirely  by  the  jealousy  of  England.    Her  Parlia- 
ment  and  her   commercial    Companies  opposed   it 
with  passionate  resentment,  and  pointed  with  horror 
to  the  prospect  of  Scotland  becoming  a  Free  Port  for 
half  the  commerce  of  the  world.     Yet  only  one-half 
of  the  Capital  Stock  was  to  be  held  by  Scotchmen. 
The  other  half  was    open  to    Englishmen,   and  a 
large  amount   of  it   was  actually  subscribed,   and 
held  by  them.     This,  however,  did  not  conciliate 
the   English   Parliament.     Narrow  and    odious   as 
its    spirit    seems    to    us    now,    it   is   impossible    to 
read   the    Scotch    Act    of  Parliament1    establish- 
ing   this    great    new    East    India    Company,    and 
especially  the  liberal   and   enlightened  regulations 
for    free   trade   with   all   nations    promulgated    at 
the  Settlement,2  without  seeing  that  Scotland  and 
England  could   no   longer  work  together  without 
either  a  more  complete  union,  or  a  more  complete 
separation.     Two  immense  Monopolies  trading  by 
opposite  routes  with  the  same  markets, — contending 
with  each  other  on  every  Ocean, — jealously  sepa- 
rate in  destinations  which  were  nevertheless  geogra- 
phically united — and  both  these  Monopolies  entitled 
to   the  protection  of  common  forces  under  a  com- 
mon Crown, — could  not  possibly  have  been  worked 

1  Act.  Parl  Scot.,  vol.  ix.  p.  277  (1  Will,  in.,  c.  10). 

2  See  Life  of  Paterson  in  Chambers's  Eminent  Scotsmen,  vol.  iv.  p.  108. 


358  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

together.  The  thing  was  impracticable.  Every  de- 
tail was  as  full  of  difficulties  and  incongruities  as 
the  principle  of  the  whole.  The  drawing  of  strict 
fiscal  lines  between  Scotchmen  born  and  living  in 
Scotland  and  Scotchmen  born  or  living  in  England, 
when  every  day  made  the  passage  and  the  inter- 
course of  the  two  populations  more  easy  and  con- 
tinual, was  like  drawing  straight  lines  in  water. 
A  complete  union  or  a  complete  quarrel  were  the 
only  alternatives.  Scotland  would  have  to  return 
to  her  old  historic  alliance  with  France,  hostile  to 
England,  or  the  two  nations  must  admit  themselves 
to  be  one. 

It  is  well  to  remember  how  narrowly  we 
escaped  from  the  wrong  alternative.  The  pas- 
sionate jealousy  in  England  of  any  rivalry  in 
trade, — the  supreme  power  exercised  by  the  spirit 
of  monopoly  over  the  English  government, — the 
ruinous  losses  inflicted  on  Scotland  by  the  failure 
of  the  Darien  Settlement, — all  so  exasperated  the 
national  feeling  in  Scotland,  that  at  last  in  1703-4 
the  two  Parliaments  were  actually  taking  measures 
for  arming  against  each  other.1  The  Scottish  Legis- 
lature went  the  length  of  passing  an  Act  provid- 
ing that  on  the  death  of  the  reigning  Sovereign, 
Queen  Anne,  the  next  Sovereign  of  Scotland  must 
not  be  the  successor  to  the  English  Crown,  un- 
less previous  to  that  event  some  more  satisfactory 
security  had  been  obtained  for  the  liberties  and 
interests  of  the  Scottish  nation.2  To  this  they  were 
driven  by  the  logic  of  necessity.  The  bond  of 
Union,  through  the  Crown  alone,  was  proving  under 
trial  to  be  no  bond  at  all.  Or,  if  it  was  a  bond  at 
all,  it  was  a  bond  which  tied  their  hands  in  fight 
for  the  interests  of  their  country.  Their  King,  sur- 
rounded by  English  Ministers,  and  swayed  by  the 
feelings  of  the  English  Capital,  had  responded  cor- 
dially to  the  most  outrageous  expressions  of  hos- 

1  De  Lolme's  Essay  on  the  Union,  1787,  p.  19. 

2  Act.  Parl  Scot.,  vol.  xi.  p.  136  (2  Qu.  Anne,  cap.  3). 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  359 

tility  against  the  Scotch  on  the  part  of  the  English 
House  of  Commons  ; 1  nay  more,  he  had  used  his 
Prerogative  in  Scotland  in  the  same  sense.  He 
dismissed  his  Scotch  Ministers,  who  had  the  con- 
fidence of  the  Nation,  because  they  promoted  the 
Trade  and  Commerce  of  their  country.2  William's 
part  had  been,  no  doubt,  a  difficult  one  to  play.  His 
relations  with  the  Dutch,  as  well  as  his  position  in 
England,  embarrassed  him  in  dealing  with  the  bold 
attempt  of  his  Scottish  subjects  to  rival  both  in  the 
commerce  of  the  Indies.3  Chiefly,  however,  it  was 
international  jealousy,  fast  rising  into  international 
hatred,  between  his  Southern  and  his  Northern 
Subjects  in  Britain,  which  determined  his  conduct. 
The  nearer,  the  wealthier,  and  the  more  powerful  of 
the  two  carried  the  day.  Yet  nothing  can  justify  the 
vindictive  and  almost  savage  orders  which  had  been 
issued  by  the  English  Government  to  all  the  Gover- 
nors of  Plantations  in  America  and  in  the  West 
India  Islands,  that  they  were  not,  on  any  account,  to 
succour  or  support  the  emigrants  from  Scotland  to 
the  Darien  Settlement.  This  order  might  have  en- 
dangered, and  in  the  sequel  did  actually  endanger, 
the  lives  of  many  of  the  most  loyal  of  William's  sub- 
jects, as  a  penalty  upon  them  for  undertaking,  not 
only  a  lawful,  but  a  most  meritorious  enterprise. 
It  was  also  a  direct  invitation  to  foreign  enemies,  and 
particularly  to  the  Spaniards,  to  attack  the  Settle- 
ment. 

Such  an  exhibition  of  the  spirit  of  international 
jealousy  between  subjects  of  the  same  Crown,  and 
contiguous  inhabitants  of  the  same  Island,  is  all 
the  more  shocking,  and  all  the  more  instructive, 
when  we  remember  that  some  of  the  leading  men 
against  whom  the  order  was  directed  were  the 
same  men  who  had  lately  been  intimately  associated 
as  fellow-countrymen  with  the  merchants  and  finan- 

1  Life  of  William  Carstares,  p.  250.     By  Rev.  E.  H.  Story,  1874. 

2  Dalrymple's  Memoirs,  vol.  iii.  p.  132. 

3  See  the  explanation  given  in  a  Paper,  purporting  to  be  written  by 
King  William,  in  Story's  Life  of  Carstares,  p.  251. 


360  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

ciers  of  London  in  another  scheme  of  great  national 
importance,  and   from   whose    aptitudes   for    Com- 
mercial  Business,   England   had   derived   manifest 
advantage.     But  such  are  the  inevitable  results  of 
encouraging  the  passions  of  separate  Nationalities, 
under   the   nominal   unity    of  one    Crown.     Anta- 
gonism becomes  only  the  more  fierce  and  ungovern- 
able in  proportion  to  the  number  of  jealousies  which 
are    aroused,   and   of    contradictory   interests    and 
aspirations  which   cannot  be  satisfied.      At  last- 
not  one  moment  too  soon — the  English  Government 
became  thoroughly  alarmed  by  the  bitter  animosity 
which  had  been  roused  in  Scotland.      In  June  1704 
the  Queen  addressed  an  almost  imploring  letter  to 
the  Parliament  sitting  in  Edinburgh,  pointing  out 
the  dangers  to  the  Protestant  Succession,  and  the 
encouragement  of  common  enemies,  which  must  arise 
from  the  increasing  estrangement  between  the  two 
Kingdoms.     She  intimated,  too,  the  repentance  of 
England  in  respect  to  the  Darien  affair  by  a  promise 
to  agree  to  conditions  by  which  such  injuries  should 
cease.     This  Letter  or  Message  was  read  on  the  1 1th 
of  July   1704,  but  the   only  reply  was   an   angry 
Resolution   voted   on   the    17th    that    Parliament 
would  not  settle  the    Succession  "until  we  have 
a   previous   Treaty   with    England   regulating   our 
commerce  and  other  concerns  with  that  Nation." 
And  this  was  followed  on  the  4th  of  August  by  the 
Act  providing  that  the  Successor  to  the  Crown  of 
Scotland   "  be  not  the  Successor  to  the  Crown  of 
England,"  unless  under  the  protection  of  a  Treaty 
securing  the  interests  of  "this  Crown  and  King- 
dom   from    English    or    any   Foreign    influence. ": 
Clearly  the  Spirit  of  Separation  was  taking  fast- 
it  might  be  fatal — hold.     There  is  nothing  so  easy 
as  to  fan  such  flames,  and  few  things  more  reckless. 
Scotland  had  been,  and  indeed  still  was,  exhibiting 
consequences  not  dissimilar  in  her  own  dealings  with 
Ireland.     Eecent  acts  of  the  Scottish  Parliament 

1  Act.  ParL  Scot.,  vol.  viii.  pp.  128-137. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  361 

had  forbidden  Trade  with  Ireland,  one  of  them 
(1686),  in  language,  and  under  penalties,  which 
seemed  to  breathe  a  special  hatred.  Not  only  was 
any  vessel  to  be  confiscated  which  brought  victual 
from  Ireland,  but  the  victual  itself  was  to  be  "  sunk 
and  destroyed/'  Scotland,  no  doubt,  had  her  old 
causes,  and  causes  only  too  recent,  of  grudge  against 
that  Dependency  of  the  English  Crown.  For  cen- 
turies there  had  hardly  been  any  attempt  against 
the  liberties  or  the  nationality  of  Scotland,  which 
had  not  been  supported  by  armed  men  recruited 
from  among  the  Celts  of  Ireland.  Nothing  can  ever 
be  forgotten  or  forgiven  where  the  amalgamating 
influences  of  Time  are  neutralised  and  defied,  by 
Institutions  which  dissociate  and  repel. 

The  truth  is  that  the  affection,  which  men  call 
Patriotism,  must  not  be  idolised.  It  may  be  among 
the  highest,  and  it  may  be  among  the  lowest  of 
human  virtues.  It  may  be  generous  and  fruitful,  or 
it  may  be  narrow  and  barbarous,  according  to  the 
worthiness  or  the  un worthiness — the  dignity  or  the 
meanness — the  amplitude  or  the  narrowness — of 
the  object  of  it.  If  our  "  Country  "  be  a  Glen,  or  a 
Parish,  or  a  Province, — if  our  compatriots  be  a  Clan, 
or  a  Kindred,  or  a  group  of  military  comrades — our 
Patriotism  will  be  of  a  corresponding  character.  If 
the  idea  and  the  sentiment,  by  which  we  feel  our- 
selves to  be  associated  with,  and  bound  to,  any 
group  of  men,  be  an  idea  which  has  in  it  any  germ  of 
growth  and  greatness — however  small  that  germ  may 
be — then  our  love  of  the  country,  and  of  the  people 
by  which  it  is  represented,  is  a  noble  love.  But  like 
all  our  passions  it  is  liable  to  degradation.  It  may 
cease  to  expand  with  expanding  growths — it  may 
fail  to  rise  with  ennobling  opportunities.  The 
love  of  a  great  Country  may  go  back  to  the  passions 
of  a  petty  Province,  or  to  the  almost  forgotten 
hatreds  and  antipathies  of  the  Tribal  and  Barbarous 
ages  of  the  world. 

1  Act.  Parl  Scot.  vol.  viii.  p.  598  (2  Jac.  vii.  cap.  26). 


362  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

This  was  the  danger  from  which  Scotland  and 
England  happily,  but  narrowly,  escaped  in  the  years 
immediately  preceding  the  Union. 

When  even  a  man  so  enlightened  as  Fletcher  of 
Saltoun  was  carried  away  by  the  narrower  view  of 
patriotism,  and  wrote,  spoke,  and  acted  in  the  in- 
terest of  Separation,  we  are  better  able  to  estimate 
all  we  owe  to  those  wiser  Patriots  who  saw  that  the 
larger  hopes,  and  the  wider  interests  of  their  Country 
were  identified  with  the  cause  of  Union.  Fletcher, 
we  are  told,  "  disliked  England  merely  because  he 
loved  Scotland  to  excess." l  It  was  a  dangerous 
moment.  The  centrifugal  forces  had  begun  to 
work  with  great  momentum.  They  were  arrested 
just  in  time.  It  is  pleasant  to  remember  that  not 
a  few  of  those  who  made  this  resistance  effectual, 
and  directed  the  national  feeling  into  the  true 
channel  of  Imperial  greatness, — my  own  ancestors 
being  among  the  number,2 — were  descendants  of  the 
men  who  had  seen  the  great  work  of  Union  begun 
in  the  old  alliance  of  Malcolm  and  of  Margaret ;  of 
those  who  in  a  later  time  had  fought  for,  and  with, 
the  Bruce ;  and  of  those  who  in  generations  yet 
more  recent  had  stood  by  the  Scottish  Monarchy  for 
three  hundred  years,  against  the  disintegrating 
anarchy  of  the  Clans.  And  now  in  happier  times 
they  saw  that  the  interests  of  their  country,  and  its 
glory,  lay  in  assuming  its  full  share  of  imperial 
duties  under  one  Imperial  Crown.  All  they  asked 
was  that  Scotland  should  retain  everything  that 
she  cared  to  keep  of  her  own  domestic  Institutions 
in  Religion  and  in  Law. 

The  patriotic  men  who  effected  the  Union  of  the 
two  Nations  wisely  insisted  too,  as  an  indispensable 
condition,  on  a  perfect  equality  between  them  in 
all  the  privileges  of  Trade.  England  also  consented 

1  Dalrymple's  Memoirs,  vol.  iii.  p.  129. 

2  John,  Duke  of  Argyll  and  Greenwich,  was  Queen  Anne's  Commis- 
sioner in  the  Parliament  of   1705,  which  passed  the  Act  authorising  the 
Treaty  of  Union;    whilst  his  brother,  Lord  Islay,  was  one  of  the  Com- 
missioners who  framed  the  Treaty. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  363 

to  refund  to  Scotland  the  losses  she  had  occasioned 
by  her  violent  conduct  in  the  Darien  enterprise. 
The  whole  Capital  Stock  of  the  Company  was  to  be 
repaid,  with  interest.1  This,  however,  was  a  small 
matter  compared  with  the  removal  of  all  impedi- 
ments to  Enterprise.  The  effect  was  immediate 
and  enormous.  Scotchmen  not  only  gained  a  full 
share  of  the  expanding  commerce  of  the  world,  but 
shot  ahead  of  all  rivals  and  competitors  in  the 
race  of  industry  and  of  maritime  activity.  Before 
the  Union,  Greenock  consisted  of  two  straggling 
Villages,  each  of  them  with  a  single  row  of  cottages, 
most  of  them  thatched,  fronting  the  natural  beach. 
Only  one  of  them  had  even  the  accommodation 
of  a  wooden  pier  along  which  any  vessel  could  lie. 
Everywhere  else  along  the  shore  the  boats  could 
only  be  drawn  up  upon  the  shingle.2  The  first 
ship  that  ever  sailed  from  Greenock  for  the  Ameri- 
can Continent  had  sailed  in  1695,  and  that  solitary 
ship  was  destined  for  the  Darien  Settlement.  The 
moment  the  Union  was  accomplished  a  new  life 
was  opened,  and  a  new  career  begun. 

But  Trade  and  Navigation  were  not  the  only 
industries  which  received  a  new  impetus  at  the 
Union.  There  was  another,  older  and  of  neces- 
sity slower  in  its  growth,  which  began  at  the 
same  time  to  feel  the  new  blood  that  was  stir- 
ring the  national  life,  and  penetrating  all  its 
members.  The  scene  before  us,  as  we  look  from 
the  Southern  Shores  of  the  Firth  of  Clyde,  is  one 
specially  representative  and  characteristic  of  all  the 
peculiar  conditions  of  Agriculture  in  Scotland,  then, 
and  ever  since.  There  are  many  large  parts  of 
England  which  have  been  cultivated  land  since 
before  the  Conquest.  Local  memories  do  not  go 
back  to  the  time  when  these  areas  were  first 
cleared  and  settled.  In  Scotland,  too,  there  are 

1  Article  xv.  of  Treaty  of  Union.     Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  viii.,  Append, 
p.  203. 

2  Smiles's  Lives  of  Boulton  and  Watt. 


364  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

some  areas  of  land,  comparatively  small,  which  are 
in  the  same  position.  But  by  far  the  largest  part 
of  the  country,  not  only  in  the  Highlands,  but  also 
in  the  Lowlands,  were  "  brown  heath  and  shaggy 
wood  "-  —forest,  bog,  morass,  and  stony  waste — down 
to  the  time  of  our  grandfathers — sometimes  down 
to  the  time  of  our  fathers — not  seldom  down  even 
to  our  own  recent  years. 

No  such  transformation  has  taken  place  in  any 
country  within  so  short  a  space — unless,  indeed,  in 
the  case  of  new  and  savage  lands,  suddenly  brought 
under  the  dominion  of  civilised  Man.  And  of  this 
great  change  the  whole  country  which  encircles  the 
harbour  of  Greenock  is  a  typical  example.  There 
is  hardly  an  acre  of  level  arable  land  visible  to  the 
eye.  The  few  that  exist  are  so  foreshortened,  and 
so  dominated  by  mountains  or  hilly  surfaces  that 
they  form  no  feature  in  the  landscape.  Early  in  the 
present  Century,  during  the  war  with  France,  some 
French  prisoners  were  sent  in  a  frigate  to  the 
Clyde.  One  of  them,  on  looking  round  him  from 
the  deck,  exclaimed,  with  almost  a  shudder  at  the 
prospect,  "  Ah !  quelle  Terre  aride  ! "  This  may 
have  been  a  natural  impression  for  a  Frenchman 
who  perhaps  came  from  beautiful  Provence,  and 
who  had  no  idea  of  any  fertility  except  in  abun- 
dance of  Corn,  and  Oil,  and  Wine.  It  was  never- 
theless a  most  erroneous  impression,  because  in  no 
part  of  the  South  of  Europe  are  the  mountains  so 
well  clothed  with  grasses  as  in  the  West  of  Scot- 
land. The  naked  limestone  Ranges  of  the  Maritime 
Alps,  of  Italy,  and  of  Greece,  are  barrenness  itself 
compared  with  the  schistose  Hills  of  Dumbarton 
and  Argyll.  But  the  Frenchman's  impression  was 
at  least  so  far  well  founded,  that  the  land  around 
him  on  every  side,  whether  on  the  Lowland  and 
Southern,  or  on  the  Highland  and  Northern  Shore, 
was  a  land  which  gave  no  indications  of  an  ancient 
and  settled  agriculture.  It  was  a  land  which 
yielded  nothing  except  to  laborious  Reclamation,  and 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  365 

when  he  spoke,  that  Reclamation  had  not  proceeded 
very  far.  Even  now  when  fields,  and  enclosures  of 
every  kind,  have  climbed  the  hills,  and  spread 
along  all  the  shores,  there  is  little  that  can  convey 
to  us  through  the  eye  any  adequate  impression  of 
the  Work  which  has  been  done, — of  the  Capital 
which  has  been  invested — of  the  Enterprise  which 
has  been  shown — of  the  prodigious  change  which 
has  been  effected.  In  this  respect  Agriculture  is  at 
a  disadvantage  as  compared  with  other  kinds  of 
industry.  It  is  peaceful,  quiet,  unostentatious.  The 
great  buildings, — the  tall  chimneys, — the  crowded 
quays, — the  gallant  ships, — the  forest  of  masts, 
which  all  catch  the  eye  and  impose  on  the  imagi- 
nation when  we  look  at  any  of  the  great  Hives  of 
manufacturing  or  maritime  activity, — are  all  in  sin- 
gular contrast  with  the  unobtrusive  instruments, 
and  the  equally  unobtrusive  results  of  Husbandry. 
No  man  can  see  the  tangled  woods  which  have 
been  cleared,  the  bogs  which  have  been  drained, 
the  stones  and  boulders  which  have  been  blasted, 
broken,  and  removed.  Still  less  can  we  see  the 
ignorance  which  had  to  be  encountered,  the  stiff 
resistances  of  prejudice  which  had  to  be  overborne.  It 
has  come  to  pass  that  the  results  of  forethought,  and 
of  skill,  and  of  faith  in  principles,  are  all  now  repre- 
sented by  nothing  but  the  silent  growths  of  Nature. 
Agriculture  hides  her  laborious  works  under  the 
verdure,  or  under  the  golden  radiance,  of  her  fruits. 

Some  personal  recollections  of  the  second  quarter 
of  this  Century  will  give  an  excellent  illustration  of 
this  prominent  distinction,  and  of  the  kind  of  work 
which  had  been  going  on  during  the  life  of  men  who 
were  then  still  in  the  vigour  of  their  years. 

All  round  the  shores  of  Scotland,  but  specially 
conspicuous  along  the  shores  of  the  Firth  of  Clyde, 
there  are  the  marks  of  an  Old  Coast  Line,  which  is 
from  30  to  40  feet  above  the  present  line  of  tide. 
At  some  date  which  we  do  not  know,  and  by  some 
agency  which  is  not  thoroughly  understood,  but 


366  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

which,  geologically  speaking,  has  been  very  recent, 
the  whole  of  Scotland  seems  to  have  been  hitched 
up  out  of  the  surrounding  seas  to  that  extent.  If 
it  be  possible  for  the  Ocean  to  change  its  level,  and 
suddenly  to  sink  or  retreat  below  the  line  at  which 
it  has  stood  for  centuries,  without  any  corresponding 
change  in  particular  areas  of  the  land  itself,  the 
effect  may  be  due  to  such  a  change.  This  is  a 
geological  and  a  physical  problem  which  must  be 
left  to  speculation  and  to  science.  Whatever  may 
be  the  explanation,  the  fact  is  certain.  The  old  level 
of  the  sea  is  indicated  by  a  line,  more  or  less  con- 
tinuous, of  steep  banks  or  low  rocky  precipices,  which 
present  in  many  places  the  distinctive  features  of 
cove  and  cave,  and  of  under-cut  shelves  of  rock. 
These  are  the  well-known  work  of  water  gnawing  at 
the  land.  The  sea  must  have  washed  our  Island  at 
this  higher  level  for  long  and  uncounted  ages.  The 
horizontal  distance  between  that  Old  Coast  Line  and 
our  present  Coast  Line  varies  greatly,  of  course, 
according  to  the  conformation  of  the  land,  and  the 
consequent  shallowness  or  depth  of  the  water  at 
different  portions  of  the  shore.  In  some  places 
where  the  shore  was,  and  still  is  steep,  the  Old 
Coast  Line  is  close  to  the  existing  line — only  lifted 
higher  up.  In  other  places  where  the  old  shores 
were  shallow,  the  space  which  has  been  left  dry  by 
the  retreat  of  the  sea  is  very  wide — sometimes  one 
or  two  hundred  yards. 

There  is  no  physical  feature  of  our  country 
more  distinctive  than  this  difference  between  two 
portions  of  the  old  sea-margin — the  sudden  bank 
and  the  flats  below.  Nor  is  there  any  more 
intimately  associated  with  separate  historic  times. 
The  precipitous  rock  or  bank  was  the  home 
of  the  Military  Ages.  Upon  it  they  built  their 
"Towers  along  the  Steep."  The  level  lands 
between  it  and  the  sea  were  left  for  the  Industrial 
Ages  to  occupy  and  reclaim.  In  this  historical 
separation  there  were,  no  doubt,  some  exceptions. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  367 

Where  the  old  sea-bottom  had  been  sandy  or 
muddy,  it  was  speedily  covered  with  sward.  In 
such  places  it  often  became  the  site  of  such  agri- 
culture as  was  known  and  practised  by  the  earliest 
human  inhabitants.  But  generally  along  our  ex- 
posed and  rocky  shores  the  spaces  thus  added  to  the 
land  had  a  very  different  character.  They  had  been 
swept  for  Centuries  by  the  ice  rafts  of  the  Glacial 
Age.  They  had  been  covered  with  the  boulders 
and  stony  rubbish  which  these  rafts  bore  away  from 
fretted  and  disintegrating  shores.  Upon  such  sur- 
faces, when  upraised,  nothing  but  the  rough  forests 
of  ancient  Caledonia  could  find  a  footing.  When 
these  had  been  destroyed  by  fire  or  flood,  peat 
mosses  had  been  formed,  or  the  land  remained  as 
hard  and  stony  as  when  first  it  had  been  elevated 
above  the  sea.  These  old  wastes  and  woods  are 
now  generally  reclaimed.  Very  often  they  are  the 
best  fields  upon  the  best  farms.  Very  often  they  are 
the  sites  of  comfortable  Villas,  or  of  thriving  Towns. 
Yet  the  processes  by  which  this  great  change 
has  been  effected  are  out  of  sight  and  out  of 
mind.  The  very  peacefulness  of  the  scene  takes 
away  all  sense  of  Work,  and  all  memory  of  the 
Workers.  I  speak  from  experience.  I  was  born 
and  brought  up  in  a  Castle  which,  somewhere  about 
the  Twelfth  Century,  had  been  built  upon  the  top  of 
the  Old  Coast  Line,  where  the  last  of  the  Highland 
mountains  slopes  into  the  basin  of  the  Clyde.  It 
was  the  stronghold  of  the  Clan  Macaulay.  They  were 
descended  from  a  younger  branch  of  the  old  Earls  of 
Lennox,  and  all  through  the  Military  Ages  they  had 
kept  their  ground  in  their  Strong  House  of  Arden- 
caple.  From  improvidence  in  expenditure — pro- 
bably from  joining  in  the  new  habits  of  civilised  life 
before  new  values  of  produce  had  enabled  them  to 
afford  it  —  their  extensive  possessions  had  been 
gradually  alienated,  and  the  last  portion  of  them 
had  been  acquired  by  Lord  Frederick  Campbell  in 
the  latter  half  of  the  last  Century.  Not  until  after 


368  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

they  were  dispersed  had  they  produced  any  very 
distinguished  man.  It  was  reserved  for  them  in 
our  own  time  to  give  birth  to  the  most  brilliant 
Essayist,  and  one  of  the  most  interesting  His- 
torians in  the  English  tongue.  The  Macaulays 
had  lost  their  lands  just  before  the  Age  of  In- 
dustry had  begun.  They  had  not  been  im- 
provers. Yet  from  the  high  Tower  which  in  later 
times  had  been  raised  upon  the  massive  foundations, 
and  the  dungeon-like  apartments  of  the  old  Castle 
of  the  Clan,  I  used  to  look  down  in  childhood 
upon  a  broad  field  of  level  and  fertile  land,  between 
the  Castle  and  the  sea,  grazed  by  "  deep  uddered 
kine" — sometimes  loaded  with  golden  sheaves — 
and  sometimes  rich  in  the  untainted  foliage,  with 
its  purple  and  yellow  flowers,  which  used  to  make 
the  Potato  crop  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  all. 
Those  were  still  the  early  days  of  steam  navigation 
in  the  West  of  Scotland,  and  I  recollect  one  river 
boat,  which  could  be  held  in  the  cabin  of  some  of 
the  great  Liners  now  yearly  launched,  which  was 
called  the  "  Pride  of  the  Clyde."  All  the  talk  I 
heard  was  of  the  opening  triumphs  of  the  Engineer— 
of  the  future  of  navigation  on  the  Ocean,  and  of  the 
yet  unsolved  problem  of  the  navigation  of  the  Air. 
The  two  brothers  Hart,  from  whom  Mr.  Smiles  has 
borrowed  some  pleasant  anecdotes  of  James  Watt,1 
were  favourite  guests — simple,  and  self-made  men 
from  Glasgow,  full  of  knowledge  and  of  suggestion  on 
every  problem  of  science  applied  to  use.  My  Father 2 
was  a  mechanic,  and  not  an  agriculturist.  He  was 
himself  an  accomplished  workman,  making,  with 
exquisite  finish,  various  implements  and  articles  in 
wood,  and  in  ivory,  and  in  metal.  Nothing  was  ever 
said  of  the  older,  slower,  and  less  exciting  conquests 
over  Nature,  and  over  the  waste  condition  in  which  her 
great  natural  Engines  had  left  the  encumbered  soil. 
And  yet  there  was  one  tool-mark  of  the  Ke- 

1  Lives  of  Boulton  and  Watt,  pp.  499,  etc. 

2  John,  seventh  Duke  of  Argyll,  then  Lord  John  Campbell. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  369 

claimer  which  might  have  recalled  his  work.  Run- 
ning straight  from  the  foot  of  the  old  Coast  Line 
down  to  the  sea,  through  the  middle  of  the  cul- 
tivated flats,  there  was  one  deep  and  open  cutting, 
called  by  the  country  people  the  "Red  Drain." 
It  had  been  excavated  out  of  the  solid  Old  Red 
Sandstone  rock,  which  there  overlies  the  flanks  of 
the  Highland  Schists.  I  had  often  been  attracted 
to  its  edges  by  the  wild  strawberries,  which  nowhere 
else  grew  so  large  ;  and  by  the  thickets  of  bramble 
in  which  the  Whitethroat  skulked  and  sang.  But 
a  chasm — in  some  places  between  seven  and  eight 
feet  deep — with  smooth  sides  of  rock,  not  easily 
climbed,  seemed  to  a  child  rather  a  formidable  trap. 
Of  its  history  and  of  its  purpose  I  knew  nothing 
— till  old  documents,  in  faded  ink,  have  in  later 
years  revealed  the  story.  It  was  the  great  Outfall 
by  which  the  fruitful  fields,  I  had  so  often  looked 
over  from  the  Tower  of  the  Macaulays,  had  been 
redeemed  from  the  condition  in  which  they  had  been 
left  by  the  Glacial  Age,  and  by  the  tangled  thickets 
of  "  Woody  Caledon."  The  operation  at  the  time 
had  been  the  talk  and  the  wonder  of  the  neighbour- 
hood, in  a  generation  not  long  preceding  that  in  which 
my  childhood  was  spent.  The  Red  Drain  had  been 
cut  at  a  cost  which  was  considered  fabulous  at  the 
time — a  time  when  money  was  as  yet  scarce  in 
Scotland.  The  surrounding  areas  on  both  sides 
had  been  sub-drained  and  trenched  at  a  further 
outlay,  not  less  new  and  astonishing  to  the  natives. 
Great  roots  and  prostrate  trunks  of  Oak  and  Fir 
had  been  uncovered  in  the  operations.  Loads  of 
stones  had  been  dug  up,  carted  away,  and  built 
into  dikes,  whilst  boggy  holes  and  quagmires 
had  been  filled  up  and  levelled.  Without  any 
mention  of  details,  significant  allusions  to  the 
change  effected  by  Lord  Frederick  are  to  be  found 
in  writings  published  before  the  close  of  the 
Century.  Thus  we  hear  that  land  on  which  Cattle 
could  not  walk  with  safety,  had,  in  1794,  been  con- 

2  A 


370  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

verted  into  land  firm  enough,  to  bear  their  weight.1 
Before  this  operation  we  are  further  told  that  not 
even  a  Dog  could  have  run  over  it  without  sinking 
to  the  belly.  This  account,  meagre  as  it  is,  testifies 
to  a  further  and  a  later  change  almost  as  great  as 
that  which  had  already  been  accomplished  in  1794. 
To  speak  of  any  one  of  the  fields  on  the  Estate  of 
Ardencaple  as  sound  enough  to  bear  the  weight  of 
Cattle,  would,  in  my  earliest  years,  have  been  as 
absurd  as  to  speak  in  the  same  language  of  the 
oldest  wheat  lands  of  Essex  or  of  the  Lothians. 
Over  some  700  acres,  every  foot  of  which  I  knew,  it 
is  hardly  conceivable  to  me,  even  now,  where  any 
marsh  or  bog  can  possibly  have  existed.  Long  before 
1823  not  a  trace,  and  strange  to  say,  hardly  a  memory 
had  remained  of  their  unreclaimed  condition.  The 
very  perfection  and  completeness  of  the  work  had 
rendered  it  impossible  to  think  of  it  as  a  work  at  all. 
It  was  another  country,  and  in  all  its  surroundings 
it  may  almost  be  said  to  have  been  another  world. 

This  story  of  a  particular  case  is  the  story  of  a 
movement  which  soon  became  general  and  simul- 
taneous over  the  whole  of  Scotland.  It  is  a  vignette 
from  a  great  Picture.  It  presents  to  us  the  starting- 
point, — the  position  and  the  character  of  those  who 
began  the  race, — the  triumphs  they  achieved,  and 
the  causes  also  which  have  led  in  our  day  to  a  very 
inadequate  appreciation  of  them.  Everywhere  in 
Scotland,  not  only  on  the  shores  of  the  Old  Coast 
Line,  but  on  all  the  slopes  of  all  the  hills — on  many 
of  the  great  plains  which  were  swamps  and  peat- 
mosses,— on  every  variety  of  surface  which  was 
covered  with  tangled  thickets  of  Alder  and  Birch 
and  Oak, — over  large  areas  which  had  before  been 
cultivated  in  spots  and  patches — the  work  of  agricul- 
ture in  Scotland  has  been  the  work  of  laborious  and 
costly  reclamation.  That  work  was  begun  by  the 
Owners  as  a  pleasure  and  a  pursuit,  when  as  yet  its 

1  Ure's  Agriculture  of  Dumbartonshire,  p.  27  :     Reports  to  Board  of 
Agriculture,  1794. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  371 

economical  results  were  doubtful,  and  when  the 
outlay  was  as  far  beyond  the  means  of  the  culti- 
vating class,  as  the  effects  of  it  were  beyond  their 
comprehension  and  belief.  It  was  objected  at  the 
time  to  such  improvements  that  they  cost  many 
times  more  than  the  price  of  the  "  fee-simple "  of 
the  land  ; — that  other  land  of  much  greater  extent, 
and  of  better  quality,  might  be  bought  for  less  than 
quarter — often  for  less  than  a  tenth  part — of  the 
enormous  outlay  thus  incurred.  And  all  this  was 
true.  Such  land  was  really  made,  not  merely  in- 
herited or  bought.  It  was  redeemed  from  absolute 
waste,  and  rendered  contributory  for  the  first  time 
to  the  sustenance  of  Man.  Where  the  Snipe 
probed  in  quagmires,  and  the  Badger  burrowed 
under  roots  of  trees,  and  under  cairns  of  stone, 
very  soon  new  ploughs  were  turning  the  furrow, 
and  Cows  of  a  newly  created  breed  were  filling 
the  pails  with  milk. 

The  Pioneers  in  this  immense  work  of  re- 
clamation were  invariably  the  larger  Landowners, 
both  because  generally  they  were  the  only  men  who, 
by  intercourse  with  an  older  civilisation  in  the 
South,  had  acquired  the  spirit,  and  the  knowledge, 
which  are  the  moving  influences  of  the  world,  but 
also  because  they  were  the  only  men  who  had  any 
command  at  all  over  the  capital  necessary  for  the 
work.  The  last  Macaulays  seem  to  have  been  a 
perfect  type  of  the  true  old  Celtic  school  of  men 
who  thought  much  of  their  Chiefery,  of  their  old 
connection  with  the  Clan  Gregor,  and  of  the  retainers 
whom  they  could  send  out  to  fight  or  reive  in 
alliance  with  them,1  but  who  thought  nothing  of 
the  acres  under  their  own  power  which  could  be 
made  to  bear  the  fruits  of  industry  and  of  peace. 
And  so  when,  after  the  Union,  first  of  the  Crowns, 
and  then  of  the  Parliaments,  the  possibility  of  living 
came  to  depend  not  on  swords  and  dirks,  but  on 
ploughshares  and  the  spade,  their  resources  were 

1  Irving's  History  of  Dumbartonshire,  p.  424. 


372  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

dried  up,  and  they  sank  into  irremediable  decay. 
The  roof  of  the  old  Castle  of  the  Macaulays  was 
falling  in,  and  their  once  extensive  territory  had 
dwindled  to  a  few  farms,  when  the  last  of  them, 
somewhere  about  1765,  .had  to  sell  the  remnant.1 
The  old  coast  lines,  over  which  they  had  looked  for 
centuries,  and  the  wastes  and  morasses  which  they 
had  valued  only  for  purposes  of  defence,  came  into 
the  possession  first  of  my  grandfather,  and  subse- 
quently of  his  brother,  Lord  Frederick  Camp- 
bell. This  was  the  very  year,  more  perhaps 
than  any  other  definite  date  that  can  be  named, 
when  the  first  streaks  of  the  Industrial  Dawn  were 
breaking  into  Day.  Both  in  manufactures  and  in 
agriculture  this  was  about  the  birthday  of  the  new 
life  in  the  West  of  Scotland.  Fortunately,  the  place 
of  such  Chiefs  as  the  Macaulays  was  very  often  taken 
— not  by  strangers,  but  by  other  Highlanders  as  Cel- 
tic as  themselves,  but  who  had  kept  in  the  stream  of 
advancing  civilisation — had  enlisted  in  theRegiments 
of  Industry, — and  had  opened  their  eyes  to  a  wider 
horizon  than  the  mountain  battlements  of  Glen- 
fruin.  They  were  men  who  had  carried  on  those  best 
traditions  of  Scotland  which  had  been  embodied  in 
the  appeal  from  Chiefs  to  Owners,  and  who  now,  in 
the  morning  of  a  new  day,  devoted  all  the  power, 
and  influence,  and  wealth  which  had  come  from  a 
wise  rule  over  Tribe  and  Sept,  and  Clan,  to  the 
strengthening  of  an  Imperial  Crown,  and  to  increas- 
ing the  resources  of  a  united  People. 

If  such  men  had  not  thrown  themselves  into 
the  new  work,  it  would  have  been  postponed 
indefinitely.  But  they  did  throw  themselves 
into  the  work  with  an  admirable  spirit,  and  a 
high  intelligence.  Across  a  narrow  strait  of 
water  belonging  to  the  Firth  of  Clyde,  the 
elder  brother  of  Lord  Frederick,  John  Fifth 
Duke  of  Argyll,  was  carrying  on  similar  reclama- 
tions on  a  much  larger  scale  upon  his  Estate  of 

1  Irving's  History  of  Dumbartonshire,  p.  424. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  373 

Rosneath.  There,  on  the  same  old  Coast  Line, 
Edward  I.  of  England  had  held  a  Strength  when 
he  was  attempting  the  subjugation  of  Scotland, 
and  there,  in  the  capture  and  burning  of  the  Castle, 
one  of  the  traditionary  exploits  of  Sir  William 
Wallace  had  been  achieved.  There  the  Glacial  Sea 
had  wound  round  the  whole  Peninsula — insinuating 
itself  into  intricate  creeks  and  coves,  where  dead 
valves  of  the  great  Clam l  are  frequent — a  shell  fish 
now  living  in  Arctic  regions,  where  it  is  the 
favourite  food  of  the  Walrus,  but  which  has 
finally  disappeared  from  the  shores  of  Clyde,  along 
with  the  icy  temperature  in  which  it  flourished. 
All  the  flats  and  ancient  shores,  corresponding 
with  those  of  the  old  Macaulay  lands,  are  now 
covered  with  fine  timber,  or  converted  into  good 
arable  soil,  every  acre  of  it  planted  and  re- 
claimed during  the  same  years.  Men  with  whom 
I  have  myself  spoken  recollected  the  time  when  a 
favourite  horse  had  been  lost  in  a  bog-hole  which 
is  now  the  most  fertile  corner  of  a  spacious  field. 

Such  operations  were  no  matters  of  routine  then. 
They  were  the  beginning  of  a  new  era.  They  were 
the  fruit  of  a  new  impulse  set  up  by  men  whose 
minds  had  been  awakened  by  contact  with  wide 
movements  and  Imperial  interests.  Lord  Frederick 
was  the  first  public  man  who  brought  the  influence 
of  Government  to  bear  upon  the  systematic  preserva- 
tion of  our  neglected  National  Muniments.  He  was 
the  first  head  of  the  newly  founded  Register  House 
of  Edinburgh;  and  in  that  great  national  Institution 
the  benignant  wisdom  of  his  countenance  is  still 
preserved  by  Gainsborough's  incomparable  brush. 
Another  brother,  Lord  William  Campbell,  was 
Governor  of  South  Carolina,  where  so  many  Scotch- 
men and  Highlanders  had  gone,  or  were  going 
before  the  revolt  of  the  Colonies.  He  was  after- 
wards Governor  of  Nova  Scotia,  where  he  founded 

1  The  Pecten  Islandicus,  a  very  handsome  shell  common  in  the  glacial 
clays. 


374  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  Town  of  Campbeltown  on  the  southern  shore 
of  the  Bay  of  Chaleur,  where  that  great  Inlet  is 
joined  by  the  beautiful  river,  the  Restigouche, 
which  divides  the  Provinces  of  New  Brunswick 
and  Quebec.  The  eldest  of  the  brothers,  John, 
Fifth  Duke,  had  begun  life  in  the  army,  had 
fought  at  Dettingen,  had  learnt  affairs  under  his 
two  cousins,  his  most  eminent  predecessors,  and 
from  their  friend  Culloden.  He  was  the  second 
Lieutenant-Colonel  of  the  Black  Watch,  and  had 
done  much  to  discipline  them  before  their  depar- 
ture for  Canada  in  1757.  He  succeeded  in  1770, 
and  spent  the  rest  of  his  life  in  devoted  attention 
to  agricultural  improvement,  dying  in  1806  the 
oldest  Field-Marshal  in  the  British  army. 

Such  were  the  men  and  such  was  the  class  of 
men  who  all  over  Scotland  carried  on  and  began 
and  established  the  work  of  Kural  Reform.  It 
needed  all  their  mental  activity,  all  their  enlight- 
enment, all  their  influence,  and  all  their  wealth 
to  make  even  a  beginning.  In  almost  every  County 
it  is  the  same  story.  In  looking  over  the  detailed 
Reports  to  the  Board  of  Agriculture  in  1794-95,  it 
is  impossible  not  to  be  struck  by  the  great  part 
played  by  the  principal  Landowners  all  over  Scot- 
land, in  stirring  up  into  a  new  life  the  dead  and 
inert  elements  with  which  they  had  to  deal.  In 
the  North  the  family  of  the  Dukes  of  Gordon  is 
remembered  as  the  beginners  of  the  work,1  stimu- 
lated, as  it  is  said,  so  early  as  1706,  by  an  English- 
woman, daughter  of  the  Earl  of  Peterborough,  who 
was  himself  a  great  improver  in  the  South.  In  Ayr- 
shire the  Earl  of  Eglinton  takes  a  high  rank  among 
the  most  energetic  improvers  of  the  country.2  In 
East  Lothian  the  Haddington  family  were  eminent, 
whilst  the  Tweeddales  also  remind  us  of  those  earlier 
Hays  who  were  the  improving  Tacksmen  under  the 
Abbots  of  Scone  in  1312.  In  Fife  the  very  ancient 

1  Northern  Rural  Life,  p.  24  (D.  Douglas,  Edinburgh,  1877). 

2  Reports,  vol.  i.,  Agriculture  of  Ayr,  p.  16. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  375 

title  of  Rothes  acquired  a  new  eminence  in  the  arts 
of  peace.  In  Banff  an  Earl  of  Findlater  receives 
especial  honour  from  all  contemporary  accounts *  for 
his  exertions  both  in  agricultural  and  manufacturing 
industry.  From  the  great  County  of  Aberdeen, 
which  had  been  terribly  desolated  by  the  years  of 
famine  at  the  close  of  the  previous  century,  and  a 
large  area  of  which  had  actually  been  abandoned 
and  thrown  out  of  cultivation,  we  are  told  that  to 
enumerate  all  those  to  whom  its  recovery,  and 
subsequent  advance  were  due,  it  would  be  necessary 
to  give  a  complete  list  of  all  the  gentlemen  in  the 
County.2 

The  class  of  capitalist  Tenant  Farmers  had 
not  yet  arisen,  or  were  only  beginning  to  appear 
in  the  South  and  East.  The  introduction  of  one 
of  this  class  from  East  Lothian  into  Ayrshire  by 
the  Earl  of  Eglinton,  is  specially  mentioned  as  an 
epoch  in  the  West.  There  also  some  of  the 
smaller  Proprietors  had  more  means,  and  they 
early  joined  the  race.  But  all  over  the  West 
Country,  and  all  over  the  Highlands,  this  class 
had  little  or  no  command  of  money.  The  ex- 
treme poverty  of  the  country  in  the  middle,  and 
during  the  whole  of  the  latter  half  of  the  last 
Century,  seems  almost  incredible.  Some  of  the 
oldest  families  in  the  Lennox,  and  some  of  the  most 
considerable  Landowners,  were  obliged  to  have  re- 
course to  loans  when  they  were  called  upon  to  pay 
sums  of  the  most  trifling  amount.  The  Dennistouns 
of  Dennistoun,  a  Knightly  family,  so  old,  that  their 
boast  was  that  Kings  had  come  from  them,  not  they 
from  Kings,  in  borrowing  £33,  6s.  8d.  from  the 
Minister  of  Cardross,  somewhere  about  1720-5,  had 
to  grant  a  bond  backed  by  two  Glasgow  merchants. 
The  Napiers  of  Kilmahew,  the  most  ancient  repre- 
sentatives of  an  illustrious  name,  in  the  same  Parish, 

1  Reports,  vol.  i.,  Agriculture  of  Banff,  p.   13.     The  Findlater  family 
is  now  merged  in  the  Earldom  of  Seafield. 

2  Agriculture  of  Aberdeenshire,  p.  75,  Reports,  vol.  i. 


376  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

were,  in  1732,  in  much  trouble  about  a  bill  amount- 
ing to  £6,  5s.  SJrd.1  Illustrations  without  number 
could  be  given  of  the  same  kind.  The  whole  circu- 
lating medium  in  all  Scotland,  at  the  time  of  the 
Darien  scheme,  was  supposed  to  be  not  more  than 
£800,000,  and  of  this  one-half  was  risked  and  lost 
in  that  unfortunate  speculation.2 

But  although  Scotland,  at  this  time,  was  a 
country  singularly  poor  in  realised  Capital,  it  was  a 
country  rich  in  everything  that  is  the  source  and 
the  fountain  out  of  which  Capital  can  be  made. 
Scotland  had  an  immense  "  Wages-Fund."  For 
here  we  come  upon  distinctions  of  the  very  highest 
interest  and  importance.  The  "  Wages-Fund"  is  a 
formal  and  scholastic  phrase  belonging  to  anti- 
quated theories  of  Political  Economy.  The  doctrine 
it  expressed  has  been  fiercely  and  successfully 
assailed  in  the  interests  of  Muscle,  and  the  op- 
ponents of  the  doctrine  have  made  good  a  portion 
of  their  case.  It  is  not  true  that  the  wages  of  Mus- 
cular Labour  come  only  from  realised  Capital.  That 
kind  of  Labour  has  a  good  right  to  vindicate  its 
own  inherent  contribution  to  Value.  Without  its 
help  no  Value  can  be  embodied,  and  no  Capital  can 
be  gathered.  Wages  may  be  advanced  for  a  time 
out  of  the  savings  of  the  past,  but  only  in  the  con- 
fident expectation  that  they  will  be  more  than 
repaid  out  of  the  gains  of  the  future.  Wages  there- 
fore come  out  of  Work,  and  Muscular  Labour  is  a 
rightful  sharer,  to  the  stipulated  extent,  in  the 
ultimate  Value  to  which  it  contributes.  It  may 
fairly  be  said  that,  whilst  standing  in  some  aspects 
pretty  nearly  abreast  in  the  fighting  lines  of  Indus- 
try, Muscular  Labour  comes  rather  before  than 
behind  its  comrade,  Capital.  It  certainly  can  find, 
and  has  often  found,  employment  where  there 
has  been  little  or  no  Capital — little  or  no  money — 
whether  accumulated  in  Banks,  or  in  Shares,  or  in 

1  Old  Cardross :  a  Lecture  by  David  Murray,  M.A.,  1880. 

2  Life  of  W.  Paterson  :  Chambers's  Biographical  Dictionat-y. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  377 

the  more  primitive  investments  of  silver  and  gold 
hidden  in  holes,  or  kept  in  stockings.  Money  must 
be  made  before  it  can  be  saved  or  stored ;  and  in 
the  getting  of  money  or  of  money's  worth  some 
kind  of  Muscular  Labour  is  always  of  necessity  con- 
cerned. But  the  truth  is  that  both  these  sources  of 
Wealth,  whilst  nearly  equal  in  rank  as  between 
themselves,  stand  a  long  way  behind  and  below 
another,  which  is  nearer  than  both  to  the  fountain- 
head.  Capital  is  the  product  and  representative  of 
a  prior  and  a  deeper  source.  Men  who  have  no 
Capita] — no  hoarded  or  accumulated  money — will, 
nevertheless,  employ  Muscle,  if  they  have  a  reason- 
able expectation  that  it  can  be  hired  for  a  stipulated 
Wage,  and  that  the  value  conferred  on  mere  physi- 
cal work  by  the  higher  agencies  of  Enterprise  and 
Forethought,  will  belong  securely  to  those  who  wield 
them.  But  this  reasonable  expectation  can  only 
be  entertained  where  the  laws  of  Covenant  and  of 
Ownership  are  firmly  settled.  Such  a  system  of 
Law  therefore  is  the  richest  inheritance  of  any 
people.  It  is  the  true  Wages-Fund.  Like  all 
other  things  of  the  highest  rank  in  Nature,  it  is 
intellectual  and  moral — not  physical  or  material. 
Here,  as  elsewhere,  it  is  true  that  the  things  which 
are  seen  are  temporal,  but  the  things  which  are  not 
seen  are  eternal. 

Scotland  was  then  poor,  not  only  in  money,  but 
in  money's  worth,  so  far  as  actual  productions  were 
concerned.  The  habits  and  usages  of  her  people 
were  rude  and  ignorant.  Like  many  other  cus- 
toms, their  usages  were  tending  more  and  more 
to  mischief.  Their  miserable  agriculture  had  been 
getting  worse  and  worse.  The  small  area  of  soil 
which  alone  had  been  cultivated  was  getting  more 
and  more  exhausted  from  over-cropping.  Their 
desperate  local  attachment  was  leading  to  reckless 
sub-division.  In  the  Highlands  ancient  predatory 
habits  had  grown  into  such  settled  and  almost 
acknowledged  customs  of  robbery  by  violence,  that 


378  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

regular  Blackmail  rents  were  paid  to  the  Robber 
Clans,  as  the  price  of  exemption.  But  these  usages 
—and  others  less  conspicuous,  but  hardly  less 
destructive  —  had  never  been  allowed  by  the 
Parliaments  of  Scotland,  or  by  her  Judges,  to 
corrupt  her  Law.  Rooted  in  an  ancient  and  noble 
civilisation,  that  Law  had  been  not  only  kept 
pure,  but,  without  departure  from  fundamental 
principles,  had  been  adapted  from  time  to  time  to 
new  requirements  of  Society.  Her  poverty  was 
thus,  as  it  were,  accidental,  temporary,  and  super- 
ficial— arising  only  from  ignorance  of  some  natural 
laws,  and  of  some  natural  products.  The  moment 
these  became  known,  and  in  proportion  as  they  came 
to  be  generally  understood,  Enterprise  sprang  up 
as  if  by  magic.  But  Enterprise  entirely  rested,  and 
could  only  rest  on  that  confidence  in  the  results 
of  action,  and  in  the  fruits  of  Work,  which  itself 
again  can  have  no  other  foundation  than  a  complete 
system  of  acknowledged  Rights  and  of  sanctioned 
Obligations  in  all  the  relations  of  Industry. 

Nothing,  indeed,  can  be  more  misleading  than 
the  ordinary  definition  of  the  sources  of  Wealth, 
and  no  wonder — because  before  we  can  make  clear 
to  ourselves  the  sources  of  anything,  we  must  begin 
with  some  clear  idea  as  to  what  that  thing  is  in  itself. 
Wealth  must  be  defined  before  its  sources  can  be 
traced.  Yet  the  common  definitions  of  Wealth  by 
the  Political  Economists  very  generally  omit,  or 
slur  over,  the  one  most  essential  element  in  the 
whole  group  of  ideas  which  are  represented  in  the 
word.  I  know  of  only  one  definition  which  goes 
straight  to  the  point,  and  leaves  a  complete  and 
satisfying  impression  upon  the  mind.  It  is  the  defini- 
tion given  in  the  searching  words,  "  A  man's  life  con- 
sisteth  not  in  the  abundance  of  the  things  which  he 
possesseth."1  Here  the  whole  strength  of  the  defini- 
tion is  concentrated  in  the  last  word — "  possesseth/' 
No  mere  enumeration,  or  description  of  the  kind  of 

1  St.  Luke  xii.  15. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  379 

things  possessed,  however  elaborate  and  ingenious, 
can  ever  convey  the  idea  of  Wealth,  unless  stress  is 
laid,  before  all  others,  upon  the  one  fundamental  idea 
of  Possession.  Wealth  may  be  defined  to  be — the 
Possession,  in  comparative  abundance,  of  things 
which  are  objects  of  human  desire,  and  which  can- 
not be  obtained  without  some  sacrifice,  or  some 
exertion.  There  may  be  infinite  variation  in  the 
kind  of  things  which  men  desire.  There  may  be 
infinite  variation  in  the  strength  of  that  desire. 
There  may  be  infinite  variation  in  the  quantities 
which  constitute  abundance  in  the  eyes  of  a  poor  or 
of  a  rich  community.  But  there  can  be  no  varia- 
tion in  the  one  fundamental  conception  of  Posses- 
sion as  the  root  idea  of  Wealth. 

The  sources  of  Wealth  must  therefore  be  insep- 
arable from  the  sources  of  Possession.  We  all  know 
what  these  sources  are.  In  early  and  rude  societies 
the  mental  and  physical  qualities  which  make  men 
Chiefs  and  Leaders,  are  the  powers  which  enable  them 
to  take,  and  to  give,  Possession.  As  society  advances 
these  powers  are  translated  into  Law.  This,  then, 
becomes  the  source  and  the  guarantee  of  all  Posses- 
sion. It  is  in  this  august  name  that  we  find  the 
ultimate  source  of  Wealth.  It  is  a  source,  like  all 
other  ultimate  sources,  which  lies  in  Mind — in  the 
settled  Jurisprudence  of  a  well-ordered  Common- 
wealth. Compared  with  this,  nothing  can  be  more 
poor  and  meagre — nothing  indeed  can  be  more  con- 
founding and  confusing  than  the  stereotyped  defini- 
tions of  the  sources  of  Wealth.  Land,  Labour,  and 
Capital,  are  the  orthodox  Three.  In  this  enumera- 
tion the  deepest  source  of  all — Possession — is  either 
omitted  altogether,  or  else  it  is  hid  under  a  word 
which  does  not  suggest  it.  Labour  of  the  Brain 
is  confounded  with  Labour  of  the  Hands.  Capital 
is  treated  as  something  separate  from  both,  which 
it  certainly  is  not.  Capital  is  the  purest  repre- 
sentative of  Mind,  because  our  very  conception  of 
it  turns  on  special  acts  of  Purpose  and  of  Inten- 


380  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

tion  in  the  disposal  or  use  of  Income.  Land  is  a 
most  confusing  word  if  it  be  intended  to  designate 
the  whole  external  world.  The  definition,  therefore, 
altogether  is  scholastic  and  artificial  in  the  highest 
degree — teaching  nothing,  suggesting  nothing, — be- 
cause none  of  its  distinctions  correspond  with  such 
great  dividing  lines  as  exist  in  Nature.  One  of 
these  lines  runs  along  the  seeming  gulf  between 
Mind  and  Matter,  and  another  between  our  own 
share  in  both  of  these,  and  the  boundless  volume  of 
them  which  is  external  to  ourselves,  but  with  which, 
nevertheless,  we  have  close  relations.  These  divid- 
ing lines  are  familiar  to  us  all — in  our  thoughts,  in 
our  actions,  and  in  our  language.  They  seem  to 
point  to  a  better  Three  than  Land,  Labour,  and 
Capital.  Mind,  Matter,  and  Opportunity,  would  be 
the  amended  list.  Mind  is  that  which  we  know — 
as  we  know  nothing  else.  Matter  is  that  which  is 
ours  also  in  Muscle,  and  in  all  that  it  acts  upon,  or 
that  re-acts  on  it.  Opportunity  is  a  convenient  term 
for  every  kind,  degree,  and  variety  of  condition,  and 
of  circumstance  which  helps  to  stimulate  our  desires, 
to  clear  our  aims,  or  to  facilitate  the  attainment  of 
them. 

These  being  the  Three  great  sources  of  Wealth, 
Scotland  was,  by  nature,  rich  in  two  of  them, 
and  was  every  day  becoming  richer  and  richer  in 
the  Third.  In  Mind  there  was  no  better  fibre  in 
the  world  than  the  fibre  which  had  been  spun  out 
of  her  old  amalgamated  races.  Mind  among  them 
might  be  mis-directed  and  wasted,  or  it  might  be 
sleeping.  But  it  was  there — with  an  immense  and 
unknown  Potential  Energy.  It  had  been  shown 
for  generations  in  all  the  special  faculties  appro- 
priate to  the  Military  Ages.  It  had  now  caught 
the  fire  which  burns  in  mechanical  genius,  and  in 
peaceful  enterprise.  So,  in  like  manner,  Scotland 
was  rich  in  the  raw  materials  of  Nature,  which 
it  is  the  function  of  Mind  to  work  with,  to  work 
upon,  and  to  subdue.  Her  country  was  soon 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  381 

found  to  be  full  of  the  savings  hoarded  in  the 
depths  of  Time,  the  great  accumulations  of  Energy 
which  had  been  laid  up  in  her  stores  of  Coal  and 
Iron.  Her  agricultural  and  pastoral  surfaces  were 
rough  and  unreclaimed,  but  they  were  not  poor. 
Even  the  Glacial  Ages  had  done  Scotland  enormous 
good — for  their  great  Planing  Engines,  though 
they  had  left,  here  and  there,  tough  and  tenacious 
clays,  had  also  scattered  everywhere  the  materials 
of  a  better  soil.  Nor  were  these  two  sources  of 
Wealth  all  that  had  been  prepared  for  Scotland  in 
starting  her  in  the  race  of  Industry.  The  Third, 
and  the  last  of  the  Three  great  sources  of  Wealth, 
Opportunity,  had  been  secured  and  opened  up  for 
her  in  that  one  fundamental  condition  on  which  all 
the  possibilities  of  Opportunity  depend.  This  was 
the  condition  without  which  no  opportunity  can  be 
seized — no  design  can  be  formed,  no  enterprise  can 
be  undertaken — the  condition,  namely,  of  an 
ancient,  accepted,  and  well-defined  system  of  Law 
and  of  Jurisprudence.  Men  knew  their  own  rights 
and  their  own  obligations,  because  these  rested  on 
written  and  recorded  Instruments,  and  because  the 
exact  force  of  all  of  them  had  been  settled  and 
applied  through  centuries  of  Judicial  interpreta- 
tion. As  in  the  Kingdom  of  Nature  the  invariable- 
ness  and  certainty  of  her  Laws  are  the  necessary 
Implements  of  Purpose  and  Design,  so  in  Human 
Society  there  can  be  no  other  foundation  for  In- 
dustry and  for  Enterprise,  than  Laws  accurately 
defining,  and  Courts  impartially  enforcing,  all  the 
rights  and  all  the  obligations  of  men.  There  is  no 

?lace  in  Science  for  the  Slattern  or  the  Sloven, 
n  dealing  with  Nature  the  loose  reasoner,  and  the 
inaccurate  observer,  soon  find  their  level.  So  it 
must  be  in  every  Political  Society  which  desires  to 
preserve  the  germs  of  life,  and  to  keep  open  to  men 
the  infinite  opportunities  of  knowledge. 

If,  in  the  purchase  or  inheritance  of  land  from 
old  Owners  of  the  type  of  the  Macaulays,  such  new 


382  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Proprietors  as  Lord  Frederick  Campbell  had  not 
been  able  to  trust  in  the  validity  of  the  Titles  by 
which  Property  had  been  conveyed  for  seven  or 
eight  hundred  years — if  the  words  of  Charters, 
which  carried  the  full  rights  and  powers  of  Owner- 
ship over  Moors,  and  Marshes,  and  Woods,  and 
Peateries,  and  over  all  the  other  enumerated  varie- 
ties of  surface,  had  not,  during  all  these  Centuries, 
been  uniformly  sustained  as  living  and  truthful  words, 
not  only  in  all  the  decisions  of  law,  but  also  in  all 
the  acknowledged  obligations  and  practical  transac- 
tions of  life — then,  such  reclamations  as  those  of  the 
old  Coast  Line  on  the  Firth  of  Clyde,  would  never 
have  been  undertaken,  and  Scotland  would  have 
remained  even  more  waste  and  wild  than  she  had 
been  in  the  days  of  Malcolm  Canmore. 

But  direct,  rapid,  and  costly  reclamations  of 
this  kind  were  not  the  only,  nor  perhaps  the  most 
important,  application  of  that  great  Wages  Fund 
which  consists  in  the  confidence  of  men  in  the 
security  of  all  legal  rights,  and  in  the  enforcement 
of  all  legal  obligations,  Land  in  Scotland  had  for 
centuries  been  almost  universally  let  on  "  Tacks  "  or 
Leases.  These  varied  more  or  less  in  their  condi- 
tions and  in  the  period  of  their  duration.  But  one 
essential  fundamental  principle  was  expressed  and 
embodied  in  them  all,  viz.,  that  the  Owner  lent  his 
land  to  the  Occupant  for  a  time,  and  for  a  time 
only.  At  the  end  of  it  the  right  of  disposing  of  the 
land  on  new  conditions  reverted  to  the  Owner.  This 
principle  extended  as  a  matter  of  course  to  Sub- 
tenants, if  there  were  any  such.  They  could  not 
have  any  higher  or  larger  right  of  possession  than 
those  under  whom  they  held.  As  water  can  rise 
no  higher  than  its  fountain,  so  derivative  tenures 
cannot  rise  above  the  tenures  from  which  they  are 
derived.  We  have  seen  how,  under  the  advice  of 
Culloden,  many  of  these  Sub-tenants  had  in  the 
Hebrides  been  raised  from  the  condition  of  Tenants 
at  Will  to  the  higher  condition  of  Tacksmen,  more 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  383 

than  thirty  years  before  the  operations  of  Lord 
Frederick  and  of  his  brother  in  Dumbartonshire. 
But  this  was  before  the  new  practices  of  Agricul- 
ture had  begun,  and  before  its  new  resources  had 
been  placed  at  the  disposal  either  of  Owner  or 
of  Tenant.  All  that  these  Leases  therefore  did, 
in  this  direction,  was  to  encourage  definite  lengths 
of  tenure  for  such  industry  as  was  then  understood, 
leaving  the  Tenants  to  pick  up  any  new  methods 
which  might  arise.  But  this  is  precisely  what 
men  of  that  class,  in  that  stage  of  society,  never  do. 
They  run  on  from  generation  to  generation  in  the 
ruts  of  custom — hating  every  novelty  and  blind  to 
every  suggestion.  One  thing,  nevertheless,  the 
system  of  Leases  did  which  was  in  itself  invaluable. 
It  established  definite  breaks  in  the  continuity 
of  occupation,  and  therefore  saved  the  country 
from  a  perpetuity  of  ignorance.  That  feature  in 
Leases  which  is  often  made  an  objection  to  them 
by  the  ignorant,  was  the  very  feature  that  gave 
saving  entrance  to  the  new  life,  and  to  the  new 
knowledge,  which  would  otherwise  have  been 
excluded  for  generations.  As  Leases  had  been 
given  during  400  years  at  an  immense  variety 
of  dates,  it  followed  that  everywhere,  all  over  Scot- 
land, at  all  times,  a  crop  of  Leases  was  coming  to 
an  end ;  and  the  necessity  of  making  new  arrange- 
ments for  a  new  Tack  gave  precisely  that  kind  of 
opportunity  which  Mind  requires  for  the  discharge 
of  its  special  functions  in  directing  Muscle.  As 
Longfellow  says  of  the  awakening  Song  of  Birds  all 
round  the  Globe,  "  'Tis  always  morning  some- 
where," so  it  may  be  said  of  Scotland  as  regards 
these  opportunities  of  improvement,  that  all  through 
her  Counties  and  Parishes  they  were  arising  every- 
where. Thus,  for  example,  the  Leases  given  by 
the  advice  of  Culloden  on  the  Argyll  estates, 
between  1739  and  1750,  were  expiring  during 
the  very  years  between  1759  and  1770,  when  the 
enthusiasm  of  new  discoveries  and  of  new  aspira- 


384  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

tions  was  at  its  height,  and  when  it  was  beginning 
to  transform  the  whole  conditions  of  the  National 
Industry  in  all  its  branches. 

Among  these  transformations  there  was  one 
affecting  Agriculture,  the  value  of  which  is  now 
confused  under  an  ignorant  form  of  sentiment.  It 
consisted  in  the  steady  but  gradual  disappearance 
of  Township  farms.  These  were  farms  tenanted  by 
small  groups  of  men,  using  their  pastures  in  common, 
and  cultivating  their  arable  lands  in  Hun-rig.  I  de- 
signate the  sentiment  in  favour  of  these  old  Town- 
ships as  an  ignorant  sentiment,  because  it  is  mainly 
founded  on  a  misunderstanding  as  to  their  real 
nature.  They  were  not  farms  under  a  common 
management  for  the  equal  benefit  of  a  community. 
The  flavour  of  communism,  which  makes  the  memory 
of  them  popular  with  some  theorists  now,  is  a  flavour 
which  comes  from  nothing  but  mistaken  analogies. 
The  Township  farms  were  not  what  we  should  now 
call  Club-farms.  They  were  not  held  nor  managed 
by  the  representatives  of  a  community  on  behalf  of 
the  whole.  They  were  mere  groups  of  individual 
men,  each  man  having  his  own  individual  property  in 
the  Cattle,  and  his  own  exclusive  share  in  the  arable 
areas  of  land.  The  principle  of  occupation  was  the 
principle  of  pure  Individualism — only,  under  such 
conditions  that  none  of  its  benefits  could  arise. 
The  common  grazing  might  contain  the  very  best 
land  of  the  farm,  if  only  it  could  be  reclaimed.  But 
no  one  of  the  Tenants  could  exert  his  mind  or  his 
muscles  in  reclaiming  a  single  morsel,  because  it 
would  have  limited  by  so  much  the  grazing  of  the 
others.  Neither  could  any  one  Tenant,  more  intelli- 
gent than  the  rest,  and  seeing  that  the  common 
grazing  was  overstocked,  gain  anything  by  limiting 
the  number  of  his  own  beasts,  because  all  his  more 
ignorant  neighbours  would  at  once  add  a  corre- 
sponding number,  and  so  keep  down  the  whole  herd 
to  the  old  starvation  point.  Neither,  again,  could 
any  of  the  Tenants,  even  if  they  had  the  capital 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  385 

and  the  knowledge,  begin  to  establish  a  better 
Ixreed,  because  the  good  breed  could  not  be  kept 
separate  from  the  bad.  Thus  all  were  kept  down, 
even  as  regarded  the  Cattle  and  the  grazing,  to  one 
level,  and  that  was  the  level  of  the  stupidest. 

The  case  was  if  possible  worse  as  regarded  the 
arable  land.  JEach  Tenant  had  indeed  his  own  scat- 
tered patches  exclusively  to  himself,  so  long  as  he  had 
tEem  alTali.  He  got  no  help,  if  his  crop  failed,  out 
of  any  share  in  the  comparative  abundance  of  others, 
nor  on  the  other  hand  did  he  share  with  others  in  any 
fortunate  excess.  In  all  these  ways,  and  in  others, 
he  was  an  individual  farmer,  and  nothing  else.  But 
he  was  not  allowed  to  benefit  by  any  individual  wit, 
if  by  chance  he  had  it,  as  regarded  the  possibility  of 
improvement.  He  had  no  inducement  to  dig  deeper, 
or  to  manure  better  his  little  patches,  because  all 
the  benefit  of  his  labour  would  probably  go  next  year 
by  lot  to  some  less  intelligent  or  less  industrious 
neighbour.  Then,  with  other  kinds  of  improvement 
even  more  important,  the  whole  system  was  abso- 
.  lutely  incompatible.  If  one  man,  seeing  the  starved 
condition  of  the  Cattle,  wished  to  make  and  store  a 
Tittle  hay  for  ^winter  feeding,  he  had  no  means  of 
doing  so.  The  moment  the  harvest  was  over,  the 
whole  area  of  the  arable  land  was  turned  into  a 
common  pasture  field  for  all  the  Township.  No 
man  could  enclose  a  morsel  of  ground  to  save  a 
bite  of  hay.  No  man  could  drain,  lime,  or  otherwise 
improve  any  portion  of  the  farm,  because,  although 
it  was  exclusively  his  own  to-day,  it  would  be  as 
exclusively  another's  to-morrow. 

Such  was  the  stupid  and  ruinous  system  on 
which  land  was  tenanted  not  only  in  the  High- 
lands, but  all  over  the  Lowlands  of  Scotland  during 
a  great  part  of  the  Eighteenth  Century,  and  in 
some  cases  down  to  our  own  time.  It  was  the  same 
in  England  only  a  little  earlier,  and  Lady  Verney 
has  disinterred  the  curious  fact  that  one  Parish  in 
the  County  of  Buckingham,  within  a  few  hours7 

2  B 


386  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

journey  of  London,  continued  to  be  occupied  in 
Runrig  for  more  than  400  years — from  1441  to  1845, 
when  it  was  divided  into  individual  holdings  by  the 
external  authority  of  the  Enclosure  Commission.1 
Although  now  banished  from  every  part  of  Scot- 
land, except  where  it  yet  lingers  in  the  most 
distant  and  poorest  Hebrides,  I  have  myself  had 
to  interpose  for  the  abolition  of  it  on  the  mainland 
of  Argyllshire  about  forty  years  ago.  As  late  as 
the  middle  of  the  last  century  it  was  as  general  on 
farms  within  sight  of  the  great  Lowland  Towns  of 
Edinburgh,  Glasgow,  Paisley,  and  Greenock  as  it  was 
round  the  more  Highland  Towns  of  Perth,  Dundee, 
and  Inverness.  Nothing  but  an  unquestioning  and 
unquestioned  adherence  to  the  rights  of  Ownership, 
operating  steadily  but  gradually  through  the  oppor- 
tunities afforded  to  awakened  Mind  by  the  termina- 
tion of  Leases,  could  have  redeemed  the  country 
from  this  system.  The  people  themselves  generally 
clung  to  it  with  a  dull  and  blind  tenacity.  Nor 
is  this  surprising.  It  was  a  system  of  which  all 
the  parts  so  hung  together,  and  which  as  a  whole 
was  so  rooted  in  all  the  routine  habits  of  daily  and 
yearly  life,  that  not  one  stone  of  it  could  be  touched 
without  the  whole  structure  tumbling.  Any  change 
involved  a  total  change  in  the  prospects  and  in  the 
life  of  every  family  concerned. 

Under  such  circumstances  the  initiative  never  is, 
and  never  can  be  taken  by  those  who  live  under  such 
a  yoke  of  custom.  It  is  so  with  all  of  us.  Our  eyes 
and  our  lips  can  be  opened  only  by  the  touch  of  a  live 
coal  from  some  altar  other  than  our  own.  There  was 
a  race  of  Scotch  Judges  in  the  last  century  whose 
witty  sayings,  expressed  in  the  broadest  native 
Doric,  were  long  the  amusement  of  the  legal  pro- 
fession in  Edinburgh.  One  of  them,  on  hearing 
a  Counsel  plead  on  behalf  of  his  Client  that  he 
had  acted  in  ignorance  of  the  Law,  interrupted  the 

1  Article  on  "  Allotments,"  by  Lady  Verney,  in  Nineteenth  Century, 
June  1886. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  387 

pleader  at  once,  saying,  "  Mr.  -  — ,  the  Law  taks 
nae  cogneesance  o'  stupeedity."  But  if  Judges 
can  take  no  cognisance  of  stupidity,  Historians 
are  compelled  to  do  so,  because  mental  blindness 
is  a  perpetual  wonder  from  generation  to  genera- 
tion as  we  trace  the  movements  of  Mankind, 
whether  in  the  progress  of  civilisation  or  in  the 
backslidings  of  corruption  and  decline.  There  is  a 
profound  passage  on  this  subject  in  the  Apocryphal 
Book  called  the  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  in  which  the 

low  progress  of  our  knowledge  in  Natural  Things 
is  set  forth  as  diminishing  the  wonder,  and  yet 
enlarging  the  estimate,  of  our  ignorance  of  the 
Spiritual  World : — "  For  the  thoughts  of  mortal 
men  are  miserable,  and  our  devices  are  but  uncer- 
tain. For  the  corruptible  body  presseth  down  the 
soul,  and  the  earthly  tabernacle  weigheth  down  the 

dnd  that  museth  upon  many  things.     And  hardly 
lo  we  guess. aright  at  things  that  are  upon  earth, 

id  with  labour  do  we  find  the   things  that   are 
before  us."  1 

It  is  fortunate,  however,  for  Mankind  that  very 
often  new  truths  are  borne  in  upon  us  by  the  mere 
weight  of  external  circumstances,  not  as  the  result 
of  any  "musing  "  at  all,  and  when  we  ourselves  may 
be  as  blind  as  ever  to  "  the  things  that  are  before  us." 
And  so  it  was  with  the  cultivating  classes  in  Scot- 
land. Great,  and  indeed  complete,  as  the  change  was 
which  came  about  within  a  time  comparatively  short, 
we  must  not  exaggerate  the  rapidity  of  the  process. 
Tt  had  begun,  as  we  have  seen,  in  the  Border 
Counties  after  the  Union  of  the  Crowns,  more  than 
a  century  before  the  time  we  are  now  considering, 
and  the  displacement  of  the  Military  Classes  there 
when  the  Border  Wars  ended,  had  been  connected 
with  the  poverty  and  distress  which  were  conspicuous 
in  Scotland  before  the  Union  of  the  Parliaments. 
It  received  a  great  impetus  after  that  event,  and 
about  1760  it  went  forward  at  an  accelerated  pace. 

1  Wisdom  of  Solomon,  ix.  14-16. 


368"  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

they  were  dispersed  had  they  produced  any  very 
distinguished  man.  It  was  reserved  for  them  in 
our  own  time  to  give  birth  to  the  most  brilliant 
Essayist,  and  one  of  the  most  interesting  His- 
torians in  the  English  tongue.  The  Macaulays 
had  lost  their  lands  just  before  the  Age  of  In- 
dustry had  begun.  They  had  not  been  im- 
provers. Yet  from  the  high  Tower  which  in  later 
times  had  been  raised  upon  the  massive  foundations, 
and  the  dungeon-like  apartments  of  the  old  Castle 
of  the  Clan,  I  used  to  look  down  in  childhood 
upon  a  broad  field  of  level  and  fertile  land,  between 
the  Castle  and  the  sea,  grazed  by  "  deep  uddered 
kine" — sometimes  loaded  with  golden  sheaves — 
and  sometimes  rich  in  the  untainted  foliage,  with 
its  purple  and  yellow  flowers,  which  used  to  make 
the  Potato  crop  one  of  the  most  beautiful  of  all. 
Those  were  still  the  early  days  of  steam  navigation 
in  the  West  of  Scotland,  and  I  recollect  one  river 
boat,  which  could  be  held  in  the  cabin  of  some  of 
the  great  Liners  now  yearly  launched,  which  was 
called  the  "  Pride  of  the  Clyde."  All  the  talk  I 
heard  was  of  the  opening  triumphs  of  the  Engineer— 
of  the  future  of  navigation  on  the  Ocean,  and  of  the 
yet  unsolved  problem  of  the  navigation  of  the  Air. 
The  two  brothers  Hart,  from  whom  Mr.  Smiles  has 
borrowed  some  pleasant  anecdotes  of  James  Watt,1 
were  favourite  guests — simple,  and  self-made  men 
from  Glasgow,  full  of  knowledge  and  of  suggestion  on 
every  problem  of  science  applied  to  use.  My  Father 2 
was  a  mechanic,  and  not  an  agriculturist.  He  was 
himself  an  accomplished  workman,  making,  with 
exquisite  finish,  various  implements  and  articles  in 
wood,  and  in  ivory,  and  in  metal.  Nothing  was  ever 
said  of  the  older,  slower,  and  less  exciting  conquests 
over  Nature,  and  over  the  waste  condition  in  which  her 
great  natural  Engines  had  left  the  encumbered  soil. 
And  yet  there  was  one  tool-mark  of  the  Re- 

1  Lives  of  Boulton  and  Watt,  pp.  499,  etc. 

2  John,  seventh  Duke  of  Argyll,  then  Lord  John  Campbell. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  369 

claimer  which  might  have  recalled  his  work.  Run- 
ning straight  from  the  foot  of  the  old  Coast  Line 
down  to  the  sea,  through  the  middle  of  the  cul- 
tivated flats,  there  was  one  deep  and  open  cutting, 
called  by  the  country  people  the  "Red  Drain." 
It  had  been  excavated  out  of  the  solid  Old  Red 
Sandstone  rock,  which  there  overlies  the  flanks  of 
the  Highland  Schists.  I  had  often  been  attracted 
to  its  edges  by  the  wild  strawberries,  which  nowhere 
else  grew  so  large  ;  and  by  the  thickets  of  bramble 
in  which  the  Whitethroat  skulked  and  sang.  But 
a  chasm — in  some  places  between  seven  and  eight 
feet  deep — with  smooth  sides  of  rock,  not  easily 
climbed,  seemed  to  a  child  rather  a  formidable  trap. 
Of  its  history  and  of  its  purpose  I  knew  nothing 
— till  old  documents,  in  faded  ink,  have  in  later 
years  revealed  the  story.  It  was  the  great  Outfall 
by  which  the  fruitful  fields,  I  had  so  often  looked 
over  from  the  Tower  of  the  Macaulays,  had  been 
redeemed  from  the  condition  in  which  they  had  been 
left  by  the  Glacial  Age,  and  by  the  tangled  thickets 
of  "  Woody  Caledon."  The  operation  at  the  time 
had  been  the  talk  and  the  wonder  of  the  neighbour- 
hood, in  a  generation  not  long  preceding  that  in  which 
my  childhood  was  spent.  The  Red  Drain  had  been 
cut  at  a  cost  which  was  considered  fabulous  at  the 
time — a  time  when  money  was  as  yet  scarce  in 
Scotland.  The  surrounding  areas  on  both  sides 
had  been  sub-drained  and  trenched  at  a  further 
outlay,  not  less  new  and  astonishing  to  the  natives. 
Great  roots  and  prostrate  trunks  of  Oak  and  Fir 
had  been  uncovered  in  the  operations.  Loads  of 
stones  had  been  dug  up,  carted  away,  and  built 
into  dikes,  whilst  boggy  holes  and  quagmires 
had  been  filled  up  and  levelled.  Without  any 
mention  of  details,  significant  allusions  to  the 
change  effected  by  Lord  Frederick  are  to  be  found 
in  writings  published  before  the  close  of  the 
Century.  Thus  we  hear  that  land  on  which  Cattle 
could  not  walk  with  safety,  had,  in  1794,  been  con- 

2  A 


390  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

offered.  Like  everything  else  in  Scotland  which  was 
valuable,  it  was  nowhere  absolutely  new,  because 
Parliament,  even  during  the  Military  Ages,  had 
encouraged  the  fencing  and  protection  of  woods  and 
plantations.  It  had,  moreover,  recognised  afresh, 
in  recent  years,  the  value  to  be  set  on  the  concen- 
tration of  individual  interest  and  of  individual 
motive  upon  landed  property.  In  some  places, 
though  not  generally,  the  Ownership  of  land,  and 
not  the  Occupancy  only,  had  been  held  on  the  fashion 
of  Runrig.  That  is  to  say,  certain  areas  of  land 
belonged,  in  small  lots,  to  different  Owners,  and 
these  were  re-divided  from  time  to  time.  This 
involved  the  same  evil,  and  although  it  did  not 
extensively  prevail,  yet  wherever  it  existed  it 
affected  indirectly  all  surrounding  properties.  It 
did  prevail,  however,  extensively  in  Annandale, 
where  Border  wars  had  long  rendered  property 
valueless.  Accordingly,  in  1695,  it  had  become 
sufficiently  mischievous  to  attract  the  attention  of 
the  First  Parliament  of  King  William  in.,  and  an 
Act  was  passed  for  remedying  it — on  the  significant 
Preamble  that  "great  disadvantage  was  arising  to  the 
whole  Subjects  from  lands  lying  in  Runrig,"  and 
that  "  the  same  was  highly  prejudicial  to  the  Policy 
and  Improvement  of  the  Nation  by  planting  and 
enclosing." l  Wherefore,  power  was  given  to  every 
one  having  an  interest  in  such  property,  to  call  for  a 
separation  and  final  division  of  it  under  the  authority 
of  the  Sheriffs.  No  such  Act  was  needed  for  the 
abandonment  of  Runrig  in  respect  to  Occupation, 
because  this  could  at  any  time  be  effected  by  virtue 
of  the  ordinary  rights  of  Ownership.  The  farms 
occupied  by  several  Tenants,  and  grazed  or  culti- 
vated by  them  according  to  the  habits  and  know- 
ledge of  the  time,  were  so  occupied  and  cultivated 
only  under  the  terms  of  Covenant.  The  terms 
of  that  Covenant  might  be  altered  from  time  to 
time.  There  was  no  legal  impediment  in  the  way. 

1  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  ix.  p.  421  (5  Will.  TIT.,  cL  23). 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  391 

No  Legislation,  therefore,  was  required.  The  saving 
effects  of  permanent  divisions  and  of  individual 
farming  were  only  just  beginning  to  be  understood. 
Rude  and  unsubstantial  fences  had  from  time  im- 
memorial been  erected  to  divide  the  "  Infield"  from 
the  "  Outfield  "  land — the  area  which  was  under 
crop  from  the  area  which  was  uncultivated.  The 
same  practice  had  now  to  be  extended  to  the  in- 
ternal divisions  of  the  arable  land,  and  to  the 
immense  areas  which  were  being  reclaimed  and 
brought  within  that  description  by  reclamation  from 
the  wastes  of  common  grazings.  In  the  district  of 
the  Lennox,  typical  from  its  geographical  situation 
bordering  on  both  Highlands  and  Lowlands,  the 
progress  of  Enclosure  was  so  rapid  and  continuous 
that  in  1794  the  Report  says,  "  Not  a  year  passes  but 
several  thousand  acres  are  surrounded  with  fences."  1 

In  the  fine  district  of  Annandale,  the  old  home 
of  the  Bruces,  the  evil  of  Commons  seems  to  have 
been  specially  enduring  and  obstructive,  since  owing 
to  them  the  greatest  exertions  of  individuals  could 
not  make  the  country  capable  of  modern  cultiva- 
tion.2 Yet  in  1794  scarcely  a  single  Common 
remained  undivided,  except  in  the  case  of  lands 
belonging  to  the  Royal  Burghs.  As  compared  with 
individual  Proprietors,  either  the  intelligence  of  these 
Corporate  Bodies  was  less,  or  their  difficulties  were 
greater,  since,  it  was  said,  "  they  alone  could  claim 
the  privilege  of  keeping  waste  tracts  of  the  country 
useless  to  mankind, — an  eyesore  to  the  benevolent 
passenger,  and  fit  only  to  indulge  the  indolent  occu- 
pier in  brooding  over  his  poverty  and  his  turf-fire." 

This  passage  is  curious,  and  directs  our  attention 
to  a  fact  of  some  interest.  The  Old  Royal  Burghs 
in  Scotland  were  in  some  cases  not  inconsiderable 
Landowners.  They  possessed  certain  areas  of  land, 
fishings,  and  various  other  rights  of  property,  as  other 
Landowners  did,  by  Charters  from  the  Sovereigns 

1  Agriculture  of  Dumbartonshire  ;  Reports,  vol.  ii.  p.  19. 

2  Agriculture  of  Dumfries  ;   Reports,  App.  p.  22.  3  Ibid. 


392  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

who  had  the  power  and  the  right  to  give  them  along 
with  the  Municipal  "liberties"  and  privileges  which 
rested  on  the  same  Instruments.  Thus  the  same 
early  Sovereign  of  Scotland,  William  the  Lion  (A.D. 
1165-121.4),  who  gave  by  Charter  to  the  ancestor  of 
Robert  Bruce  the  great  Estate  of  Annandale,  also 
erected  the  Town  of  Ayr  into  a  Royal  Burgh,  and 
granted  it  certain  lands,  which  are  carefully  de- 
scribed by  boundary  names  as  purely  Celtic  as  any 
now  used  in  the  heart  of  the  Highlands.  It  was 
specified  that  out  of  this  area  belonging  to  the  Town 
each  Burgess  might  reclaim  six  acres  out  of  the 
Wood  or  Forest  "  to  make  their  own  profit  thereby/'1 
This  would  seem  to  point  to  an  unlimited  power  of 
individual  appropriation  corresponding  to  the  num- 
ber of  Burgesses.  But  practically  the  use  of  these 
Burgh  lands  was  generally  the  use  of  pasture  for  the 
benefit  of  the  Burgesses  as  a  Community,  and  for 
centuries  they  continued  to  be  so  used  in  common, 
by  all  who  acquired  the  position  and  rights  of  a 
Burgess. 

It  was  natural  that  under  these  conditions  there 
should  be  great  difficulties  in  changing  the  mode  of 
use.  But  if  the  Burghs  were  in  1794  behind  in  the 
improvement  of  their  lands,  this  reproach  has  been 
removed  long  ago.  Burgh  property  in  Scotland  was 
called  the  "  Common  Good,"  and  the  Burghs  soon 
found  out  by  the  example  of  other  Landowners 
around  them  that  the  best  way  of  consulting  the 
"  Common  Good "  was  to  give  up  common  Occu- 
pation and  resort  to  individual  holdings.  Accord- 
ingly the  landed  property  of  the  Burghs  has  long 
been  managed  on  the  same  principle  on  which  it  is 
managed  by  individual  Owners, — except  that  the 
public  interest  of  the  Community  has  led  to  a 
more  rigid  and  universal  system  of  letting  by  open 
competition,  so  as  to  secure  the  highest  possible 
rents.  Every  tendency  to  let  land  on  terms  below 
the  market  rate  was  very  naturally  regarded  as 

1  National  Manuscripts  of  Scotland,  Part  i.  p.  21. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  393 

simply  a  cover  for  jobbery.  Early  Statutes l  forbade 
Burghs  to  grant  Leases  for  a  longer  term  than  three 
years,  and  the  object  of  this  prohibition  was  to 
secure  to  the  Burgh  the  growing  value  of  land,  and 
to  prevent  the  transfer  of  that  growing  value  from 
those  in  whom  Ownership  resided  to  those  who  had 
no  other  right  than  that  of  temporary  Occupation 
and  of  special  bargain.  This  principle  was  finally 
embodied  in  stringent  legislation  by  an  Act  passed 
in  1832,2  which  prohibited  all  feuing,  alienation,  or 
leasing  of  any  part  of  Common  Good  of  Burghs 
except  by  public  roup — that  is  to  say,  except  at  the 
very  highest  attainable  rent  or  feu-duty.  When, 
therefore,  Burghal  Owners  discovered,  as  other 
Owners  did,  that  lands  enclosed,  and  otherwise 
reclaimed  from  slovenly  and  promiscuous  uses,  im- 
mediately rose  in  value,  and  afforded  at  once  double 
or  treble  the  former  rent,  they  joined  in  the  great 
industrial  race  of  enclosure  and  reclamation  by  which 
the  whole  face  of  Scotland  has  been  transformed 
from  being  one  of  the  poorest  to  being  one  of  the 
best  cultivated  countries  in  the  world. 

The  principle  thus  laid  down  by  Parliament, 
that  the  value  of  all  property  belonging  to  Corpor- 
ate Bodies  must  always  be  tested  by  competition, 
and  let  by  public  roup  at  the  highest  market  rent, 
is  obviously  the  only  safe  principle  in  the  manage- 
ment of  a  "  Common  Good."  It  is  undoubtedly  the 
principle  on  which  all  land  would  be  let  which  falls 
directly  in  the  hands  of  the  State.3  Private  Owners 
can  and  do  depart  from  it  with  more  or  less 
advantage,  because  the  preferences  of  character  and 
the  considerations  of  sentiment  which  lead  an  in- 
dividual Owner  to  let  his  farms  to  one  man  who 
can  give  less,  rather  than  to  another  man  who 
can  give  more,  are  preferences  which,  in  his  case, 
must  always  have  their  natural  limits,  and  which, 

1  Such  as  1491,  c.  19,  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  ii.  p.  227. 

2  3  Geo.  iv.  cap.  91. 

3  Mr.  Henry  George  has  repeatedly  admitted  that  the  State  must  let 
its  land  by  auction. 


394  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

whether  wise  or  not,  are  at  least  always  generous  and 
can  never  be  corrupt.  In  the  case  of  Public  Bodies, 
on  the  contrary,  such  preferences  are  quite  sure  to 
be  the  result  of  intrigue  and  of  corruption.  Accord- 
ingly it  is  certain  that  in  the  centuries  when 
publicity  was  unknown,  and  when  the  government 
of  Burghs  was  far  from  pure,  the  "  Common  Good  " 
had  been  often  jobbed  and  wasted.  Hepeated  Acts 
of  Parliament  were  passed  during  the  Sixteenth 
and  Seventeenth  Centuries,  recording  and  vainly 
endeavouring  to  check  this  evil.1  A  strict  adher- 
ence, therefore,  to  the  principle  laid  down  in  the 
Act  of  1832  was  the  only  remedy — the  principle, 
namely,  of  free  and  open  competition  in  the  hire  of 
land  or  of  other  property  belonging  to  all  Public 
Bodies. 

It  is  one  of  the  innumerable  benefits  of  Private 
over  Public  Ownership,  that  it  is  not  bound  by  such 
rigid  necessities.  The  free  choice  of  persons  in 
selecting  Tenants,  is  one  of  the  most  essential  of  its 
powers.  The  highest  offerer  is  not  necessarily  the 
best  Tenant,  except  under  an  equality  of  other 
conditions,  which  is  rare.  Yet  even  in  respect  to 
land  belonging  to  private  Owners,  the  larger 
interests  of  the  public  are  at  least  presumably  in 
favour  of  the  same  principle.  The  rent  of  agricul- 
tural land  must  ultimately  be  determined  by  the 
produce.  The  man  who  can  pay  the  highest  rent 
is  presumably  the  man  who  can  turn  out  the  largest 
amount  of  produce.  This  he  can  only  do  by  supe- 
riority over  other  competitors  in  some  faculty  or 
aptitude  of  Mind,  or  in  the  possession  of  Capital 
which  has  been  stored  by  the  foresight  of  himself,  or 
by  others  whom  he  represents.  There  are  wonderful 
bits  of  faculty  and  of  aptitude  connected,  each  of 
them,  with  some  corresponding  bits  of  Brain,  which 
in  Agriculture,  as  much  as  in  any  other  pursuit,  tell 
upon  the  result.  It  may  be  a  faculty  for  estimating 

1  Observations  on  the  Law  and  Practice  in  regard  to  Municipal  Elections 
in  Scotland.     By  J.  D.  Marwick,  LL.D.,  pp.  336-71. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  395 

the  "  points"  in  the  breeding  of  domestic  animals  on 
which  all  progress  in  utility  and  in  value  depends. 
It  may  be  some  inborn  and  instinctive  aptitude  for 
the  best  methods  of  manufacture  in  the  artificial  pro- 
ductions of  the  Dairy — it  may  be  merely  the  faculty 
of  thrift  in  everything,  and  of  turning  everything  to 
the  best  account — it  may  be  any  one,  or  any  combi- 
nation of  these,  that  will  enable  one  man  to  pay  for 
land  a  rent  much  higher  than  can  be  afforded  by 
others  who  have  no  similar  qualifications,  and  who 
are  the  blind  followers  of  routine.  Private  Owners 
may,  and  continually  do,  prefer  some  man  who  is 
inferior  in  all  these  respects,  and  they  may  do  so 
wisely  on  account  of  personal  or  hereditary  associa- 
tions. But  in  general  the  interests  of  agricultural 
production,  which  on  the  whole  are  the  interests  of 
the  nation,  are  to  some  extent  sacrificed  thereby.  It 
can  never  be  for  the  public  interest  that  dull  men 
should  be  preferred  to  men  of  ability,  or  men  with  no 
means  to  men  who  have  adequate  capital.  It  is  only 
when  the  extreme  test  of  competition  for  the  holding 
of  land  is  applied  to  men  who  are  all  equally  poor, 
and  who  seek  for  it  as  a  means  of  bare  subsistence, 
that  it  ceases  to  have  any  value  in  the  public 
interests.  Yet  even  in  this  case,  those  who  think 
that  the  hire  of  land  should  be  dealt  with  as  a 
matter  of  charity,  will  find  it  difficult  to  defend  the 
rejection  of  several  candidates  who  offer  more,  on 
behalf  of  some  favoured  one  who  offers  less.  It 
would  be  a  strange  exercise  of  benevolence  not  to 
prefer  those  who,  from  the  very  fact  of  being  the 
most  needy,  are  willing  to  give  the  most,  because 
they  are  satisfied  with  the  smallest  residue.  Ac- 
cordingly, the  Irish  Land  Act  of  1880  incites  and 
encourages  the  Cottier  Tenantry  of  Ireland  to  exact 
the  last  farthing  they  can  get  for  the  sale  of  their 
interest  to  any  new  Tenant.  Private  Owners  had 
made  rules  modifying  the  severity  of  this  principle 
in  favour  of  incoming  Tenants.  But  the  coarse 
hands  of  the  State,  when  it  intervenes,  have 


396  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

nothing  to  fall  back  upon  except  the  principle  of 
Competition  in  its  extremest  form. 

This  system  when  applied  to  conditions  of 
hungry  and  necessitous  competition  which  are  in 
themselves  disastrous,  can  end  in  nothing  but  the 
ruin  of  agriculture  and  universal  pauperism.  Under 
such  circumstances  there  is  no  presumption  in  favour 
of  the  highest  offerer.  He  is  the  hungriest,  and 
nothing  more.  It  would  be  a  bad  principle  of 
selection  applied  to  a  morbid  condition  of  society, 
and  securing  further  degradation  by  systematic 
preference  of  the  most  unfit.  This  was  the  actual 
result  in  some  parts  of  Ireland — not  at  all  as 
the  consequences  of  English  law  or  of  English 
customs,  but,  on  the  contrary,  as  the  natural 
fruit  of  the  most  genuine  old  Celtic  habits  and 
traditions. 

The  total  absence  of  any  elevating  guidance, 
or  of  any  intelligent  control,  over  men  with  a 
low  standard  of  living,  and  a  narrow  horizon 
of  desire,  can  never  end  in  anything  but  disaster, 
whatever  be  the  avocation  or  pursuit  to  which 
such  a  system  is  applied.  Most  disastrous  of  all 
must  it  be  when  applied  to  that  industry  and 
pursuit  which  comes  before  every  other  in  the  pro- 
gress of  nations.  Unlimited  licence  to  sub-let  and 
to  sub-divide,  and  to  multiply  down  to  the  level  of 
a  potato  diet — a  perfect  jungle  of  sub-tenures — one 
set  of  lettings  beneath  another,  and  single  "  rigs  " 
below  the  lowest — all  let  to  the  highest  bidder — 
all  except  the  first,  from  year  to  year  only — and  all 
interposed  for  long  and  indefinite  periods  of  time 
between  the  Owner  and  any  possibility  of  improve- 
ment or  even  of  regulation — such  a  system  was 
perfectly  adapted  to  banish  Mind,  in  all  its 
higher  faculties,  from  the  business  of  agriculture, 
and  from  the  building  up  of  Society  upon  founda- 
tions even  tolerably  safe.  Ownership  lost  all 
its  virtue  along  with  all  its  opportunities,  and 
all  its  power.  And  all  this  system  was  purely 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  397 

native — purely  Celtic.  The  Midd]  email  holding 
tracts  of  lands  for  Life  or  Lives,  and  living  on  the 
competitive  rents  of  very  poor  and  very  ignorant 
people,  all  struggling  for  a  bare  subsistence,  is  the 
nearest  possible  modern  representative  and  ana- 
logue of  the  old  Irish  Chieftain  nourishing  a  crowd 
of  Septs  as  his  servitors  and  retainers,  and  living 
in  his  turn  upon  them,  by  their  help  in  inter-tribal 
wars,  and  in  peace  "by  coign  and  livery,"  "cosher- 
ings  and  cuttings."  The  abuses  of  the  system 
adopted  by  the  Middlemen  were  multiplied  and 
intensified  by  the  abuses  which  grew  up  like 
weeds  among  all  below  them.  There  was  one 
hideous  practice  of  Tenants  of  Ireland,  unheard 
of  in  any  civilised  country  in  the  world,  to  which 
they  were  stimulated  by  the  high  prices  of  wheat 
during  the  many  years  of  war  towards  the  end 
of  the  last,  and  the  first  quarter  of  the  present 
century.  This  was  the  practice  of  burning  the 
land — setting  fire  to  the  finest  grass  lands,  whereby 
the  best  mineral  and  vegetable  ingredients  of  the  soil 
could  be  used  up  and  carried  off  in  a  few  years  of 
enormous  and  exhausting  profits.  In  vain  had  the 
Irish  Parliament  passed  one  enactment  after  another 
to  prohibit  and  punish  this  barbarous  waste.  It 
was  only  one  of  a  thousand  other  mischievous 
practices  arising  out  of  the  paralysis  of  the  powers 
of  Ownership.  Laws  are  useless  when  they  cannot 
be  enforced,  and  they  never  can  be  enforced  when 
the  power  to  practise  and  to  compel  obedience  is 
not  in  the  hands  of  those  who  have  a  motive  and 
an  interest  in  doing  so. 

Like  many  other  noble  words  that  are  used 
without  thought,  the  word  Custom  has  suffered 
degradation.  It  has  a  venerable  sound — reminding 
us  of  harmless  ancestral  usages,  loved,  regretted, 
and  commemorated.  It  has  its  own  place,  too — 
and  a  very  high  place — in  the  most  civilised  systems 
of  Jurisprudence  and  of  Law.  Neither  oral  nor 
written  Covenants  between  men,  however  definite, 


398  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

can  express  the  whole  of  the  conditions  which  they 
imply.  Many  of  these  conditions  may  be,  and 
indeed  must  be  omitted, — not  at  all  because  they 
are  inapplicable,  but,  on  the  contrary,  because  their 
application  is  of  necessity  understood.  Customs  so 
universal  or  so  general,  as  to  occupy  this  rank,  are 
not  opposed  to  Covenant  or  Contract  as  the  basis  of 
all  relations  between  men  in  matters  of  business. 
They  are  essential  parts  of  every  system  of  Contract, 
in  so  far  as  they  are  evidence  of  things  mutually 
understood.  In  the  oldest  Charters  in  Scotland 
there  are  many  references  to  customary  Use  and 
Wont,  to  be  ascertained  as  a  matter  of  fact,  in  the 
determination  of  the  most  important  rights  ;  as,  for 
example,  in  the  extent  and  boundary  of  lands,  or  in 
the  extent  and  limits  of  the  privilege  of  fishing. 
But  nothing  can  be  more  different  from  this  high 
idea  of  Custom  than  that  other  idea  which  con- 
secrates under  the  same  name  every  stupid  practice 
and  every  abuse  which  may  creep  in  and  establish 
itself  among  the  ignorant  or  the  weak. 

The  wonderful  burst  of  Industry  which  trans- 
formed the  whole  face  of  Scotland  in  the  course  of 
the  Eighteenth  Century,  and  especially  during  the 
latter  half  of  it,  could  never  have  arisen  if  her 
ancient  LawT  had  not  been  kept  pure  and  uncon- 
taminated  from  such  debasement.  Everything  that 
takes  from  Knowledge  its  initiative  by  depriving 
it  of  Opportunity  —  everything  that  discourages 
Enterprise  by  accumulating  against  it  unknown 
elements  of  uncertainty — is  a  barrier — often  an  in- 
superable barrier — to  improvement.  Fortunately  for 
Scotland  the  rights  recognised  by  Charter  on  the 
one  hand,  and  conveyed  by  Covenant  on  the  other, 
had  been  kept  clear  and  definite.  If  the  property 
conferred  on  Corporations  was  longer  left  without 
improvement,  or  if  it  had  been  wasted  and  dis- 
persed, this  result  had  only  arisen  because  Corporate 
Bodies  can  never  in  such  matters  represent,  except 
very  imperfectly,  the  natural  influences  and  motives 


THE  BUKST  OF  INDUSTRY.  399 

which  animate  Individual  Owners,  and  which  make 
their  aspirations  and  desires  coincident  in  the  main, 
and  in  the  long-run,  with  the  public  interests.  No 
such  law  was  ever  thought  of  for  them,  as  the  law 
which  was  ultimately  passed  for  Burghal  Owners, 
laying  down  an  universal  and  unbending  rule  that 
nothing  should  be  let  except  by  roup,  and  at  the 
highest  rates  determined  by  competition.  On  the 
contrary,  in  a  memorable  Act  passed  at  a  memorable 
epoch  in  the  national  history,  Parliament  had  called 
upon  all  Landowners  to  remember  that  in  the  dis- 
posal of  their  lands  they  held,  and  were  free  to  use 
a  large  and  a  wide  discretion  over  the  choice  of  their 
Tenants.  Upon  the  loyal  exercise  of  this  power,  the 
Monarchy  had  relied  in  its  long  contention  against 
the  most  formidable  political  dangers.  Upon  the  wise 
and  enlightened  exercise  of  the  same  power  the  Nation 
now  again  relied,  not  less  securely,  for  its  advance 
from  famines  and  poverty  to  comfort  and  to  abun- 
dance, and  from  comparative  barbarism  to  a  high  and 
advancing  civilisation.  As  in  the  Sixteenth  Century 
Landowners  were  called  upon  not  to  let  their  farms 
and  "  rooms  "  to  men  ignorant  of  their  duty  to  the 
National  Government,  so  now,  in  the  dawn  of  the 
Industrial  Ages,  they  were  trusted  not  to  let  their 
lands  to  men  ignorant  of,  or  deaf  to,  the  new  duties, 
the  new  demands,  and  the  new  opportunities  of  their 
day. 

On  the  other  hand,  as  the  progress  of  agri- 
cultural knowledge  had  been  slow  even  among  the 
educated  classes,  it  could  not  fail  to  be  much  more 
slow  among  those  who  had  no  education  except  that 
of  tradition  and  routine.  It  was  not  possible,  and 
it  would  not  have  been  wise,  if  it  had  been  possible, 
to  bring  about  too  suddenly  the  immense  changes 
which  were  absolutely  required.  Nothing  but  the 
free  play  of  individual  motive, — of  knowledge,  of 
enterprise,  and  of  personal  relations, — could  have 
worked  with  the  elasticity,  and  with  the  variety  of 
application,  which  such  circumstances  eminently 


400  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

demanded.  And  never,  perhaps,  in  the  history  of 
any  country  was  a  more  signal  illustration  given  of 
the  inestimable  value,  on  the  one  hand,  of  a  strict 
and  clear  definition  of  all  legal  rights,  and,  on  the 
other  hand,  of  perfect  individual  .freedom  in  the 
handling  of  them.  In  the  beginning  of  the  century, 
by  far  the  largest  part  of  the  country,  not  only  in 
the  Highlands  and  in  the  Borders,  but  also  in  the 
Lowlands,  was  unenclosed,  unimproved,  and  culti- 
vated, or  rather  wasted,  by  groups  of  Tenants  whose 
relations  with  each  other  were  an  insuperable  ob- 
stacle to  every  reform.  At  the  end  of  the  century 
all  this  had  been  reversed.  By  far  the  largest  part 
of  the  country  had  been  or  was  being  enclosed,  and 
improved,  or  for  the  first  time  reclaimed.  The  farms 
had  been  generally  let  to  individual  Tenants,  free 
to  change  and  to  adapt  their  management  without 
let  or  hindrance  from  slower  "  neighbours,"  or  from 
more  ignorant  or  more  obstinate  partners. 

And  all  this  great  change — great  in  itself,  but 
greater  still  from  the  opening  it  gave  to  a  continuity 
of  progress — had  been  effected  without  any  disturb- 
ance, or  commotion,  or  serious  discontent.  At  one 
time  in  the  wilds  of  Galloway  alone,  there  is  some 
record  of  bands  of  men  going  about  the  country 
pulling  down  the  newly  erected  dikes,  just  as  in 
much  later  times  bands  of  men  in  the  West  of 
England  went  about  breaking  the  new  machines 
which  were  another  of  the  instruments  of  advanc- 
ing agriculture.  But  this  excitement  in  Galloway 
was  transitory  and  local,  not  unconnected  with  the 
Celtic  origin  of  the  "  Galwegians,"  who  in  the  days 
of  the  early  Monarchy  were  always  addressed  as  a 
separate  people  from  the  Scots.  But  here,  too,  as 
elsewhere,  the  work  of  improvement  was  speedily 
resumed,  and  went  on  with  that  sure  and  steady 
pace,  and  with  that  silent  and  peaceful  develop- 
ment, which  are  the  sure  indications  of  healthy 
organic  growth. 

And  this  is  exactly  what  it  was,  and  what  the 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  401 

progress  of  Nations  must  always  be,  if  it  is  to  be 
great  and  lasting.  It  was  not  a  mere  burst  of 
speculation  like  the  South  Sea  Bubble,  or  even  as 
the  Darien  Scheme.  It  was  a  general  awakening 
of  Mind,  directing  stronger  Muscle,  and  taking 
advantage  of  new  and  boundless  horizons  of  Oppor- 
tunity. All  ranks  and  classes — all  orders  and  con- 
ditions of  men — took  part  in  it.  It  was  a  general 
advance  all  along  the  line.  The  rising  industry  of 
the  Towns  was  ready  to  absorb  the  overflowing 
idleness  of  the  country.  The  rising  activity  and 
the  increasing  knowledge  of  the  agricultural  classes 
were  ready  to  supply  all  markets  as  they  had  never 
been  supplied  before,  and  to  feed  as  they  had  never 
been  fed  before,  all  who  came  from  Potato  patches 
to  enlist  in  the  ranks  of  industry.  Many  of  those 
who  did  so  were  continually  returning  to  their  old 
homes  with  sums  of  money  which  enabled  them  to 
take  their  place  among  the  new  Tenants  of  single, 
undivided,  and  therefore  unwasted,  Farms.  All 
values  were  rising,  partly  from  a  change  in  the 
value  of  money,  but  mainly  from  a  rising  demand 
which  even  an  increasing  volume  of  production 
could  not  adequately  supply.  Muscle  was  among 
the  articles  which  had  a  rapidly  increasing  value, 
and  this  was  one  of  the  many  simultaneous  adjust- 
ments, due  to  natural  growth,  which  made  all  the 
changes  fit  into  each  other,  and  work  with  so  little 
friction  or  disturbance. 

Great  distress  had  arisen  in  the  Seventeenth 
Century  from  the  displacement  of  the  military 
population  out  of  the  Border  Counties,  after 
the  Union  of  the  Crowns,  because  at  that  time 
the  progress  of  industry  had  not,  either  in 
town  or  country,  reached  a  point  which  enabled  it 
to  afford  employment.  But  in  the  Eighteenth 
Century,  after  the  Union  of  the  Parliaments,  the 
ranks  of  the  Industrial  Army  were  never  full. 
Every  recruit  was  welcome,  and  every  soldier  was 
paid  far  better  than  ever  he  had  been  paid  before, 

2  c 


402  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

even  by  the  most  successful  raids  for  cattle.  So 
early  as  1730-35,  Captain  Burt  found  that  about 
Inverness  every  young  fellow  with  any  genius  •  for 
his  trade  or  business,  and  with  any  spirit  of  enter- 
prise,1 was  looking  and  going  for  employment  to 
England  or  to  the  Low  Country.  All  over  the 
Western  Highlands  the  rising  industries  of  the 
Clyde  were  the  great  centre  of  attraction.  They 
were  like  a  powerful  magnet  waved  over  an  area 
full  of  particles  of  iron.  Even  when  smothered  in 
earth  and  sand,  these  particles  will  respond  to  such 
attraction, — heaving  aside  the  inert  particles  around 
them,  and  moving  like  Ants  in  an  Ant-hill,  until  the 
whole  grainy  mass  seems  alive  with  creatures.  Such 
was  the  effect  produced,  only  more  slowly  and 
more  gradually,  by  the  magnetic  attraction  of  the 
wages  offered  in  Greenock,  Paisley,  and  Glasgow, 
— and  all  over  the  country  in  works  of  Reclamation 
— to  the  men  who  had  been  gathering  in  the  glens 
and  hills  of  Dumbarton  and  Argyll.  The  Minister 
of  one  of  these  Highland  Parishes  tersely  and 
graphically  describes  the  condition  from  which  this 
great  opening  relieved  them,  when  in  his  Statistical 
Report  he  says,  "  Idleness  was  almost  the  only 
comfort  they  enjoyed." ; 

It  is  a  striking  illustration,  too,  of  the  close 
inter- communion  between  all  classes  in  Scotland 
during  this  great  period  of  national  advance,  that 
when  we  look  into  local  records  we  find  that  Land- 
owners had  often  much  to  do  with  the  rise  of  Towns, 
whilst  there  are  conspicuous  examples  of  the 
dwellers  in  Towns  taking  the  lead  in  agricultural 
improvements.  Thus,  for  example,  the  earliest 
germ  and  nucleus  of  the  present  Town  of  Greenock 
lay  in  a  little  Village  called  Crawfordsdyke,  part  of 
the  Barony  of  Crawfordsburn,  which  belonged  to  a 
family  of  the  name  of  Crawford.  Immediately  after 
the  Revolution  the  Proprietor  appointed  the  grand - 

1  Burt's  Letters,  vol.  i.  p.  112 

2  Old  Statistical  Account,  Parish  of  Lochgoilhead,  vol.  iii.  p.  185. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  403 

father  of  James  Watt  to  be  his  Bar  on- bailie — a 
position  at  that  time  of  great  local  influence  and 
importance.  In  like  manner,  Greenock  itself, 
then  a  separate  but  adjoining  village,  was  on  the 
property  of  Sir  John  Shaw,  whose  heirs  and 
representatives  are  still  in  possession  of  the 
Estate,  and  whose  interests  have  ever  since  been 
identified  with  the  rising  fortunes  of  this  great 
Seaport.  The  quiet  bit  of  sandy  shore  which  is 
now  covered  with  its  Docks  and  Quays,  was  then 
known  as  "  Sir  John  Shaw's  little  Bay/'1  The 
new  centres  of  industry  which  were  then  rising  in 
Scotland  needed  at  that  time  not  only  the  encour- 
agement of  such  Landowners,  but  also  their  influ- 
ence and  protection  in  their  contests  with  the 
oppressive  monopolies  of  the  older  Royal  Burghs, 
such  as  Dumbarton  and  Glasgow. 

On  the  other  hand,  turning  from  the  West  to 
the  East  of  Scotland,  it  seems  to  have  been  a  Lord 
Provost  of  Edinburgh,  who,  about  1688,  set  the  first 
example  of  the  most  fundamental  of  all  agricultural 
improvements,  in  dividing  and  enclosing  his  estate 
of  Prestonfield  close  to  that  city.2  This,  however, 
he  did,  not  in  his  capacity  of  Provost  dealing  with 
Burghal  Property,  or  "  Common  Good,"  but  in  his 
capacity  of  a  Private  Owner,  in  the  exercise  of 
those  full  rights  which  such  Ownership  always 
carried  and  implied.  No  doubt  those  lands,  almost 
touching  the  old  walls  of  Edinburgh,  must  have 
been  previously  grazed  by  the  cows  of  some  definite 
or  indefinite  number  of  persons,  each  paying  some 
"grass  mail"  for  the  poor  support  in  summer  of 
some  still  poorer  cattle.  But  common  use  did  not 
constitute  common  Property.  The  ignorant  usages 
of  an  ignorant  time  were  not  stereotyped  by 
being  converted  into  legal  rights  standing  in  the 
way  of  every  kind  of  progress.  And  yet,  in  the 

1  Smiles's  Lives  of  Boulton  and  Watt,  pp.  83-84. 

2  Old  Statistical  Account,  Parish  of  Duddingston,  vol.  xviii.  p.  362. 
The  name  of  this  gentleman  seems  to  have  been  Sir  Magnus  Prince. 


404  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

result,  the  exercise  by  the  Provost  of  his  rights  of 
private  Ownership  over  these  lands,  was  an  im- 
mense gain  to  the  citizens  of  Edinburgh.  The 
meat  market  and  the  milk  market  were  at  once 
better  supplied.  Cows  which  barely  gave  two  or 
three  pints  a  day,  during  a  very  small  portion  of  the 
year,  were  replaced  by  cows  which  gave  perhaps 
eight  or  ten  pints  a  day,  and  for  a  much  longer 
period  of  time.  The  measure  of  this  public  benefit 
was  indicated  by  the  correlative  share  of  it  which 
was  secured  by  the  Proprietor.  It  became  gradu- 
ally known  all  over  Scotland  that  by  virtue  of 
enclosure  alone,  land  near  Towns  rose  in  rental  by 
more  than  a  third  or  33^  per  cent.,  which  meant 
that  the  total  produce  rose  on  at  least  a  correspond- 
ing scale.  Land  was  never  so  well  and  so  fruitfully 
"  municipalised "  as  when  it  was  owned  as  the 
private  property  of  an  intelligent  and  enterprising- 
Citizen. 

On  the  other  hand,  the  not  less  important 
function  discharged  by  individual  Ownership  in 
mitigating  the  hardness,  and  modifying  the  rapi- 
dity of  changes  so  great,  was  not  less  signally  illus- 
trated on  another  Estate  contiguous  with  that 
of  Prestonfield.  This  was  the  Estate  of  Dudding- 
ston — embracing  the  southern  slopes  of  Arthur's 
Seat,  and  the  hollow  which  lies  between  that  hill 
and  the  heights  crowned  by  the  Castle  of  Craig- 
millar.  The  most  tragic  scenes  in  the  tragic  life 
of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  make  all  that  land  classic 
ground  in  the  history  of  Scotland.  It  is  almost 
startling  to  find  that  for  the  long  period  of  sixty 
three  years  after  the  enclosure  of  Prestonfield,  the 
lands  of  Duddingston,  so  close  to  the  Scottish 
Capital,  continued  to  be  held  by  a  number  of  poor 
Tenants,  on  the  Hunrig  system,  with  all  the  pas- 
tures common  and  unenclosed,  and  with  all  the 
arable  land  miscropped  and  exhausted  under  the 
same  barbarous  usages  which  still  linger  in  the 
remotest  and  poorest  Parishes  of  the  Hebrides. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  405 

It  was  not  until  1751  that  the  Estate  was  brought 
under  the  conditions  of  agricultural  civilisation  by 
the  enclosure  of  the  lands,  the  separation  of  the 
farms,  the  erection  of  better  houses,  and  the  intro- 
duction of  a  better  husbandry.  All  this  was  done 
at  last  under  the  powers  and  rights  of  Ownership 
by  the  Abercorn  family  ;  and  so  well  and  wisely 
done  that  the  Minister  reporting  in  1796  could 
describe  the  change  as  not  less  happy  for  the 
Tenants  than  for  the  Proprietor  and  the  Country.1 

We  may  well  wonder,  sometimes,  at  the  stupid- 
ities of  men  which  so  long  prevented  them  from 
putting  the  gifts  and  opportunities  of  Nature  to 
those  methods  of  use  which  seem  to  us  now  so. 
obvious.  But  our  wonder  may  well  be  greater  still 
when  we  find  that  new  stupidities,  in  our  own  day, 
and  after  all  the  enlightenments  of  experience,  are 
scolding  at  the  knowledge,  and  at  the  enterprise,  and 
at  the  achievements,  by  which  in  our  fathers'  time 
the  older  stupidities  were  replaced.  Among  these 
new  stupidities  there  is  none  so  great  as  the  modern 
revolt  against  enclosures.  These  are  equally  neces- 
sary, and  equally  the  symbol  of  all  improvement, 
whatever  be  the  purpose  to  which  land  may  be 
applied  after  it  has  been  enclosed.  It  is  equally 
necessary  to  enclose  land  whether  it  be  used  as 
Allotments  for  the  poorer  classes,  or  for  Farms  of  all 
sizes  for  men  having  various  amounts  of  capital,  or 
even  whether  it  is  to  be  kept  wild  and  unculti- 
vated, for  the  purposes  of  public  recreation.  It 
may  have  been  one  of  the  stupidities  of  former 
generations  not  to  foresee  the  importance  which 
would  come  to  be  attached  to  this  last  purpose 
from  the  enormous  growth  of  Cities.  But  their 
growth  was  so  gradual,  and  the  want  of  open 
spaces  was  for  generations  so  little  felt,  that  this 
particular  failure  in  foresight  is  not  really  any 
great  matter  of  surprise.  However  this  may  be, 
the  preservation  of  certain  areas  of  ground  for 

1  Old  Statistical  Account,  vol.  xviii.  pp.  362-4. 


406  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

public  Parks  near  great  Towns  has  now  become  a 
most  rational  and  even  a  most  necessary  use.  It 
affords,  however,  no  justification  for  the  denuncia- 
tion of  Enclosures  which  has  become  loosely  popu- 
lar. This  denunciation  rests  upon  nothing  but  a 
vague  jealousy  of  all  individual  appropriation,  and 
against  all  the  improvement  which  depends  upon 
it.  As  such  it  is  a  sentiment  more  ignorant  and 
barbarous  than  any  of  those  that  retarded  the  pro- 

fress  of  Agriculture  during  the  stagnant  ages, 
ome  of  these  had,  so  far  as  mere  sentiment  is 
concerned,  a  far  better  justification.  The  ruinous 
customs  of  Runrig,  for  example,  rested  originally 
.on  a  sentiment  of  justice  and  of  fairness  as  between 
the  individual  shareholders  in  a  Township — a  feeling 
that  every  one  should  have  his  chance  and  his  turn 
of  the  best  and  of  the  poorer  bits  of  soil.  Hence 
the  custom  of  innumerable  sub-divisions,  and  of  the 
yearly  disposal  of  them  by  lot.  But  though  the 
sentiment  was  good,  the  ignorance  was  profound. 
Men  did  not  then  know  that  the  worst  land  might 
be  made  into  the  best,  if  it  became  the  interest  of 
any  individual  to  make  it  so.  Nor  did  they  con- 
sider that  the  very  best  land  would  become  as  bad 
as  the  very  worst  by  the  continued  cropping  of  it 
by  men  who  had  no  motive  to  improve.  But  none 
can  plead  these  ignorances  now.  In  our  time, 
therefore,  any  feeling  against  Enclosures  which 
are  the  indispensable  foundation  of  all  agricultu- 
ral improvement,  is  simply  a  return  to  barbarism, 
far  worse  than  any  old  failure  of  our  fathers  to 
rise  above  the  knowledge  of  their  times.  It  is 
a  sentiment  in  favour  of  the  right  of  everybody 
in  general  to  keep  the  country  waste,  lest  any- 
body in  particular  should  profit  by  its  reclama- 
tion. 

In  1756  there  was  published  an  elaborate  and 
indeed  a  sumptuous  Work  on  the  Agriculture  of 
England,  which  in  not  a  few  things  is  even  now 
ahead,  if  not  of  the  science,  yet  at  least  of  the 


I  THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  407 

practice  of  our  own  day.1  Nowhere  is  there  to 
be  found  a  more  clear  and  forcible  exposition  of 
the  place  which  Enclosure  occupies  as  the  one 
preliminary  condition  of  every  possible  improve- 
ment, both  of  the  land  and  of  the  people  who  live 
upon  it.  The  authors  declare  as  the  result  of  their 
own  observation  and  experience  that  "  Whatever 
pretences  may  be  made  of  the  oppression  of  the 
poor  by  the  enclosing  of  Lands,  this  is  certain,  that 
they  nowhere  are  so  happy  as  where  the  land  in 
general  is  under  enclosure,  and  nowhere  so  miser- 
able, poor,  ragged,  and  idle,  as  in  those  places  where 
most  of  the  land  lies  in  common/'  Again  they  say, 
"  Upon  the  edges  of  all  great  commons  we  see  a  set 
of  miserable  cottagers.  Hunger  is  in  their  faces, 
and  misery  upon  their  backs  :  they  idle  away  their 
time  in  tending  their  own  and  other  people's  cattle, 
and  breed  their  children  to  this  poor  employment." 

Most  fortunately  for  Scotland  "  Commonties,"  in 
the  full  sense  of  that  word,  had  almost  entirely 
disappeared  before  the  close  of  the  last  century. 
Moors,  and  "  outfield"  pastures  used  as  a  common 
grazing  by  the  joint-tenants  of  one  farm — these, 
indeed,  remained  in  abundance  all  over  the  country. 
In  all  the  backward  parts  of  it  they  remain  still. 
But  these  are  not  Commons  or  "  Commonties," 
as  they  were  called  in  Scotland,  in  the  English 
sense  of  the  word.  "  Commonties"  were  areas 
of  land  over  which  an  indefinite  number  of  per- 
sons had  various  and  indefinite  rights  of  use, 
founded  only  on  customs  of  ancient  origin.  Farm 
grazings  open  to  nobody  except  to  the  legal  Tenants 
of  the  farm ,  and  used  by  them  under  no  other  rights 
than  those  conveyed  to  them  from  the  Owner  by 
Lease  or  otherwise,  were  indeed,  in  one  sense,  "com- 
mon "  grazings.  But  they  were  totally  different  in 
their  nature  from  Commonties.  They  could  be 
divided,  enclosed,  reclaimed,  planted,  or  otherwise 

1  A  Complete  Body  of  Husbandry,  by  Thomas  Hale  and  others  ;    a 
fine  folio.  2  Ibid.  Book  ni.  chap.  ii.  pp.  100-101. 


408  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

dealt  with,  at  the  will  of  the  Proprietor  whenever 
an  existing  Lease  expired.  And  even  during  an 
existing  Lease  they  might  be  similarly  dealt  with 
by  bargain  and  agreement  between  the  Owner  and 
the  few  Tenants  who  were  exclusively  concerned. 
"  Commonties,"  on  the  other  hand,  could  only  be 
divided  and  reclaimed  by  some  Judicial  process. 
But  the  Judicial  process  provided  by  the  Law  of 
Scotland  for  dealing  with  them,  was  less  expensive 
and  troublesome  than  any  which  had  been  provided 
in  England.  They  never  seem  to  have  existed  in 
Scotland  to  anything  like  the  same  extent  as  in 
England.  The  clear  and  sharp  definition  of  all 
rights  and  tenures,  which  the  system  of  Leases  had 
established  with  the  earliest  civilisation  of  the 
Kingdom,  had  tended  to  keep  out  confusion.  But  it 
is  curious  and  instructive  to  observe  how,  in  the 
Border  Counties,  where  centuries  of  continual  war 
had  unsettled  everything,  and  where  large  areas  of 
land  could  not  be  secured  for  a  twelvemonth  from 
devastation,  the  natural  results  oF  promiscuous, 
hap-hazard,  and  indefinite  usages  of  Occupation, 
had  precisely  the  same  effects  as  those  so  forcibly 
denounced  in  England  by  the  universal  voice  of  all 
impartial  observers.  In  the  excellent  Report  on 
the  County  of  Dumfries,  rendered  to  the  Board  of 
Agriculture  in  1794,  the  strongest  language  is  used 
in  condemnation  of  the  "  Commonties  "  which  had 
existed  there,  and  of  the  impediments  which  even 
the  more  favourable  Law  of  Scotland  had  placed  in 
the  way  of  the  abolition  of  them.1  "  Commonage  " 
is  declared  in  that  Report  by  a  competent  observer 
"to  be  so  inimical  to  all  improvement  of  land,  and 
a  source  of  so  many  moral  evils  affecting  the  whole 
community,  that  they  ought  to  be  abolished  every- 
where by  a  general  enactment."2  But  this  was 
quite  unnecessary,  so  far  as  Scotland  was  concerned. 
All  difficulties  and  impediments  disappeared  before 
the  obvious  interest  of  almost  all  who  were  locally 

1  Reports,  vol.  ii.,  Co.  Dumfries,  p.  55.  2  Ibid.  p.  56. 


THE  BURST  OF  INDUSTRY.  409 

concerned.  Commonties  soon  completely  vanished 
from  the  map  of  Scotland  ;  and  nothing  remained 
to  be  dealt  with  that  even  savoured  of  the  same 
evils,  except  those  ignorant  methods  of  cultivation 
in  Eunrig  which  were  pursued  by  the  Tenants  of 
Township  Farms. 

It  is  well  to  remember,  however,  that,  even  in 
this  very  mitigated  form,  the  principle  and  the 
practice  of  stifling  individual  interests,  and  per- 
sonal aptitudes,  in  their  application  to  the  most 
important  of  all  industries,  was  specially  danger- 
ous in  Scotland  because  of  the  great  amount  of 
intelligence  and  of  enterprise  which  were  needed 
to  reclaim  her  rough  and  encumbered  soil.  It  is 
impossible  to  read  the  account,  given  in  the  Report 
of  1794  on  the  County  of  Aberdeen,  of  the  tremen- 
dous effect  produced  by  a  few  "ill  years"  or  bad 
seasons  at  the  close  of  the  previous  century,  with- 
out seeing  that  not  over  the  Highlands  alone,  but 
over  a  very  large  proportion  of  the  whole  of  Scot- 
land, Famine  had  been  always  standing  at  the 
door.  Very  widely  indeed  that  gaunt  Figure  not 
only  stood  at  the  door,  but  entered  within  the 
House.  It  was  said  of  the  "ill  years  "  referred  to, 
that,  in  addition  to  all  those  who  were  only  kept 
from  starvation  by  collections  at  the  churches, 
there  were  more  than  200,000  people  who  were 
wandering  mendicants  begging  from  door  to  door.1 
This  represents  a  terrible  percentage  of  the  then 
population  of  Scotland.  The  County  of  Aberdeen 
was  depopulated.  The  land  was  waste ;  and  not 
until  after  the  new  burst  of  Industry  had  begun, 
and  an  appeal  was  made  to  individual  skill,  enter- 
prise, and  capital,  in  the  holding  of  undivided 
farms,  was  the  country  redeemed  from  its  desolation. 

Neither  was  it  enough  that  the  Tenants  should 
all  be  men  with  single  holdings,  and  freed  from 
the  common  interest  of  ignorant  partners  in  the 
perpetuation  of  senseless  usages.  This  was  not 

1  Northern  Rural  Life,  p.  46. 


410  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

enough,  unless  the  new  Tenants  were  fitted  to 
take  advantage  of  their  new  position,  by  having 
themselves  risen  above  the  old  level.  Accord- 
ingly, nothing  is  more  striking  in  the  accounts  we 
have  of  the  condition  of  the  country  before  the 
Union,  than  the  testimony  they  bear  to  the  failure 
which  followed  the  letting  of  land  to  men  who  had 
neither  knowledge  nor  capital.  Many  Proprietors 
after  the  Famine  had  no  opportunity  of  exercising 
any  effective  power  of  selection,  because  there  was  no 
competition.  They  were  glad  to  let  their  land  to 
any  applicants  who  could  take  it,  even  in  the  smallest 
portions,  and  with  the  poorest  qualifications.  They 
were  tempted  to  break  down  their  farms  into  minute 
holdings  at  from  £2  to  £5  Rent.  The  Occupants 
made  a  little  money  by  knitting  stockings.  They 
could  eat  potatoes.  But  they  were  ignorant  of 
agriculture.  The  result  was  that,  in  1794,  where- 
ever  these  small  holdings  prevailed,  the  condition 
of  the  Occupiers  was  described  as  having  become 
gradually  reduced  to  "  the  degraded  state  they  held 
at  present." 1  Next  followed  the  great  scarcity  of 
1740,  and  again  the  repetition  of  famine  in  1782, 
which  affected  with  special  severity  the  County  of 
Aberdeen.2  But  by  this  time  the  new  knowledge 
had  begun,  and  the  general  rise  of  Industry  had 
been  well  established.  As  usual  under  such  con- 
ditions, both  Migration  and  Emigration  followed, 
and  a  race  of  new  Tenants,  with  the  requisite 
skill  and  capital, — selected  by  the  Owners — holding 
undivided  Farms, — and  encouraged  by  adequate 
Covenants,  joined  the  broad  and  rapid  stream  of 
national  advance. 

1  Reports,  vol.  i.,  Aberdeenshire,  p.  51.  2  Ibid.  pp.  57-8. 


CHAPTER  IX. 

THE    FRUITS    OF   MIND. 

[T  was  not  in  Agriculture  alone  that  the  great 
>rinciple  of  giving  free  scope  to  individual  Mind, 
id  to  individual  Capital/  which  is  its  fruit, 
became  the  prime  agent  in  the  advancing  pro- 
sperity of  Scotland.  It  was  equally  conspicuous 
and  equally  powerful  in  the  opening  of  her  Trade 
and  Commerce.  In  a  former  chapter1 1  have  referred 
to  the  engrossing  Monopolies  which  had  been  given 
by  early  Charters  to  the  old  Royal  Burghs  of  the 
country.  Those  who  have  been  accustomed  to  think 
of  Fiscal  Protection  as  specially  associated  with  the 
interest  of  Landowners,  have  little  idea  how  univer- 
sally this  system  originated  with  the  only  popular 
Bodies  which  existed  in  the  Military  Ages,  or  of  the 
extravagant  lengths  to  which  commercial  exclusive- 
ness  was  carried  on  their  behalf.  For  centuries, 
and  by  repeated  Statutes,  the  whole  Trade  and 
Commerce  of  Scotland  were  placed  in  the  hands  of  a 
few  Communities  of  ancient  date,  to  the  absolute 
exclusion  not  only  of  the  whole  agricultural  classes, 
but  to  the  exclusion  also  of  all  other  Towns  and 
Villages  which  had  arisen  from  time  to  time  in 
situations  favourable  for  some  particular  kind  of 
industry.  The  "liberties"  granted  to  the  old  Com- 
munities were  Monopolies  in  the  only  correct  sense 
of  that  word — the  sense,  namely,  in  which  it  means 
the  absolute  prohibition  of  all  selling  and  buying 
by  all  persons  who  do  not  belong  to  the  privileged 

1  Chapter  ii.  pp.  67,  68. 


412  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Community,  so  that  even  their  own  money  and  their 
own  goods  are  made  useless  for  purposes  of  exchange 
except  through  the  narrow  circle  of  the  Monopolists.1 
Not  a  single  quarter  of  corn, — not  a  single  beast  of 
any  kind, — not  a  single  cask  of  wine, — not  a  single 
fleece  of  wool,  nor  hide  of  cattle,  could  be  lawfully 
imported,  or  even  bought  and  sold,  except  through 
the  hands  of  the  privileged  Freemen  of  the  Royal 
Burghs.  Within  the  Burghs  themselves  the  Magis- 
trates assumed  and  exercised  the  right  of  regulat- 
ing and  fixing  the  prices  of  all  kinds  of  goods,  and 
especially  of  bread  and  provisions  generally.  This 
was  done  in  the  assumed  interest  of  the  Community. 
Nothing  is  more  remarkable  in  the  History  of 
Scotland  than  the  manner  in  which  this  wide, 
deeply  rooted,  and  oppressive  system  was  gradually 
invaded  and  destroyed  by  the  natural  action  of 
individual  interests,  without  any  previous  change 
of  abstract  opinion  against  the  general  policy  on 
which  the  system  had  been  ignorantly  founded. 
So  late  as  the  reign  of  Charles  I.  in  1633,  a  fresh 
Act  was  passed  renewing,  reviving,  and  enforcing 
the  older  Statutes,  and  whatever  had  become 
more  or  less  obsolete  in  these  Communal  Mono- 
polies over  the  whole  Trade  and  Commerce  of 
the  Nation.2  This  was  too  much.  There  was 
an  immediate  and  strong  reaction  from  the  grow- 
ing energies  of  individual  enterprise  and  industry. 
The  first  great  breach  which  was  effected  in  the 
system,  came  through  the  undermining  action  of 
the  new  Towns  and  Villages  which  had  no  old 
Charters,  and  were  not  included  within  the  charmed 
circle  of  the  Hoyal  Burghs.  The  inhabitants  of 
these  places  could  not  practically  be  prevented  from 
buying  and  selling  such  articles  as  they  were  able 
to  make,  or — if  they  were  near  the  sea — to  import. 

1  It  is  a  vulgar  error  to  apply  this  word  to  the  possession  of  articles 
which  are  limited  in  quantity.     If  all  who  have  such  articles  are  free  to 
sell  them,  and  all  are  equally  free  to  buy  them,  then  the  possession  is  not 
a  monopoly. 

2  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  v.  p.  48  (1633),  c.  24. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  413 

Then  came  the  supporting  action  of  the  Landowners 
on  whose  Estates  these  new  Towns  were  rising. 
They  had  risen  and  were  growing  under  the  powers 
and  rights  of  Leasing,  of  Feuing,  and  of  Heritable 
Jurisdiction,  which  these  Landowners  held  by 
Charters  erecting  their  Estates  into  Baronies  of 
Regality,  or  into  simple  Baronies  with  powers  only 
a  little  less  extensive.  Hence  these  new  Towns  and 
Communities  were  called  Burghs  of  Barony  and  of 
Regality.  For  several  centuries  there  had  been 
more  or  less  of  a  perpetual  struggle  on  the  part  of 
the  Royal  Burghs  to  enforce  their  monopoly,  and  to 
crush  the  newer  Towns  as  nests  of  Smugglers.  On 
the  other  hand  the  great  Landowners  who  held 
Baronies  and  Regalities,  were  naturally  interested  in 
the  prosperity  of  the  new  Towns  which  were  rising 
under  them,  and  thus  became  insensibly,  but  very 
practically,  interested  in  the  extension  of  individual 
liberty,  and  consequently  in  the  freedom  of  Trade. 
Accordingly  when  legal  questions  arose,  and  the 
Royal  Burghs  prosecuted  other  Towns  for  violation 
of  their  monopolies,  the  Landowners  sometimes 
appeared  in  support  of  the  defence. 

The  Act  of  1633  was  too  violent  to  be  borne. 
At  last,  in  1671,  a  case  arose  which  brought  matters 
to  a  head.  Falkirk  was  a  Burgh  of  Regality 
built  on  the  Estate  of  the  Earl  of  Callendar.  But 
it  was  within  the  area  of  Monopoly  claimed  by 
the  Royal  Burgh  of  Stirling.  It  was  prosecuted  for 
allowing  its  inhabitants,  who  were  "  unfreemen,"  to 
engage  in  trade.  The  case  attracted  great  atten- 
tion. The  Barons  of  Regality  took  up  arms  in 
a  body  in  favour  of  a  wider  liberty.  The  Duke 
of  Lauderdale  himself,  who  was  interested  in 
the  rising  Town  of  Musselburgh,  was  induced  to 
come  to  Edinburgh  to  watch  the  case  as  it  was 
argued  before  the  Court  of  Session.  It  soon 
appeared  that  the  questions  raised  touched  the 
whole  policy  of  the  Kingdom,  and  could  only  be 
settled  by  the  Legislature  itself.  A  suggestion 


414  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

to  this  effect  by  Sir  George  Mackenzie  was  taken 
up  by  the  Lords  of  Parliament,  whose  duty  it 
was  to  prepare  Bills ;  and  the  result  was  the 
Act  of  1672,1  which  effected  a  temporary  compro- 
mise between  the  interests  of  individual  freedom 
and  the  old  Monopolies  in  the  hands  of  a  few 
popular  Bodies.  Parliament  declared  that  the  Act 
of  1633  had  extended  those  monopolies  to  a  degree 
"  highly  prejudicial  to  the  common  interest  and 
good  of  the  Kingdom."  Nevertheless,  the  monopoly 
of  the  Royal  Burghs  was  for  the  future  kept  up  as 
regarded  both  the  export  and  import  of  many 
articles  of  foreign  produce,  except  in  so  far  as 
private  persons  of  all  ranks  might  import  them  for 
their  own  domestic  use  alone.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  export  and  sale  of  all  agricultural  produce  and 
all  native  commodities  was  made  free  to  all  the  sub- 
jects of  the  Realm.  The  new  Towns,  the  Burghs 
of  Regality  and  of  Barony,  were  made  free  to  trade 
in  all  manufactures  of  their  own,  to  export  all  home 
produce,  and  to  import  many  articles  required  for 
"  tillage  or  building ; "  whilst  the  retail  trade  of 
Markets  was  made  absolutely  free. 

This  was  a  tremendous  breach  in  the  exclusive 
privileges  of  the  old  Burghal  Communities,  and 
it  was  the  opening  of  a  very  wide  door  for  the 
free  action  of  all  individual  interests.  Accordingly, 
against  the  ever  widening  consequences  of  this  Act 
the  Royal  Burghs,  which  alone  were  represented 
in  Parliament,  carried  on  an  unceasing  struggle 
and  protest,  loudly  calling  for  its  repeal.  They 
did  succeed  in  getting  some  new  Acts  passed  after 
the  Revolution,  fencing  and  guarding,  by  new  pro- 
visions and  penalties,  the  exclusive  rights  which 
still  remained  to  them  as  regards  the  imports  of 
foreign  produce ;  and  at  a  later  date  their  interest  in 
Parliament,  backed  by  the  influence  of  traditional 
feelings  and  opinions  which  were  not  yet  theoreti- 
cally abandoned,  were  sufficiently  strong  to  secure 

1  Act.  Parl.  Scot.,  vol.  viii.  p.  63  (1672),  c.  5. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  415 

a  Clause  in  the  Treaty  of  Union  with  England,  pro- 
viding for  the  security  and  continuance  of  their 
privileges  as  they  then  stood.  But  too  much 
freedom  had  now  been  granted  to  keep  out  the 
continued  and  unceasing  pressure  of  individual 
Mind.  The  Courts  of  Law  in  all  doubtful  cases 
ruled  in  favour  of  freedom  in  the  true  sense  of 
that  word,  the  sense,  namely,  of  individual  liberty. 
The  natural  right  of  every  man  to  exercise  his 
own  faculties  in  the  free  disposal  of  his  own  means 
and  property,  became  too  wide  an  instinct  to  be 
compatible  with  even  a  faint  survival  of  the  Com- 
munist Monopolies.  Yet  it  may  well  be  regarded 
with  surprise,  that,  so  far  as  the  Statute-Book 
was  concerned,  they  survived  down  to  our  own  day. 
It  was  not  until  1846  that  an  Act  was  passed  for- 
mally abolishing  them,  and  this  was  passed  as 
the  result  of  an  inquiry  by  Royal  Commission, 
which  reported  that  practically  they  were  already 
dead. 

Every  step  in  the  long  process  of  self-education 
through  which  the  Nation  passed  in  this  question 
of  Trade  Monopolies,  is  full  of  historical  and  of 
political  interest.  There  are  two  documents  which 
throw  especial  light  upon  that  process,  which  are 
separate  from  each  other  in  date  by  no  more  than 
35  years.  The  first  belongs  to  the  time  of  the 
Commonwealth — the  second  belongs  to  the  time  of 
William  in.  The  Protector,  as  is  well  known,  con- 
templated and  for  a  time  effected,  a  complete  Union 
between  England  and  Scotland,  both  being  under 
one  Government,  and  represented  in  one  United 
Parliament.  It  is  to  the  credit  of  the  Royal 
Burghs  of  Scotland  that  a  majority  of  them  seem  to 
have  voted  for  Cromwell's  policy,  which  included  as 
one  of  its  main  advantages,  complete  freedom  of 
commercial  intercourse  between  all  citizens  of  the 
Commonwealth.  Struck  by  the  poverty  of  Scot- 
land and  the  heavy  deficit  on  its  revenue  below 
the  cost  of  its  administration,  he  sent  down  an 


416  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

experienced  Commissioner1  to  inquire  into  the 
subject,  and  especially  into  the  condition  of  the 
Royal  Burghs.  His  Report,  rendered  in  1656,  gives 
an  authentic  and  a  very  striking  account  of  the 
almost  abject  poverty  of  the  country,  and  of  the 
miserable  narrowness  of  its  Commerce.  He  saw  at 
once  that  much  of  this  scantiness  of  Trade  was 
directly  connected  with  the  backwardness  of  Agri- 
culture, and  the  consequent  want  of  any  products 
to  exchange.  This  condition  of  Agriculture  again 
he  ascribed  to  the  ignorance,  poverty,  and  slothful- 
ness  of  the  people.  With  a  curious  insight  and 
perspicacity,  he  pitched  on  the  most  striking 
symbol  of  all  the  waste  he  saw,  and  pointed  to  a 
"lazy  vagrancy  of  attending  and  following  their 
herds  up  and  down  in  their  pasturage."  There 
was  consequently  no  trade  from  the  inland  parts. 
There  never  had  been  much  ;  but  what  re- 
mained was  limited  to  the  seaside,  and  was 
confined  to  a  few  Ports  on  the  East  coast,  and 
in  or  near  the  Estuary  of  the  Clyde.  Glasgow 
had  then  only  twelve  vessels,  the  biggest  of 
which  was  150  tons  burden,  and  most  of  which 
were  mere  boats.  They  traded  to  Ireland  with 
small  coals  in  open  boats  of  from  four  to  twenty 
tons,  taking  back  meal,  oats,  butter,  with  barrel 
staves  and  hoops.  There  was  a  limited  trade 
with  France  and  Norway — coals,  plaiding,  salt 
herring,  and  salmon  being  the  chief  articles,  for 
which  they  got  some  condiments  and  prunes. 
Dundee  had  suffered  severely  from  the  Wars. 
Her  trade  had  declined,  but  "  though  not  glorious, 
yet  was  not  contemptible."  She  had  ten  vessels  in 
all,  the  biggest  120  tons.  Ayr  was  in  a  sad  con- 
dition, from  the  silting  up  of  her  river  and  harbour. 
"The  place  was  growing  every  day  worse  and  worse. "fl 
Newark  (now  Port-Glasgow)  had  "  some  four  or 

1  A  Mr.  Tucker  from  the  Office  of  Excise  in  London. 

2  Miscellany   of   Scottish   Burgh    Records    Society,    1881  :    Tucker's 
Report,  p.  16.  3  Ibid.  p.  28. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND. 


417 


five  houses  besides  the  Laird's  house  of  the  place." 
Greenock  was  just  such  another,  only  a  little  larger 
—the  people  all  fishermen  and  sailors  trading  to 
Ireland  and  the  Isles  in  open  boats  ;  yet  in  spite  of 
all  this  leanness  in  the  land,  Cromwell's  agent  had 
the  perception  to  see,  and  did  not  omit  to  mention 
the  "  Mercantile  genius  "  of  the  people. 

Such  was  the  description  of  a  stranger,  coining 
from  a  wealthier  country  in  1656.  But  thirty-five 
years  later  we  have  the  description  of  the  Royal 
Burghs  of  Scotland  given  by  themselves.  They 
had  spent  many  of  the  intervening  years  in  vain 
endeavours  to  enforce  their  monopoly  against  all 
their  countrymen,  and  in  alternate  contests  and 
negotiations  with  the  Landowners  who  were  en- 
couraging the  new,  unprivileged,  individual  Traders 
who  were  rising  everywhere.  The  Restoration  of 
the  Monarchy  had  brought  with  it  the  immediate 
abandonment  and  revocation  of  all  Cromwell's 
policy,  including  Free  Trade  with  England.  This 
great  outlet  was  lost  to  Scotland — to  all  her  Towns 
whether  "free"  or  "  unfree."  All  the  more  was 
personal  energy  and  character  required  for  success 
in  the  narrowed  and  restricted  paths  of  industry. 
The  old  Royal  Burghs  did  not  advance.  At  last, 
in  1691,  they  appointed  a  Committee  to  inquire 
and  report  on  the  condition,  revenues,  resources, 
and  difficulties  of  every  one.  A  tabulated  series  of 
questions  was  addressed  to  each.  The  result  was 
a  series  of  Reports  of  the  highest  interest  in  History 
and  in  Politics.  One  broad  result  stares  us  in  the 
face — that  almost  everywhere  the  privileged  and 
monopolist  Burghs  were  stagnant  or  declining, 
whilst  the  new  Towns  which  had  no  privileges, 
and  were  even  heavily  handicapped  in  the  race 
by  having  to  fight  against  Communal  Monopolies, 
were  as  universally  prosperous,  and  were  rising 
every  year  in  wrealth  and  in  importance.  Mind,  set 
upon  its  mettle,  was  everywhere  triumphing  over 
routine  and  usage  : — Mind,  in  the  selection  of  new 

2  D 


418  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

sites — Mind,  in  the  advantage  taken  of  special 
opportunities — -Mind,  in  seeing  new  openings — and 
everywhere,  Mind  freed  from  the  stupid  levelling 
of  arbitrary  Guilds. 

Nothing  can  be  more  striking  than  the  evidence 
to  this  effect.  One  of  the  questions  asked  of  all 
the  old  Royal  Burghs  concerned  the  number  and 
condition  of  the  New  Towns  of  Barony  and  Regality 
which  existed  within  the  area  of  their  Monopoly. 
The  list  given  is  a  list  of  many  of  the  most  im- 
portant Towns  now  existing  in  Scotland.  The 
Royal  Burgh  of  Renfrew  enumerates  no  less  than 
nine  new  Burghs  of  Barony  and  Regality  within 
"  their  precincts,"  even  the  smallest  of  which  had 
"  a  much  more  considerable  trade"  than  them- 
selves. Among  these  nine  we  find  Paisley,  Port- 
Glasgow,  Greenock,  and  Gourock.  The  rising 
trade  of  all  these  places  was,  if  possible,  to  be 
suppressed,  and  the  Royal  Burghs  universally  refer 
to  it  as  "  highly  prejudicial "  to  their  own  in- 
terests and  industry.  Even  Glasgow  was  at  that 
time  declining — with  nearly  five  hundred  houses 
"waste,"  whilst  those  still  inhabited  had  fallen 
nearly  one-third  in  the  rents  they  fetched.  The 
best  houses  in  Glasgow  were  at  that  time  worth 
no  more  than  £8,  6s.  a  year  in  Sterling  money. 
Glasgow  bitterly  complained  of  the  same  neigh- 
bouring Towns,  and  of  some  others,  which  so  vexed 
the  soul  of  Renfrew.  In  particular,  the  little  vil- 
lage which  was  growing  up  on  the  shores  of  "Sir 
John  Shaw's  little  Bay,"  Greenock,  was  described 
as  having  "  a  very  great  trade  both  foreign  and 
inland,  particularly  prejudicial  to  the  trade  of 
Glasgow."  l 

And  yet  in  the  midst  of  these  stupidities 
we  have  a  few  evidences  that  even  the  Com- 
munal Mind  was  opening  to  the  lessons  of  ex- 
perience. In  a  few  cases  men  began  to  see  that 
the  action  of  the  human  Will  is  subject  to  cer- 

1  Miscellany  of  Scottish  Burgh  Records  ;  State  of  Burghs,  etc. ,  p.  72. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  419 

tain  natural  laws,  and  that  when  enactments 
run  counter  to  these,  or  do  not  take  due  note  of 
them,  such  enactments,  however  virtuous  in  motive, 
are  purely  mischievous.  Thus  in  1688,  the  Conven- 
tion of  Royal  Burghs  had  awakened  to  the  fact  that 
the  Sumptuary  Laws  had  been  "  very  prejudicial" 
to  them.1  It  was  turning  out  that  what  were  called 
the  luxuries  of  the  rich  were  inseparable  from  the 
comforts  and  necessities  of  the  poor.  Costly  things 
were  only  costly  because  they  were  much  desired, 
and  because  much  was  consequently  given  to  those 
who  could  find,  produce,  or  make  them.  And  a 
great  part  of  this  cost  went  of  necessity  to  the  Mus- 
cular Labour,  which  was  the  contribution  of  the  poor. 
Again,  the  Royal  Burghs  were  beginning  to  find  out 
that  even  within  their  own  "  precincts,"  individual 
enterprise  was  breaking  through  the  incubus  of  their 
communal  restrictions.  Individual  citizens  and 
Burgesses,  seeing  the  success  of  their  neighbours  in 
the  "  unfree  "  Towns,  were  entering  into  partnership 
with  them  in  various  enterprises  and  speculations. 
It  is  worth  while  to  listen  for  a  moment  to  the  words 
in  which  this  conduct  of  men  in  the  free  disposal  of 
their  own  faculties,  and  of  their  own  property,  was 
denounced  by  that  spirit  of  tyranny  which  is  never 
more  oppressive  than  when  it  is  wielded  in  the  sup- 
posed interest  of  a  local  popular  majority.  "  The 
Convention  being  resolved  no  longer  to  suffer  the 
privileges  of  Royal  Burghs  to  be  abused  and  en- 
croached upon  by  their  own  Burgesses,  who,  by 
joining  stocks  with  unfreemen,  inhabitants  in  the 
Burghs  of  Regality  and  Barony,  and  other  unfree 
places,  both  in  point  of  trade  and  shipping,  whereby 
those  unfreemen  receive  all  imaginable  encourage- 
ment from  freemen  in  Royal  Burghs  to  trade,  and 
that  the  said  freemen  do  voluntarily  and  with 
their  own  hands  destroy  the  privileges  of  the 
Royal  Burghs  — therefore "  2  the  Convention  de- 
nounced new  pains  and  penalties  against  all  such 

1  Miscellany  of  Scottish  Burgh  Records  :  Preface,  p.  32.  2  Ibid.  p.  40. 


420  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

persons — as    disloyal  to  the  Community  to  which 
they  belonged. 

Here  was  an  aperture  in  the  armour  of  Burghal 
monopolies  which  the  irrepressible  energies  of 
individual  interests  were  quite  sure  to  widen. 
Partnerships  could  be  easily  concealed,  and  the 
on]y  result  of  enforcing  inquisition  into  the  use 
to  which  men  might  put  their  own  money,  would 
have  been,  and  doubtless  was,  that  the  most  enter- 
prising Minds  would  seek  refuge  in  the  new  Towns. 
With  them,  therefore,  the  contest  was  hopeless, 
and  it  soon  ceased  altogether.  But  for  many  years 
after  this  date,  and  even  after  the  Union,  the 
exclusiveness  of  the  Guilds  in  the  supposed  inter- 
est of  the  Skilled  Labour,  and  of  the  Retail  Trade 
of  the  old  Burghs,  continued  unabated.  It  was 
reserved  for  this  system  as  it  prevailed  in  Glas- 
gow, to  afford  the  most  signal  illustration  of  its 
antagonism  to  the  laws  of  Nature.  The  site  of 
Glasgow  had  been  chosen  without  any  view  to  in- 
dustry even  of  the  earliest  and  rudest  kind.  It  had 
not  clustered  under  a  Hock  Fortress,  like  Stirling 
or  Dumbarton.  It  had  not  arisen  beside  a  natural 
harbour,  like  Dundee  or  Aberdeen.  It  had  not 
grown  up  out  of  a  fishing-village,  like  Greenock  or 
Rothesay.  Its  nucleus  was  not  even  a  feudal 
Castle.  Its  position  had  been  determined  by  the 
Cathedral  of  St.  Mungo,  and  was  originally  a  mere 
hamlet  of  "  the  Bishop's  men  "  living  under  the 
protection  of  a  great  Archiepiscopal  See.  It  was 
not  among  the  number  of  the  most  Ancient  Royal 
Burghs  of  the  Kingdom.  In  the  Fifteenth  Century 
its  importance  was  increased  by  being  made  the 
seat  of  a  new  University.  But  this  was  done  through 
the  same  influence  and  agency  of  the  Church  to 
which  the  Town  owed  its  own  foundation.  Glas- 
gow was  itself,  therefore,  nothing  more  than  one  of 
the  Burghs  of  Barony  on  a  Church  Estate.  Two 
of  the  Old  Royal  Burghs,  Rutherglen  and  Dum- 
barton, long  domineered  over  it,  as  now  Glasgow 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  421 

tried  to  domineer  over  Greenock  and  Paisley.  It 
is  true  that  it  stood  near  the  river  Clyde,  towards 
which  its  houses  gradually  straggled.  But  the 
Clyde  at  that  point  was  distant  from  the  sea,  its 
course  was  very  shallow,  and  it  was  being  perpetu- 
ally silted  up  with  shifting  sandbanks.  This  was 
one  of  the  causes  of  its  decay  in  Cromwell's  time. 
Only  through  the  new  openings  which  came  with 
the  Union  did  it  begin  to  revive  again.  But,  as 
a  Seaport,  it  never  could  have  reached  its  pre- 
sent position  without  the  operation  of  the  Steam 
Dredge,  through  which  ships  of  the  heaviest  burden 
have  long  been  able  to  ascend  the  river,  and  to 
lie  beside  its  quays.  During  the  last  forty-six  years 
very  nearly  forty  millions  of  tons  of  material  have 
been  removed  from  the  bed  of  the  Clyde  by  the 
Steam  Dredge — a  mass  which  would  form  a  conical 
mountain  513  feet  high,  with  a  circumference  at  the 
base  of  one  mile  and  a  half.1  Yet  it  is  a  memorable 
fact  that  when  the  future  Inventor  of  the  new  Steam 
Engine,  without  which  dredging  on  this  gigantic 
scale  would  have  been  impossible,  came  to  reside 
and  to  open  a  shop  in  Glasgow,  he  was  persecuted 
as  an  interloper  and  a  poacher  on  the  domain  of 
the  Guild  of  Hammermen.  James  Watt  was  then 
probably  known  there  as  an  ingenious  Mechanic,  but 
he  must  have  also  been  known  as  the  grandson  of  one 
of  the  earliest  Bailies  of  the  "  unfree  "  Town  of  Green- 
ock, that  most  presumptuous  union  of  the  villages  of 
the  Crawfords  and  the  Shaws.  The  Hammermen  de- 
clared that  from  the  competition  of  such  an  "  unfree- 
rnan,"  the  whole  Community  would  "  suffer  skaith." 
A  man  on  whom  Nature  had  bestowed,  in  richer 
measure  than  it  had  ever  been  bestowed  before, 
the  very  individual  and  the  very  special  gift  ol 
mechanical  genius,  and  whose  discoveries  were  des- 
tined to  raise  Glasgow  to  be  one  of  the  greatest 

1  I  give  these  astonishing  facts  on  the  authority  of  Mr.  James  Deas, 
C.E.,  kindly  communicated  to  me  through  Dr.  Marwick,  Town-Clerk 
of  Glasgow. 


422  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Cities  of  the  world,  was  actually  driven  from  her 
Burghal  "  precincts."  Fortunately  the  University 
had  precincts  of  its  own  which  were  outside  the 
"  liberties  "  of  the  Guilds.  Within  that  sanctum  this 
patient  and  laborious  Mind  wrought  out  the  great 
problem  on  which  its  heart,  as  well  as  its  intellect, 
was  set.  It  thought  and  pondered,  and  weighed 
and  measured,  and  tried  and  tried  again,  until  at 
last  the  moment  of  Inspiration  came,  and  one  of  the 
most  tremendous  agencies  in  the  material  world 
became  tractable  as  a  little  child.  It  was  tamed, 
yoked,  and  bound  to  every  variety  of  human  service 
— an  immense  contribution  indeed,  not  only  to  the 
Common  Good  of  Glasgow,  but  to  the  Common 
Good  of  all  Mankind. 

The  same  natural  play  of  instinct  and  of  motive 
which  had  led  the  Landowners  with  such  immense 
success  to  foster  individual  liberty  and  enterprise, 
in  the  hands  of  their  own  Villagers  and  Feuars,  now 
led  them  also  to  rely  more  and  more  on  the  same 
great  principle  as  equally  applicable  to  their  agricul- 
tural Tenants.  For  this  purpose  the  first  step  to  be 
taken  was  that,  wherever  possible,  on  the  expiry  of 
old  Leases,  their  farms  should  be  re-let  to  indi- 
vidual Tenants.  Such  Tenants  became  at  once  freed 
from  the  trammels  of  Communal  Usage,  and  could 
move  out  of  the  ruts  in  which  the  wheels  of  progress 
were  jammed  up  to  the  very  axletrees.  They  could 
—but  were  they  sure  to  do  so  ?  Here  again  there 
was  an  education  of  experience — analogous  to  that 
which  only  very  slowly  and  very  gradually  educated 
the  Towns  in  the  lessons  of  the  new  Industrial  Age. 
It  soon  turned  out  that  neither  the  mere  circum- 
stance of  undivided  holdings,  nor  the  additional  cir- 
cumstance of  very  long  Leases,  were  enough  of 
themselves  to  secure  an  improving  Agriculture. 
The  reason  is  obvious.  If  the  sources  of  all  Wealth 
are  Mind,  Materials,  and  Opportunity,  it  is  clearly 
not  enough  to  have  only  one,  or  only  two  of  these 
sources  opened.  Materials  are  useless,  and  so  is 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  423 

Opportunity,  and  so  are  both  together,  if  the  ap- 
propriate qualities  of  Mind  to  make  use  of  them 
are  wanting.  Significant  indications  are  given  in 
the  Reports  so  often  referred  to,  of  the  steps  of 
experience  through  which  the  Owners  of  land  were 
taught  how  best  to  secure  the  improvement  of  the 
soil.  Thus  in  the  Lennox,  the  perpetual  tenure  of 
Feu  for  a  fixed  annual  payment,  had  been  given 
over  various  areas  of  agricultural  land  to  men  who 
thereby  became  small  Owners,  and  had  all  the  in- 
ducements to  improvement  which  Ownership  is  re- 
puted to  give.  But  neither  the  accumulations  due 
to  Mind  in  the  past,  nor  those  aspirations  of  Mind 
which  regard  the  future,  were  present  to  take  due 
advantage  of  the  Material  and  of  the  Opportunity. 
These  Feuars  belonged  originally  to  the  old  unim- 
proving  class.  They  had  no  conception  of  educating 
their  children  for  any  other  employment  than  that 
on  which  they  and  their  fathers  had  maintained 
existence.  Consequently  they  went  on  sub-dividing 
their  lands  among  a  progeny  as  ignorant  and  unim- 
proving  as  themselves.  "  They  thought  it  a  disgrace 
that  their  children  should  be  anything  but  Lairds." 1 
This  sub-division  went  on  increasing  until  the  little 
possessions  had  become  so  small,  in  1794,  that  some 
of  the  Owners  could  not  afford  to  keep  a  horse. 
Then  we  have  the  usual  sickening  detail  of  constant 
over-cropping,  of  "nothing  being  laid  out  on  improve- 
ments, and  of  the  land  being  scourged  to  the  last 
extremity."  The  whole  produce  could  hardly  sup- 
port the  families  that  depended  upon  it,  even  with 
the  addition  of  what  was  procured  by  the  unremit- 
ting labour  of  the  wife  and  children  in  spnming_and 
a.  little  weaving.2  This  is  an  exact  Sescription  of 
"the  "results  of  a  similar  condition  of  things  now 
common  among  the  Peasant  Proprietors  of  parts 
of  France,  as  described  by  such  eye-witnesses  as 
Mr.  Hamerton,  Lady  Verney,  and  many  others. 
The  lesson  against  feuing  agricultural  land  was 

1  Agriculture  of  Dumbartonshire  :  Reports,  vol.  ii.  p.  14.  2  Ibid. 


424  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

hardly  needed.  Land  feued  is  land  sold.  Feuing  is 
merely  one  form  of  total  alienation.  A  "Superior" 
parts  with  all  the  powers  and  rights  of  Ownership, 
except  that  of  receiving  a  Kent  charge.  The  Feuar 
becomes  the  Proprietor.  On  the  other  hand,  the 
evidence  furnished  by  the  Report  of  1794  on 
Dumbartonshire,  is  in  favour  of  what  are  now 
called  Allotments — that  is  to  say,  small  areas  of 
land  let  to  Labourers  and  Tradesmen  who  were 
intelligent.  These  were  reported  to  be  by  no  means 
ill  cultivated  or  unimproved.1  On  the  contrary, 
they  were  reported  to  be  as  far  advanced  as 
any  part  of  the  County — at  a  time  too,  when  the 
Common  Good  of  the  Burgh  was  lying  compara- 
tively waste.  On  such  Allotments  the  full  benefit 
of  individual  interest  was  at  work,  coupled  often 
with  knowledge  above  the  average  of  that  possessed 
by  the  old  class  of  Tenants.  Feus  are  an  excellent 
tenure  for  purposes  of  Building,  and  Scotchmen 
generally  will  not  build  on  any  tenure  less  secure 
and  permanent.  But  there  is  no  reason  which  should 
induce  a  Proprietor  to  give  off  agricultural  land  on 
this  tenure.  If  he  wishes  to  sell,  it  is  best  to  sell 
out  and  out.  But  the  example  of  those  old  feus  to 
small  Owners  in  Dumbartonshire  is  an  excellent 
illustration  of  the  general  principle  on  which  all 
improvements  depend. 

There  was,  however,  another  case  in  which  the 
teachings  of  experience  were  more  practically  im- 
portant. Leases  of  great  length  are  another  panacea 
amongst  those  who  have  had  no  experience,  which 
is  often  recommended  with  much  confidence.  But 
this  also  was  tried,  and  with  the  same  result, 
depending  exactly  on  the  same  principles.  It 
appears  from  Professor  Walker's  Work,  published 
in  1808, 2  that  Archibald,  third  Duke  of  Argyll,  the 
friend  of  Culloden,  had  been  induced  to  give  some 
very  long  Leases  of  large  farms  in  Mull — Leases  for 

1  Agriculture  of  Dumbartonshire :  Reports,  vol.  ii.  p.  15. 

2  Economic  History  of  the  Hebrides,  vol.  i.  p.  68. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  425 

"  three  nineteens,"  or  a  period  of  fifty-seven  years. 
He  expected  the  Tenants  "to  set  a  pattern  of 
industry  and  improvement"  on  such  length  and 
security  of  tenure.  But  the  expectation  was  not 
fulfilled.  When  the  Leases  were  half  expired  the 
farms  were  found  to  be  as  little  improved  as  any  on 
the  Island.  The  same  experiment  had  been  tried 
in  the  Island  of  Islay  by  Mr.  Campbell  of  Shawfield, 
who,  in  1720,  let  all  his  Estate  on  Leases  of  the 
same  long  duration,  with  the  result  that  in  1764 
that  Island  had  undergone  no  improvement — with 
one  solitary  exception.  Flax  had  been  introduced, 
and  became  a  source  of  industry  and  advantage  to 
the  Island.  But  this  one  exception  was  the  result, 
not  of  the  long  Leases,  but  of  the  only  compulsory 
clause  which  had  been  inserted  in  them  by  the  Pro- 
prietor, which  was  a  clause  binding  the  Tenants  to 
cultivate  flax.1  It  thus  appeared  that  the  only  one 
item  of  improvement  which  had  been  effected  during 
more  than  half  a  century  was  due,  not  to  the  Mind 
of  the  Tenant,  but  to  the  Mind  of  the  Proprietor — 
to  his  forethought,  and  to  his  knowledge — in  binding 
men  who  were  comparatively  ignorant,  to  begin  a 
new  industry,  which  of  themselves  they  never 
would  have  thought  of. 

In  this  one  exception  to  the  general  result  we 
see  the  whole  secret  and  the  whole  philosophy  of 
the  only  method  by  which  it  was  then  possible  to 
improve  the  agriculture  of  Scotland — to  arrest  the 
increasing  impoverishment  of  her  soil,  and  to  lift 
her  rural  population  out  of  the  poverty  and  sloth  in 
which  they  lived.  It  was  the  exercise,  in  a  new 
direction,  of  the  same  Power  to  which  the  Parlia- 
ment of  Scotland  had  often  appealed  before,  not  only 
to  secure  a  Tenantry  loyal  to  the  Government,  but 
also  to  secure  such  rural  improvements  as  were  then 
known.  Educated  men  were  to  direct  the  energies 
of  men  less  instructed.  Mind  was  to  keep  its  power 
over  Muscle.  Very  long  terms  of  Lease,  during 

1  Economic  History  of  the  Hebrides,  vol.  i.  p.  68. 


426  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

which  this  power  was  to  be  suspended,  could  not 
but  be  mischievous.  Most  fortunately  for  the 
country,  few  Proprietors  had  been  induced  to  try 
an  experiment  which  could  not  be  stopped  during 
the  long  period  of  nearly  sixty  years — although  it 
might  be  quite  evident  before  one-half  that  time  had 
expired,  that  it  must  end  in  total  failure.  In  the  great 
majority  of  cases  they  had  granted  no  other  Leases 
than  those  of  the  ordinary  duration  of  "one  nine- 
teen/' and  at  the  end  of  every  Lease  they  inserted 
stipulations  in  the  new  Tacks  binding  the  Tenants 
to  execute  certain  specified  improvements.  These, 
of  course,  expanded  with  the  expanding  knowledge 
of  the  day.  Proprietors  were  themselves  only  in 
course  of  being  educated ;  and  some  were  before 
others  in  appreciating  and  accepting  the  advancing 
knowledge  of  a  new  science.  In  some  points  they 
were  almost  as  slow  to  break  with  ancient  Usages, 
and  to  perceive  the  mischief  of  them,  as  the  most 
ignorant  of  their  Tenants.  The  heavy  dues  exacted 
for  "  Thirlage,"  or  the  maintenance  of  Mills,  were  a 
great  evil,  and  they  were  not  wholly  abolished  till 
recent  years.  But  the  stipulations  in  Leases  became 
more  and  more  enlightened  and  important  in  their 
effects.  They  began  generally  with  stipulations  for 
the  making  of  enclosures,  and  for  the  building  of 
better  Houses  than  the  old  hovels,  which  were  as  uni- 
versal in  the  Lowlands  as  in  the  Highlands.  But  this 
rudimentary  step  of  providing  for  enclosures  speedily 
involved  corresponding  stipulations  for  the  uses  to 
which  enclosed  land  was  to  be  applied.  There  were 
clauses  to  forbid  old  habits  which  were  ruinous. 
There  were  clauses  prescribing  new  methods  which 
were  fruitful — clauses  forbidding  continuous  crop- 
ping with  Cereals — clauses  enjoining  an  alternation 
with  the  new  Green  Crops — clauses  insisting  on  the 
use  of  Sown  Grasses — and  on  the  application  of  due 
quantities  of  manure.  With  the  growing  knowledge 
of  the  cultivating  class,  and  the  yearly  proofs  ex- 
perienced of  increasing  produce  and  of  rising  values, 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  427 

the  necessity  for  such  detailed  stipulations  gradually 
abated.  The  "rules  of  good  husbandry"  became  a 
legal  phrase,  having  a  definite  meaning,  and  suscept- 
ible of  judicial  interpretation.  A  class  of  Tenant 
farmers  arose  having  themselves  ample  knowledge, 
sufficient  capital,  and  technical  skill. 


accommodation  and  apparatus  re- 
quired for  scientific  agriculture  became  more  costly, 
it  became  more  and  more  the  universal  habit  in 
Scotland  that  the  Owner  should  supply  that  accom- 
modation and  apparatus  along  with  the  land  itself. 
In  some  cases  part  of  this  work  was  done  by  the 
Tenant  on  stipulated  conditions  —  he  making  his 
own  calculations  for  repayment,  either  by  compara- 
tive lowness  of  rent,  or  by  comparative  length  of 
Lease  —  or  by  both  combined. 

It  is  not  often  that  we  can  enjoy  in  human  affairs 
the  sharp  and  clear  processes  of  demonstration  which 
are  the  glorious  reward  of  Physical  Research.  Yet 
such  —  and  not  less  certain  —  are  the  proofs  now 
afforded  by  the  history  of  Scotland  in  favour  of  the 
Powers  and  Agencies  through  which  her  Agriculture 
was  reformed  during  the  latter  half  of  the  Eighteenth 
Century.  By  all  that  had  happened  before  the 
change  —  by  all  that  ceased  to  happen  wherever  it  was 
effected  —  by  all  that  continued  to  happen  wherever 
it  was  hampered  or  delayed,  —  it  is  proved  to  demon- 
stration that  terrible  evils  and  dangers  were  in- 
separably bound  up  with  the  older  system,  and  with 
the  ignorant  habits  in  which  the  whole  of  it  con- 
sisted. This  is  one  kind  of  proof.  But  there  is 
another  kind.  By  all  the  benefits  which  the  change 
immediately  conferred  —  by  all  the  increase  in  these 
benefits  which  arose  in  proportion  as  it  became 
developed  —  by  all  the  sacrifice  of  them  wherever  it 
was  still  delayed,  —  we  can  see  without  the  shadow 
of  a  doubt,  that  the  new  system  was  founded  on 
Natural  Laws,  on  the  recognition  which  they 
demand,  and  on  the  obedience  which  they  reward. 
Nature  takes  no  cognisance  of  stupidity  in  the 


428  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

sense  of  allowance  or  of  remission.  She  does  take 
cognisance  of  it  in  the  way  of  punishment.  Chronic 
poverty  and  frequent  famines  had  been,  as  we  have 
seen,  the  punishment  in  Scotland  of  the  ignorant 
wastefulness  of  its  traditionary  agricultural  cus- 
toms. So  now  when  Mind  had  been  awakened, 
and  when  its  energies,  wielded  by  individual 
men,  had  been  turned  with  better  knowledge 
to  the  improvement  of  the  soil,  Nature  took 
notice  of  it  by  a  lavish  increase  of  her  fruits. 
It  is  a  striking  fact  that  the  "  ill  years  "  —the  bad 
seasons — of  1781-2  were  the  last  which  afflicted  any 
large  part  of  Scotland  with  severe  distress  and  the 
danger  of  famine.  In  those  years  the  new  know- 
ledge, and  the  new  class  of  Tenants  who  were  able 
to  make  any  use  of  it,  were  as  yet  established  only 
in  some  parts  of  the  country.  Everywhere  else  the 
old  usages  were  still  supreme — the  Hunrig  culti 
vation — the  promiscuous  grazing — the  wretched 
Cattle — the  not  less  wretched  Oats  and  Bear.  The 
consequence  was  that  over  no  less  than  fifteen  of 
the  Counties  of  Scotland,  a  population  of  not  less 
than  111,521  souls  were  only  rescued  from  starvation 
by  charitable  collections.1  After  this  date  down  to 
our  own  times  there  have  been  bad  seasons  again  and 
again  recurring  at  about  the  usual  intervals — but 
never  have  they  had  the  same  effect — except  in  the 
few  remaining  fastnesses  of  the  ancient  ignorance. 
These  fastnesses  have  chiefly  been  in  the  Hebrides, 
and  in  a  few  Districts  of  the  Northern  Highlands 
— always  where,  only  where,  and  in  proportion  as, 
the  old  stupidities  have  resisted  and  survived. 

But  the  story  of  this  resistance  is  so  curious  and 
so  instructive  that  it  must  be  shortly  told. 

We  have  seen  how  in  1739,  under  the  advice  of 
Culloden,  the  first  great  step  had  been  taken  on  the 
Hebridean  Estates  of  the  Argyll  family — that  of 
redeeming  the  class  of  Sub-Tenants  from  their 
servitudes  to  the  Tacksmen  under  whom  they 

1  Memoirs  of  Sir  John  Sinclair,  Bart.,  vol.  i.  p.  90. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  429 

universally  held  at  Will.  In  some  cases  they  were 
themselves  raised  to  the  position  of  Tacksmen — in 
all  cases  they  were  freed  from  indefinite  exactions. 
We  have  seen,  too,  how  shocked  Culloden  had  been 
by  the  wasteful  and  barbarous  husbandry  he 
witnessed  in  Tyree.  But  on  the  other  hand  he  did 
not  see  his  way  to  any  immediate  or  compulsory 
change  in  these  methods  of  cultivation.  He  probably 
thought  that  self-interest,  now  called  into  play 
under  new  conditions  of  security,  would  be  enough 
to  bring  about  reform.  Wielding  the  powers  of 
Ownership,  he  had  abolished  one  deeply -rooted  and 
most  ancient  custom — the  custom  of  indefinite 
Servitudes.  He  did  not  know,  or  perfectly  under- 
stand, that  nothing  but  the  same  powers,  wielded 
with  like  determination  and  like  intelligence,  could 
uproot  those  other  Servitudes — as  old  and  as  de- 
structive— under  which  the  people  were  chained  and 
bound  amongst  each  other  in  a  perfect  tangle  of 
obstructive  usages. 

Culloden  and  all  that  generation  passed  away, 
with  his  two  friends,  Duke  John  and  Duke 
Archibald  (Lord  Islay).  The  struggle  was  unceasing 
to  get  the  people  to  amend  their  culture.  Then 
came  the  Potato — then  the  Kelp.  Subsistence 
became  comparatively  easy,  and  was  sometimes 
abundant.  But  all  this  came  to  a  people  unprepared 
by  previous  habits,  or  by  any  new  aspirations,  to 
profit  by  it.  Nothing  was  saved  or  stored.  They 
lived,  and  ate,  and  multiplied.  From  the  date  of 
my  Grandfather's  succession  in  1770,  he  issued 
ceaseless  instructions  for  the  improvement  of  the 
people.  He  insisted  in  his  Leases  on  enclosures,  to 
save  the  arable  lands  from  constant  invasion  by 
whole  herds  of  useless  horses  and  lean  cattle.  He 
insisted  on  better  Houses.  He  tried  his  best  to 
prevent  the  systematic  waste  of  Barley  by  illicit  dis- 
tillation. He  tried  to  establish  Fisheries.  He  tried 
to  stop  the  destructive  habit  of  breaking  up  pasture 
on  Sands  which  were  liable  to  be  blown.  When 


430  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Kelp  became  an  important  resource  he  left  so  large  a 
part  of  it  to  the  workers  that  they  held  their  land 
practically  for  nothing,  because  the  whole  rent,  and 
often  much  more,  came  out  of  Kelp.  His  rent  from 
13,000  acres  of  land  did  not  amount  to  more  than  the 
saleable  value  of  the  Barley  crop  alone.  All  other 
produce, — potatoes,  lint,  sheep,  milk,  butter  and 
cheese,  poultry,  eggs,  etc.,  were  not  counted  at  all 
as  contributing  to  rent,  because  the  Proprietor  said 
"he  wished  the  Tenants  to  live  plentifully  and 
happily."  It  was  all  in  vain — as  regards  any  per- 
manent improvement.  Plenty  is  a  relative  term. 
Produce  which  was  plenteous  for  a  population  of 
1676  persons  in  1769,  would  not  be  plenteous  to  a 
population  which  had  risen  to  2776  in  1802.  In 
that  year  the  condition  of  the  Island  alarmed  his 
agent,  Mr.  Maxwell  of  Aros,  an  excellent  and  able 
man  who  was  maternal  grandfather  of  the  late  Dr. 
Norman  Macleod.  His  Report  is  a  repetition  of  the 
worst  accounts  to  the  Board  of  Agriculture  in  1794. 
Subdivision  had  reduced  the  holdings  to  starvation 
point.  The  Cows  did  not  produce  calves  above  once 
in  two  or  three  years.  Troops  of  Horses,  used  only 
for  dragging  seaweed  at  one  time  of  the  year,  preyed 
all  the  rest  of  the  year  on  the  exhausted  pastures. 
Hosts  of  Cottars  living  only  on  the  wages  of  Kelp- 
burning  oppressed  the  unfortunate  Tenants.  The 
quality  of  the  Barley  was  deteriorating  rapidly. 
Ignorance  of  all  husbandry,  and  stubborn  attach- 
ment to  the  old  customs,  offered  "  arduous  obstacles 
to  the  improvement  of  the  Island."  The  additional 
One  Thousand  people  who  had  grown  up  in  recent 
years  could  not  be  supported.  My  Grandfather  had 
begun  to  entertain  the  proposal  to  help  them  to 
the  Colonies.  But  in  1803  there  arose,  as  we  have 
seen,  that  panic  against  Emigration  described  before. 
The  old  Duke  seems  to  have  deeply  shared  in  it. 
His  soldierly  spirit  was  stirred,  too,  in  favour  of  the 
men  who  had  enlisted  in  the  Fencible  Regiments 
which  were  about  to  be  disbanded  at  the  Peace. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  431 

He  determined  to  try  a  new  plan.  He  resolved  to 
break  down  and  cut  up  several  of  the  larger  Farms 
falling  out  of  Lease,  and  to  settle  as  many  of  the 
people  as  he  could  on  smaller  but  separate  Holdings 
of  a  size  calculated  to  support  a  Family  with  ease. 
But  one  .essential  part  of  this  scheme  was  enclosure 
—individual  possession — the  abolition  of  promis- 
cuous waste  in  the  form  of  Runrig.  He  employed 
a  professional  Surveyor  to  lay  out  the  new  "  Crofts," 
which  were  to  be  capable  of  supporting  not  less 
than  16  Cows. 

This  most  benevolent  scheme  was  met  by  the 
most  obstinate  resistance  on  the  part  of  the  people. 
Rather  than  give  up  the  wasteful  habits  of  Runrig, 
they  declared  they  would  rather  go  to  join  the 
emigration  which  Lord  Selkirk  was  then  leading  to 
North  America.  The  Duke's  agent  at  the  time 
was  a  Highlander  himself,  intimate  with  the  con- 
dition and  habits  of  the  people.  Yet  he  writes 
almost  in  despair  with  their  infatuated  blindness  to 
their  own  obvious  interests,  and  to  the  value  of 
the  reforms  which  had  by  that  time  become  accepted 
by  every  educated  man.  He  suggested  to  the  Duke 
a  postponement  of  the  plan.  Yet  time  was  needed 
to  make  even  a  beginning,  and  the  powers  of 
Ownership  were  once  more  asserted  to  insist  on  the 
abolition  of  a  system  so  destructive  and  so  dangerous. 
By  firmness,  and  by  assistance  given  in  fencing,  the 
division  and  individuality  of  the  arable  lands  was 
at  last  effected.  The  grazings  only  continued  to 
be  used  in  common,  but  even  on  these  the  amount 
of  stock  was  carefully  fixed  and  apportioned  to 
each  man. 

Now  followed  a  most  remarkable  series  of  facts. 
The  old  Field-Marshal  died  in  1806.  In  one 
respect  his  policy  was  entirely  successful.  The 
separation  of  holdings — the  individualisation  of  the 
arable  areas — resulted,  almost  automatically,  in  a 
great  increase  of  produce.  But  it  had  another 
result  which  was  not  foreseen.  It  facilitated  and 


432  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

gave  a  new  impulse  to  further  subdivision.  Under 
the  Runrig  system  the  introduction  of  an  additional 
shareholder  required  assent.  In  settling  this  there 
were  at  least  some  difficulties  to  be  overcome  in 
the  way  of  subdivision.  Under  separate  holdings 
of  the  arable  area  these  difficulties  were  much  dimi- 
nished. Increasing  produce  and  a  greater  freedom 
in  subdividing,  were  at  once  taken  advantage 
of  by  a  people  whose  intelligence  was  not  deve- 
loped in  proportion  to  its  opportunities.  Nothing 
but  the  continued  exercise  of  the  powers  of 
Ownership  in  fighting  a  watchful  and  uphill  battle 
against  inveterate  habits,  could  have  been  success- 
ful. Instead  of  this  there  was  an  almost  complete 
abandonment  of  all  control.  There  came  a  Reign- 
not  of  Law,  or  of  Mind — but  of  what  in  medical 
language  is  called  "  Amentia."  My  Grandfather's 
Successor J  lived  for  thirty-three  years — during  the 
whole  of  which  time  the  powers  of  Ownership  may 
be  said  to  have  been  suspended.  He  was  a  perfect 
type  of  the  kind  of  Landowner  who  was  adored  in 
Ireland — one  who  never  meddled  or  interfered  with 
the  stupidities  of  Custom.  Celtic  usages  were 
allowed  their  course.  Subdivision  went  on  at  a 
redoubled  rate,  and  population  kept  up  even  more 
than  pace.  In  1822  the  Farms  which  had  been  held 
by  small  Tenants  ever  since  Culloden's  time  were 
crowded  with  a  population  of  2869  souls  ;  whilst  the 
newly  divided  farms,  five  in  number,  held  no  less 
than  1080  more.  There  had  been  a  bad  season  in 
1821.  The  Cattle  were  almost  starved,  and  there 
were  many  cases  of  great  misery  among  the  people. 
Once  more,  Kelp  came  to  the  rescue.  There  was  an 
extraordinary  supply  of  it,  and  this,  with  wholesale 
insolvency  admitted  and  allowed,  tided  over  the 
crisis  for  a  time.  Next  came  another  tremendous 
blow.  The  whole  Kelp  Trade  rested  on  Fiscal 
Protection,  and  on  two  special  taxes  alone.  One 
was  upon  Spanish  Barilla — a  Plant  growing  not 

1  George,  Sixth  Duke  of  Argj'll,  succeeded  1806,  died  1839. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  433 

in  the  sea,  but  on  the  land,  and  rich  in  the 
Alkalis  which  seaweed  afforded.  The  other  im- 
post wras  the  tax  on  Salt — a  tax  most  oppressive 
to  numberless  industries,  and  specially  injurious  to 
the  Highlands,  through  the  impediments  thrown 
in  the  way  of  the  trade  in  fish.  From  common  salt, 
which  is  a  salt  of  Soda,  the  same  important  Alkali 
could  be  made  into  other  combinations.  Both  these 
taxes  were  repealed — one  in  1823,  the  other  in  1826. 
The  trade  of  the  Kingdom  as  a  whole  was  immensely 
benefited.  But  the  special,  and  the  only  manu- 
facture of  the  Hebrides,  and  of  the  adjacent  coasts, 
was  destroyed. 

In  all  other  countries  when  Mines  are  ex- 
hausted, or  when  Mills  are  closed,  or  when  any 
other  local  industry  is  extinguished,  the  people 
who  had  been  so  employed  invariably  move  off  to 
other  fields  where  their  labour  can  be  made  re- 
munerative to  themselves,  and  useful  to  the  world. 
But  the  Hebrideans  never  thought  of  this.  There 
is,  nevertheless,  no  suspension  of  the  laws  of  Nature 
for  the  special  and  exclusive  protection  of  any  par- 
ticular set  of  men,  merely  because  they  belong  to 
a  particular  race,  or  because  they  live  in  an  Island,  or 
because  they  speak  a  particular  language.  Failing 
the  Kelp  trade,  they  still  held  on  by  the  Potato. 
The  consequence  was  that  the  "ill  years,"  which 
must  every  now  and  then  recur,  always  smote  them 
with  the  misery  and  famine  which  had  in  former 
generations  smitten  the  rest  of  Scotland.  In  1836-7 
there  was  terrible  misery  all  over  the  Highlands 
wherever  the  old  system  still  survived,  and  especi- 
ally in  Skye.  We  have  an  account  of  it,  and  of  the 
causes  which  produced  it,  from  an  educated  High- 
lander,1 who  writes  with  that  high  intelligence  of 
his  race  which  never  fails  to  be  conspicuous  where- 
ever  Highlanders  are  lifted  above  the  level  of  the 
old  Paternal  Customs.  I  need  not  repeat  his  story. 

1  Mr.  Alexander  Macgregor,  Licentiate  of  the   Church  of  Scotland 
Quarterly  Journal,  of  Agriculture,  No.  XLII.,  vol.  ix. 

2  E 


434  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

It  is  a  mere  duplicate  of  the  course  of  events  which 
we  have  followed  in  Tyree.  Everything  that  had 
been  done  in  the  panic  of  1803  against  emigration, 
had  simply  ended  in  aggravating  the  evil.  Even 
the  making  of  the  Caledonian  Canal,  begun  in  the 
same  year,  from  which  much  was  hoped,  had 
done  no  permanent  good.  The  Skye  men  had 
indeed  worked  at  it.  Whilst  the  construction  of 
it  had  lasted,  between  300  and  400  of  them  had 
earned  from  £3500  to  £4000  in  the  half-year. 
But  there  was  no  change  of  habits — no  elevation 
in  the  standard  of  living.  On  the  contrary,  it 
was  becoming  lower  and  lower  from  the  wretched 
husbandry,  and  from  the  stimulated  growth  of 
population.  The  one  Parish  of  Kilmuir  had  in  1736 
only  1230  souls.  Even  this  was  far  above  the 
population  it  had  supported  in  the  Epoch  of  the 
Clans.  This  is  repeatedly  and  emphatically  stated 
by  Mr.  Macgregor,  and  it  reminds  us  that  even 
then  the  population  of  the  old  Military  Ages  had 
been  far  exceeded.  Yet  nineteen  years  later,  the 
population  had  risen  to  1572.  In  1791  it  was 
2060.  In  1831  it  was  3415,  and  in  this  year  of 
renewed  famine  1836-7,  it  amounted  to  about  4000. 
It  will  be  observed  that  this  exorbitant  in- 
crease went  on  after  the  Kelp  trade  had  been 
destroyed.  There  was  nothing  whatever  to  justify, 
or  account  for  such  increase  except  an  ever- 
increasing  dependence  on  the  Potato,  and  a 
corresponding  lowering  of  the  conditions  of  life. 
There  .was  not  the  slightest  advance  in  agri- 
cultural knowledge  or  industry.  On  the  contrary 
— no  account  given  by  wandering  Englishmen 
or  by  Low  Countrymen,  which  may  be  thought 
highly  coloured  by  anti-Celtic  prejudices,  can 
exceed  in  wretchedness  the  account  by  this  de- 
scendant of  the  Clan  Gregor  in  respect  to  the 
industrial  habits  of  the  Skyemen  among  whom  he 
lived  so  late  as  1838.  The  women  alone  did  all 
the  harrowing ;  whilst  every  implement  and  every 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  435 

method  of  cultivation  were  alike  barbarous  and 
ineffective.  Next  came  the  final  blow — the  Potato 
disease  of  1846.  By  that  time  the  population  of 
Tyree  had  increased  to  about  5000  souls — an  in- 
crease probably  without  parallel  in  any  purely  rural 
district  in  the  world.  It  may  bring  this  abnormal 
multiplication  more  strikingly  home  to  us,  when  we 
observe  the  fact  that  this  single  Hebridean  Island 
added  to  its  population  during  about  80  years 
a  greater  number  of  souls  than  were  added  to  the 
population  of  the  Cathedral  City  of  Glasgow  during 
all  the  generations  which  elapsed  between  the  War 
of  Independence  and  the  Reformation.1  It  did  this 
under  the  stimulus  of  a  manufacture  which  rested 
wholly  on  Protective  Duties  injurious  to  the  rest  of 
the  community — under  the  influence  of  a  mindless 
contentment  with  a  very  low  diet — and  of  an  in' 
dulgence,  not  less  mindless,  in  instincts  which  are 
natural  in  themselves,  but  which,  like  all  other 
natural  instincts,  require  the  control  of  an  en- 
lightened Will.  The  love  of  offspring  is  a  natural 
instinct  which  we  share  with  all  creatures.  But 
educated  men  do  not  anywhere  encourage  their 
children  to  build  hovels  round  their  home,  without 
reference  to  adequate  means  of  maintaining  a  civi- 
lised existence.  Even  among  the  Birds  of  the  Air,  and 
the  creatures  of  the  Field,  there  is  a  wonderful, 
and  even  a  mysterious  law  by  which  a  wholesome 
dispersion  is  secured,  and  limited  areas  of  subsist- 
ence are  kept  from  being  overstocked.  It  is  a 
curious  fact,  quite  common  in  the  Highlands,  that 
small  areas  of  arable  land  which  can  never  be  en- 
larged from  the  nature  of  the  country,  are  frequented 
by  a  single  pair  of  Partridges,  producing  a  single 
covey  every  year,  which,  even  when  never  shot, 
never  remain  to  multiply.  It  is  true  that  Man  has 
powers  and  resources  which  the  lower  animals  have 
not.  It  is  true  that  with  every  new  mouth  that 
is  born,  two  new  hands  are  born  to  feed  it. 

1  History  of  Glasgow,  by  George  Macgregor,  1881,  Appendix,  p.  530. 


436  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

But  it  is  not  true  that  the  two  hands  have  power 
in  all  circumstances  to  earn  new  subsistence.  Sus- 
tenance cannot  be  sensibly  increased  upon  St.  Kilda. 
Nature  intervenes  and  kills  off  the  children  by  a 
horrible  and  mysterious  disease.  Even  those  that 
remain  live  largely  upon  charity ;  and  are  now  said 
to  exhibit  the  moral  deterioration  which  such  de- 
pendence always  causes,  when  it  becomes  habitual. 
This  is  an  extreme  case.  But  it  is  very  little  more 
extreme  than  the  case  of  other  Hebridean  Islands. 
The  love  of  Race  is  another  natural  instinct.  But 
educated  men  do  not  cling  to  spots  of  birth  when 
wider  regions  invite  to  wider  duties,  and  to  more 
fruitful  works. 

Sooner  or  later  Nature  finds  out  the  sins  and 
blindnesses  of  all  her  children.  We  know  what 
were  the  results  of  the  Potato  famine  in  Ireland, 
where  it  fell  on  a  population  which  had  never  been 
redeemed  from  a  terrible  continuity  of  Celtic  usages, 
and  had  never  enjoyed  the  opportunities  afforded 
to  the  people  of  Tyree,  by  the  abolition  of  Middle- 
men, by  the  formation  of  separate  holdings,  and  by 
rents  kept  down  to  a  low  rate  on  purpose  to  let 
them  live  with  exceptional  ease.  The  same  effects 
resulted  where  all  these  opportunities  had  been 
afforded,  but  where  they  had  not  been  put  to  the 
right  use  by  minds  adequately  prepared.  There 
was  imminent  danger  of  starvation.  It  was  pre- 
vented by  charity — the  charity  of  Proprietors  gen- 
erously aided  by  the  charity  of  the  Public.  This 
charity  was  rendered  effective  in  the  Hebrides  by 
the  comparatively  limited  area  of  distress.  The 
rest  of  Scotland  suffered  great  losses  in  one  article 
of  produce  and  of  sale.  But  no  part  of  Scotland 
suffered  any  danger  of  famine,  except  those  parts 
of  it  where  the  old  mediaeval  ignorances  had  been 
suffered  to  survive.  There  never  was  so  clear  a 
lesson.  Conviction  was  forced  on  the  poor  people 
of  the  Island  of  Tyree,  and  they  addressed  to  Sir 
John  M'Neill,  who  was  then  at  the  head  of  the 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  437 

Board  of  Supervision  for  the  Poor,  an  earnest  and 
even  a  passionate  petition  asking  for  assistance  to 
emigrate  to  Canada.  I  have  nowhere  seen  a  more 
forcible  and  more  conclusive  plea  set  forth  in  favour 
of  this  remedy.1  It  fell  to  the  lot  of  my  Father  and 
myself  to  respond  to  it.  At  great  cost  we  enabled 
upwards  of  a  thousand  people  to  go  where  they 
could  put  to  use  the  admirable  elements  of  char- 
acter which  never  fail  to  be  exhibited  by  High- 
landers when  they  move  out  into  the  stream  of  the 
world's  progress.  When  I  visited  Canada  and  the 
United  States  in  1879,  I  had  the  warmest  invita- 
tions from  Highlanders  who  had  emigrated  ;  and 
the  accounts  of  success  were  universal, 

I  take  but  little  merit  to  myself,  that  in  the 
face  of  proofs  so  ample,  and  of  results  so  terrible, 
I  determined — with  due  regard  to  local  circum- 
stances, and  to  a  past  which  could  not  be  too 
suddenly  reversed  without  hardship — to  return  to 
the  principles  which — starting  everywhere  from 
the  same  conditions — had  secured  the  wealth,  the 
comfort,  and  the  civilisation  of  the  rest  of  Scot- 
land. Subdivision  was  stopped.  Existing  sub- 
divisions, when  vacant  from  death,  insolvency,  or 
migrations,  were  never  put  up  to  competition,  as 
they  would  have  been  under  Middlemen.  They 
were  invariably  added  to  the  holding  of  the  nearest 
neighbours  who  could  take  them.  Some  new 
Tenants  from  the  Low  Country  were  brought  in, 
who  could  show  new  methods,  and  introduce  some 
circulation  of  ideas  into  a  stagnant  air.  By  the 
steady  prosecution  of  this  process  during  forty 
years,  some  approach  has  been  gradually  made  to 
the  condition  of  things  which  was  aimed  at  by  the 
old  Field-Marshal.  With  the  increasing  size  of 
holdings,  comfort  and  prosperity  have  steadily 
advanced.  But  the  tendency  to  revert  to  ancient 
habits  reappears  from  time  to  time ;  and  the 
encouragements  of  a  very  ignorant  sentiment  "  out 

1  See  Appendix  II.  p.  488. 


438  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

of  doors  "  has  lately  led  to  an  attempt  to  go  back 
through  the  paths  of  violence  to  the  ruinous  prac- 
tices of  the  past,  in  spite  of  all  reason,  and  in  spite 
of  a  long  and  a  terrible  experience. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  wonder  that  must  often 
strike  us  when  we  look  back  on  the  slowness  of 
Mankind  in  opening  their  eyes  to  the  most  obvious 
facts  of  nature,  and  to  conclusions  of  the  reason 
which  now  appear  to  us  quite  as  obvious  as  the 
facts.  There  is  one  signal  example  of  this  connected 
with  the  history  of  a  large  part  of  Scotland,  which 
applies  not  to  the  poorer,  but  to  the  more  educated 
classes,  and  especially  to  the  Landowners.  An 
immense  area  of  the  Western  and  Northern  High- 
lands is  occupied  by  high  and  very  steep  mountains. 
We  have  seen  that  only  little  bits  of  them  were 
ever  put  to  any  use  at  all  under  the  old  system, 
and  even  those  bits  were  used  for  only  about  six 
weeks  in  the  year.  For  several  generations  it  had 
been  known  in  the  Border  Highlands  that  such 
mountains  were  most  valuable  grazings  for  sheep, 
which  could  be  fed  in  thousands  upon  their  steepest 
surfaces,  and  could  remain  on  them  all  the  year 
round.  Yet  it  was  only  very  slowly  and  very  late 
that  it  dawned  upon  Farmers,  or  upon  Landowners, 
that  the  Highland  mountains  could  be  put  to  the 
same  use,  and  could  be  thus  redeemed  from  all  but 
absolute  waste.  The  enormous  addition  made  by 
this  discovery  to  the  natural  produce  of  the  country, 
is  very  apt  to  be  forgotten  now,  because  of  the 
great  ignorance  prevalent  on  the  extent  of  area 
which  was  thus,  for  the  first  time,  made  contributory 
to  the  comforts  and  sustenance  of  mankind.  On 
my  own  estate  there  is  one  Mountain  which,  with 
its  spurs  and  peaks  and  shoulders,  occupies  more 
than  20,000  acres.  Of  this  great  area  only  about 
500  acres  are  arable,  and  many  of  these  have  been 
reclaimed  and  enclosed  at  great  cost,  within  the 
last  fifty  years.  Of  the  rest,  probably  not  more 
than  1000  acres  would  be  available  for  Cattle.  All 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  439 

the  remainder,  at  least  18,500  acres,  are  very  steep, 
and  many  of  them  either  actually,  or  almost,  pre- 
cipitous.    No    other   animal   except    Sheep   could, 
or   ever   did,    consume    the    grasses   which    clothe 
these  surfaces  more  or  less  abundantly.     Yet  they 
can  and  do  feed  some  8700  Sheep,  without  inter- 
fering  with   the    comparatively   few  Cattle   which 
were    ever    reared    in    the   olden  time.     If,   now, 
we   look   at   an    Orographical  Map   of  the    High- 
lands,  we  shall  find  that  this  case  is  the  typical 
case    of    the    Western     Highlands     and    of    the 
Northern  Highlands,  embracing  the  larger  half  of 
the  Counties  of  Inverness,   Boss,   and  Sutherland. 
Sir   John    Sinclair   calculated  that  before   the  in- 
troduction   of  sheep-farming,    the    whole    produce 
exported  from   all  the  Highlands  did  not  exceed 
£300,000  worth  of  very  lean  and  poor  Cattle.    Under 
Cheviot  Sheep  he  shows  that  the  same  area  would 
produce  at   least   twice   the    value    of  mutton,  or 
£600,000,  besides  all  the  Wool,  equal  to  a  further 
sum  of  £900,000.     This  Wool,  again,  when  manu- 
factured,   would    represent    a    value    of  at    least 
£3,600,000     of    Woollens.      The    total    difference 
therefore   between    the    produce   of   the    Country 
under  the  new  system  as  compared  with  the  old, 
was    as    the    difference    between    £600,000,    and 
£4,200,000 — this  difference  being  all  added  to  the 
comfort  and  resources  of  Mankind.1 

It  does  seem  almost  incredible  that  Highland 
Landowners  and  Tenants  should  have  been  so  slow 
to  find  out  an  application  and  a  use  for  the  Moors 
and  Mountains  they  occupied  or  possessed,  a  use 
which  in  reality  constituted  as  much  the  addition 
of  a  new  country  as  the  recovery  of  the  Bedford 
Level  from  the  Sea.  The  Mountains  round  Moffat 
in  Dumfriesshire  are  hardly  less  steep  or  less  high 
than  the  Mountains  round  Loch  Maree  in  Boss-shire, 
or  round  Loch  Lax  ford  in  Sutherland.  The  Highland 
Mountains  had  even  an  advantage  over  the  Border 

1  Agricultural  Reports,  vol.  iv.  p.  185  :  Northern  Counties. 


440  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Mountains,  that  they  were  nearer  to  the  Gulf 
Stream,  and  snow  lay  less  long  upon  them.  Yet  the 
stupidities  of  Custom  and  Tradition  were  so  difficult 
of  removal  that  Sheep-farming  spread  as  slowly 
as  the  Potato,  or  the  manufacture  of  Kelp.  No 
doubt  the  new  Sheep-farming  involved  some  local 
displacement  of  population,  because  Sheep  could 
not  be  supported  without  access  to  low  ground, 
which  was  sometimes  occupied  by  "  Clachans," 
liable  to  periodical  distress  and  famine.  But  this 
displacement  of  population  was  far  less  than  that 
which  had  been  involved  all  over  the  Low 
Country  by  the  abandonment  of  Runrig,  and 
in  the  Border  Counties  by  the  Sheep-farming 
which  had  superseded  the  Moss-troopers.  Neither 
again  did  it  involve  necessarily  in  all  cases  very 
large  farms.  The  Highland  Counties  have  at 
this  moment  a  much  greater  variety  of  hold- 
ings in  respect  to  size,  than  the  most  thriving 
Lowland  Counties.  Neither  again  did  it  involve 
any  general  substitution  of  Lowland  farmers  for 
Highlanders.  Some  of  the  earliest  sheep-farmers 
were  Highlanders  who  had  acquired  capital  by 
industry.  Others  were  Lowlanders  who  brought 
knowledge  of  management,  and  imparted  it,  to  the 
immense  advantage  of  the  country.  It  remains 
therefore  a  wonderful  example  of  the  slow  progress 
of  new  ideas  that  the  Highland  Proprietors  adopted 
Sheep-farming  on  the  hills  so  slowly  and  so  late  as 
they  actually  did.  Although  it  began  as  soon  as 
1768,  it  was  not  universally  applied  to  the  wasted 
areas  till  as  late  as  1823. 

But  there  is  another  phenomenon,  even  more 
wonderful,  which  is  equally  common — and  that  is, 
the  coming  back  of  old  blindnesses — the  revival  of 
old  errors — and  even  the  passionate  return  to 
practices  which  Nature  has  condemned.  Yet  this 
phenomenon  has  its  analogue  in  the  material  world 
as  well  as  in  the  World  of  Mind.  It  is  now  uni- 
versally admitted  that  Development,  or  Evolution, 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  441 

does  not  always  work  in  one  direction.  It  works 
downwards  as  well  as  upwards.  As  Tennyson 
expresses  it — "Throned  races  may  degrade." l  There 
is  even  reason  to  believe  in  a  constant  force  tending 
to  revert  to  earlier  and  ruder  stages  of  existence. 
Whether  this  be  so  or  not,  the  fact  is  certain  that 
there  are  many  creatures  that  fall  from  a  com 
paratively  high,  to  a  comparatively  low,  organisation. 
The  freedom — nay  the  very  organs — of  locomotion 
are  abandoned  and  cast  away.  Even  the  noble 
faculty  of  vision  is  lost.  The  creature  becomes  fixed 
to  a  bit  of  rock,  or  to  the  shells  and  exuviae  of  dead 
things.  So  it  is  with  Man.  At  the  beginning  of  this 
Work  I  have  referred  to  the  influence  exerted  over 
our  longings  and  desires  by  the  pressure  of  modern 
life — the  "  fumum  strepitumque  Romse  " — the  strain 
of  Work  in  the  pursuit  of  Wealth — or  the  not  less 
trying  strain  of  Mind  in  a  speculative  age  in  the 
quest  of  satisfying  Truth.  All  this  tends  to  throw 
a  most  false  glamour  on  the  ages  which  have  passed. 
The  old  tastes  for  a  Wild  Life  return  upon  us,  in- 
herited through  many  generations. 

Most  of  us  know  the  feeling.  It  is  pleasant  to 
return  to  childhood,  and  the  pleasures  of  imagina- 
tion. I  never  read  any  detailed  account  of  so-called 
"  primitive  "  life  in  any  of  the  happier  climates  of 
the  world,  without  at  least  some  passing  feelings  of 
desire  to  join  in  its  freedom  and  pursuits — to  live  in 
Pile  Dwellings  on  the  lagoons  of  a  Coral  Sea,  or  in 
huts  on  the  tops  of  trees — to  watch  the  Birds  of 
Paradise  in  the  Forests  of  New  Guinea — to  shoot 
reedy  arrows  at  the  great  Ground  Pigeon — or  to 
hunt  for  the  wondrous  hatching-mounds  of  the 
Brush  Turkey.  Not  less  attractive  to  other  tastes 
would  it  be  to  go  back  to  the  Epoch  of  the  Clans,— 
to  sail,  and  to  fight,  and  to  spoil  in  beautiful 
Galleys,  with  all  their  bravery  of  war.  It  is  perhaps 
less  easy  for  civilised  men  to  think  with  any  envy 
of  the  old  Celtic  habits — of  the  wattled  huts,  jointly 

1  In  Memoriam,  Canto  128. 


442  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

inhabited  with  the  cows  and  calves — of  the  perpetual 
atmosphere  of  Peat-reek — of  all  the  hardest  labour 
left  to  women,  and  of  seeing  them  yoked  to  Harrows 
as  described  by  Mr.  Macgregor,  writing  as  late  as 
1838.  But  imagination  has  a  wonderful  power  of 
winnowing  out  all  facts  that  are  disagreeable,  and 
of  resting  only  on  those  which  have  a  flavour  of  the 
picturesque.  We  have  seen  that  not  only  the 
charm  and  glamour  of  these  old  habits,  but  the 
actual  delight  of  exercising  the  powers  of  "  Chiefery" 
with  which  they  were  inseparably  connected,  had 
been  strong  enough  to  corrupt  the  noble  chivalry  of 
Norman  Barons,  so  that  even  a  man  near  in  blood 
to  Robert  the  Bruce  had  descended  to  the  level  of 
a  mere  "  Wolf  of  Badenoch."  We  have  seen  how, 
in  a  much  later  day,  another  conspicuous  example  of 
the  same  influence  had  been  displayed  by  Sir  James 
Macdonald,  who  was  known  in  the  Palaces  of  the 
Kingdom  as  a  most  polished  and  accomplished 
Knight — but  who,  when  he  returned  to  Islay  or 
Kintyre,  became  the  bloody  and  the  fierce  Macsorlie. 
In  our  own  time  it  has  too  often  an  influence  not 
indeed  so  formidable  in  action,  but  hardly  less 
corrupting  in  opinion.  Harmless  in  the  form  of 
mere  sentiment  and  poetry,  it  ceases  to  be  harmless 
when  it  perverts  History  and  loosens  the  hold  of 
Mind  over  the  rights  and  obligations  upon  which 
every  Society  must  be  built. 

In  this  form  it  acts  as  a  solvent  upon  Opinion 
which  is  the  root  of  Law.  It  subordinates  the 
Reason  to  Fancy — it  elevates  the  ignorant  Declama- 
tion of  the  Platform  over  the  responsible  decisions 
of  the  Bench.  This  is  a  return  to  the  power  of 
"  Chiefery  "  not  in  its  ancient  and  nobler  form  but 
in  a  new  and  debased  embodiment.  It  is  a  reversion, 
as  Darwin  expresses  it,  in  Biology,  to  an  old  and 
ruder  type.  It  is  however  worse  than  this.  It  is 
a  mere  travesty  and  corruption  of  that  violence 
against  which  the  Monarchy  and  the  civilisation  of 
Scotland  had  to  wage  for  centuries  one  long  con- 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  443 

tinuous  war.     It  is  the  true  modern   analogue   of 
the  worst  Anarchy  of  the  Clans. 

It  is  curious  to  observe  the  different  direction 
which  this  kind  of  sentiment  has  taken  in  regard  to 
the  country  formerly  inhabited  by  the  Border  Clans. 
That  country  has  been  infinitely  more  changed  and 
more  depopulated  than  the  Celtic  Highlands.     The 
vast  stretches  of  moorland,  and  the  long  vista  of 
vacant  Glens  which  strike  the  eye  on  the  borders 
of  Dumfriesshire  and  the  Upper  Wards  of  Lanark- 
shire, are  far  more   desolate  of  human  habitation 
than  any  similar  areas  in  the  Highlands  possessing 
equal  possibilities   of  reclamation.     But  more  than 
this :  the   greener    and   lower   Valleys  which    are 
so  beautiful  in  Selkirk  and  Roxburgh,  are  almost 
entirely  destitute  of  the  smaller  Holdings  which  are 
abundant  and  successful  all  over  the  Counties  of 
Argyll  and  Inverness.     How  does  true  Poetic  Senti- 
ment deal  with  the  memory  of  the  days  when  these 
Valleys  were  full  of  a  military  population — when  a 
few  powerful  Chiefs  could  summon  at  the  shortest 
notice  armies  of  10,000  men?    It  sings  of  those  days 
indeed.  But  the  Singer  does  not  pretend  to  wish  that 
they  should  return.     Let  us  listen  for  a  moment  to 
the  melodious  words  in  which  the  great  Minstrel  of 
the  Borders  recalled  the  Military  Ages  of  that  pas- 
toral land  in  which,  when  a  child,  he  lifted  his  little 
hands  to  the  lightning  in  a  raging  Thunderstorm,1 
and  shouted  with  excitement  "  Bonny,  bonny  ! ": — 

"  Sweet  Teviot !     On  thy  silver  tide 

The  glaring  bale-fires  blaze  no  more  : 
No  longer  steel-clad  warriors  ride 

Along  thy  wild  and  willowed  shore  ; 
Where'er  thou  wind'st,  by  dale  or  hill, 
All,  all  is  peaceful,  all  is  still, 

As  if  thy  waves,  since  Time  was  born, 
Since  first  they  rolled  upon  the  Tweed, 
Had  only  heard  the  shepherd's  reed, 

Nor  started  at  the  bugle-horn."  2 

1  Lockhart's  Life  of  Scott,  vol.  i.  p.  83. 

2  Lay  of  the  Last  Minstrel :  Canto  Fourth,  i. 


444  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

This  is  delightful  and  legitimate.  But  more  than 
this  would  be  childish.  Scott  himself  became  a 
Landowner  in  that  very  country — and  latterly  he 
possessed  no  inconsiderable  Estate.  He  built  a 
Baronial  Hall.  But  he  did  not  restore  a  Cottier 
Tenantry.  He  enclosed  and  planted.  But  he 
planted  Larches.  He  did  not  invite  the  Workmen 
making  high  wages  in  Hawick  or  Galashiels  to 
come  back  to  starve  on  patches  of  corn  and  of 
potatoes  along  the  once  populous  "Haughs"  of 
Tweed.  The  unreality  on  which  much  of  this 
kind  of  sentiment  is  founded  was  never  more 
curiously  illustrated  than  when  the  Government 
chose  as  the  Head  of  a  Commission  appointed 
to  inquire  into  the  Small  Tenants  of  the  North 
and  West,  a  Scotch  Peer1  whose  own  Estate  is 
situated  among  the  long  "cleared"  sheep  pastures 
of  the  Southern  Highlands,  and  in  a  locality 
which  is  specially  described  by  Sir  Walter  Scott 
in  Marmion  as  a  perfect  picture  of  solitude  and 
depopulation.2  This  distinguished  Scotchman  has 
given  elaborate  advice  to  Highland  Proprietors 
for  the  extension — not  merely  of  small  Holdings 
— but  of  the  special  form  of  these  which  is 
least  advantageous — that  of  Joint  or  Township 
Farms.  There  is  nevertheless  not  the  slightest 
reason  to  believe  that  he  himself  or  any  of  his 
brethren,  would  consent  to  cut  up  any  portion  of 
their  great  sheep  grazings,  or  of  their  comfortable 
and  single  arable  Farms,  for  the  purpose  of  re- 
storing the  population  of  the  Military  Ages.  Many 
Owners  in  the  Lowland  Counties  now  wish  that 
they  had,  as  the  Highland  Counties  have,  more 
small  Farms,  and  fewer  of  the  largest  class.  But 
no  man  who  knows  anything  of  Agriculture,  or 
of  the  influences  which  promote  its  progress,  would 
ever  recommend  the  revival  of  the  old  Township 
System.  In  my  own  experience  I  have  always 

1  Lord  Napier  and  Ettrick. 

2  Marmion  :  Introduction  to  Canto  Second.    St.  Mary's  Lake. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  445 

found  that  the  moment  any  "  Crofter "  becomes 
exceptionally  industrious  and  exceptionally  pro- 
sperous, he  earnestly  desires,  above  all  things,  that 
his  grazings  as  well  as  his  arable  land,  should  be 
fenced  off  from  those  of  his  neighbours,  so  that  he 
may  have  the  exclusive  use  of  his  own  faculties  in 
the  better  tillage  of  his  land  and  in  the  better 
breeding  of  his  stock.  The  multiplication  of  small 
Farms,  indeed,  such  as  will  profitably  employ  the 
whole  industry  and  capital  of  individual  men,  is 
an  object  most  desirable.  But  the  conditions  of 
success  vary  with  every  locality,  and  can  only  be 
determined  by  local  knowledge.  It  cannot  be 
settled  by  a  vague  desire  to  revive  the  usages  of 
a  time  which  has  passed  away  for  ever. 

Sentiment,  however,  must  never  be  surrendered 
to  those  who  have  little  knowledge  and  no  balance. 
Such  are  the  men  who  are  very  apt  to  claim  it  as 
their  own,  whilst  instructed  men  are  too  apt  to 
leave  it  in  their  hands.  Sentiment  can  be  strong 
as  well  as  weak — healthy  as  well  as  sickly,  manly  as 
well  as  mawkish.  It  can  fix  its  enthusiasms  on 
what  is  really  good,  as  it  too  often  does  on  what 
is  only  picturesquely  bad.  The  cruelties,  treach- 
eries, disloyalties,  and  brutalities  of  the  Clans 
were  mere  developments  of  corruption,  due  to  the 
divorce  between  them  and  all  settled  Government 
and  Law.  They  represented  nothing  but  anarchy 
in  their  relations  with  the  Nation  and  the  King- 
dom, and  nothing  better  in  their  relations  with 
each  other.  But  the  root  and  the  principle  of  their 
organisation  was  that  of  a  Military  Tribe,  recruit- 
ing from  all  directions, — practising  obedience,— 
acknowledging  authority, — and  loving  its  heredi- 
tary transmission  from  those  who  had  first  afforded 
guidance,  conduct,  and  protection.  This  is  a  con- 
structive, and  not  a  destructive  or  anarchic  principle. 
It  needed  only  to  be  turned  in  a  right  direction  to 
become  one  of  the  steadiest  of  all  foundation-stones 
for  the  building  up  of  a  great  structure  in  the  light 


446  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

and  air  of  a  higher  civilisation.  It  was  thus  that 
in  the  transition  between  the  two  Ages,  the  broken 
fragments  of  a  hundred  Septs  enlisted  under  the 
Banner  of  the  Black  Watch,  and  began  the  im- 
mortal services  of  the  Highland  Regiments.  Yet 
this  is  only  a  late  and  picturesque  incident  in  a 
long  series  of  events.  Nothing  is  more  striking  or 
more  poetic  in  the  history  of  Scotland  than  the 
slow  and  arduous  processes  by  which  the  rough 
energy  of  the  Military  Ages  was  transformed  under 
the  ages  of  industry  and  of  peace.  Malcolm 
Canmore  had  begun  the  transformation  by  his  own 
Union  with  the  Daughter  of  another  blood.  Robert 
the  Bruce  continued  it  by  the  welding  of  broken 
Races  in  the  heat  and  fire  of  Battle.  Between  the 
War  of  Independence  and  the  Union  of  the  Crowns 
it  was  one  long,  continuous,  constant,  struggle.  But 
by  slow  and  steady  steps  the  work  was  done,  and 
Scotland  became  a  Nation  with  a  noble  and  a 
settled  Jurisprudence.  Our  Kings  became  our  only 
Chiefs  :  our  Country  became  our  only  Clan.  Her 
Law,  the  best  symbol  of  her  History,  and  the  best 
expression  of  her  Mind,  became  the  only  authority 
to  which  we  bowed,  and  the  only  protection  to  which 
we  trusted.  Under  its  shelter  man  could  have  con- 
fidence in  man,  because  there  was  no  fear  of  that 
which  even  the  old  Celts  ranked  with  Pestilence 
and  Famine — the  breaking  of  the  Bonds  of  Cove- 
nant. In  this  high  field  of  Human  Energy, — the 
establishment  of  that  confidence  in  Law  which  is 
the  nearest  approach  we  can  ever  make  to  the 
methods  of  the  Divine  Government, — Scotland  may 
well  be  proud  of  the  old  beginnings,  and  of  the 
steady  growth,  of  all  her  National  Institutions. 

Among  these  Institutions  there  is  one  of  purely 
native  origin  which,  perhaps,  as  much  as  any  other, 
is  a  striking  embodiment  of  this  principle,  and  a 
splendid  illustration  of  its  effects.  I  refer  to  her 
Banking  system.  Barter,  as  we  all  know,  is  the 
earliest  form  of  Exchange,  and  under  that  system 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  447 

if  the  Seller  can  bring  his  produce  to  a  market, 
and  the  Buyer  can  carry  it  away  in  safety,  no 
higher  kind  of  security  is  required.  Then  comes 
Money  as  an  abstract  representative  of  Value, 
immensely  facilitating  Exchange,  by  providing  an 
article  with  which,  and  for  which,  everything  can 
be  got  from  somebody.  Lastly  comes  Credit,  the 
highest  and  the  most  powerful  of  all  agencies  for 
promoting  the  intercourse  of  men.  It  is  the  highest 
because  it  is  most  purely  the  work  of  Mind — the 
most  absolute  expression  of  confidence  in  the 
universal  authority  of  Law.  In  other  countries 
the  intervention  of  the  State  has  been  required  to 
establish  Banks,  and  the  work  assigned  to  them 
has  been  lauded  as  among  the  highest  efforts  of 
Statesmanship.  In  Scotland  an  immense  network  of 
Institutions  for  the  universal  diffusion  and  organi- 
sation of  Credit,  has  been  spread,  as  it  were,  by  a 
natural  growth  indigenous  to  the  soil.  In  Scotland 
there  is  a  Bank  for  about  every  4000  souls  of  the 
total  population.  Ten  of  them  represent  a  paid-up 
capital  of  above  Nine  Millions  sterling,  and  Deposits 
to  the  amount  of  more  than  Eighty  Millions  ;  their 
Branches  are  all  over  the  country.  Thus  everywhere 
men  are  able  to  take  advantage,  not  only  of  their 
savings,  but  of  the  credit  in  which  they  stand  for 
their  character  in  business — that  is  for  their  honesty, 
their  industry,  and  for  all  the  mental  aptitudes 
which  give  promise  of  success.  The  whole  of  this 
vast  system  of  Credit  is  founded  upon  confidence 
in  the  Law — constituting  a  Wages  Fund  co-ex- 
tensive with  the  possibilities  of  Industry  and  of 
Knowledge.  It  would  all  crumble  at  the  touch  of 
Anarchy.  Under  the  confidence  which  this  Reign 
of  Law  ensures,  Mind  in  all  its  forms,  whether 
of  enterprise,  or  of  invention,  or  of  organisation, 
or  only  of  patient  perseverance,  has  made  an 
entirely  new  world  of  Scotland.  It  has  reclaimed 
her  soil,  it  has  deepened  her  rivers,  it  has 
built  her  commercial  navies,  it  has  brought  into 


448  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

her  harbours  the  products  of  the  most  distant 
regions,  and  it  has  redeemed  her  own  people, 
immensely  multiplied,  from  chronic  poverty  and 
frequent  famines. 

There  must  be  something  wrong  with  our- 
selves, and  not  with  the  Order  of  Nature,  or 
with  the  Designs  of  Providence,  if  we  can  find 
none  of  the  pleasures  of  the  Imagination,  and 
none  of  the  gratifications  of  Sentiment,  in  changes 
such  as  these.  Nothing  can  be  more  certain  than 
that  we  are  but  accomplishing  part  at  least,  and  an 
essential  part,  of  our  mission  in  the  world  when  we 
turn  the  desert  into  the  fruitful  field.  Nothing 
can  be  more  certain  than  that  it  is  our  duty  to  put 
our  Talents  out  to  Use,  and  not  to  hide  them  in 
a  napkin.  Most  of  these  Talents  have  their  poetic 
side.  Slothfulness  is  not  one  of  the  Christian 
virtues,  even  when  it  is  passed  amidst  picturesque 
surroundings.  The  Hebrew  People  were  not 
devoid  of  Poetry  or  of  Sentiment,  and  yet  their 
Songs  and  their  Prophecies  are  full  of  the  imagery 
derived  from  the  improvement  of  the  soil,  as  well 
as  of  the  precious  and  beautiful  things  which  were 
brought  in  Commerce  by  the  ships  of  Tarshish. 
With  them  the  Olive,  and  especially  the  Vine, 
were  the  symbols  of  cultivated  fertility ;  and  in 
connection  with  the  Vineyard,  in  particular,  we 
have  the  most  touching  and  passionate  allusions  to 
all  the  care  and  labour  bestowed  upon  Enclosures 
as  the  best  type  and  symbol  of  the  work  needed  in 
the  higher  cultivation  of  the  soul.  The  "fencing" 
of  land,  and  the  "  gathering  out  the  stones 
thereof,"  and  the  "  planting  "  of  it,  and  the  build- 
ing "  in  the  midst  of  it,"1  are  as  apposite  a  descrip- 
tion of  the  work  of  Reclamation  in  Scotland  as  it 
was  of  the  same  work  in  Palestine.  The  taking 
away  the  "  Hedge  thereof,"  and  the  "  breaking 
down  the  wall  thereof"  are  used  as  the  best  Images 
of  utter  Desolation,2  whilst  the  ravages  of  the  wild 

1  Isaiah  v.  2.  2  Ibid.  v.  5. 


THE  FBUITS  OF  MIND.  449 

creatures  which  fences  are  intended  to  exclude  are 
similarly  used  to  typify  the  invasions  of  the  sacred 
fields  by  the  arms  of  Heathendom.1  There  is  too, 
in  the  Book  of  Proverbs,  a  striking  description 
of  the  ignorant  and  lazy  habits  which  had  afflicted 
Scotland  :  "  I  went  by  the  field  of  the  slothful,  and 
by  the  vineyard  of  the  man  void  of  understanding  ; 
and,  lo,  it  was  all  grown  over  with  thorns,  and 
nettles  had  covered  the  face  thereof,  and  the  stone 
wall  thereof  had  been  broken  down.  Then  I  saw,  and 
considered  it  well :  I  looked  upon  it,  and  received 
instruction.  Yet  a  little  sleep,  a  little  slumber,  a 
little  folding  of  the  hands  to  sleep  :  so  shall  thy 
poverty  come  as  one  that  travelleth ;  and  thy 
want  as  an  armed  man."2  Yet,  beyond  all  question, 
the  "pruned  vine"  is  a  much  less  picturesque  object 
than  the  Briers  and  the  Thorns  which  ignorance  or 
violence  may  allow  to  choke  it.  On  the  other  hand, 
the  clustered  grapes, — and  the  winds  passing  over 
fields  of  corn, — and  the  flocks  browsing  in  perspective 
upon  great  plains, — and  the  sheep  herded  on  the 
mountains — are  all  pictures  full  of  poetry — far 
higher  than  that  which  circles  round  the  deeds  and 
the  pursuits  of  half- barbarian  Man. 

We  cannot  go  back  to  the  Primitive  Ages, 
whatever  else  we  do.  We  must  live  in  our  own 
time,  and  we  must  put  to  culture  and  to  use,  such 
talents  as  come  to  us  from  the  inheritance  of  the 
Past,  and  from  the  opportunities  of  the  Present. 
It  is  a  delusion  to  suppose  that  the  sin  of  covet- 
ousness  belongs  specially  to  the  later  ages  of  the 
world.  The  naked  Savage  covets  more  of  his  beads, 
or  of  his  bits  of  iron,  as  much  as  the  civilised  Man 
covets  some  new  indulgence.  Modern  Industry 
has  its  own  dangers,  and  its  own  evils,  but  the 
truth  is  that  the  pursuit  of  Wealth  under  the  con- 
ditions of  civilisation,  having  in  it  more  of  Mind 
than  the  same  pursuit  under  conditions  of  Bar- 
barism, tends  to  be  better  and  higher  in  its  moral 

1  Psalm  Ixxx.  12,  13.  2  Proverbs  xxiv.  30-34. 

2  F 


450  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

character.  There  is  less  in  the  mere  getting,  and 
more  in  the  intellectual  interest  belonging  to  the 
processes  through  which  the  getting  comes.  The 
Machine  Maker  thinks  as  much  of  the  perfection 
and  accuracy  of  his  work,  as  of  the  price  he  gets 
for  it.  The  Shipbuilder  thinks  most  of  the  fine 
"lines" — of  the  speed,  and  capacity,  and  strength 
of  his  ships.  The  Skilled  Workman  rejoices  in  his 
manual  dexterity,  and  takes  a  pleasure,  purely  in- 
tellectual, in  the  triumph  of  his  hands — in  the 
straightness  of  his  furrow  —  in  his  mastery  over 
some  difficult  and  intractable  material.  One  of 
my  earliest  recollections  is  of  the  laborious  and 
conscientious  pains  bestowed  by  my  Father,  as  a 
Mechanic,  on  the  high  finish  of  the  articles  he 
produced — on  the  perfect  symmetry  of  form — on 
the  joinings  which  the  finest  touch  could  not  detect 
— on  the  harmonies  of  colour  and  of  substance. 
Throughout  all  the  Kingdom  of  Labour — using 
that  word,  not  in  its  vulgar  but  in  its  highest 
meaning,  as  including  above  all  the  Labour  of  the 
Brain — there  is  a  Hierarchy  or  Gradation  of  rank 
corresponding  to  the  degree  in  which  the  mere 
getting  of  Value  is  subordinate,  and  the  produc- 
tion of  excellence  is  predominant.  The  lowest  rank 
must  be  assigned  to  the  most  purely  mechanical- 
such  as  Commission  Agencies — in  which  there  is  no 
skill,  although  the  work  may  be  useful,  or  even 
necessary,  as  part  of  the  machinery  of  Distribution. 
And  most  assuredly  in  this  Hierarchy  of  Labour 
the  work  of  the  Improver  and  Reclaimer  of  Land 
stands  very  high  in  the  variety  and  dignity  of 
the  motives  which  come  before  the  mere  love  of 
gain.  Time  may  be  on  his  side,  but  generally  it 
is  time  belonging  to  a  somewhat  distant  future. 
A  single  successful  voyage,  one  single  turn  of  the 
market,  may  make  and  has  often  made  the  fortune 
of  a  Merchant.  One  happy  thought  flashing  on 
the  Brain  of  the  Inventor,  may  reward  him  at 
a  stroke  with  abundant  wealth.  But  the  fruits 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  451 

of  the  Earth  cannot  generally  be  multiplied  so 
quickly,  and  we  see  by  the  history  and  experience 
of  the  past,  how  difficult  it  has  been  to  exercise 
the  foresight,  and  to  submit  to  the  immediate 
sacrifices,  which  the  laborious  steps  of  a  reformed 
Husbandry  have  demanded  of  those  who  live  by 
it.  The  love  of  Agriculture  is  among  the  ori- 
ginal instincts  of  our  nature — as  distinct  from 
others  as,  in  early  ages,  is  the  love  of  the  Chase, 
or,  in  all  ages,  the  love  of  Decoration.  And 
amongst  these  original  instincts  it  is  unquestion- 
ably the  highest  and  the  best,  both  from  the 
simplicity  of  its  character  and  from  the  beneficence 
of  its  effects.  With  advancing  education  it  suffers 
no  decay.  On  the  contrary,  it  charms  and  elevates 
the  mind  in  proportion  as  it  exercises  us  in  our 
great  commission  over  Nature,  and  brings  us  into 
closer  contact  with  those  "  abodes  where  self-dis- 
turbance hath  no  part."  1  The  sentiment  which  pre- 
fers to  these  attractions  the  far-off  echoes  of  the 
Spear  and  Shield,  or  the  alternating  indulgence  of 
fierce  activity  and  of  selfish  idleness,  is  a  sentiment 
unworthy  alike  of  true  Poetry,  of  true  Religion, 
and  of  true  Philosophy. 

I  have  spoken  of  the  natural  causes  which  lead 
to  forgetfulness  of  the  work  of  Ownership  in  the 
Agricultural  Improver — causes  connected  with  the 
very  completeness  of  that  work,  and  with  the  total 
obliteration  of  the  older  surfaces  which  have  been 
reclaimed.  These  are  causes  which  lie  in  mere 
ignorance  and  want  of  thought.  But,  strange  to 
say,  this  ignorance  or  forgetfulness  has  been  stereo- 
typed, and  as  it  were  enshrined,  in  doctrines  which 
profess  to  be  scientific.  In  this  matter  the  Formulae 
of  Political  Economists  have  been  even  more  feeble 
than  in  the  definitions  of  Wealth  and  of  its  Sources. 
Ricardo's  famous  definition  of  Rent  is  a  perfect 
example  of  that  delight  which  men  are  apt  to  have 
in  formal  propositions  spun  out  of  their  own  brains, 

1  Wordsworth. 


452  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

which  have  little  or  no  correspondence  with  the 
facts  of  Nature.  Abstract  ideas  are  the  high  pre- 
rogative of  Man,  and  he  could  not  get  on  for  a 
single  day  without  them.  All  Language  is  built 
upon  them,  and  the  rudest  Savage  who  can  convey 
intelligence  to  his  fellow  is  exercising  the  same 
power  which  may  one  day  lead  on  his  descendants 
to  the  peaks  of  science.  Men  practised  Logic  before 
the  days  of  Aristotle,  and  the  Inductive  Philosophy 
before  the  days  of  Bacon.  Political  Economists  are 
quite  right  to  reduce  within  the  terms  of  some 
abstract  definition,  if  they  can,  those  facts  of  human 
history  and  the  nature  of  human  transactions,  which 
are  the  sources  of  Eent.  But  there  are  bad  abstrac- 
tions as  well  as  good, — abstractions  which  do  not 
take  in  more  than  a  fraction  of  the  facts,  and  that 
fraction  perhaps  the  least  significant  of  all.  They 
may  be  true  in  a  sense,  and  yet  be  valueless. 
That  is  to  say,  they  may  reproduce  and  represent 
with  vividness  some  mere  circumstance  connected 
with  particular  results,  and  yet  miss  completely 
the  essential  conditions  on  which  these  results 
depend. 

Bicardo's  definition  of  Bent,  as  pruned  and  shaped 
under  the  fire  of  criticism  by  later  writers,  is  not 
only  true,  but  it  is  a  truism.  The  Bent  which  any 
given  piece  of  land  will  fetch  is  precisely  the  excess 
of  its  value  over  another  piece  of  Land  which  is  too 
poor  to  fetch  any  rent  at  all.1  But  we  may  well 
ask,  like  Eliphaz,  the  Temanite,  when  we  hear  such 
a  definition  as  this,  "  Should  a  wise  man  utter  vain 
knowledge,  and  fill  his  belly  with  the  East  wind  ? " 
This  definition  is  true,  not  only  of  the  rent  of  land, 
but  of  the  rent  of  all  other  things  which  fetch  a 
price  for  hire.  The  admirers  of  it  sometimes  boast 
that  the  mere  statement  of  it  has  all  the  force  of 

1  Professor  Fawcett  expresses  it  thus  : — "  The  rent  of  any  land  is  the 
difference  between  its  net  produce  and  the  net  produce  of  land  which 
pays  a  merely  nominal  rent." — Manual  of  Political  Economy,  6th  Ed. 
p.  117. 

2  Job  xv.  2. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND. 


453 


a  self-evident  proposition.1  This,  however,  becomes 
very  doubtful  praise  when  we  observe  that  the  same 
self-evident  character  follows  the  definition  when  it 
is  applied  to  the  hire  of  a  Costermonger's  Donkey 
as  much  as  when  it  is  applied  to  the  hire  of  a  Farm. 
The  value  for  hire  of  any  particular  Donkey  is  obvi- 
ously the  value  of  its  labour  above  that  of  any  other 
Donkey  which  will  fetch  no  price  at  all  for  hire,  but 
which  works  just  enough  to  pay  for  its  own  feeding. 
So  in  like  manner  the  Rent  of  any  given  House  is  the 
excess  of  its  value  for  hire  above  that  of  some  other 
House  which  would  fetch  no  rent  at  all,  but  which 
is  used  by  Paupers  as  a  Hovel.  In  this  form  the 
proposition  is  true,  but  it  is  also  barren.  All  the 
corollaries  which  have  been  drawn  from  it  in  later 
speculations,  are  not  logical  consequences  at  all,  but 
are  built  up  on  verbal  fallacies  imported  into  the 
definition  by  the  careless  use  of  ambiguous  words. 
It  certainly  does  not  prove,  or  tend  to  prove,  that  the 
Kent  of  agricultural  land  is  no  element  in  the  cost 
of  Production,2  because  whatever  may  be  the  truth 
in  this  matter,  the  Formula  gives  us  no  analysis  of 
Rent,  and  tells  us  nothing  of  its  sources  or  of  its 
composition.  It  is  not  very  easy  to  see  how  the 
hire  of  a  Steam-Plough  would  be  part  of  the  cost 
of  Production,  whilst  the  hire  of  a  drain  or  of  a 
fence  would  not.  Yet  the  hire  of  such  improve- 
ments is  a  large  element  in  Rent.  Still  less  does 
the  Formula  prove  that  all  the  growing  values 
in  all  the  Products  of  Labour,  tend  to  become 
absorbed  in  the  Rent  of  land — a  proposition  in 
itself  absurd,  and  opposed  to  all  observation  and 
experience.3  The  proportion  of  gross  or  total  pro- 
duce which  goes  to  Rent  is  not  greater,  but,  on  the 
contrary,  it  is  smaller,  as  Agriculture  becomes  more 
scientific.  Nothing  like  one-third — the  old  Scotch 
proportion  in  rude  ages — of  the  gross  produce,  now 
goes  to  Rent.  One-sixth  or  one-eighth  is  more 

1  Progress  and  Poverty,  Book  in.  ch.  ii. 

2  Fawcett's  Manual,  p.  126.  3  Henry  George,  passim. 


454  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 


near  the  average  proportion.  More  than  before  goes 
to  Muscular  Labour ;  more  goes  to  the  breeder  of 
Horses  ;  more  goes  to  the  maker  of  machines  ;  more 
goes  to  the  seller  of  manures,  and,  in  average  times, 
more  to  the  Farmer.  The  increase  of  Hent  arises 
entirely  from  the  enormous  increase  of  total  produce, 
and  from  a  corresponding  increase  of  demand.  This 
is  the  reason  why  high  rents  are  a  sign  of  general 
prosperity.1  If  the  sixth  or  the  eighth  of  the  total 
produce  be  only  ten  shillings,  then  the  total  pro- 
duce per  acre  must  be  as  low  as  £3  per  acre  or  £4. 
This  indicates  wretched  crops,  or  a  poor  market,  or 
both.  If,  on  the  other  hand,  the  rent  of  land  be 
sixty  or  eighty  shillings  an  acre,  it  proves  that  the 
total  produce  must  be  at  least  £18  an  acre  or  £24 
—indicating  abundant  crops,  and  a  good  market. 
Both  of  these  are  the  signs  of  general  activity  and 
increasing  wealth  among  all  classes.  "  A  low  rent," 
says  a  well-informed  writer,  "  is  always  an  index  of 
the  poverty  of  the  land,  a  thriftless  and  unscientific 
method  of  culture,  or  a  want  of  enterprise  on  the 
part  of  both  Landlord  and  Tenant." :  The  inference 
that  all  values  are  absorbed  in  Rent  is  absurd. 
But  whether  true  or  false,  such  inferences  as  these 
have  no  foundation  whatever  in  the  Ricardo  For- 
mula, in  so  far  as  that  Formula  expresses  a  self- 
evident  proposition.  It  has  this  self-evident  char- 
acter only  when  it  is  kept  strictly  to  a  purely 
quantitative  relation.  It  defines  Rent  only  as 
regards  its  amount  or  quantity,  and  in  no  other 
relation  whatever.  The  moment  it  pretends  to 
explain  Rent  in  any  other  of  its  many  relations 
to  the  Past,  or  to  the  Present,  the  Ricardo  Formula 
passes  beyond  its  province.  It  is  a  definition  deal- 
ing with  quantity  alone — and  dealing  with  that 
element  in  Rent  in  a  form  so  elementary  that  its 
boasted  self-evidence  may  freely  be  conceded.  It 

1  I  speak,  of  course,  of  Rents  freely  offered  by  free  men,  and  usually 
paid. 

2  Judicial  Records  of  Renfrewshire,  by  W.  Hector,  1876,  p.  319. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND. 


455 


measures  even  quantity  by  a  standard  of  compari- 
son which  is  of  no  practical  use  whatever.  It 
assumes  a  Zero  line — the  existence  of  land  which 
will  afford  no  Rent  at  all,  or  only  a  Rent  which 
is  nominal.  It  then  announces  the  profound  con- 
clusion that  all  higher  Rents  are  to  be  measured  in 
respect  to  quantity  by  their  elevation  above  this 
Zero  line.  This  is  a  theoretical  but  a  self-evident 
truth,  even  if  we  dispute  as  a  fact  (as  well  we  may) 
that  there  is  any  land  except  naked  rock,  which 
will  yield  no  Rent  whatever.1  But  this  self-evident 
truth  is  as  naked  as  the  only  land  which  answers  to 
its  description.  It  tells  us  nothing  of  any  practical 
or  even  of  any  speculative  value. 

By  a  curious  coincidence  I  first  heard  this 
Ricardo  Formula  for  defining  Rent,  set  forth, 
many  years  ago,  by  Lord  Macaulay — the  only  illus- 
trious descendant  and  representative  of  the  Clan  on 
whose  reclaimed  lands  I  had  been  born  and  bred. 
He  had  evidently  very  little  practical  knowledge 
of  the  many  economic  elements  which  determine 
Rent,  nor  probably  had  he  ever  thought  of  tracing 
the  Historical  elements  which  explain  its  origin  in 
the  Past.  On  the  other  hand,  at  that  time  I  had 
not  myself  studied  the  subject  theoretically ;  whilst, 
practically,  I  had  a  good  deal  of  instructive  and 
significant  experience.  I  recollect  noticing  the  evi- 
dent intellectual  pleasure  with  which  he  expounded 
a  Doctrine  which  can  be  so  neatly  expressed,  and 
which  assumes  to  set  forth  in  so  small  a  compass 
one  of  the  most  complicated  of  all  the  facts  of 
History  and  of  Life.  Not  less  distinctly  do  I 
remember  the  sense  of  emptiness — the  painful  con- 
trast, as  it  struck  me,  between  the  self-evidence  of 
the  Definition,  and  the  sterility  of  it — not  only 
as  regarded  any  practical  application,  but  even  as 
regarded  any  satisfying  theoretical  analysis. 

This  is  but  one  example  out  of  many  of  those 

1  The  most  uaked  mountains  in  Scotland  will  hold  a  few  sheep,  and 
every  sheep  affords  a  rent. 


456  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

methods  of  handling  which  have  brought  Political 
Economy  into  its  present  disrepute,  as  not  only  a 
"  Dismal  Science  "  but  as  a  Body  of  Doctrine  either 
actually  deceptive  or  at  least  to  a  very  large  extent 
misleading.  No  doubt  part  of  this  eclipse  in 
popular  estimation,  arises  from  nothing  but  ignorant 
rebellion  against  some  truths  which  are  as  certainly 
ascertained  as  any  other  truths  whatever.  For  this 
evil  the  only  remedy,  other  than  discussion,  will  be 
found  in  those  practical  results  of  evil  which  must 
always  follow,  sooner  or  later,  from  kicking  against 
the  pricks  of  Nature.  This  was  the  teaching,  for 
example,  as  we  have  seen,  which  led  men  at  last,  in 
Scotland,  to  recognise  the  folly  of  Sumptuary  Laws 
—of  Laws  forbidding  men  to  sell  or  buy  except 
through  certain  Corporate  Monopolies, — and  of  Laws 
which  pretended  to  regulate  the  price  of  anything. 
But  Ignorances  and  Rebellions  of  this  kind,  affect- 
ing our  obedience  to  those  Supreme  Enactments 
which  are  enforced  by  the  high  pains  and  penalties 
of  Natural  Consequence,  are  not  the  only  cause  of 
the  wide  revolt  which  now  assails  the  teaching 
that  passes  under  the  name  of  Political  Economy. 
Another  cause  is  to  be  found  in  the  fact  that  this 
teaching  has  been  often  most  defective,  and,  not 
seldom,  even  thoroughly  erroneous.  One  grand 
defect  in  it  has  been  the  comparative  neglect,  and 
sometimes  even  the  complete  elimination,  as  not 
belonging  to  its  Province,  of  those  agencies  of  Mind 
which  are  in  reality  the  ultimate  sources  of  all  that 
is  done,  or  enjoyed  or  suffered,  in  Societies  of  Men. 
In  undertaking  to  reduce  the  growth  of  Nations, 
and  the  progress  of  Mankind,  to  causes  as  rigid  and 
mechanical  as  those  which  govern  the  Material 
World,  it  has  missed  the  highest  offices  which  it  is 
its  duty  to  discharge.  Political  Economy,  properly 
treated,  ought  not  to  be  a  Dismal  Science.  It 
ought  not  to  present  results  emptied  of  all  adequate 
recognition  of  the  work  done  by  Mind,  and  Heart, 
and  Will.  To  pretend  to  explain  the  origin,  or  the 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  457 

growth,  or  the  distribution  of  Wealth — to  explain 
anything,  indeed,  of  the  past  history  or  present 
condition  of  Man,  without  full  recognition  of  these 
great  moving  Forces,  is  like  pretending  to  explain 
the  cylinders,  and  the  tubes,  and  the  valves 
of  a  Steam  Engine  without  any  reference  to  the 
properties  of  Steam,  and  without  any  reference  to 
the  mechanical  Invention  by  which  its  pressures  are 
generated,  concentrated,  and  brought  to  bear  on 
Use.  Against  this  kind  of  science,  falsely  so  called, 
continual  resistance  and  revolt  is  both  inevitable 
and  just.  On  the  other  hand,  when  the  Science 
which  deals  with  all  these  things,  comes — if  it  ever 
does  come — to  be  properly  handled,  and  when  all 
the  facts  of  our  complicated  nature  are  marshalled 
in  their  due  rank  and  order,  it  will  be  a  Science 
full  of  all  the  interest,  and  of  all  the  poetry,  and  of 
all  the  pure  intellectual  delight,  which  must  belong 
to  the  contemplation  and  the  analysis  of  Nature 
in  the  noblest  of  all  her  Provinces. 

Nothing,  for  example,  can  be  more  interesting 
or  instructive  than  to  trace  in  the  light  of  History 
the  sources  and  the  origin  of  those  relations  between 
men  which  directly  or  indirectly  exist  in  all  regions 
of  the  civilised  world  between  Owners  and  Occupiers 
of  the  Soil.  We  need  not  fill  our  bellies  with  East 
Wind  in  artificial  definitions  of  Rent  which  have 
nothing  to  do  with  either  its  origin  or  its  nature. 
There  is  really  no  difficulty  in  arriving  at  a  defini- 
tion which  is  not  artificial,  but  natural, — a  simple 
description  of  facts, — and  one  which  nevertheless 
immediately  suggests  questions  leading  up  to  higher 
and  higher  aspects  of  the  truth.  Rent  is  that 
which  one  man  pays  for  the  temporary  possession, 
or  exclusive  use,  of  anything  that  is  not  his  own, 
but  is  the  permanent  property  of  another.  Bent 
is  the  price  of  Hire.  As  regards  this  essential  and 
definite  characteristic,  it  matters  nothing  what  the 
thing  thus  hired  may  be.  In  common  parlance 
Rent  is  usually  applied  to  the  Hire  of  land,  or 


458  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

of  Houses,  or  of  Mines,  or  of  Fishings,  but  is 
not  usually  applied  to  the  Hire  of  Horses,  or  of 
Carriages,  or  of  other  moveable  property.  Each 
of  these  different  things  has  its  own  peculiar  kind 
of  use,  and  each  special  use  holds  out  to  us  some 
special  inducement  to  hire  it.  But  no  peculiarity  in 
the  nature  of  the  use  constitutes  any  distinction  in 
the  principle  of  Hire.  That  principle  is  the  same  in 
all  cases  in  which  we  pay  for  the  temporary  pos- 
session of  anything  that  belongs  to  another.  What 
we  pay  for,  when  we  hire  anything,  is  the  Exclusive 
Use  or  Possession  of  it,  for  a  time.  And  the  price 
we  pay  for  this  Exclusive  Use  is  paid  to  the  man 
who  himself  possesses  it,  and  has  the  power  of 
lending  it.  What  we  owe  to  him  in  the  form  of 
Hire,  or  Kent,  is  due  to  him  because  of  his  exer- 
cising in  our  favour  his  right  and  power  of  lending. 
If  we  want  to  have  the  Exclusive  Use  of  a  Horse, 
or  of  a  Cow,  or  of$  a  Cabbage  Garden,  or  of  a  Vine- 
yard, or  of  a  Farm,  we  must  hire  this  exclusive 
right  for  a  time,  if  we  cannot  buy  it  out  and  out. 

If  we  go  further  and  ask  how  the  Owner 
came  to  have  that  right  of  Exclusive  Use  which 
many  other  men  can  only  afford  to  Hire,  we  shall 
find  that  there  is  no  difference  in  principle  be- 
tween the  different  things  over  which  this  right 
has  been  acquired.  It  is  true  that  the  land  of 
the  Cabbage  Garden,  or  of  the  Vineyard,  or  of 
the  Farm  has  not  been  the  creation  of  Muscular 
Labour.  But  neither  have  Cattle,  nor  Sheep,  nor 
Horses  been  the  work  of  Muscle.  The  breeding  of 
them  is  the  work  of  Nature,  under  the  direction  to 
some  extent  of  a  selecting  Mind,  and  even  this  only 
rendered  possible  by  the  right  of  Exclusive  Use  over 
at  least  some  grazing  land.  And  so,  although  land 
is  not  in  itself  the  produce  either  of  Muscular  or  of 
Mental  Labour,  yet  the  Exclusive  Use  of  any  part  of 
it  has  always  been  originally  acquired  by  the  work 
of  Mind.  To  seek  the  origin  of  this  exclusive  Right 
of  Use  we  must  go  back  to  the  Conquering  Tril 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  459 

from  which  we  are  all  descended.  And  then,  again, 
to  explain  how  they  came  to  conquer,  we  must 
always  go  back  to  some  time,  whether  within  the 
area  of  History  or  beyond  it,  when  the  Men  of 
Muscle  surrounded  some  Man  of  Mind,  lifted  him 
perhaps  on  their  shields  and  shouted,  "  Be  thou  our 
acknowledged  Strongest." l  In  our  own  country 
this  tracking  of  the  ultimate  sources  of  Owner- 
ship leads  us  along  no  doubtful  path — no  mere 
faint  indications  interpreted  by  theory  and  specu- 
lation. The  footprints  are  revealed  to  us  in  no 
dim  light  of  mere  tradition,  but  in  the  full  blaze 
of  History.  We  see  men  crowding  under  the 
banner  of  powerful  Chiefs,  and  seeking  "  rooms " 
of  land  under  their  protection,  because  of  the  secu- 
rity it  held  out  to  them  for  Exclusive  Use.  We  see 
our  early  Kings,  with  the  consent  of  Barons,  Clergy, 
and  People,  acknowledging  the  power  of  those 
Chiefs  as  a  Power  which  had  been  established  long 
before,  and  tendering  to  those  who  held  it  a  new 
Form  of  Record  as  a  reward  for  new,  but  immortal, 
services.  Poetry  and  Sentiment  could  hardly  have 
a  better  subject.  The  Recording  Instruments  may 
have  been  long  lost — they  may  be  now  reduced  to 
pulp  in  damp  cellars,  or  in  neglected  Charter- Chests 
— or  they  may  have  been  happily  preserved  with 
their  old  Parchments,  and  their  old  stately  Seals. 
But  whether  surviving  in  this  form  or  not,  they 
live  in  the  continuous  transactions  of  perhaps  a 
thousand  years.  That  which  men  have  been  hold- 
ing— that  which  they  have  been  buying  and  selling 
during  all  these  centuries — has  been  the  Tenure 
which  these  Instruments  record.  Over  the  whole  of 
Scotland  every  morsel  of  land  which  is  owned  or  hired 
for  the  exclusive  use  of  any  man,  is  held  by  him  in 
virtue  of  the  Rights  of  Predecessors  in  Title  dating 
from  before  the  times  of  Malcolm  Canmore,  or  from 
the  years  of  contest  that  were  closed  at  Bannockburn. 

1 1  borrow  this  from  Thomas  Carlyle,  but  I  do  not  recollect  the  Work 
in  which  it  occurs. 


460  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

The  aptitudes  of  Mind  are  infinite — or  at  least  as 
various  as  all  the  varieties  of  circumstance  in  which 
the  Human  Species  has  been  placed  since  it  was  born 
into  the  world.  Nothing  can  be  done  without  it— 
everything  that  has  been  done,  has  been  done  by  it. 
In  early  ages,  courage  and  conduct  in  War  has 
been  the  form  of  mental  energy  most  effective. 
But  this  is  generally  a  compound  of  many  qualities. 
The  influence  of  some  men  cannot  be  explained. 
It  is  magnetic.  In  their  presence  other  men  be- 
come excited  with  a  fire  which  is  not  their  own. 
Without  such  Minds,  mere  numbers  are  of  no  avail 
— for  the  units  become  as  incoherent  as  grains  of 
sand.  Such  men  become  the  Founders  of  Nations 
because  of  the  confidence  they  inspire — of  the  ideas 
they  represent — and  of  the  Institutions  which  they 
inaugurate.  One  of  the  very  first  works  which 
they  accomplish  is,  the  establishment  of  supreme 
and  exclusive  dominion  over  some  portion  of  the 
Earth's  surface  for  themselves  and  for  their  im- 
mediate followers.  This  right  of  Exclusive  Use 
is  subdivided  and  partitioned  in  a  thousand  ways. 
But  in  its  essence  and  in  its  principle  it  is  every- 
where the  same.  It  is,  in  its  very  inception,  the 
fruit  of  Mind,  and  it  affords  the  only  fulcrum  on 
which  Mind  can  exert  its  higher  powers  over  the 
Increase  of  the  Earth  during  the  more  peaceful  ages 
which  follow,  and  are  the  rewards  of,  Conquest. 

Examples  have  not  been  wanting  in  our  own 
day,  which  exhibit  the  power  of  one  gifted 
Mind  so  to  discipline  the  forces  of  mere  Muscle, 
and  the  labour  of  comparatively  mindless  men, 
as  to  lay  the  foundations  of  a  civilised  State. 
General  Gordon  was  unquestionably  one  of  those 
men — whose  heroic  nature  represents,  as  Muscle 
never  can  represent,  those  supreme  forms  of 
"Labour"  on  which  all  Wealth,  and  Comfort,  and 
Law  depend.  And  it  is  remarkable  that  when 
he  was  first  ruling  as  Governor  of  Khartoum, 
one  of  the  most  immediate  and  striking  effects  of 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  461 

his  dominion,  was  a  revival  of  that  cultivation  of 
the  soil  which  is  inseparable  from  individual  appro- 
priation, or  Exclusive  Use.  Tracts  of  land  which 
had  been  desolate  for  generations,  became  cultivated 
again,  simply  because  the  Owners  were  secured 
under  his  dominion  against  the  inroads  of  men 
who  would  not  respect  the  rights  of  Exclusive  Use. 
If  General  Gordon  had  been  a  Native  Ruler,  or  a 
Native  Chief,  having  extensive  Territorial  rights 
over  the  Soudan,  and  depending  for  the  mainten- 
ance of  his  power  upon  native  revenues,  the  private 
Owners  to  whom  the  fruits  and  rights  of  Ownership 
had  been  thus  restored,  would  have  been  only  too 
glad  to  yield  to  him  no  inconsiderable  share  of  these 
fruits,  which  could  not  be  enjoyed  except  under 
the  protection  he  afforded. 

There  may  be  other  cases  in  which  the  indi- 
vidual appropriation  of  land,  and  the  acknowledged 
right  to  its  Exclusive  Use,  has  arisen  from  other 
causes.  Indeed,  it  may  be  said  with  truth  to  be  a 
universal  and  apparently  a  necessary  fact  in  every 
portion  of  the  Globe,  and  with  every  branch  of  the 
human  family.  One  of  the  most  prominent  Social- 
istic theorists l  who  now  denounce  it,  is  himself 
one  of  a  small  group  of  men — less  than  one- 
quarter  of  the  population  of  London — who  claim 
Exclusive  Use  over  the  whole  State  of  California, 
embracing  about  ninety-nine  millions  of  acres,  or 
156,000  square  miles  of  plain  and  valley,  of  moun- 
tain and  of  hill.  No-  part  of  this  vast  territory 
is  open  to  all  mankind — except  upon  the  conditions 
imposed  by  this  small  community.  But  like  all 
other  communities  in  like  circumstances — like  all 
the  colonies  of  our  own  Empire — they  not  only 
practise  the  individual  appropriation  of  land  among 
their  own  citizens,  but  they  recognise  it  as  the 
foundation  of  their  prosperity.  What  they  all  want 
is  Settlers  ;  and  what  all  Settlers  want  is  land  on 
which  they  can  exercise  their  industry  for  their 

1  Mr.  Henry  George  of  San  Francisco. 


462  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

own  benefit  and  the  benefit  of  the  world.  Some 
evidence  of  truth  is  always  afforded  by  the  universal 
instincts  of  Mankind.  The  celebrated  test  which 
has  been  put  to  very  doubtful  use  in  Theology,  has 
nevertheless  its  own  sphere  of  legitimate  applica- 
tion —  "  Quod  semper  —  quod  ubique  —  quod  ab 
omnibus." l  The  most  experienced  travellers  in 
Africa  tell  us  that  there  is  no  portion  of  that  vast 
Continent  which  is  not  claimed  in  Ownership  by 
some  Tribe,  and  the  invasion  of  which  by  others 
would  not  be  resented  and  resisted  by  those  who 
thus  claim  its  Exclusive  Use.  If  there  be  any 
portions  of  the  Earth's  surface  where  individual 
appropriation  might  be  less  absolutely  necessary 
than  another,  as  regards  the  means  of  subsistence,  it 
would  seem  to  be  in  those  happy  Islands  of  the 
Eastern  Archipelago  where  wild  and  .native  trees 
bear  the  most  nutritious  fruits,  and  the  vegetable 
world  holds  out  the  most  lavish  inducements  to 
an  idle  communal  existence.  Yet  I  find  in  an 
interesting  account  of  New  Guinea  by  a  Highlander 
who  has  devoted  himself  to  Missionary  Work  in  the 
Pacific,  the  following  instructive  passage  respecting 
that  immense  Island: — "Far  up  the  distant  moun- 
tain sides,  in  the  clear  atmosphere  of  morning,  we 
saw  the  smoke  made  in  the  Bush  by  cultivators 
of  yams.  The  Teachers  assert  that  every  acre  of 
soil  along  this  part  of  New  Guinea  has  its 
Owner/'2 

There  is  no  Political  Eeonomist,  to  whatever 
School  he  may  belong,  however  narrow  may  be  his 
formulae,  and  however  narrower  still  may  be  his 
use  and  his  interpretation  of  them,  who  does  not 
at  least  confess  with  his  lips  that  "  Labour  "  must 
be  held  to  include  every  kind  and  form  of  Human 
Energy.  Yet  very  few  writers  have  really  digested  * 

1  What  has  been  held  always — everywhere — and  by  all  men  ; — the 
test  of  Catholic  orthodoxy,  laid  down  by  St.  Vincent  of  Lerins,  A.D.  434. 

2  Work,  and  Adventures  in  New  Guinea.     By  James  Chalmers,  1885. 
This  distinguished  missionary  is  a  native  of  Argyllshire,  and  was  educated 
in  the  Parish  of  Inveraray. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  463 

this  truth, — have  taken  adequate  account  of  it  in 
their  reasonings, — or  have  attempted  to  follow  it  to 
all  its  consequences.  The  great  difference  between 
the  wages  of  Skilled  and  of  Unskilled  Labour  is  one 
of  the  most  rudimentary  facts  of  Life  which  indicate 
the  value  of  the  mental  element  even  in  its  simplest 
forms.  The  simplest  of  these  forms  is  that  in  which 
some  special  faculty  of  Perception  is  united  in  the 
same  person  with  the  Labour  of  the  Hands.  But  all 
the  higher  forms  of  Mental  Energy  are,  for  the  most 
part,  not  united  in  the  same  person  with  the  Labour 
of  the  Hands.  It  is  the  value  and  effect  of  these 
higher  Energies  of  Mind  which  are  most  habitually 
forgotten,  and  in  almost  all  Treatises  on  questions 
of  human  Progress  the  word  Labour  gradually  slips 
down — and  down — in  its  use  and  signification,  until 
practically  it  means  nothing  but  the  Labour  of  the 
Hands,  with  the  more  or  less  implicit  addition,  only 
of  the  various  degrees  of  mere  technical  or  manipu- 
lative skill.  "  The  producing  Classes"-—"  The  pro- 
duce of  Labour/'  and  many  other  similar  phrases,  are 
perpetually  used  as  if  Muscle  only  were  concerned  in 
the  sources,  or  in  the  increase,  or  in  the  diffusion,  of 
Wealth.  Nothing  can  be  more  erroneous,  and  yet 
the  error  has  never  been  sufficiently  exposed.  The 
Modern  Socialist  School  are  especially  forgetful  of 
Mind  in  all  its  highest  and  most  operative  powers, 
and  are  especially  jealous  of  those  facts — the  most 
certain  perhaps  of  all  facts — which  establish  the 
natural,  ineradicable,  and  far-reaching  inequalities 
with  which  these  powers  have  been  bestowed  by 
Nature  on  individual  men.  All  the  writers  of  this 
School  dislike  and  avoid  the  subject,  and,  when 
they  do  deal  with  it,  show  how  very  little  they 
recognise  or  appreciate  the  real  facts  of  Nature. 

The  most  signal  example  I  have  seen  of  the 
measureless  difference  between  these  facts  and 
the  Socialist  appreciation  of  them,  is  the  example 
to  be  found  in  some  words  of  Mr.  Henry  George  : 
"  I  doubt  if  any  good  observer  will  say  that 


464  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  mental  differences  of  men  are  greater  than 
the  physical  differences."  l  Here  we  have  a  com- 
parison made  between  two  things  which  are  abso- 
lutely incommensurable.  It  may  be  quite  true 
that  the  tallest  Giant  ever  known  is  scarcely 
more  than  four  times  as  tall  as  the  smallest 
Dwarf.  It  may  be  true  that  the  average  difference 
in  height  between  men  does  not  exceed  one-sixth, 
or  one-seventh  of  the  whole  stature.  It  may  be 
true  that  the  scale  of  difference  in  muscular 
strength — in  the  lifting  of  weights,  for  example — 
is  a  scale  not  much  wider  in  its  extremes.  But 
most  certainly  it  is  not  true  that  even  in  those 
lower  manifestations  of  Mind  which  constitute 
mere  manual  dexterity  and  skill  in  handicrafts, 
the  differences  between  men,  are  like  mere  bodily 
differences,  either  in  kind  or  in  degree.  A  short 
man  may  be  as  good  for  all  manly  work  as  a  tall 
man — or  an  ugly  man  as  a  man  of  the  most  per- 
fect form.  But  in  Mechanics,  or  in  Chemistry, 
or  in  Art,  the  corresponding  differences  of  skill 
make  the  whole  contrast  between  work  which  is 
useless  or  effective — healing  or  poisonous — hideous 
or  of  surpassing  beauty.  To  Be,  or  Not  To  Be— 
this,  and  no  less,  is  the  question  which  may  depend, 
and  often  does  depend,  upon  the  degrees  of  Faculty 
with  which  the  eyes  are  directed,  or  the  hands  are 
moved.  Still  more  futile  is  this  comparison  of 
physical  distinctions  as  any  illustration  of  the 
differences  which  separate  one  man  from  another  in 
the  higher  faculties  of  the  Mind.  The  difference 
between  a  dull  man  and  a  man  of  genius — whatever 
the  particular  line  of  that  genius  may  be — is  a  differ- 
ence so  immense  as  to  be  immeasurable.  The  scale 
is  one  which  reaches  from  Zero  to  a  practical  Infinity. 
Moreover,  it  is  a  scale  of  difference  applicable  above 
all  to  those  kinds  of  Work  on  which  Society  is 
founded,  and  by  which  its  progress  is  determined. 
There  is  no  scale  that  can  measure  the  difference,  in 

1  Social  Problems,  p.  69. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  465 

actual  working  value,  between  the  Mind  of  James 
Watt  and  the  Mind  of  the  most  skilled  Workmen 
whom  he  employed  to  make,  first,  his  Models, 
and  then,  his  Engines.  But  great  as  this  differ- 
ence is,  it  is  perhaps  exceeded  by  the  differ- 
ence between  the  average  faculties  of  ordinary 
men,  and  those  rarer  gifts  which  in  the  early 
stages  of  Society  are  concerned  in  founding  its 
Organic  Structures,  and  in  establishing  its  Oppor- 
tunities of  Growth.  Yet  as  regards  physical  powers, 
there  is  often  little  or  nothing  to  distinguish  be- 
tween such  men ;  and  certainly  no  physical  differ- 
ence could  even  be  a  symbol,  however  imperfect,  of 
the  differences  of  level  on  which  they  stand. 

It  is  one  of  the  regrets  of  my  life  that  I 
once  had  a  long  interview  with  General  Gordon 
when  I  did  not  even  know  who  he  was.  It  was 
before  the  time  of  his  greatest  fame,  but  when  in  a 
very  distant  region  he  had  done  enough  to  indicate 
what  manner  of  man  he  was.  There  was,  however, 
nothing  in  his  outward  appearance  to  arrest  atten- 
tion. There  was  no  aspect  of  command.  There 
was  no  look  of  genius  in  his  almost  cold,  grey  eye. 
There  was  no  indication  in  his  calm  manner,  of  the 
Fires  of  God  that  were  slumbering  underneath — of 
the  powerful  yet  gentle  nature  which  was  equally 
at  home  in  the  "confused  noise"  of  Battle,  in  the 
teaching  of  poor  children,  or  in  the  comforting  of  a 
deathbed.  Yet  General  Gordon  was  one  who  even 
then  had  saved  an  Empire,  and  had  rescued,  by  his 
own  individual  example  and  force  of  character,  a 
whole  population  from  massacre  and  devastation. 
Not,  perhaps,  very  tractable  in  council — sometimes 
almost  incoherent  in  speculative  opinion — he  was, 
beyond  all  question,  a  born  Ruler  and  King  of  men 
—one  who  in  early  ages  might  have  been  the 
founder  of  a  Nation — the  Chosen  Leader  of  some 
Chosen  People  on  the  way  from  intertribal  wars 
and  barbarism  to  peace,  and  Government,  and  Law. 
To  say  of  such  men  as  Gordon  that  the  difference 

2  G 


466  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

between  them  and  the  common  herd,  is  no  greater 
than  the  difference  between  men  of  the  biggest 
and  the  smallest  size  of  body  that  may  be  picked 
off  the  street,  is  to  betray  a  profound  ignorance  of 
the  causes  and  the  forces  which  have  governed  the 
history  of  Mankind.  Nor  does  it  need  such  an  ex- 
treme case  to  illustrate  the  fallacy.  The  varieties 
of  Mind  are  infinite,  and  the  pre-eminence  of  one 
over  another  in  some  special  faculty — some  single 
gift — may,  and  often  does,  make  the  whole  differ- 
ence between  victory  and  defeat  —  between  tri- 
umphant success  and  total  failure,  in  the  race  of 
individual  life,  and  in  the  struggle  between  Tribes 
and  Nations. 

The  protection  of  the  Powerful  has  been  in  all 
ages  the  earliest  shelter  for  the  beginnings  of  in- 
dustry and  of  wealth.  In  our  own  country  we  have 
traced  these  beginnings  from  before  the  dawn  of  His- 
tory— when  Power  was  establishing  itself  through 
all  the  various  gifts  and  aptitudes  which  made  some 
men  Kings,  and  Chiefs,  and  Leaders,  by  clustering 
round  them  all  who  could  not  otherwise  defend 
themselves.  The  Exclusive  Use  of  land,  whether  by 
small  groups  or  by  individual  men,  has  always  been 
absolutely  necessary  for  the  production  and  enjoy- 
ment of  even  the  simplest  of  its  fruits ;  and  this 
Exclusive  Use  could  not  be  had  without  coming 
under  the  protection  of  those  who  had  become 
Owners,  who  could  defend  their  Ownership,  and 
who  could  defend  also  those  to  whom  they  let  it, 
or  lent  it,  for  a  time.  Bent,  originally  and  his- 
torically, was  the  price  men  were  too  glad  to  pay 
for  this  protection.  This  element  in  Kent  is  still 
expressed  in  every  Lease  by  words  which  in  one 
form  or  another  have  been  continuously  used  for 
700  years,  and  which  embodied  in  language  under- 
standings which  were  necessary  and  universal. 
They  are  words  which  convey  the  promise  that 
Tenants  will  be  protected  in  their  Exclusive  Use 
"at  all  hands,  and  against  all  mortals."  Some- 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  467 

times  the  words  were  shorter — "  against  all  deadly." 
This  was  the  Occupier's  Tenure.  This  was  his 
Security.  This  was  the  one  fundamental  advantage 
for  which  men  owed,  and  gladly  paid,  some  portion 
of  Produce,  or  of  their  own  Muscular  Labour,  or  of 
both. 

But  from  very  early  times  another  element  was 
added  to  the  benefits  for  which  Produce  and  Ser- 
vices were  paid.  Owners  lent  not  only  the  Exclu- 
sive Use  of  land,  but  also  the  cattle  by  which 
the  land  was  stocked.  We  have  seen  that  this 
form  of  what  on  the  Continent  is  called  "Metayer," 
was  common  over  the  whole  of  Scotland  under 
the  name  of  "  Steelbow."  l  Next  came  a  further 
change — another  addition,  or  rather  another  great 
group  of  additions,  to  the  benefits  for  which 
Rent  was  paid.  These  additions  included,  in  the 
first  place,  all  those  exercises  of  Mind  and  of 
Authority  by  which  ignorant  and  wasteful  Usages 
were  abolished,  and  all  those  by  which  the  new 
methods  of  husbandry  were  taught  and  first  estab- 
lished. They  included,  in  the  second  place,  all  that 
we  now  know  under  the  head  of  Reclamation  and 
Permanent  Improvements, — operations  which  have 
in  all  cases  far  exceeded  the  capital  value  of  the 
Land  before  they  began.  The  Burst  of  Industry 
which  I  have  described  as  having  begun  to  trans- 
form the  face  of  Scotland  during  the  latter  half  of 
the  last  century,  did  not  end  with  a  Burst,  but  has 
been  continuous  and  increasing  ever  since.  On  this 
point  I  can  speak  from  personal  experience.  Some 
parts  of  the  "  Old  Coast  Line  "  on  which  I  have  de- 
scribed the  operations  of  Lord  Frederick  Campbell, 
were  still  left  unreclaimed  when  I  began  the  work  of 
Ownership  forty  years  ago.  I  found  that  the  cost  of 
bringing  them  into  the  condition  of  arable  land  was 

1  Among  the  Celts  of  Ireland  this  footing  seems  to  have  been  equally 
common,  and  the  Landlord's  share  of  produce  was  two-thirds,  one-third 
representing  Rent  for  use  of  land,  and  another  third  for  the  stock  also- 
lent.  Manners  and  Customs  of  the  Ancient  Irish,  by  Professor  O'Curry, 
vol.  i.  Introd.  p.  122. 


468  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

not  less  than,  and  sometimes  exceeded,  £25  an  acre. 
As  in  its  unreclaimed  state  the  land  was  not  worth 
5s.  an  acre  of  the  coarsest  pasture,  this  outlay  re- 
presents one  hundred  years'  purchase  of  its  original 
value.  Sentiment, — of  one  kind, — has  often  led  me 
to  desire  to  see,  even  if  it  were  only  for  a  moment, 
the  aspect  of  our  country  when,  before  the  days 
even  of  the  Picts  and  Scots,  it  was  covered  by  mag- 
nificent and  continuous  Forests — where  not  a  stick 
has  grown  within  the  memory  of  Man,  or  within 
the  records  of  authentic  History.  But  as  this  re- 
vival cannot  be,  Sentiment — of  another  kind — has 
led  me  lately  to  dig  up  the  trunks  of  the  Caledonian 
Forest,  and  to  cover  with  corn-fields  some  areas 
which  have  been  for  many  centuries  under  bog. 
One  of  these  seems  to  have  been  a  glade  shaded  by 
giant  Oaks.  Here  again  my  experience  has  been 
that  the  outlay  is  far  beyond — sometimes  forty  and 
fifty  times  beyond — the  capital  value  of  the  land  as 
it  stood  when  I  began.  But  reclamations  effected 
thus  suddenly,  and  by  one  single  operation,  are  few 
in  comparison  with  those  other  reclamations  which 
have  been  gradual  and  continuous  during  many 
generations  —  each  successive  work  bringing  up 
the  condition  of  the  land  to  the  standard  of 
knowledge  existing  at  the  time.  I  have  found 
that  in  the  West  of  Scotland,  where  there  is 
a  very  heavy  rainfall,  and  where  great  areas  of 
country  are  far  from  Tileworks,  the  mere  re-drain- 
age of  old  cultivated  land  cannot  be  thoroughly 
done,  at  the  present  or  recent  prices  of  Muscular 
Labour  and  of  Material,  at  a  less  cost  than  from 
£10  to  £12  per  acre;  and  this  alone  is  very  fre- 
quently more  than  twenty  years'  purchase  of  the 
former  rent. 

But  there  is  another  kind  of  outlay  connected 
with  modern  husbandry  which  has  been  on  an 
enormous  scale,  the  work  of  Ownership  in  Scotland, 
especially  during  the  last  forty  years.  Up  to  about 
that  time,  over  the  greater  part  of  the  country, 


THE  FBUITS  OF  MIND.  469 

it  had  been  one  of  the  customary  stipulations  in 
Leases  that  the  Tenants  should  erect  new  Houses, 
with   such   assistance   as   in   each   case   might   be 
agreed  upon.     This  stipulation  was  connected  with 
the    abandonment    of   Township    Hovels,    and    of 
Runrig  Tillage.     The  new  class  of  Houses,  although 
an  immense  advance   on  the  old  huts  of  Wattles 
and  turf,    were   generally   built   of  stone  without 
lime  and  with  roofs  of  thatch.     Comfortable  and 
commodious  as  these  Houses  often  were  when  com- 
pared with  the   squalid  dwellings  which  had  pre- 
ceded them,  they  still  left  much  to  be  desired  when 
compared  with  the   advancing   tastes  and   know- 
ledge of  the  day.     Accordingly,  in  almost  all  cases, 
Tenants   taking    farms    during    later    years,    have 
offered  their  new  rents  upon  condition  of  getting 
the   farms   furnished  with   new  Houses,   both   for 
themselves  and  for   their   Cows   and  other  stock. 
On  this  branch  of  the  Work  of  Ownership,  I  can 
also   speak  from   a   somewhat  large   and  long   ex- 
perience.     It  is  quite  impossible  to  graduate  the 
outlay  on  Houses  according  to  the  scale  of  Rent. 
Certain  requirements  apply  equally  to  a  Farm  of 
£100  a  year,  and  to  a  farm  of  £500  a  year.     I  have 
rarely  succeeded  in  building  a  "  Steading"  or  com- 
plete set  of  Farm  Buildings,  under  at  least   five 
years'  outlay  of  the  improved  rent.     Nine  and  ten 
years'  outlay  is  common ;  and  in  the  case  of  small 
Farms  of  between  £100  and  £200,  the  outlay  has 
been  as  high  as  sixteen  years  of  the  rent.     The 
general  result  is  that  the   capital   represented  by 
Ownership  in   Scotland   is  seldom   less  than  from 
forty  to  fifty  years'  rental,  and  is  very  often  a  great 
deal  more.     The  average  capital  of  Tenants  is  cer- 
tainly less  than  five  years   of  the  rental  per  acre. 
I  have  elsewhere 1  specified  the  case  of  one  farm  in 
which  the  capital  of  the  Owner  represents  the  sum 
of  £7046,  whilst  that  invested  by  the  Tenant  would 

1  Nineteenth  Century,  No.  106,  Dec.  1885.     "  Capital  and  the  Improve- 
ment of  Land." 


470  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

represent,  on  a  liberal  computation,  not  more  than 
£966.  The  results  of  any  improvement  which  such 
a  Tenant  can  make  upon  his  farm  must  be  always 
in  greatest  measure  due  to  sources  which  he  did  not 
contribute.  He  is  trading  on  the  capital,  on  the 
previous  improvements,  and  on  the  ancient  Owner- 
ship, of  other  men.  Yet  there  are  politicians  and 
economists  who  recommend  that  a  Tenant  who 
builds  a  new  piggery  or  a  new  silo,  at  the  cost  of 
some  fraction  of  a  year's  rent,  should  be  allowed  to 
deprive  Owners  of  the  rights  which  flow  from  cen- 
turies of  Tenure  and  of  outlay,  by  selling  the  occu- 
pancy which  has  been  lent  to  them  for  a  time  upon 
stipulated  conditions. 

These  facts,  and  a  host  of  others  correlative  to 
these,  open  up  an  immense  subject.  If  writers  on' 
Political  Economy  and  on  Social  problems  of  any 
kind,  would  not  only  say,  but  would  practically 
remember  that  Labour  means  every  form  and  kind 
and  degree  of  Human  Energy,  and  most  especially 
all  those  kinds  which  were  the  earliest  and  are  the 
highest,  their  "  Science"  would  not  be  the  dismal, lean 
and  erroneous  teaching  which  too  often  it  has  been 
found  out  to  be.  Abstractions  from  which  every- 
thing has  been  subtracted  that  ought  to  have  been 
included — arbitrary  selections  and  as  arbitrary  re- 
jections among  the  elements  contributing  to  great 
results — slovenly  analysis,  and  complete  forget- 
fulness  of  essential  things  which  are  by  way  of 
being  left  to  be  understood, — all  these  sources  of 
error  leave  but  a  poor  and  beggarly  account  of  the 
inexhaustible  riches  and  Poetry  of  Nature,  in  the 
true  history  and  progress  of  Man.  The  multitude 
of  mental  agencies,  and  of  powers — the  complexity 
of  the  sources,  and  of  the  opportunities  of  work 
— dating  back  through  many  centuries,  with  which, 
and  upon  which,  every  man  trades  in  Scotland 
who  hires  any  land  belonging  to  another — but  none 
of  which  are  due  to  the  hirer — are  but  the  type  of 
a  general  truth,  affecting  more  or  less  all  callings 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  471 

or  employments.  When  Men  are  taught  that 
they  ought  to  have  the  "  whole  value  of  their  own 
Labour/'  they  are  never  taught  to  count  and 
estimate  all  the  factors  which  go  to  make  up  the 
total  value  of  results  to  which,  perhaps,  their 
own  contribution  may  be  the  smallest.  They  do 
not  think  of  the  Capital  which  is  the  savings  of 
Mind,  of  the  Organisation  which  is  the  invention 
of  Mind — of  the  Enterprise  and  Confidence  which 
are  the  expectations  of  Mind — of  the  Law  which 
is  the  embodiment  of  Mind, — on  all  of  which  the 
whole  of  their  own  opportunities  have  absolutely 
depended.  And  yet  these  considerations  are 
not  founded  on  theory  or  speculation.  They  are 
founded  on  indisputable  facts,  and  are  brought 
to  light  as  facts  by  the  very  simple  process  of 
analysing  with  care  and  accuracy  the  conditions  of 
our  own  life,  and  the  meaning  of  the  commonest 
words  in  which  we  instinctively  express  them. 

The  great  interest  and  value  of  the  history  of 
Scotland  regarding  all  these  matters,  lie  in  its 
splendid  continuity.  Like  the  days  of  the  Poet, 
our  generations  have  been  "  bound  each  to  each  by 
natural  piety."1  From  the  days  when  her  early 
Sovereigns,  in  the  Eleventh  and  Twelfth  Centu- 
ries, gathered  round  them  the  Barons  and  Knights 
and  the  Burgesses  of  the  Kingdom,  and  gave 
them  new  Instruments  recording  and  defining  the 
rights  and  powers  which  they  had  even  then 
immemorially  enjoyed — from  the  time  when  Robert 
the  Bruce  emerged  triumphant  from  the  War  of 
Independence,  and  transferred  these  rights  and 
powers  from  men  who  had  been  faithless,  to  men 
who  had  been  faithful  to  their  Country — from  the 
time  when  he  rewarded  by  a  fresh  and  noble 
Tenure  those  who  had  stood  by  his  side  from 
Methven  Bridge  to  Bannockburn, — the  history  of 
Scotland  has  been  one  long  and  steady  develop- 
ment of  the  Heign  of  Mind  in  Government  and  in 

1   Wordsworth. 


472  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Law.  The  amalgamation  of  Races — the  blending 
of  interests — the  fusion  of  Classes — the  freedom  of 
trade — the  local  movements  of  population  in  the 
rise  of  new  industries, — these  have  been  the  lines 
of  its  long  rough  but  steady  march  from  extreme 
poverty  and  rudeness,  to  great  wealth,  and  great 
achievements  in  every  walk  of  intellectual 
exertion. 

There  are  drawbacks  and  limitations  to  progress 
in  all  Nations,  and  it  would  be  alike  foolish  and 
dangerous  to  forget  them.  But  it  is  certainly  not 
true  that  the  immense  increase  of  Wealth  in  Scot- 
land since  the  Union  has  been  an  increase  not  widely 
distributed  over  the  bulk  of  her  population.  The 
wages  of  her  artificers,  by  no  means  the  highest  in 
skill,  who  are  now  employed  on  the  Industries  of 
the  Clyde,  amount  very  often  in  a  single  month  to 
more  money,  with  ten  times  the  purchasing  power, 
than  the  whole  yearly  income  enjoyed  by  their 
fathers  a  hundred  years  ago.  The  same  contrast  is 
presented  in  every  walk  of  life.  The  Houses  and 
Cottages  which  all  Owners  have  been  building  for 
Tenants  during  the  last  fifty  years,  are  palaces 
compared — not  only  with  the  huts  of  the  corre- 
sponding classes  in  the  Military  Ages,  but  corn- 
red  even  with  the  Houses  lived  in  by  power- 
ul  Chiefs  not  longer  than  a  century  and  a  half 
ago.  The  multiplication  of  Villas  and  Houses  of  a 
high  class  along  all  our  shores,  and  round  the  old 
centres  of  our  great  cities,  represents  an  immense 
aggregate  of  comfortable  means  among  all  the  classes 
engaged  in  Trade  and  Commerce.  The  condition 
of  our  great  cities  is  justly  attracting  attention, 
and  much  remains  to  be  done  for  them  in  lines  of 
action  which  cannot  be  too  earnestly  considered. 
But  the  more  carefully  we  look  into  the  Past,  the 
more  we  .shall  be  thankful  for  the  general  direc- 
tion of  the  path  in  which,  as  a  Nation,  we  have  been 
led. 

No  man  was  more  deeply  versed  in  the  literature 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  473 

of  the  Past — in  the  details  of  life  during  the  Military 
Ages — than  the  late  Mr.  Cosmo  Innes.  He  did 
not  escape  altogether  from  that  curious  form  of 
Sentiment  which  tempts  us  all  at  times  to  long  for 
a  Wild  Life,  and  to  wish  that  our  wild  land  had  re- 
mained for  ever  unreclaimed — that  our  mountains 
had  remained  for  ever  waste.  Under  the  influence 
of  this  strange  glamour,  which,  as  we  have  seen, 
never  has  any  power  as  regards  the  Lowlands,  he 
has  allowed  himself  in  one  passage  to  take  strange 

-L  O  O 

liberties  with  History  and  with  Logic.  He  suggests 
that  all  the  wild  surfaces  of  our  Country  were  not 
really  intended  to  be  conveyed  by  Charter,  because 
in  those  days  they  were  not  really  thought  of.  Yet 
in  another  passage  of  the  same  Essay,  when  dealing 
with  the  express  words  of  these  Charters,  which  care- 
fully and  exhaustively  enumerated  every  variety  of 
surface  within  the  boundaries  of  an  Estate,  he  ex- 
plains that  these  enumerations  were  introduced  ob 
major  em  cautelam1 — or,  in  other  words,  from  the  very 
excess  of  thoughtfulness.  Of  course  this — the  only 
irrational  passage  in  all  the  writings  of  a  very  learned 
man — is  the  only  one  ever  quoted  by  the  irrational 
and  the  sentimental.  Yet  I  know  few  writings 
more  rich  in  evidence  of  all  the  leading  facts  and 
inferences  which  have  been  set  forth  in  the  preced- 
ing chapters — those  especially  which  show  us  at  once 
the  connection  and  the  contrast  between  the  past 
and  the  present  condition  of  our  country.  The  ori- 
ginal identity  of  Celtic  Institutions  with  those  of 
the  other  Northern  Nations — differing  only  in  the 
longer  survival  of  early  customs,  and  in  the  want 
of  any  code  to  define  or  fix ; 2  the  gradual  adoption 
of  Saxon  Laws,  not  as  alien  or  as  the  result  of 
conquest,  but  because  there  was  nothing  definite  to 
be  displaced,  and  because  those  laws  were  in  their 
nature  "  the  most  approved — the  most  civil ; " 3  the 
extent  of  exactions  imposed  upon  the  people  during 

1  Scotch  Legal  Antiquities,  compare  p.  45  with  p.  155. 

2  II.  pp.  97-8.  3  Ib.  pp.  95-6. 


474  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

the  Military  Ages ; l  the  fractionally  small  portion 
of  the  country  which  was  cultivated  at  all,  this 
portion  being  confined  to  a  narrow  strip  on  the 
river  bank,  or  beside  the  sea;2  the  miserable  use 
to  which  even  those  small  areas  were  put  that 
were  grazed  at  all — -just  serving  to  keep  the  cattle 
from  starvation ;  the  constant  quarrels  arising  out 
of  the  common  use  of  pastures  ; 3  the  great  excess 
of  population  which  arose  in  the  Glens  over  the 
number  which  the  country  could  support  with  its 
own  produce  "or  honestly  ;" 4  the  enormous  waste 
involved  in  the  neglect  and  utter  vacancy  of  vast 
areas  of  mountain  land — stretching,  on  one  Estate, 
across  the  whole  of  Scotland  from  sea  to  sea,  and 
yielding  literally  nothing  to  represent  "the  thou- 
sands and  millions  of  sheep  which  graze  them  now;"5 
the  beginnings  of  improvement  in  the  obligatory- 
stipulations  imposed  on  Tenants  by  Owners  in  the 
terms  of  Leases,  so  early  as  1 5 1 1 ; 6  the  enforce- 
ment of  all  such  stipulations  by  the  penalty  of  re- 
moval or  dismissal  from  the  Estate  ; 7  the  safety 
of  the  evidence  that  the  small  cultivators  and  sub- 
tenants, now  called  Crofters,  were  then  Tenants  at 
Will ; 8 — all  these,  and  many  other  kindred  facts, 
testify,  first,  to  the  rude  and  barbarous  condition 
of  our  ancestors,  and,  next,  to  the  powers  and  pro- 
cesses by  which  their  children  have  been  raised 
to  an  acknowledged  place  among  the  most  civilised 
nations  in  the  world.  The  contrast  is  indeed 
astonishing.  "  Always  on  the  verge  of  famine  and 
every  few  years  suffering  the  horrors  of  actual  star- 
vation " — such  are  the  words  in  which  this  careful 
Historian  describes  the  old  condition  of  the  High- 
lands.9 There  is  no  wonder  that  he  is  roused  to 
something  like  enthusiasm  when  in  the  case  of  a 
particular  Estate, — that  of  the  Campbells  of  Cawdor 


1  Scotch  Legal  Antiquities,  p.  276.  2  Ib.  pp.  154-5. 

3  Ib.  p.  268.  *  Ib.  p.  269.  5  Ib.  p.  263. 

6  Ib.  pp.  250-2.  1  Ib.  p.  252.  «  Ib.  p.  251. 

9  Sketches  of  Early  Scotch  History,  p.  424. 


THE  FKUITS  OF  MIND.  475 

in  Nairn, — he  sees  and  describes  all  the  poetry  of  a 
most  blessed  change  : — "The  woods  now  wave  over 
the  grey  Castle  with  a  luxuriance  of  shade  which 
its  old  inhabitants  never  thought  of.  Above  all,  the 
country  round,  of  old  occupied  by  a  half-starving 
people,  lodged  in  houses  of  '  faile/  l  disturbed  by 
plundering  neighbours,  and  ever  and  anon  by  the 
curse  of  Civil  War,  is  now  cultivated  by  an  active 
and  thriving  Tenantry,  with  the  comforts  which 
increasing  intelligence  and  wealth  require  and 
supply." 2  This  is  a  beautiful  vignette.  But,  again, 
this  is  only  a  little  bit  out  of  a  wide  landscape, 
which  carries  into  the  mind,  through  the  eye,  cer- 
tain .convictions  in  which  we  cannot  be  deceived. 

And  so  it  happens  again  that  Mr.  Cosmo  Innes 
when,  in  another  Work,  he  finds  himself  in  contact 
with  the  actual  records  of  old  times,  and  with 
the  picture  they  present  of  life  and  manners,  was, 
as  we  all  must  be,  recalled  to  the  realities  of  historic 
truth.  In  closing  his  Preface  to  that  instructive 
record  of  life  on  a  great  Highland  Estate  during 
three  Centuries,  which  is  contained  in  the  Book  of 
Taymouth,  he  expresses  his  general  conclusion  in 
these  remarkable  words  : — "  While  there  is  enough 
of  romance  in  the  glimpses  here  opened  of  the  rough 
life  of  the  '  good  old  time,'  it  is  pleasant  to  think 
that  while  much  is  changed,  every  change  has  been 
for  the  better.  The  country  which  these  papers 
show  us  in  so  wild  a  state  of  lawless  insecurity  has 
for  the  last  two  centuries  steadily  improved,  and 
the  process  has  not  been  more  marked  in  the  face 
of  the  country  than  in  the  moral  and  physical  con- 
dition of  the  people  and  their  social  happiness." 
Yet  this  is  spoken  of  a  district  in  the  Highlands 
from  which  there  was  as  large  a  movement  of 
population,  in  connection  with  the  Industrial  Age, 
as  from  any  other  portion  of  the  country. 

Among  the  many  delusions  which  a  false  senti- 
ment has  promoted  there  has,  perhaps,  never  been 

1  "Faile,"  turf.  2  Sketches,  p.  436. 


476  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

a  delusion  more  complete  than  that  which  imagines 
that  in  early  Celtic  Customs  or  traditions,  as  dis- 
tinguished from  the  corresponding  Customs  and 
traditions  of  the  Teutonic  Nations,  there  was  any 
element  which,  if  it  had  been  left  alone,  would 
have  built  up  some  Polity  better  for  the  mass  of 
the  people  than  the  Polity  which  actually  arose,  out 
of  the  amalgamation  of  the  races,  in  England  and 
in  Scotland.  As  it  so  happens,  we  have  historical 
evidence  on  this  subject,  more  ancient,  more  con- 
tinuous, and  more  conclusive,  than  on  any  other 
subject  whatever  connected  with  the  rise  of  civilisa- 
tion in  any  part  of  Europe.  In  an  earlier  chapter 
I  have  already  referred  to  the  curiously  narrow  and 
local,  but  attractive  culture  of  the  early  Celtic 
Church.  It  is  beyond  question  that  the  Monks 
and  Priests  of  that  Church  had  some  culture  and 
some  letters  in  a  literature  purely  Celtic,  at  a  time 
when  the  other  modern  European  nations  were 
either  sunk  in  utter  barbarism,  or  at  least  were 
so  little  advanced  as  to  have  nothing  of  the  same 
kind.  But  from  this  very  fact  we  have  an  amount 
of  evidence  in  respect  to  the  condition  and  habits 
of  these  Celts,  which  we  do  not  possess  in  respect  to 
any  other  European  race  whatever  at  the  same  date. 
In  the  Annals  of  Ireland  by  the  Four  Masters  we 
have  a  continuorus  Chronicle  which  is  supposed,  on 
good  grounds,  to  be  substantially  authentic  from 
the  Second  Century  of  the  Christian  Era.  Even  if 
this  very  early  date  be  doubted,  there  seems  to  be 
no  doubt  whatever  that  these  Annals  are  authentic 
from  at  least  the  Fourth  Century,  and  they  are 
continuous  down  to  the  middle  of  the  Seven- 
teenth. They  present  to  us  all  the  chief  incidents 
of  each  year  which  were  considered  worthy  of 
record  by  men  of  the  most  educated  and  intelligent 
class  in  Ireland.  The  result  is  to  show  that  not 
only  were  the  whole  conditions  of  Society  barbar- 
ous in  the  sense  of  being  rude,  rough,  and  violent — 
but  that  they  were  barbarous  in  the  sense  of  being 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  477 

exceptionally  savage,  and  without  a  trace  of  ameliora- 
tion or  of  progress  towards  better  things. 

There  may  be  a  high  interest  attaching  to  "War- 
like Tribes — if  their  Wars  have  in  them  even  the 
germ  of  contests  animated  by  nobler  passions  than 
the  mere  thirst  for  blood,  or  the  mere  triumphs  of 
revenge.  But  we  may  turn  over  page  after  page  of 
these  Annals  without  seeing  even  one  solitary 
symptom  of  the  crystallising  forces  which  begin  the 
Organic  Structures  of  Civilisation.  Every  page  is  a 
sickening  repetition  of  intertribal  battles,  murders, 
and  devastations.  Taking  only  the  period  before  the 
English  Conquest  by  Henry  Plantagenet,  we  have 
the  record  of  about  700  years.  Not  one  single 
step  can  be  traced  through  all  those  centuries  in 
the  path  of  progress.  On  the  contrary,  the  country 
was  getting  worse  and  worse.  And  yet  there  was 
Poetry  and  Sentiment — of  a  kind.  One  of  the 
most  curious  features  of  the  Monkish  Journals  is 
the  constant  bursting  of  the  narrative  into  verse — 
couplets  and  quatrains  of  rhythmic  utterance.  Few 
of  us  can  judge  of  any  beauty  which  may  belong  to 
them  in  the  Erse.  But  we  can  all  judge  of  the 
meanings  and  passions  which  inspired  them.  There 
are  some  allusions  to  Nature — to  the  Sea — to 
Rivers — to  Mountains — which  are  poetic.  But  the 
animating  spirit  is  almost  purely  ferocious — with 
nothing  of  the  higher  sentiments  which  we  under- 
stand as  Patriotism.  No  deeds  of  massacre,  how- 
ever dreadful,  are  ever  narrated  with  rebuke — still 
less  any  acts  of  mere  plunder — unless,  perchance, 
any  of  these  should  have  been  directed  against 
Ecclesiastics.  Then  indeed  the  culprit  "King"  or 
Chief  is  denounced  as  a  monster,  and  some  rival 
King  or  Chief  is  incited — in  piteous  or  in  furious 
appeals — to  punish  him  with  death  and  with  the 
devastation  of  his  country.  Thus  in  the  year  733 
we  are  told  in  the  Annals  that  a  Celtic  King  had 
ventured  to  practise  upon  some  Church  or  Convent 
one  of  those  exactions,  "  Coigny,"  which  were 


478  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

universally  practised  against  all  the  laity.  He  had 
forcibly  taken  some  "  refection "  from  a  Church 
called  "  Cill-Cunna."  For  this  offence  another  King 
was  incited  by  "  Congus,  successor  of  Patrick,"  to 
take  bloody  vengeance  on  his  too  hungry  rival. 
As  usual  there  was  a  great  battle.  On  the  way  to 
it  the  avenging  King  bursts  into  this  characteristic 
poetical  effusion : — 

"  For  Cill-Cunna,  the  Church  of  my  Confessor, 

I  take  this  journey  on  the  road  ; 
Aedh  Roin  shall  leave  his  head  with  me, 
or  I  shall  leave  mine  with  him." 

And  then  we  have  the  result  chronicled  thus  :— 

"  The  slaughter  of  the  Ulidians  with  Aedh  Roin  by 

Aedh  Allan,  King  of  Ireland, 
For  their  Coigny  at  Cill-Cunna  he  placed  soles  to  necks." 

This  last  image  may  be  very  beautiful  and  poetic 
in  Erse,  but  in  Anglo-Saxon  it  requires  explana- 
tion. Accordingly  the  meaning  is  given  in  a  note 
by  the  learned  Editor,  as  follows  : — "  This  is  an 
idiom  expressing  indiscriminate  carnage,  in  which 
the  sole  of  the  foot  of  one  body  was  placed  over 
against  or  across  the  neck  or  headless  trunk  of 
another."1 

It  would  be  easy  to  fill  whole  chapters  with 
extracts  of  the  same  kind.  Many  of  them  would 
exhibit  the  misery  of  the  people.  One  of  them 
celebrates  a  battle  of  which  it  is  specially  recorded 
"  Great  the  carnage  of  Fir  Feini,"  which  is  ex- 
plained to  be  the  "  Farmers " 2  or  Cultivating 
Class.  Down  to  the  very  latest  date  in  these 
Annals  the  same  spirit  is  exhibited.  The  glory 
of  a  great  Irish  Chief  who  died  in  Rome  so  late 
as  1616,  is  celebrated  in  the  last  pages  of  the  last 
volume.  He  is  praised  as  "  a  warlike,  valorous, 
predatory,  enterprising  Lord." :  The  truth  is,  that 
the  Celtic  race,  like  many  others,  were  first  lifted 

1   Annals,  vol.  i.  p.  331.  *  Ibid.  p.  334.  3  Ibid.  vol.  vi.  p.  2375. 


THE  FKUITS  OF  MIND.  479 

above  themselves  by  contact  and  mixture  with 
other  blood.  By  themselves  they  had  not  only 
failed  to  advance,  but  they  had  fallen  back.  They 
had  declined  from  the  doctrines  and  the  practice 
even  of  their  own  Brehon  Laws.  The  Colony 
which  they  sent  out  to  Scotland  in  the  Sixth 
Century,  rose,  and  has  risen,  in  exact  proportion 
as  it  became  thoroughly  mixed  and  fused  with  the 
Teutonic  people.  England  gained  immensely  by 
both  the  Conquests  which  were  effected  over  her. 
Scotland  gained  quite  as  much  by  the  more  peace- 
ful but  equally  effective  processes  through  which 
Saxon  and  Norman  blood  established  itself  even  in 
the  remotest  Highlands.  Ireland  has  suffered  not 
from  the  Conquest,  but  because  the  higher  Rule 
and  Law  were  so  long  limited  to  the  Pale.  No 
corner  of  Europe  needed  so  much  that  work  of  com- 
plete amalgamation  which  has  given  all  its  strength 
and  power  to  the  British  people. 

There  is,  however,  one  fruitful  branch  of  the 
national  life  of  Scotland  to  which  I  cannot  now  direct 
any  adequate  attention,  but  to  which  I  must  shortly 
refer  in  closing.  This  fruitful  branch  is  that  which 
consists  in  the  life  and  labours  of  men  of  the  Celtic 
race,  who  have  moved  out  from  their  native  hills 
and  glens,  and  have  given  the  benefit  of  high 
culture,  or  of  a  rich  and  imaginative  character,  to 
their  country  and  to  the  world.  Two  examples  of 
this  kind  are  impressed  upon  my  memory  by  cir- 
cumstances which  have  left  an  indelible  impression. 
Many  years  ago  I  was  speaking  to  Lord  Macaulay 
on  the  subject  of  the  Indian  Code  of  Criminal 
Law,  to  which,  in  his  own  earlier  life,  he  had  devoted 
his  learning  and  his  genius.  He  had  occasion  to 
mention  the  difficulties  of  the  work — the  deep 
questions  of  Jurisprudence  which  it  involved,  and 
the  sources  from  which  he  had  sought  and  found 
assistance.  Amongst  these  he  mentioned  especially 
the  name  of  a  man  of  whom  at  that  time  I  had 
never  heard — one  of  those  who  work  unseen  in  our 


480  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

Civil  Services,  and  to  whom  the  Nation  Very  often 
is  indebted  for  far  more  than  it  ever  comes  to  know. 
This  was  Sir  John  M'Leod,  a  native  of  Skye,  and 
one  of  the  smaller  Proprietors  in  that  Island.  Lord 
Macaulay  was  not  a  man  to  lavish  praise  indiscri- 
minately. His  mind  was  critical,  and  he  had  of 
necessity  in  his  own  nature  a  very  high  standard 
in  judging  of  intellectual  powers.  It  was  therefore 
with  some  surprise  that  I  heard  Lord  Macaulay 
speak  in  almost  enthusiastic  praise  of  this  little- 
known  descendant  of  the  old  MacLeods  of  Skye,  as 
having  one  of  the  most  profound,  sagacious,  and 
philosophic  minds  he  had  ever  met  with.1  When 
I  came  to  know  Sir  John  M'Leod  as  I  afterwards 
did,  I  found  in  him  the  perfect  type  of  a  highly 
cultured  son  of  the  Celtic  race — modest,  refined, 
dignified, — and  speaking  English,  after  some  forty 
years'  service  abroad,  with  as  strong  a  Gaelic  tone 
and  accent  as  if  he  had  never  left  his  Estate  in 
Skye. 

But  I  recall  another  example  somewhat  different 
in  kind.  A  curious  habit  of  the  Highland  people 
serves  to  conceal  sometimes  the  part  they  have 
played  in  the  highest  walks  of  human  enterprise. 
This  is  the  habit  of  changing  their  name — dropping 
one  and  assuming  another.  During  the  Military 
Ages  they  did  so  perpetually,  as  we  have  seen, 
when  they  enlisted  under  some  new  Chief,  and 
joined  some  other  Clan..  In  assuming  the  name  of 
their  new  associates  they  kept  up  that  theory  and 
flavour  of  blood-relationship  which  in  nine  cases 
out  of  ten  had  no  other  foundation  whatever.  Sir 
Walter  Scott  tells  us  that  one  of  his  friends,  shoot- 
ing in  the  North,  had  a  native  guide  assigned  to 
him  under  the  name  of  Gordon.  But  he  recognised 
the  man  as  having  served  him  in  a  similar  capacity 
some  years  before  in  another  place  under  the  name 
of  MacPherson.  On  asking  the  man  whether  he 

1  "  The  very  rare  talents  "  of  J.  M'Leod  is  the  expression  used  by 
Macaulay  on  another  occasion,  as  quoted  in  Trevelyan's  Life,  vol.  i.  p.  413. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  481 

was  not  the  same,  and  whether  his  name  had  not 
then  been  MacPherson,  the  composed  reply  was, 
"Yes,  but  that  was  when  I  lived  on  the  other  side 
of  the  hill."1  It  is  less  known,  however,  that  this 
habit  has  always  been  very  general  when  High- 
landers leave  the  hills  and  settle  in  the  Low  Coun- 
try. The  native  Celtic  name  is  dropped,  and  some 
Lowland  form  is  adopted  which  is  supposed  to  be  a 
translation  or  an  equivalent.  It  was  thus  that 
during  the  scarcities  and  distress  which  afflicted 
the  Hebrides  during  the  last  years  of  the  last 
century  —  about  1792  —  a  family  of  the  name  of 
MacLeay  migrated  from  the  Islet  of  Ulva,  one  of 
the  broken  fragments  of  the  volcanic  Island  of  Mull, 
and  settled  at  Blantyre,  near  Glasgow.  The  name 
they  took  was  Livingstone,  and  their  illustrious 
grandchild  was  the  great  African  Traveller  and 
Missionary.  The  purity  of  the  true  old  Celtic  race 
cannot  be  safely  determined  by  name  or  language. 
Long  centuries  of  foreign  dominion,  and  of  inter- 
course and  inter-marriage,  leave  it  very  doubtful 
where  we  can  find,  even  in  the  Hebrides,  any- 
thing like  an  unmixed  descent.  But  having  had 
the  honour  of  a  somewhat  intimate  friendship 
with  David  Livingstone,  I  always  regarded  him 
as  an  example  of  the  purest  Celtic  type.  Kather 
below  the  medium  stature,  broad,  sturdy,  and 
with  an  evident  capacity  for  great  endurance, 
the  special  feature  which  attracted  notice  was  his 
very  dark  hazel  eye — an  eye  so  dark  as  almost 
to  suggest  a  Southern  or  an  Eastern  origin. 
Great  self-possession  and  dignity  of  manner  were 
blended  with  a  curious  mixture  of  gentleness 
and  determination.  Nothing  in  Nature  escaped 
his  observation ;  and  shortly  before  his  death  I 
had  a  letter  from  him,  written  in  Central  Africa, 
alluding  to  a  peculiarity  of  growth  in  a  tree  at 
Inveraray  which  I  had  not  before  noticed,  but 
which  he  must  have  noticed  in  silence  when  we 

1  Quarterly  Review,  vol.  xiv.  p.  301. 
2  H 


482  SCOTLAND  AS  IT  WAS  AND  AS  IT  IS. 

were  together.  He  was  another  instance  of  a 
man  like  General  Gordon,  with  a  special  gift  and 
a  special  inspiration,  which  in  all  human  probabi- 
lity would  never  have  been  developed  if  he  had 
been  born  in  the  life  passed  by  the  old  Sub -tenants 
in  Ulva.  Burning  a  little  Kelp,  digging  a  few 
Potatoes,  or  even  herding  Cattle  in  the  summer 
Shealings  which  looked  down  on 

"  all  the  group  of  Islets  gay 
That  guard  famed  Staffa  round,"  l 

is  a  life  which  it  is  difficult  to  rank  at  its  proper 
level  as  compared  with  that  which  he  actually  led 
— a  life  in  which  he  became  to  millions  of  the  human 
race  the  first  Pioneer  of  Civilisation,  and  the  first 
Harbinger  of  the  Gospel. 

The  blood  and  the  race  which  in  our  own 
day  have  produced  two  such  men  —  one  from 
the  class  of  Chiefs,  and  another  from  the  class 
of  ordinary  Clansmen, — must  have  the  very  best 
stuff  of  human  nature  in  it.  But  that  blood 
and  race  is  not  confined  to  those  who  still  re- 
tain the  Gaelic  speech.  The  larger  and  the  more 
cultivated  part  of  it  is  spread  over  the  wide 
Dominions  of  the  British  Crown.  It  is  one  of  the 
many  sources  of  our  Imperial  strength  and  wealth. 
The  Low  Country  of  Scotland  is  full  of  it.  The 
Colonies  are  full  of  it.  The  Indian  Services  have 
always  been  full  of  it.  The  Army  and  the  Navy 
have  had  abundant  reason  to  be  proud  of  it.  It 
was  trusted  by  The  Bruce  in  the  thickest  of  the 
Fights4  he  fought.  But  its  whole  pride,  and  aim, 
and  object  must  continue  to  be  those  which  that 
great  King  promoted — the  object  of  living  and 
working  in  harmony  with  the  other  elements  which 
have  built  up  the  Scottish  Nation,  and  in  obedience 
to  those  Natural  and  Moral  Laws  which  are  the 
only  solid  foundation  of  all  Human  Institutions. 

The   progress    that  Scotland   made  after  union 

1  The  Lord  of  the  Isles.     Fourth  Canto,  x. 


THE  FRUITS  OF  MIND.  483 

with  England,  was  a  progress  without  a  parallel  in 
any  of  the  older  Nations  of  the  World.  Yet  that 
progress  was  not  due  to  anything  she  derived  from 
England  in  the  way  of  Laws  and  Institutions. 
These  were  all  her  own.  She  kept  them  at  the 
Union,  and  guarded  them,  with  a  noble,  because  a 
grateful,  care.  We  were  jealous  about  them,  not 
from  any  narrow  or  provincial  feeling, — but  because 
our  fathers  had  told  us  of  the  noble  works  done  in 
their  days,  and  in  the  old  times  before  them.  The 
one  great  benefit  which  Scotland  did  owe  to  the 
last  and  happiest  of  her  many  unions,  was  nothing 
more  than  access  to  larger  fields  of  exercise — to 
wider  openings  of  Opportunity.  She  rose  to  the 
immense  prospects  of  this  new  horizon  because  of 
the  Mind  and  Character  which  had  been  developed 
under  the  long  discipline,  and  through  the  fiery 
trials,  of  her  own  stormy  history.  The  wonderful 
start  she  made  in  the  race  of  intellectual  and  indus- 
trial Life,  was  due  to  that  history — to  the  older 
unions  effected  during  it — to  the  doctrines  it  had 
embodied — to  the  energies  it  had  developed — to  the 
great  principles  of  Jurisprudence  which  had  worked 
under  the  sanctions,  and  with  the  authority,  of  Law. 
Scotland,  therefore,  at  the  Union,  did  not  break 
with  her  own  Past.  On  the  contrary,  she  kept 
it,  and  cherished  it,  as  the  richest  contribution  she 
could  make  to  the  growth  of  One  Great  Empire, 
and  to  the  Polity  of  One  United  Kingdom.  Let 
her  keep  it  still — and  always  in  the  same  spirit, 
and  with  the  same  great  end  in  view. 


APPENDIX    I. 

CH.  VI.  P.  261. 

LEASE  OF  FAKM  IN  MULL,  signed  by  DUNCAN  FOKBES 
of  Culloden,  as  Commissioner  for  John  Duke  of  Argyll  and 
Greenwich,  1739. 

Att   Stonyhill  the  Eighteenth  day  of  Aprile  one  thousand 
seven  hundred  and  thirty-nine  years,  And 

It  is  contracted,  agreed,  and  finally  ended  betwixt  the  partys 
folio  wing,  viz.  : — Duncan  fforbes  of  Culloden,  Esquire,  Lord  Presi- 
dent of  the  Session,  as  having  power  from  his  Grace  John  Duke 
of  Argyle  and  Greenwich,  Here  table  Proprietor  of  the  Lands  and 
others  after  specified,  To  the  effect  after  mentioned,  Conform  to 
Commission  dated  the  twenty-fourth  day  of  March  one  Thousand 
Seven  hundred  and  Therty-eight  nine  years,  Registrat  in  the 
Books  of  Session  the  ffourth  day  of  Aprile  and  year  foresaid, 
on  the  one  part,  and  Hugh  McLean,  Eachell  McCarter,  Donald 
McDonald,  John  McLean,  Duncan  Beaton,  and  Archibald 
McCarter,  all  present  possessors  of  the  Lands  and  others  under- 
written^- on  the  other  part,  in  manner  following — That  is  to  say, 
The  said  Duncan  fforbes,  as  having  power  in  manner  forsaid, 
has  sett  and  in  Tack  and  assedation  Letton,  Like  as  He  by  thir 
presents,  wiili  and  under  the  conditions  and  for  payment  of  the 
Tack  Duty  after  mentioned  t  Setts  and  in  Tack  and  assedation 
Letts  to  them  and  their  heirs  and  such  partners  as  they  shall 
from  time  to  time  assume  upon  the  Death  or  ffaillure  of  any  of 
them  in  manner  herein  after  mentioned*  (Secluding  all  other 
Assigneys  and  Subtennents),  All  and  Haill  The  one  penny  half 
penny  Land  of  Bunessan,  with  houses,  biggings,  yeards,  parts, 
pendicles,  and  universall  pertinents  thereof  tvhatsomever  used 
and  wont,s  lying  in  the  Division  of  Ross,  Island  of  Mull  and 

1  Showing    that   the   new   Leaseholders    were   of    the   old    class   of 
cultivators,  probably  sub-tenants. 

2  Showing  that  new  Lease  regulated,  and  strictly  limited  any  admis- 
sion of  co  partners  in  the  farm. 

3  Showing  admission  of  "  use  and  wont  "  in  ascertaining  facts. 


486  APPENDIX  I. 

Sheriffdom  of  Argyle,  ly  the  proportions  followng,  viz.  : — To 
the  said  Hugh  McLean  one-half ;  To  the  said  Eachael  M'Carter 
one-sixth ;  To  the  said  Donald  McDonald  one-tiuelvth  ;  To  the 
said  John  McLean  one-twelvth ;  To  the  said  Duncan  Beaton 
one-twelvth;  and  to  the  said  Archibald  McCarter  one-twelvth  ;l 
And  That  for  the  space  of  nineteen  full  and  compleat  years  2  from 
and  after  their  entry  thereto,  which  is  hereby  Declared  to  have 
been  and  begun  at  the  term  of  Whitsunday  one  Thousand  and 
Seven  hundred  and  Therty-eight  years ;  and  so  furth  to  continue 
in  the  peaceable  possession  of  the  said  Lands  during  the  space 
foresaid ;  Which  Tack  above  written  The  said  Duncan  fforbes, 
as  having  power  in  manner  foresaid,  Binds  and  obliges  the  said 
Duke,  his  heirs  and  successors,  to  warrand  to  them  and  their 
foresaids  ait  all  hands  and  against  all  deadly  as  Law  will  :3  For 
the  which  Causes  and  on  the  other  part  the  haill  forenamed 
persons  Bind  and  oblige  them  Conlly.  and  Sevally.,  their  heirs, 
Exetrs.  and  Successors  whatsomever,  Thankfully  to  content  and  pay 
to  the  said  Duke  and  his  above  written,  or  to  his  or  their  assig- 
neys  or  Chamberlains  in  his  or  their  names,  the  Sum  of  One 
Hundred  and  Seventy-Six  pound  Scots  money  4  at  the  term  of  Mar- 
tinmas yearly,  AND  THAT  IN  FULL  SATISFACTION  OF 
ALL  HEREZELDS,  CASUALITYS,  AND  OTHER  PRES- 
TATIONS  AND  SERVICES  WHATSOMEVER,  WHICH 
ARE  HEREBY  DISCHARGED,5  Except  the  Services  of  Tennents 
for  Repairing  Harbours,  mending  Highways,  or  making  or  Repairing 
Milnleads  for  the  generall  Benefite  of  the  Island  f  with  Therty 
pound  money  foresaid  of  penalty  for  ilk  term's  failled  and 
annual  rent  of  the  said  Tack-duty  from  and  after  the  term 
of  payment  during  the  not  payment :  Declaring  The  first 
year's  Tack-duty  was  payable  at  the  term  of  Martinmas  one 
Thousand  seven  hundred  and  therty-eight  years,  and  that  the 
Tack-duty  is  to  be  paid  yearly  at  the  term  of  Martinmas  for  all 
the  years  contained  in  this  present  Tack :  And  furder,  The 
haill  forenamed  persons  Bind  and  oblige  them  and  their  foresaids 
to  possess  the  Lands  and  others  above  written  with  their  own 
proper  stock  allenarly?  As  also  To  ffree  and  Releive  the  sd  Duke 
and  his  foresaids  of  all  Cesses,  Ministers'  Stipends,  School- 
masters' Sallarys,  and  all  other  burdens  imposed  or  to  be  im- 
posed upon  the  lands  above  mentioned :  And  it  is  hereby 

1  Showing  great  inequality  in  shares — recognising  facts. 

2  Showing  fixed  limit  of  time. 

3  The  usual  clause  of  Warrandice — conveying  security  for  Exclusive 
Use. 

4  Showing  fixed  rent  in  money. 

5  Showing  the  terms  in  which  Servitudes  were  abolished. 

6  Showing  the  specific  services  retained,  as  of  public  utility. 

7  To  prevent  Debt,  and  secure  Tenants  with  sufficient  means. 


APPENDIX  I.  487 

expressly  Provided  and  Declared  That  in  case  one  year's  rent 
or  any  part  thereof  shall  remain  unpaid  when  another  year's 
rent  becomes  due,  Then  and  in  that  case  this  present  Tack 
shall  ipso  facto  become  void  and  null  without  any  process  of 
Declarator  to  follow  on  the  said  Contravention  :  And  it  shall  be 
Leisume  and  Lawfull  to  the  said  Duke  and  his  foresaids  to  Lett 
the  Lands  above  written  of  new  as  if  this  present  Tack  had 
never  been  made  or  granted ;  Providing  also  that  in  case  any  one 
vr  more  of  the  Tennents  above  named  shall  faill  in  their  Circum- 
so  as  they  shall  not  be  able  to  hold  their  proportions  of  the 
Lands,  Or  if  upon  the  Death  of  any  of  them  there  shall  not  be  a 
fitt  person  to  take  up  their  possession,  The  remaining  tennents  shall 
either  take  the  share  or  shares  of  the  person  or  persons  so  failling 
amongst  them  during  the  residue  of  this  present  Tack,  Or  shall' find 
and  assume  a  fitt  Successor  or  Successors  to  him  or  them,  for  whose 
answering  the  prestations  Incumbent  on  them  as  Succeeding  to  a  Share 
or  Shares  of  this  present  Tack  the  remaining  tennents  shall  be  answer- 
able :  In  performance  of  which  the  haill  forenamed  persons  not 
only  bind  and  oblige  them  and  their  foresds.,  But  also  in  payment 
of  the  above  rent  at  the  terms  and  in  manner  above  mentioned  : 
And  both  party s  Bind  and  oblige  them  and  their  foresaids  to 
perform  the  premisses  hinc  inde  to  others,  under  the  penalty  of 
Eighty-five  pounds  money  foresd.,  to  be  paid  by  the  party 
ifaillier  to  the  party  performer  or  willing  to  perform  by  and  attour 
performance :  And  Consent  To  the  Registration  hereof  in  the 
Books  of  Councill  and  Session  or  others  Competent  to  have  the 
strength  of  a  Decreet  of  any  of  the  Judges  thereof  Interponed 
thereto,  That  Letters  of  Horning  on  six  days'  charge  and  all 
other  Exect3  needfull  may  pass  hereon  in  form  as  effeirs,  &  yrto. 
Constitute 

Their  proct3,  etc.  In  witnes  whereof  their  presents,  consist- 
ing of  this  and  the  two  preceeding  pages  of  Stamped  paper, 
written  by  David  Marshall,  writter  in  Edinburgh,  are  Sub- 
scribed as  follows,  viz* :  By  the  said  Duncan  Forbes  Att  Stoney- 
hill  the  said  Eighteenth  day  of  Aprile  one  thousand  Seven 
hundred  and  thirty-nine  years  Before  these  witnesses,  Ronald 
Dunbar,  Writer  to  the  Signet,  and  David  Forbes  his  Serviter, 
Inserter  of  the  place,  Date,  Witnesses'  names  and  Designations 
to  the  said  Duncan  Forbes  his  subscription. 

(Signed)  (Signed) 

RONALD  DUNBAR,  Witness.  DUN.  FORBES,  Comr. 

DAVID  FORBES,  Witness. 


APPENDIX   II. 

CH.  IX.  P.  437. 

PETITION  FROM  POOR  PERSONS  IN  TYREE  FOR  AID 
TO  EMIGRATE. 

Unto  Sir  JOHN  M'NEILL.     1847. 

The  Petition  of  the  undersigned  Cottars  and  small  Crofters 
on  the  Island  of  Tyree, 

Humbly  sheweth, 

That  since  the  making  of  kelp  ceased,  and  particularly  since 
the  failure  of  the  potato  crop,  the  inhabitants  of  this  island 
have  been  in  a  state  of  great  destitution ;  and,  were  it  not  for 
the  benevolence  of  the  proprietor,  and  the  aid  afforded  by  the 
relief  board,  they  would  inevitably  have  starved.  That  hitherto 
they  have  been  employed  by  the  proprietor  at  drainage  and 
other  works,  during  the  winter  and  spring  months,  before  the 
land  was  cropped,  and  during  the  summer  they  were  supported 
by  the  funds  of  the  relief  board.  That  this  latter  resource  being 
now  at  an  end,  your  petitioners'  prospects,  on  looking  forward 
to  the  ensuing  summer,  are  in  the  extreme  dismal,  and  the 
more  so,  as  the  only  prospect  of  ultimate  relief  to  which  they 
so  fondly  cling  is  denied  them — that  of  emigration — which 
your  petitioners  neglected  to  take  advantage  of  while  in  their 
power,  probably  supposing  that  the  relief  funds  were  to  last,  or 
that  the  potato  would  be  restored.  That,  to  add  to  their  fur- 
ther grievance,  your  petitioners  are  led  to  understand  that  those 
averse  to  emigration  from  the  West  Highlands  are  using  every 
possible  means  to  prevent  it,  and  that  statements  are  made  pub- 
licly that  the  poor  can  be  supported  by  employing  them  in  the 
improvement  of  waste  land.  Those  who  advocate  such  are  cer- 
tainly actuated  by  other  motives  save  that  of  philanthropy,  and 
display  the  grossest  ignorance  as  to  the  resources  of  the  coun- 
try, particularly  as  regards  this  isolated  island,  where  there  is 
no  fuel,  and  not  an  inch  of  waste  laud  which  the  inhabitants 


APPENDIX  II.  489 

could  not  drain  and  trench  in  a  few  months.  That  your  peti- 
tioners would  now  most  earnestly  request,  that  if  possessed  of  the 
bowels  of  compassion,  such  as  were  your  forefathers,  or  value 
the  lives  of  your  countrymen,  you  will  not  credit  the  statement 
of  those  inimical  to  our  best  interest,  but  examine  individually 
into  our  circumstances,  and  the  condition  of  the  island,  when 
they  have  no  doubt  you  will  have  sufficient  proof  afforded  of 
the  fallacy  of  such  statements,  and  the  injury  and  cruelty  done 
us  by  such  misrepresentations,  which  may  perhaps  be  the  means 
of  the  Duke's  withholding  his  bounty,  and  depriving  us  of  the 
power  of  participating  in  the  enjoyments  and  comforts,  they  are 
from  day  to  day  informed,  their  friends  in  Canada  enjoy  to  such 
an  extent. 

May  it  therefore  please  your  honour  to  take  the  miserable 
condition  of  your  petitioners  into  consideration,  and 
use  your  influence  with  Her  Majesty's  Government, 
or  His  Grace  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  to  provide  for  them 
the  means  of  emigrating ;  and  your  petitioners  shall 
ever  pray. 

(Signed  by  136  heads  of  families  representing  825  souls.) 


FINIS. 


INDEX. 


ABERCORN  FAMILY,  405. 
Abercromby,  General,  300. 
Aberdeen,    123,    177,    420;    King's 

College  founded,  160. 
Aberdeenshire,  49,  375,  409. 
Adamnan,  St.,  9,  10,  18,  81. 
Agricola,  346. 
Agriculture,  Board  of,  268,  321,  374, 

388,  408,  430. 
Ailsa  Craig,  219. 
Alba  Longa,  20. 
"Alban,"191. 

Albany,  New  York  State,  201,  334. 
"Alcluid,"349. 
Alexander  n.  (1214-49),  32,  52,  53, 

55,  88  ;  precept  by,  in  favour  of 

the  Abbot  of  Scone,  89. 
Alexander  in.  (1249-86),  27,  40,  54, 

55,  60,   91;  arrangements  of,  for 

daughter's  marriage,  93  ;  treaty  of. 

with  Norway,  143. 
Alexandria,  106. 
American  War,  333,  341. 
Anglo-Normans,  Feudalism  of,  17. 
Angus,  149. 
Annan,  river,  128. 
Annandale,    33  ;    conferred    on    an 

ancestor  of  Robert  the  Bruce,  41  ; 

granted  to  Robert  de  Brus,  50  ; 

287,  391. 

Anne,  Queen,  255,  358. 
Anne,  Princess  of  Denmark,  210. 
Antoninus  Pius,  Wall  of,  346. 
Antrim,  Earls  of,   217.     See   Mac- 

donalds. 

Appin,  336.     See  Stewarts. 
Applecross,  59. 
Arabian  Peninsula,  305. 
Ardnamurchan,  161. 
"  Ardri,"  the  Supreme  King,  26. 
Ardvoirlich,  Stewart  of,  212. 
Argyll,  Chiefs  of,  35,  73,  75. 
Argyll,    Dnkes    of:    John,    second 

(1678-1743),  255,  362  n. 

—  Archibald,   third   (1743- 

1761),  270,  296,  300,  424. 


Argyll,  Dukes  of  :  John,  fifth  (1761- 

1806),    271  ;    President    of    the 

Highland  Society,  342 ;  374. 
George,      sixth      (1806- 

1839),  432  n. 
John,      seventh      (1839- 

1847),  368  n. 
Argyll,  Earls  of  :  Colin,  first  (1457- 

1493),  190. 
Archibald,  fourth  (1533- 

1558),  207. 
Archibald,  seventh  (1584- 

1638),    acquires    Kintyre,    217  ; 

James,  his  son,  230  n. 
Archibald,  ninth   (1661- 

1685),  239. 
Archibald,  Marquis  of  (1638- 

1661),  218. 
Argyll  family,  Leases  given  by,  229 ; 

Hebridean  estates  of,  428. 
Argyllshire,    238,    250,    313,   443; 

hills  of,  364  ;  population  of,  30  ; 

province  of,  23. 
Armstrongs,  179. 
Arran,  162,  318. 
Aros.     See  Maxwell. 
Arthur's  Seat,  404. 
Asia,  Central,  Migrations  from,  3. 
Assynt,  Macleod  of,  238. 
Atholl,  Lord  of,  murdered,  32. 
Attacotti,  347. 
Avenel,  Lords  of,  131. 
Avenels,  Lords  of  Eskdale,  52,  54. 
Ayr,  219,  225,  226,  287. 

BADENOCH,  337. 

Wolf  of,  151,  153,  154,   157, 

167,  241,  442. 
Balgarvie,  97,  103. 
Balloch,  191. 
Banff,  49,  375. 
Bannockburn,  34,  55,  57,  74,  76,  94, 

141. 

Barilla,  Spanish,  432. 
Baronial    Jurisdiction,    Courts     of, 

189,  276. 


492 


INDEX. 


Beaton,  Duncan,  485,  486. 
Beauly  Firth,  281. 
Bedford,  Captain,  R.N.,  313  ». 
Bell,    Henry,    successor    of    James 

Watt,  355. 

Ben  Cruachan,  56,  74,  191. 
Ben  Lomond,  350. 
Ben  More,  264. 
Bernera,  309. 
Berwick,  90. 

Black  Mount,  Glenurchy,  205. 
Black   Watch,    296,    297;    formed 

into  a  Regiment,   1739,  298  ;  at 

Fontenoy,  299,  301  ;   446. 
Blantyre,  481. 
Bo-aire — the  Cow-Lord,  8. 
"Bonacht,"  explained,  16. 
"Bonds  of  Manrent,"  155,  181. 
"  Booer,"  dairy  contractor,  8  n. 
Border  Highlands,  families  of,  179. 
"  Bored  Stone,"  the  Standard  of  the, 

76. 

Breadalbane,  191. 
"Brehon  Laws,"  6,  110,  112. 
"  Brettons  "  of  Strathclyde,  85. 
Bruce,  King  Robert  (1306-29),  59, 

73. 

Buccleuch,  Duke  of,  255  n. 
Buchan,   36,  48,   59  ;  Lowlands  of, 

153. 

Buchanan,  Laird  of,  161. 
Buckingham,  County  of,  385. 
Bunessan,  485. 
Bute,  318. 

Byland  Abbey,  battle  of,  74,  141. 
Byssets,  story  of  the,  32. 

"  CAIN,"  one  of  the  four  burdens  im- 
posed by  Irish  Chiefs,  22. 

Cairntable,  a  hill  in  Lanarkshire,  59. 

Caithness,  268. 

Caledonian  Canal,  157,  434. 

Caligula,  152. 

Cambuskenneth,  91. 

Cameron,  Highland  family  of,  34. 

Clan,  153,  179. 

Campbell  (Cambel),  the  name,  34. 

Clan,  208,  217,  244. 

Colin,  57. 

family,  191. 

Lord  Frederick,  367,  372,  382, 

467. 

Gillespie  (Archibald),  58. 

-  Sir  Nigel  (Niel),  34,  57. 

of  Glenlyon,  208. 

Lord    William,    Governor    of 

South  Carolina,  373. 


Campbell  of  Shawfield,  425. 

of   Stonefield,    244,  247,  249, 

254,  255. 

Campbells,  224,  296  ;  obtain  posses- 
sion of  Kin  tyre,  217. 
of  Cawdor,  474. 


Campbeltown,  374  ;  Loch  of,  219. 
Canada,    emigration    to,    337,    437, 

489. 

Canna,  Island  of,  319. 
"  Capital,"  explained,  7. 
Cardross,  139,  350,  375. 
"  Carl,"  fine  for  the  slaughter  of,  85. 
Carlyle,  Thomas,  459  n. 
Carrick,  33,  73,  218,  226. 
Carruthers,  179. 
"  Cascroim,"  explained,  243  n. 
Castles  of  defence,  128. 
"  Casualties  "  abolished,  278. 
Caterans,  281  ;  ravages  of,  239. 
"Caulpes,"  90. 
Celtic  Tribes,  5. 
Champlain,  Lake,  303. 
Charles  I.  (1625-49),  192,  217,  218  ; 

his  Parliament  of  1633,  287,  299, 

412. 
n.   (1649-85),   129,   218,   223, 

224,  225. 
Charter,  the  earliest  extant,  of  lands 

in  Scotland,  39. 
Charters,  The  Age  of,  36  et  seq.  ;  the 

Earliest  Feudal,  38. 
Chatham,    Earl    of,    296  ;     on    the 

Army,  299,  301. 
Chattan  Clan,  153,  181. 
"  Cill-C anna, "Church  so  called,  478. 
"  Cill  Delga,"  Monks  of,  12. 
Civil  Wars,  189,  237,  299. 
"  Clachans,"  260,  440. 
Clan,  organisation  of,   21  ;    system, 

266. 

"  Clans  of  Thieves,"  176. 
Clanranald,  162,  184. 
Claverhouse.     See  Graham. 
Cluniac  Monks,  150. 
Clyde,    20,    139,    226,     346,    356  ; 

industries  of,  402  ;  steam  dredge 

on,  421. 
"  Coigny,"  corresponds  with  "  Con- 

veth,"  23,  477. 
"  Coin  and  Livery,"  16. 
Coke,  Lady  Mary,  256  n. 
Coldingham,  Monks  of,  88. 
Coll,  Island  of,  169. 
Colonsay,  336. 

Colquhouns  of  Luss,  287,  351,  354. 
Columba,  St.,  9,  81,  228,  248. 


INDEX. 


493 


Commodus,  Emperor,  106. 

"  Common  Good  "  of  Burghs,  72. 

Communism,  384. 

Connecticut,  337. 

"  Constable  of  the  Castle,"  129. 

Constitutional      Law,      established 

1688,  185. 
"  Conveth,"  one  of  the  four  burdens 

imposed  by  Irish  Chiefs,  22,  90. 
Cope,  Sir  John,  defeat  of,  at  Preston- 
pans,  273,  297. 

"  Cor,"  a  possessory  right,  111. 
Cordova,  305. 
"  Cosherings,"  90. 
Courts    of    Heritable    Jurisdiction, 

188. 
Covenants,  The  Age  of,   79  et  seq.  ; 

113;  Free  System  of,   117,   187, 

221. 

Cramond,  339. 
Craigmillar  Castle,  404. 
Crawford,    Thomas,    of   Jordanhill, 

127,  130,  350. 
Crofters  in  the  Highlands,  204,  445, 

474. 

Cromarty,  268. 
Cromwell,  238,  417. 
"  Cuddiche,"  an  exaction  so  called, 

24. 
Culloden,  Leases  of,  in  1739,  263  ; 

victory  of,  273. 
Culloden.     See  Forbes. 
Cumbraes,  162,  318. 
"  Cumerlache,"  86. 
"Cumlaws  and  Cumherbes,"  Celtic 

designation  of  serfs,  89. 
Cunninghame,  226. 

DALMENY,  339. 

Dalriadic  Kingdom,  34. 

Celts — a    colony    from    the 

Irish  Scots,  58. 
Darien  Scheme,  358,  401. 
Darwin  and  the  Origin  of  Man,  144, 

442. 
David  i.  (1124-53),  Charters  of  land 

given    by,    41  ;    development    of 

form  in  charters  of,  45,  50,  ,55, 

85,  91,  149. 
ii.    (1329-71),    58,    147;    his 

arrangement    with    the     Chiefs, 

148. 
De   Brus,    ancestor   of   Robert   the 

Bruce,    33  ;  acquires   Annandale, 

41,  50. 

Dee,  36,  165,  213,  241,  281. 
Deer,  Abbey  of,  36. 


Dennistouns  of  Dennistoun,  375. 
Dermot,    King    of    Leinster,     Irish 

chief,  13,  17. 
Dingwall,  177. 
Dochart,  Loch,  190  ;  castles  on, 

191. 

river,  227. 

Dollinger,  Dr.,  107. 

Donald,  Lord  of  the  Isles,  attempts 

to  overthrow  the  kingdom,  1411, 

159. 

Donald  of  Islay,  149. 
Donnell,  Clan,  166,  217,  243. 
Douart,  Macleans  of,  168. 
Douglas,  House  of,  179. 

Lord  James,  59,  140,  152. 

Valley  of,  59. 

Dow,  MacCallum,  195. 
Drumalban,  157,  227. 
Drummond,  Lord,  211. 

of  Drummonderocht,  212. 

Duddingston,  404. 
Duirinish  (Skye),  335. 
Duisk,  Monastery  of,  17,  49. 
Dumbarton,  287,  348,  350,  420. 

hills  of,  364. 

Dumfries,  177. 

county  of,  408,  443. 

Dunbar,  Ronald,  487. 

Dunblane,  91. 

Duncan,  King  (1094-5),  39  ;  charter 

of,  to  Monks  of  St.  Cuthbert,  40. 
Dundee,   67,  68,   420;    convocation 

held  at,  temp.  Robert  the  Bruce, 

73. 

Duukeld,  91. 
Dunluce,  James  Macdonald  of.     See 

Macdonald. 
Dunolly,  castle  of,  57. 
Durness,  smallpox  at,  305. 

EARN,  Loch,  191. 

river,  227. 

Edgar,    King    (1098-1107),    charter 

by,  44. 
Edinburgh,   Parliament  held  at,  by 

James  in.,  1469, 123 ;  QueenMary, 

1555, 124;  Register  House  of,  373; 

Lord  Provost  of,  in  1688,  403. 
Edward  i.  (1272-1307),  373. 

in.  (1327-77),  141. 

•  iv.  (1461-83),  160. 

Eglinton,  Earl  of,  374. 

Eigg,    Island  of,   162  ;  tragedy  on, 

213  ;  its  population  last  century, 

319. 
Elizabeth,  Queen,  166,  311. 


494 


INDEX. 


Elliotts,  179. 

Enclosure  Commission,  386. 

England,  Agriculture  of,  406. 

Bank  of,  357. 

Entails,  origin  of,  71  ;  practice  of, 

133. 
Eric,  King  of  Norway,  espouses  the 

Princess  Margaret,  93. 
Etive,  Loch,  56  n. 
Ettrick,  Forest  of,  283. 

*'  FAIR  RENT,"  133. 

Falkirk,  413  ;  General  Hawley  de- 
feated at,  1746,  273,  297. 

Falkland,  167. 

Farr  (Sutherland),  320. 

Fawcett,  Professor,  452,  453. 

"  Feacht,"  one  of  the  four  burdens 
imposed  by  Irish  chiefs,  22. 

Fee-farm,  66. 

Feu-duty,  65. 

Feudal  system,  5  et  passim  ;  adapta- 
tion of,  26 ;  in  the  Lowlands  of 
Scotland,  27. 

Feudalism,  Celtic  bond  between  the 
chiefs  and  clans,  48 ;  Celtic 
burdens  of,  12,  42,  92,  160,  226  ; 
Celtic,  dying  hard,  265. 

Fife,  Gaelic  still  spoken  in,  about 
the  end  of  last  century,  49. 

Findlater,  Earl  of,  375. 

Finlarig,  191. 

Fitz  Alan,  a  friend  of  William  the 
Conqueror,  150. 

Fitz  Gisselbert  (Strongbow),  18. 

"  Fixity  of  tenure,"  118. 

Flathald,  150. 

Fletcher  of  Saltoun,  362. 

Flodden,  161,  192. 

Fodan,  Bishop,  39. 

Fontenoy,  299,  300. 

Forbes,  David,  487. 

Duncan,  of  Culloden,  254, 256  ; 

visits  Mull  and  Morven,  263 ;  a 
friend  of  the  Duke  of  Argyll,  270 ; 
on  the  heritable  jurisdictions,  275, 
296,  374,  485  ;  quoted,  258,  265. 
See  App.  i. 

Forfar,  Sheriffdom  of,  68. 

Forth  and  Clyde  Canal,  348. 

Fort- William,  322. 

"Forty-Five,  The,"  236,  242,  247, 
262,  265,  270. 

France,  war  with,  in  Canada,  341  ; 
peasant  proprietors  of,  423. 

Fraser  (Frezeau,  Fiezel,  Fresel),  the 
name,  33. 


Fraser,  Dr.  W.,  Book  of  Lennox  by, 
61,  64  n.,  127,  128  n.  1. 

Free  exchange  depends  on  free  pos- 
session, 70. 

Free  possession  determines  free  ex- 
change, 70. 

Free  Trade,  69  ;  with  England,  417. 

Freeman,  Prof.  E.  A.,  238  n. 

Froissart,  350. 

Fyne,  Loch,  215. 

GAELIC  SONGS,  1 14. 

Galgacus,  347. 

Galloway,  province  of,  49,  59  ;  tribal 

laws  in,  84,  225,  400. 
"  Galwegians,"  King  David's  char- 
ters addressed  to,  49. 
Gareloch,  60. 

Gasclune,  battle  of,  149,  151. 
"Gavelkind,"  custom  of,   in  Kent, 

142. 

George  i.,  levee  of,  241. 
Georgia,  335,  337. 
Girig,  King,  so  called,  22. 
Glacial  Age,  369. 
Glasgow,  402 ;  in  1656,  41 6 ;  value  of 

houses  in  (17th  century),  418  ;  its 

site  determined  by  its  Cathedral, 

420  ;    population  of  (1300-1500), 

435. 
See  of,  founded  by  St.  Kenti- 

gern,    39  ;    University    of,    160, 

222,  226,  420. 
Glassary,  smallpox  at,  305. 
Glee  Club,  London,  223. 
Glenartney,  Forest  of,  211. 
Glencoe,    191  j    massacre    of,    240, 

241. 

Glenfruin,  287,  352,  353,  354. 
Glengarry,  337. 
Glenkerny,  Sir  Gilbert  of,  62. 
Glenlyon.     See  Campbell. 
Glen  More,  157,  158. 
Glensheil,  335. 
Glenurchy,  Colin,  Lord  of,  195. 

Duncan,  Lord  of,  192,  195. 

Lords  of,  191,  194  ;    Statutes 

of  Baronial  Courts  of,  193,  195  ; 

regarding  wolves,  200. 
Glenurchy,  190  ;  a  lease  on,  granted 

1687,  205. 
Gordon,  Dukes  of,  374. 

General,  465,  482. 

friend  of  Sir  W.  Scott,  480. 

name  of,  assumed  by  the  Earl 

of  Huntly,  165. 
Gourock,  418. 


INDEX. 


495 


Gracchi,  106. 

Graham,  John,  of  Claverhouse,  240. 

Grampian  Range,  27. 

Grant,  Chiefs  of,  165,  213. 

Greenock,  345,  363,  403,  418,  420 ; 

unfree  "  Town  of,"  421. 
Greenwich,  title  of,  255  n. 
Gregor,  Clan,  195,  207,  351,  352, 

434. 

Gregory,  Dr.  William,  354. 
Guilds,  "liberties"  of,  422. 
Guise,  Duke  of,  350. 

HACO,  143. 

Haddington,    tournament    near,   in 

1242,  32. 
Hale,    Thomas,    his   "Husbandry," 

107  n.,  407  n. 
Hamilton,  Sir  W.,  222. 
Hamilton,  town  of,  349. 
Hammermen,  Guild  of,  421. 
Hammerton,  423. 
"  Haudfasting,"    Celtic    custom    so 

called,  171. 

Hardenberg,  Prussian  Minister,  71. 
Harlaw,  159. 
Hart,  the  brothers,  368. 
Hawley,  General,  273,  297. 
Hay  del  Leys,  Edmund  de,  96,  101. 
Hebrides,  143,  146,  243,  263  ;  Con- 

ference    in   the,    c.     1603,    170 ; 

Celtic     usages     condemned     in, 

1609,  236. 
Helensburgh,  354. 
Henry     n.     (1154-89),     15,     477  ; 

Anglo-Norman    invaders    under, 

18. 
Heritable  Jurisdiction,    Courts   of, 

61,    188,    209;    abolished,    273; 

founded    on    charters   and   laws, 

274 ;  compensation  for  their  aboli- 
tion, 280. 
"Highlandand  Agricultural  Society," 

342. 
Highlands,  Clan  system  in,  181. 

misery  of,  in  1836-7,  433. 

Holland,  285. 

Holy  Island,  170. 

Holyrood,  45,  167  ;  the  Pretender 

at,  273. 

Home,  Earl  of,  256  n. 
"  Hosting,"   226  ;   tribal   obligation 

of,  10. 

Howards,  of  Norfolk,  150. 
Hudson,  201,  202,  303,  334. 
Huie,  Mr.,  223. 
Huntly,  Earl  of,  165  ;  Chiefs  of,  213. 


INCH  AFFRAY,  Abbots  of,  177. 
Inns,  establishment  of,  171. 
Inverness,  35,  177,  337,  439;  county 

of,  443. 

Inversnaid,  294. 
lona,    36,    244  ;    monastery   of,  9  j 

monks  of,   24  ;   conferred  on  St. 

Columba,    82  ;  statutes  of,  171  ; 

meeting  of  chiefs  at,  in  1609,  228 ; 

conference  at,  in  1609,  243. 
Ireland,    137,    225  ;    possessed    by 

Celts,    6 ;    tribal    laws    in,    84  ; 

Norman  and  Anglo-Saxon  settlers 

in,   146  ;  trade  with,  361  ;  Mac- 

donalds  flee  to,  229  ;  tenants  of, 

397  ;  potato  famine  in,  436. 
Irish  Church,  10. 
kings,  Latin  Charters  granted 

by,  17. 

Land  Act,  1880,  395. 

Parliament,  397. 

Islay,  Lord,  362  n.,  429. 

Macdonald,  Lord  of,  166. 

Macdonalds  of,  217. 

Lord  of  (temp.  Robert  Bruce), 

147,  168,  216. 
Earl  of :  third  Duke  of  Argyll 

known  as,  296. 

island  of,  425. 

Isles,  the,  73  ;  John  of  the,  148. 
Italy,  356. 

JACOBITE  REBELLION,  235,  237,  262, 

278,  301,  356. 
James  T.  (1406-37),  14,  237  ;  holds 

a  Parliament  at  Perth,  1429,  118 ; 

knights  Sir  James  Macdonald,  168. 
m.  (1460-88),  288 ;  Parliament 

of,  at  Edinburgh,  1469,  123. 

v.  (1513-42),  283. 

vi.  (1567-1625),  127,  129,  130, 

162,  169,  192,  350;  union  under, 

180 ;    marries   Princess   Anne  of 

Denmark,  210  ;  and  the  massacre 

of  Glenfruin,  352. 
Jardines,  179. 
Jews,  1. 

Johnstones,  179. 
Jordanhill.     See  Crawford. 

Laird  of,  130. 

Jura,  336. 

"  KATHEBANS,"  154. 
Katrine,  Loch,  211,  294. 
Kay,  Clan,  153,  154. 
Kells,  in  County  Meath,  monastery 
at,  12. 


496 


INDEX. 


Kelp,    429 ;    trade    iu,    314,    433  ; 

manufacture  of,  319,  440. 
Kelso,  45,  100  ;  Rental  of  Abbacy 

of,  89  j  lease  to  Abbacy  of,  1242, 

93. 
Kentigern,   St.,  founder  of   See    of 

Glasgow,  39. 

Keppoch,  Macdonalds  of,  184. 
Kiaran,  216. 

Kilkiaran.     See  Campbeltown. 
Kilmahew.     See  Napiers. 
Kilmuir  (Skye),  434 ;  small-pox  in, 

in  1792,305;  population  of,  319. 
Kilpatrick,    the   tablets   found  at, 

348. 

Hills,  346,  350. 

Kintyre,  169,  214,  215,    216,   229, 

262,  318 ;  Chiefs  of,  75  ;  system 

of  leases  in,  243. 

James,  Lord  of,  lease  by,  230  n. 

Kirkcaldy,  252. 
Kirkcudbright,  287. 
Knapdale,  215. 
Kyle,  226. 

LAGGAN.     See  Grant,  Mrs. 

Lanarkshire,  226,  443. 

Land  Charter,  the  earliest,  2. 

Langside,  349. 

"  Latifundia,"  105  el  seq. 

Latin  Charters,  17,  23. 

Latitim,  tribes  of,  20. 

Lauderdale,  Duke  of,  223,  224,  413. 

Laxford,  Loch,  439. 

Lecky,  Mr.,  on  the  elder  Pitt,  301  n. 

Leith,  211. 

Lennox,  Duke  of,  127,  130. 

Malcolm,  Earl  of,  61. 

Earls  of,  75,  177. 

the,  91,  227. 

Leslie,  General,  victory  of,  at  Philip- 

haugh,  237. 

Leven,  the,  139,  281,  351. 
Lewis,  303. 

"Lex  Innocentium,"  the,  10. 
Liferent,  131. 
Limerick,  King  of,   grants  a  Latin 

charter  in  1169,  50. 
Lingard,  quoted,  13. 
Linlithgow,  167. 
Lismore,  248  n. 
Livingstone,  David,  481. 
Lochaber,  165,  227,  337  ;  braes  of, 

165. 
Lochmaben,  128 ;  "  Four  Towns  "  of, 

129  ;  tenants  of,  130. 
Lochness,  32. 


Lochow,  Sir  Archibald  of,  190. 

—  Sir  Duncan  of,  190. 

—  loyal  Knight  of,  56. 

Barony  of,  57,  58,  190. 

Lomond,  Loch,  191,  294. 

London  in  a  state  of  panic  (1745), 

273. 
Lome,   Chief   of,    defeated   at   Ben 

Cruachan,  74. 

John  of,  191. 

Lord  of,  56. 

Lothian,  East,  a  tournament  there 

in  1242,  32. 
Lothians,  the,  370. 
Lovat,  Clan,  33. 
Luss. .   See  Colquhoun. 

MACALPINES,  224. 

M'Ane,  Gregor,  195. 

M'Carter,  Archibald,  485,  486. 

Rachel,  485,  486. 

MacArthur,  Rachel,  260. 

Macaulay,  Lord,  455,  480 ;  quoted, 
240. 

Macaulay  Clan,  367. 

Macaulays,  Tower  of  the,  369. 

MacCouliglas,  207. 

Macdonald,  Lord,  of  Islay  and  Kin- 
tyre,  166. 

• of  Clanranald,  309. 

Donald,  260,  485,  486. 

Sir  James,  of  Dunluce  ("Mac- 

sorlie"),  167,  442. 

James  (of  Dunluce),  knighted 

by  James  i.,  168. 

Macdonalds,  179;  feuds  with  Mac- 
leods,  162. 

of  Antrim,  237. 

of  Glencoe,  240. 

of  Keppoch,  184. 

of  Sleat,  228. 

Macdougall,  57. 

Mac  Duine,  Duncan,  58. 

Macgillivray,  181. 

Macgregor,  Alex.,  433  n. 

Duncan,  208. 

Macgregors,  287,  353;  "their  auld 
Chief  "  renounced  by  several  fami- 
lies of  Clan  Gregor  in  1552,  207. 

Machrihanish,  219. 

Macian,  Chief  so  called,  161. 

Mackays,  224/ 

Mackenzie,  Sir  George,  414. 

Clan,  161. 

of  Kintail,  1 62. 

of    Lewis,    feuds    with    Mac- 

leods,  163. 


INDEX. 


497 


Mackintoshes,  59,  179,  353. 
M'Leans  of  Dowart,  24,  168. 

of  Mull,  161. 

Clan  of,  244. 

M'Lean,  Hugh,  260,  485,  486. 
M'Leod,  Sir  John,  480. 
Macleod,  Dr.  Norman,  430. 

of  Assynt,  238. 

Macleods,  179. 

—  feuds  with  Macdonalds,  162. 
— -  of  Harris,  228. 

of  Skye,  299 ;  their  feuds  with 

Mackenzies  of  Lewis,  163. 
M'Neil,  Sir  John,  436,  488. 
Macpherson,  Rev.  Neil,  of  Inveraray, 

111  n. 
MacPherson,    a,    who    changed   his 

name  with  his  residence,  480. 
MacQuhele,  Clan,  154. 
Macrory,  James,  Lord  of  Bute,  1 50. 
"Macsorlie."      See   Macdonald,  Sir 

James. 

Magellan,  Straits  of,  144. 
Maine,  Sir  Henry,  111. 
"Malar"  or  Tenant,  123,  124. 
Malcolm  Canmore  (1057-93),  26,  32, 
35,  39,  40,  48,  54,  143,  150,  242, 
354. 

Malcolm  iv.  (1153-65),  Ordinance  or 
Prescript  of,  87  ;  precept  by,  con- 
cerning Coldingham,  88  ;  charter 
of,  149. 

Malise,  Earl  of  Strath  earn,  62. 
Man,  Isle  of,  217. 
Manchester,  273. 
Manrent,  Bonds  of,  206,  227. 
Mar,  Earls  of,  159,  177,  241. 
Maree,  Loch,  439. 
Margaret,  Queen,  27,  39,  54. 
Marcus  Aurelius,  347. 
Princess,    daughter    of    Alex- 
ander in.,  93. 
Marjory,  Lady,  sister  of  the  Bruce, 

34. 

Marlborough,  255. 
Martel,  Charles,  305. 
Marwick,  Dr.,  Town-Clerk  of  Glas- 
gow, 421  n. 

Mary,  Queen,  holds  Parliament  at 
Edinburgh  in  1555,  124,  159,  192, 
349. 

Maxwell  of  Aros,  430. 
Maxwells,  179. 
Mearns,  149. 

Melrose,  45  ;  charter  of,  46  ;  monks 
of,  52  ;  charter  given  to  abbey  of, 
53  ;  abbots  of,  177. 

2 


Menteith,  91,  194,  353. 

Menzies  of  Rannoch,  208. 

Meschin,  Randulph,  50. 

"Metayer,"  system  same  as  "Steel- 
bow,"  83,  467. 

Middleton,  Earl  of,  224. 

Moffat,  439. 

Mohawk,  the,  202,  303,  337  ;  vil- 
lages, 201. 

Monmouth,  Duke  of,  239. 

Montagu,  Lady  Mary  Wortley,  306. 

Montgomeries,  224. 

Montrose,  Marquis  of,  212. 

campaign  of,  237,  238. 

Monopoly,  70,  71. 

Mons  Grampius,  347. 

Moors,  305. 

Moray,  province  of,  23,  48. 
—  Earls  of,  75. 

Mormaers  of,  35,  37,  80,  89. 

Morven,  peninsula  of,  244,  248,  256, 
263. 

Moss-troopers,  281,  440. 

"  Mountb,"  the,  157,  227. 

Moydart,  337. 

Mull,  215;  coal  in,  220  w.,  244, 
248,  250,  256,  263,  264,  303  ; 
famine  in,  c.  1700,  325,  424,  481  ; 
lease  of  farm  in,  485.  See  also 
Macleans. 

Municipal  privilege,  66. 

Munros,  296. 

Murray,  Earl  of  (17th  c.),  353. 

Musselburgh,  413. 


NAPIER  AND  ETTRICK,  Lord,  444  n. 
Napiers  of  Kilmahew,  375. 
Navigation  law  of  1661,  356. 
New  Brunswick,  374. 
New  Guinea,  462. 
Newton,  Sir  Isaac,  354. 
Nithsdale,  287. 
Norsemen,   contests  of   Celts  with, 

30. 

North  Uist,  307. 
Norway,  treaty  with,  by  Alexander 

m.,  143. 
Nova  Scotia,  337,  373. 


OCCUPATION  OF  LAND,  79. 
O'Curry,  Professor,  467  w. 
"  Oran,"  244  n. 
Orkney,  268,  314. 
Ossory,  13  ;  abbot  of,  17. 
Qundle  (Northamptonshire),  299. 

I 


498 


INDEX. 


PAISLEY,   91,  402,  418  ;    monastery 

of,  150  ;  abbots  of,  177. 
Palestine,    Bruce's   desire   to    visit, 

141. 
Parliaments  of  1581  and  1587,  17o  ; 

1587,    held  at  Edinburgh,   177  ; 

1578,  on  ownership,    186 ;    1746 

and  1747,  274. 
Partick,  127  ;  mill  at,  130. 
Paterson,  William,  founds  the  Bank 

of  England,  357. 
Pennant,  visits  the  Hebrides,   1769 

and  1772,  320;  his  Tour,  322-24. 
Pentland  Firth,  138. 
Perth,  94,  190;  Parliament  held  at, 

by  James  I.,   1429,  118;  North 

Inch  of,  152  ;  gladiatorial  exhibi- 
tion on  North  Inch  of,  153,  154, 

173. 

Sheriffdom  of,  194. 

Perthshire,  337. 
Peterborough,  Earl  of,  374. 
Philiphaugh,  Leslie's  victory  at,  237. 
Picts,  18  ;  tribal  stage  among,  21  ; 

union  of,  with  Scots,  22. 
Pile  Dwellings,  441. 
Pitt.     See  Chatham. 
Pliny,  105,  106,  108. 
Political  economy  in  Scotland,  252, 

376,  456,  470." 

Poor,  Board  of  Supervision  for,  437. 
Port-Glasgow,  416,  418. 
Potato,  its  propagation  in  Scotland, 

309;  its  place  in  agriculture,  3 1 6 ; 

failure  of,  1846-47,  271. 
"Prairie,"  explained,  60. 
Presbyterian     Church    among     the 

Highlanders,  170. 
Preston,  241,  273. 
Prestonfield,  404. 
Prestonpans,  battle  of,    1745,   273, 

297. 

Pretender,  273. 
Prince  Edward's  Island,  337. 
Protection,  69. 
Protestant  succession,  360. 
Prussia,  monopoly  of  land  in,   71  ; 

serfdom  in,  85. 
Pyrenees,  305. 

QWHELE,  CLAN,  153. 

RACES  OF  EUROPE,  20. 
Raleigh,  Sir  Walter,  309. 
Randolph,  nephew  of  the  Bruce,  ac- 
quires the  earldom  of  Moray,  35. 


Rannoch,  191  ;  lease  on,  granted 
1553,  207. 

Ravenna,  109. 

Reay  (Sutherland),  336. 

"  Reestle,"  machine  so  called,  333. 

Reformation,  180. 

"Reilig  Oran,"  in  lona,  244. 

Renfrew,  218,  226,  287,  418. 

"  Rentallers,"  129. 

Restoration,  the,  in  1660,  239. 

"  Reverser,"  136.     See  Wadset. 

Ricardo,  454. 

Richard,  Abbot  of  Melros,  55. 

"Rob  Roy,"  292,  293,  317,  320. 

Robber  clan  of  Gregor,  195. 

Robert  the  Bruce  (1306-29),  33,  50, 
58  ;  grants  charter  to  Malcolm, 
Earl  of  Lennox,  61,  62  ;  grants  a 
charter  to  Dundee,  67  ;  his  army, 
73  ;  his  victory  at  By  land  Abbey, 
74,  110  ;  holds  a  Parliament  at 
Scone,  1318,  114;  declaration  by 
Parliament  of,  125  ;  his  place  of 
holding  court,  128  ;  made  a 
nation,  139. 

Robert  n.  (1371-90),  147,  150,  151, 
154. 

m.  (1390-1406),  147  ;  brief  of, 

concerning  Wolf  of  Badenoch 
(1390),  153. 

Robertsons  of  Strowan,  208. 

Roman  law,  78,  104,  110;  an  agent 
of  civilisation,  26  ;  leases  under, 
83. 

Rome,  in  conflict  with  the  Celtic 
tribes,  21 ;  its  supply  of  corn,  106. 

Ross,  Earls  of,  60,  75;  old  Celtic 
earldom  of,  151,  160. 

Ross-shire,  35,  268,  337,  439; 
small-pox  in,  307. 

Rothes,  title  of,  375. 

Rothesay,  420. 

Royal  burghs,  412;  creation  of,  66  ; 
Common  attached  to,  391  ;  con- 
vention of,  1688,  419. 

Rum,  island  of,  319,  323. 

Runrig  system,  272,  384,  431. 

Russia,  356. 

SAGAS,  NORSE,  114. 

St.  Andrews,  University  of,  160. 

St.  Cuthbert,  monks  of,  39,  44. 

St.  Kilda,  318. 

St.  Lawrence,  303. 

St.  Mungo,  cathedral  of,  420. 

St.  Oran's  chapel,  248. 

St.  Vincent  of  Lerins,  462  n. 


INDEX. 


499 


Scone,   91;  lease,   125,    132,    232; 

Parliament  held  at,  by  Bruce,  in 

1318,  114  ;  Great  Council  held  at, 

in  1209,  115. 
Abbot  of,   89,   245  ;  contract 

of,  94  ;  agreement  by,  translated, 

96  et  seq.;  lease  given  by,  101. 

Abbots  of,  177. 

"  Scoor,"  the,  in  the  Island  of  Eigg, 

162. 
Scotland — 

agricultural  improvement  of,  425. 

amalgamation  of  Celtic  and 
Teutonic  races  in,  142. 

black  cattle  of,  388. 

burgh  property  of,  394. 

Celts  of,  18. 

coal-tields  of,  220. 

"  Commonties  "  of,  407. 

Court  of  Session  of,  and  heritable 
jurisdictions,  274. 

effects  of  Jacobite  Rebellion  in, 
273. 

enclosures  in,  404. 

foreign  commerce  of,  356. 

"Ill  years"  of,  1781-82,  428. 

law  of,  regarding  sub-tenants, 
259. 

legislation  of,  in  feudal  times,  67. 

money  in,  369. 

mountain  pasturage  of,  455  n. 

municipal  elections  of,  394. 

old  coast-line  of,  365. 

old  Episcopal  Sees  of,  91. 

Ownership  of  land  in,  280,  468. 

Parliaments  of,  283,  378. 

physical  geography  of,  214. 

political  economy  in,  252. 

realised  capital  of,  376. 

reclamation  of,  448. 

Reformed  Church  in,  218. 

rights  of  municipalities  recog- 
nised by  charter,  and  conveyed 
by  covenant,  398. 

Royal  Burghs  of,  417. 

spirit  of  separation  in,  360. 
Scots,  18,  179  ;  tribal  stage  among, 

21  ;  union  of,  with  Picts,  22. 
Scott,    Sir  Walter,    162,    212,    255 

n.,  283,  292,  294,  315,   317,  333, 

444,  480. 
Selkirk,  177. 
Lord,    431  ;    his    Observations 

on    Emigration,    335,    344,    337 

notes. 

"  Senchus  Mor,"  112  n. 
Serfdom,  disappearance  of,  72. 


"  Sessings  of  the  Kerne  "  explained, 
16. 

Session,  Court  of,  its  valuation  in 
lieu  of  "casualties,"  277. 

and  heritable  jurisdic- 
tions, 274. 

Seville,  305. 

Sharp,  Archbishop,  224. 

Shaw,  Sir  John,  403 ;  his  "little Bay," 
418. 

Shaws,  friends  of  the  Lord  of  Glen- 
urchy,  194. 

"Shealings,"  199,  334. 

Sheep-farming,  440. 

Sheriffmuir,  242. 

Shetland,  268. 

Sinclair,  Sir  John,  439 ;  paper  drawn 
up  by,  1795,  268;  on  the  "ser- 
vices" in  Caithness,  269 ;  organises 
the  Statistical  Account  of  Scotland, 
320,  338  ;  Memoirs  of,  428  n. 

Skye,  35,  60,  215,  303,  337,  434, 
480  ;  Pennant's  report  of,  323. 

Sleat.     See  Macdonalds. 

"  Sluaged,"  one  of  the  four  burdens 
imposed  by  Irish  Chiefs,  22. 

Small-pox,  306. 

Smith,  Adam,  252. 

Smollett,  Tobias,  ancestor  of  the 
novelist,  351. 

Smugglers,  413. 

Snizort,  small-pox  at,  305. 

Solway  Firth,  49,  128,  138,  281. 

Somerled,  137,  142,  166. 

"Sorners,"  172. 

South  Sea  Bubble,  401. 

South  Uist,  309,  336. 

Spaniards  attack  Darien  Settlement, 
359. 

"  Spendings,"  explained,  16. 

Spey,  35,  36,  281. 

"  Statutes  of  lona,"  170. 

Steam  Engine,  421. 

"Steelbow,"  467;  holdings,  122; 
same  as  "Metayer"  system,  83. 

Stephen,  King  of  England  (1135-54), 
55. 

"Steward  of  the  estate,"  129. 

Stewart,  Charles  (Fasnacloich),  297 
n.  2. 

Stewarts,  302. 

of  Appin,  297. 

Stirling,  123,  177,  413,  420. 

Castle,  198. 

Stokes,  Mr.  Whitley,  111  w. 

Stonehaven,  346. 

Stonyhill,  485. 


500 


INDEX. 


Strathclyde,  85,  143. 

Strathearn,  91. 

Earl  of,  75. 

earldom  of,  62. 

Strathfillan,  190. 

Strathspey,  165,  337. 

Strongbow,  18. 

Stuart,  House  of,  its  Norman  origin, 
149. 

Sumptuary  Laws,  289,  419. 

Supreme  Court,  established  in  Scot- 
land, 160,  182. 

Sutherland,  268,  337,  439. 

coal  in,  220,  n. 

"  TACK,"  name  for  lease  in  Scot- 
land, 100. 

"Tallages"  explained,  16. 

"Tanistry,"  15. 

Tarbet,  Loch,  215. 

Tay,  the,  31,  152,  190,  281. 

Loch,  190. 

Taymouth,  191;  Black  Book  of 
Taymouth,  192. 

Tenant  Farmers,  375. 

"  Terra  Ethica,"  264. 

Teviotdale,  monasteries  of,  89. 

"Thirithe,"  264. 

Thurso,  59. 

Tiber,  20,  106. 

Ticonderoga,  302,  334. 

Tierra  del  Fuego,  Darwin's  visit  to, 
144. 

Tinto,  a  hill  in  Lanarkshire,  59. 

"  Toisechs,"  26,  37,  80,  89. 

Tongue,  320. 

Township  farms,  384,  409. 

Trade -guilds,  exclusiveness  of,  70. 

Tucker,  Mr.,  416  n. 

Tweed,  the,  59,  281. 

Tweeddales,  374. 

Twelve  Tables,  7. 

Tyree,  244,  256,  263,  264,  314,  429, 
434,  436  ;  petition  from  poor  of, 
488. 


Tyrone,  rebellion  of,  in  1595,  166. 

ULSTER,  the  reason  of  its  desolation 

in  17th  century,  16. 
Ulva,  Islet  of,  481. 
Union  of  the  Crowns,  281. 
of   Crowns  an   epoch    in   the 

Highlands,  286  ;  treaty  of,  1707, 

and  heritable  jurisdictions,  274  ; 

legislative,  355. 
United  States,  437. 

VALENTINIAN,  347. 


"  WADSET,"  a  tenure  of  land  so 
called,  135. 

Wales,  Tribal  laws  in,  84. 

Walker,  Professor,  424. 

Wallace,  Sir  William,  373. 

Walpole,  Sir  Robert,  and  the  High- 
landers, 298. 

Walter,  the  Steward  of  Scotland, 
temp.  Alexander  n.,  53. 

War  of  Independence,  its  lessons 
73,  77,  93. 

Waterloo,  76,  301. 

Watt,  James,  355,  368,  403,  421. 

Wealth,  sources  of,  379. 

Wenlock,  foundation  of  Cluniac 
Monks  at,  150. 

West  India  Islands,  359. 

Whately,  Archbishop,  327. 

Wigtown,  177,  219,  287. 

William  the  Conqueror,  12. 

William  the  Lion  (1165-1214),  51, 
115  ;  Act  passed  in  favour  of  the 
"  Freedom "  of  Burghs  in  his 
reign,  67 ;  legislation  of,  regard- 
ing tenants,  193. 

William  in.  (1689-1702),  240,  325, 
390,  415. 

Wolf,  the,  in  Scotland  until  1622, 
200. 


Printed  by  T.  and  A.  CONSTABLE,  Printers  to  Her  Majesty, 
at  the  Edinburgh  University  Press, 


ISA  CASTLE  STREET, 

EDINBURGH,  October  1888. 


LIST  OF   BOOKS    PUBLISHED    BY 
DAVID    DOUGLAS. 


View  of  the   Political  State  of  Scotland  in  the  last 

Century.  A  Confidential  Report  on  the  Political  Opinions,  Family  Connections, 
or  Personal  Circumstances,  of  the  2662  County  Voters  in  1788.  Edited,  with  an 
introductory  account  of  the  Law  relating  to  County  Elections,  by  Sir  CHARLES 
ELPHINSTONE  ADAM  of  Blair- Adam,  Bart.,  Barrister-at-Law.  Crown  8vo,  5s. 

On  the  Philosophy  of  Kant. 

By  ROBERT  ADAMSON,  M.A.,  Professor  of  Logic  and  Mental  Philosophy,  Owens 
College  ;  formerly  Examiner  in  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Ex. 
fcap.  8vo,  6s. 

The  New  Amphion;  Being  the  Book  of  the  Edinburgh 

University  Union  Fancy  Fair,  jn  which  are  contained  sundry  Artistick,  Instruc- 
tive, and  Diverting  Matters,  all  now  made  publick  for  the  first  time.  12mo,  Illus- 
trated, 5s. ;  Large-Paper  Edition,  21s.  (only  100  Copies  printed). 

"An  especially  dainty  little  morsel  for  the  lovers  of  choice  books." — Academy. 

"There  is  no  need  to  say  that  the  book  is  valuable.  It  will  be  eagerly  and 
widely  sought  for.  .  .  .  The  external  appointments  are  such  as  would  charm  the 
most  fastidious  bibliomaniac." — Scotsman. 

Stories  by  Thomas  Bailey  Aldrich. 

THE  QUEEN  OF  SHEBA.     Is.,  or  in  cloth,  gilt  top,  2s. 
.    MARJORIE  DAW,  and  other  Stories.     Is.,  or  in  cloth,  gilt  top,  2s. 
PRUDENCE  PALFREY.    Is.,  or  in  cloth,  gilt  top,  2s. 
THE  STILLWATER  TRAGEDY.    2  vols.  2s.,  or  in  cloth,  gilt  top,  4s. 

"  Mr.  Aldrich  is,  perhaps,  entitled  to  stand  at  the  head  of  American  humourists." 
— Athenaeum,. 
"  Marjorie  Daw  is  a  clever  piece  of  literary  work." — Saturday  Review. 

Johnny  Gibb  of  G-ushetneuk  in  the  Parish  of  Pyketillim, 

with  Glimpses  of  Parish  Politics  about  A.D.  1843.  By  WILLIAM  ALEXANDER, 
LL.D.  Ninth  Edition,  with  Glossary,  Ex.  fcap.  8vo,  2s. 

Seventh  Edition,  with  Twenty  Lithographic  Illustrations— Portraits  and  Land- 
scapes—by GEORGE  REID,  R.S.A.  Demy  8vo,  12s.  6d. 

"A  most  vigorous  and  truthful  delineation  of  local  character,  drawn  from  a 
portion  of  the  country  where  that  character  is  peculiarly  worthy  of  careful  study 
and  record."— The  Right  Hon.  W.  E.  Gladstone. 

Life  among  my  Ain  Folk. 

By  WILLIAM  ALEXANDER,  LL.D.,  Author  of  "Johnny  Gibb  of  Gushetneuk." 
Ex.  fcap.  8vo.     Second  Edition.     Cloth,  2s.  6d.     Paper,  2s. 

Notes  and  Sketches   of   Northern   Rural    Life   in   the 

Eighteenth  Century,  by  WILLIAM  ALEXANDER,  LL.D.,  the  Author  of  "Johnny 
Gibb  of  Gushetneuk."  Ex.  fcap.  8vo,  Is.  Cloth,  2s.  6d. 


LIST  OF  BOOKS 


American  Authors. 

Latest  Editions.     Revised  by  the  Authors.    In  Is.  volumes.     By  Post,  Is.  2d. 
Printed  by  Constable,  and  published  with  the  sanction  of  the  Authors. 


ByW.  D.  HOWELLS. 
A  FOREGONE  CONCLUSION. 
A  CHANCE  ACQUAINTANCE. 
THEIR  WEDDING  JOURNEY. 
A  COUNTERFEIT  PRESENTMENT. 
THE  LADY  OF  THE  AROOSTOOK.   2  vols. 
OUT  OF  THE  QUESTION. 
THE  UNDISCOVERED  COUNTRY.   2  vols. 
A  FEARFUL  RESPONSIBILITY. 
VENETIAN  LIFE.    2  vols. 
ITALIAN  JOURNEYS.     2  vols. 
THE  RISE  OF  SILAS  LAPHAM.     2  vols. 
INDIAN  SUMMER.    2  vols. 

By  FRANK  R.  STOCKTON. 
RUDDER  GRANGE. 
THE  LADY  OR  THE  TIGER? 
A  BORROWED  MONTH. 

By  GEO.  W.  CURTIS. 
PRUE  AND  I. 

By  J.  C.  HARRIS  (Uncle  Remus). 

MlNGO,   AND  OTHER  SKETCHES. 

By  GEO.  W.  CABLE. 
OLD  CREOLE  DAYS. 
MADAME  DELPHINE. 

By  B.  W.  HOWARD. 

ONE  SUMMER. 


By  JOHN  BURROUGHS. 

WINTER  SUNSHINE. 
PEPACTON. 

LOCUSTS  AND  WILD  HONEY. 
WAKE-ROBIN. 
BIRDS  AND  POETS. 
FRESH  FIELDS. 

By  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES. 
THE  AUTOCRAT  OF  THE  BREAKFAST 

TABLE.     2  vols. 
THE  POET.     2  vols. 
THE  PROFESSOR.     2  vols. 

By  G.  P.  LATHROP. 
AN  ECHO  OF  PASSION. 

By  R.  G.  WHITE. 

MR.  WASHINGTON  ADAMS. 

By  T.  B.  ALDRICH. 
THE  QUEEN  OF  SHEBA. 
MARJORIE  DAW. 
PRUDENCE  PALFREY. 
THE  STILLWATER  TRAGEDY.    2  vols. 


By  B.  MATTHEWS  and 

H.  C.  BUNNER. 
IN  PARTNERSHIP. 

By  WILLIAM  WINTER. 

SHAKESPEARE'S  ENGLAND. 
***  Other  Volumes  of  this  attractive  Series  in  preparation. 
Any  of  the  above  may  be  had  bound  in  Cloth  extra,  at  2s.  each  vol. 

"  A  set  of  charming  little  books."— Blackwood's  Magazine. 

"  A  remarkably  pretty  series." — Saturday  Review. 

"These  neat  and  minute  volumes  are  creditable  alike  to  printer  and  publisher. " 
— Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

"  The  most  graceful  and  delicious  little  volumes  with  which  we  are  acquainted." 
— Freeman. 

"  Soundly  and  tastefully  bound  .  .  .  a  little  model  of  typography, .  .  .  and  the 
contents  are  worthy  of  the  dress." — Si.  James's  Gazette. 

"The  delightful  shilling  series  of  '  American  Authors '  introduced  by  Mr.  David 
Douglas  has  afforded  pleasure  to  thousands  of  persons." — Figaro. 

"The  type  is  delightfully  legible,  and  the  page  is  pleasant  for  the  eye  to  rest 
upon ;  even  in  these  days  of  cheap  editions  we  have  seen  nothing  that  has  pleased 
us  so  well."— Literary  World. 

American  Statesmen. 

A  Series  of  Biographies  of  men  conspicuous  in  the  Political  History  of  the 
United  States.  Edited  by  JOHN  T.  MORSE,  Jun. 

Small  crown  8vo,  price  6s.  each  vol. 

1.  THOMAS  JEFFERSON.     By  JOHN  T.  MORSE,  Jun. 

2.  SAMUEL  ADAMS.     By  JAMES  K.  HOSMER. 

"A  man  who,  in  the  history  of  the  American  Revolution,  is  second  only  to 
Washington." 

3.  ALEXANDER  HAMILTON.    By  HENRY  CABOT  LODGE. 

With  a  Preface  containing  the  "Declaration  of  Independence,"  "Articles  of 
Confederation,"  and  the  Constitution  of  the  United  States. 

4.  HENRY  CLAY.    By  CARL  SCHURZ.    2  vols.,  12s. 

Alma  Mater's  Mirror. 

Edited  by  THOMAS  SPENCER  BAYNES  and  LEWIS  CAMPBELL,  Professors  in  the 
University,  St.  Andrews.  Printed  in  red  and  black,  on  antique  paper.  Bound 
in  white,  richly  tooled  in  gold  in  the  ancient  manner,  with  ribbon  fastening.  In 
box,  Price  5s. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS. 


Modern   Horsemanship.    A  New  Method  of  Teaching 

Riding  and  Training  by  means  of  pictures  from  the  life.  By  E.  L.  ANDERSON. 
Third  Edition,  with  fresh  Illustrations  of  the  "Gallop-Change"  of  unique  and 
peculiar  interest.  Illustrated  by  32  Instantaneous  Photographs.  Demy  8vo.  21s. 

Vice  in  the  Horse  and  other  Papers  on   Horses  and 

Hiding.  By  E.  L.  ANDERSON,  Author  of  "  Modern  Horsemanship."  Illustrated. 
Demy  Svo,  5s. 

The  G-allop. 

By  E.  L.  ANDERSON.   Illustrated  by  Instantaneous  Photography.   Fcap.  4to,  2s.  6d. 

Scotland  in  Early  Christian  Times. 

By  JOSEPH  ANDERSON,  LL.D.,  Keeper  of  the  National  Museum  of  the  Antiquaries 
of  Scotland.  (Being  the  Rhind  Lectures  in  Archaeology  for  1879  and  1880.)  2  vols. 
Demy  Svo,  profusely  Illustrated.  12s.  each  volume. 

Contents  of  Vol.  I.— Celtic  Churches— Monasteries— Hermitages— Round  Towers 
—Illuminated  Manuscripts— Bells— Crosiers— Reliquaries,  etc. 

Contents  of  Vol.  II.—  Celtic  Medal- Work  and  Sculptured  Monuments,  their  Art 
and  Symbolism— Inscribed  Monuments  in  Runics  and  Oghams— Bilingual  inscrip- 
tions, etc. 

Scotland  in  Pagan  Times. 

By  JOSEPH  ANDERSON,  LL.D.  (Being  the  Rhind  Lectures  in  Archaeology  for  1881 
and  1882.)  In  2  vols.  Demy  Svo,  profusely  Illustrated.  12s.  each  volume. 

Contents  of  Vol.  I.— THE  IRON  AGE.— Viking  Burials  and  Hoards  of  Silver  and 
Ornaments— Arms,  Dress,  etc.,  of  the  Viking  Time— Celtic  Art  ''of  the  Pagan 
Period— Decorated  Mirrors— Enamelled  Armlets— Architecture  and  Contents  of 
the  Brochs— Lake-Dwellings— Earth  Houses,  etc. 

Contents  of  Vol.  II.— THE  BRONZE  AND  STONE  AGES.— Cairn  Burial  of  the  Bronze 
Age  and  Cremation  Cemeteries— Urns  of  Bronze- Age  Types— Stone  Circles- 
Stone  Settings— Gold  Ornaments— Implements  and  Weapons  of  Bronze— Cairn 
Burial  of  the  Stone  Age— Chambered  Cairns— Urns  of  Stone-Age  Types— Imple- 
ments and  Weapons  of  Stone. 

Scotland  as  it  was  and  as  it  is. 

By  the  DUKE  OF  ARGYLL.  1  vol.  Demy  Svo.  Illustrated.  New  Edition.  Care- 
fully Revised.  7s.  Cd. 

Contents.—  Celtic  Feudalism— The  Age  of  Charters— The  Age  of  Covenants— 
The  Epoch  of  the  Clans— The  Appeal  from  Chiefs  to  Owners— The  Response  to 
the  Appeal— Before  the  Dawn— The  Burst  of  Industry— The  Fruits  of  Mind. 

"  Infinitely  superior  as  regards  the  Highland  land  question  to  any  statement 
yet  made  by  the  other  side." — Scotsman. 

"  It  presents  a  series  of  strikingly  picturesque  sketches  of  the  wild  society  and 
rude  manners  of  the  olden  time." — Times. 

The  New  British  Constitution  and  its  Master-Builders. 

By  the  DUKE  OF  ARGYLL.    1  vol.  crown  Svo,  3s.  6d. 

Crofts  and  Farms  in  the  Hebrides : 

Being  an  account  of  the  Management  of  an  Island  Estate  for  130  Years.  By  the 
DUKE  OF  ARGYLL.  Demy  Svo,  83  pages,  Is. 

Continuity  and  Catastrophes  in  Geology. 

An  Address  to  the  Edinburgh  Geological  Society  on  its  Fiftieth  Anniversary,  1st 
November  1S83.  By  the  DUKE  OF  ARGYLL.  Demy  Svo,  Is. 

The  History  of  Liddesdale,  Bskdale,  Ewesdale,  Wauch- 

opedale,  and  the  Debateable  Land.  Part  I.  from  the  Twelfth  Century  to  1530.  By 
ROBERT  BRUCE  ARMSTRONG.  The  edition  is  limited  to  275  copies  demy  quarto, 
and  105  copies  011  large  paper  (10  inches  by  13).  42s.  and  84s. 

Beminiscences  of  Golf  on  St.  Andrews  Links. 

By  JAMES  BALFOUR.    Price  Is. 
On  Both  Sides.     By  FRANCES  C.  BAYLOR.    1  vol.    6s. 


LIST  OF  BOOKS 


Dr.  HeidenhofFs  Process. 

By  EDWARD  BELLAMY.     Crown  8vo,  6s. 

Miss  Ludington's  Sister :  a  Romance  of  Immortality. 

By  EDWARD  BELLAMY,  Author  of  "  Dr.  Heidenhoffs  Process."    Crown  8vo,  6s. 

Bible  Readings.   Extra  fcap.  svo.  2s. 
The  Voyage  of  the  Paper  Canoe. 

A  Geographical  Journey  of  2500  miles,  from  Quebec  to  the  Gulf  of  Mexico,  during 
the  year  1874-75.  By  N.  H.  BISHOP.  With  Maps  and  Plates.  Demy  Svo,  10s.  6d. 

On  Self-Culture: 

Intellectual,  Physical,  and  Moral.  A  Vade-Mecum  for  Young  Men  and  Students. 
By  JOHN  STUART  BLACKIE,  Emeritus  Professor  of  Greek  in  the  University  of 
Edinburgh.  Seventeenth  Edition.  Fcap.  Svo,  2s.  6d. 

"Every  parent  should  put  it  into  the  hands  of  his  son."— Scotsman. 

11  Students  in  all  countries  would  do  well  to  take  as  their  vade-mecum  a  little 
book  on  self-culture  by  the  eminent  Professor  of  Greek  in  the  University  of  Edin- 
burgh."— Medical  Press  and  Circular. 

"An  invaluable  manual  to  be  put  into  the  hands  of  students  and  young  men." 
— Era. 

"  Written  in  that  lucid  and  nervous  prose  of  which  he  is  a  master." — Spectator. 

"  An  adequate  guide  to  a  generous,  eager,  and  sensible  life."— Academy. 

"The  volume  is  a  little  thing,  but  it  is  a  multum  in  parvo,  ...  a  little  locket 
gemmed  within  and  without  with  real  stones  fitly  set."— Courant. 

By  the  same  Author. 

On  Greek  Pronunciation.   Demy  svo,  3s.  6d. 

On  Beauty.  I    Lyrical  Poems. 

Crown  Svo,  cloth,  8s.  6d.  Crown  Svo,  cloth,  7s.  6d. 

The   Language   and   Literature  of  the  Scottish  High- 
lands.   Crown  Svo,  6s. 

Four  Phases  of  Mprals : 

Socrates,  Aristotle,  Christianity,  and  Utilitarianism.  Lectures  delivered  before 
the  Eoyal  Institution,  London.  Ex.  ffcap.  Svo,  Second  Edition,  5s. 

Songs  of  Religion  and  Life.   Fcap.  svo,  6s. 
Musa  Burschicosa. 

A  book  of  Songs  for  Students  and  University  Men.     Fcap.  Svo,  2s.  6d. 

"War  Songs  of  the  Germans.   Fcap.  svo,  2s.  6d.  cloth ;  2s.  paper. 

Political  Tracts.    No.  1.  GOVERNMENT.    No.  2.  EDUCATION.    Is.  each. 

Gaelic    Societies.     Highland    Depopulation    and    Land 

Law  Reform.    Demy  Svo,  6d. 
Homer  and  the  Iliad.     In  three  Parts.     4  vols.    Demy  Svo,  42s. 

A  Letter  to  the  People  of  Scotland  on  the  Reform  of 

their  Academical  Institutions.    Demy  Svo,  6d. 


Love  Revealed :  Meditations  on  the  Parting  "Words  of 

Jesus  with  His  Disciples,  in  John  xiii-xvii.  By  the  Rev.  GEORGE  BOWEN, 
Missionary  at  Bombay.  New  Edition.  Small  4to,  5s. 

"No  true  Christian  could  put  the  book  down  without  finding  in  himself  some 
traces  of  the  blessed  unction  which  drops  from  every  page." — Record. 

"  Here  is  a  feast  of  fat  things,  of  fat  things  full  of  marrow." — Sword  and  Trowel. 

"A  more  stimulating  work  of  its  class  has  not  appeared  for  many  a  long  day." 
— Scotsman. 

"The  present  work  is  eminently  qualified  to  help  the  devotional  life." — Literary 
World. 

"He  writes  plainly  and  earnestly,  and  with  a  true  appreciation  of  the  tender 
beauties  of  what  are  really  among  the  finest  passages  in  the  New  Testament."— 
Glasgow  Herald. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS. 


"Verily,  Verily,"  The  Amens  of  Christ. 

By  the  Bey.  GEORGE  BOWEN,  Missionary  at  Bombay.     Small  4to,  cloth,  5s. 

' '  For  private  and  devotional  reading  this  book  will  be  found  very  helpful  and 
stimulative." — Literary  World. 

Daily  Meditations  by  Rev.  George  Bowen,  Missionary 

at  Bombay.     With  Introductory  Notice  by  Rev.  W.  HANNA,  D.D.,  Author  of 
"The  Last  Day  of  our  Lord's  Passion."    New  Edition.     Small  4to,  cloth,  5s. 

"These  meditations  are  the  production  of  a  missionary  whose  mental  history  is 
very  remarkable.  .  .  .  His  conversion  to  a  religious  life  is  undoubtedly  one  of  the 
most  remarkable  on  record.  They  are  all  distinguished  by  a  tone  of  true  piety, 
and  are  wholly  free  from  a  sectarian  or  controversial  bias." — Morning  Post. 

"Works  by  John  Brown,  M.D.,  F.B.S.E. 

HOR.E  SUBSECIV.E.    3  Vols.     22s.  6d. 
Vol.     I.  Locke  and  Sydenham.    Fifth  Edition,  with  Portrait  by  James  Faed. 

Crown  8vo,  7s.  6d. 

Vol.    II.  Rab  and  his  Friends.    Thirteenth  Edition.     Crown  8vo,  7s.  6d. 
Vol.  III.  John  Leech.     Fifth  Edition,  with  Portrait  by  George  Reid,  R.S.A. 
Crown  8vo,  7s.  6d. 

Separate  Papers,  extracted  from  "  Horce  Siibsecivce." 

RAB  AND  HIS  FRIENDS.  With  India-proof  Portrait  of  the  Author  after  Faed,  and 
seven  Illustrations  after  Sir  G.  Harvey,  Sir  Noel  Paton,  Mrs.  Blackburn, 
and  G.  Reid,  R.S.A.  Demy  4to,  cloth,  9s. 

MARJORIE  FLEMING  :  A  Sketch.    Being  a  Paper  entitled  "Pet  Marjorie  ;  A  Story 
of  a  Child's  Life  fifty  years  ago."    New  Edition,  with  Illustrations.    Demy 
4to,  7s.  6d.  and  6s. 
RAB  AND  HIS  FRIENDS.     Cheap  Illustrated  Edition.     Square  12mo,  ornamental 

wrapper,  Is. 

LETTER  TO  THE  REV.  JOHN  CAIRNS,  D.D.    Second  Edition,  crown  8vo,  sewed,  2s. 
ARTHUR  H.  HALLAM.    Fcap.,  sewed,  2s.  ;  cloth,  2s.  6d. 
RAB  AND  HIS  FRIENDS.    Sixty-sixth  thousand.    Fcap.,  sewed,  6d. 
MARJORIE  FLEMING:  A  Sketch.    Sixteenth  Thousand.    Fcap.,  sewed,  6d. 
OUR  DOGS.    Twentieth  thousand.     Fcap.,  sewed,  6d. 
"  WITH  BRAINS,  SIR."    Seventh  thousand.    Fcap.,  sewed,  6d. 
MINCHMOOR.    Tenth  Thousand.    Fcap.,  sewed,  6d. 

JEEMS  THE  DOOR-KEEPER  :  A  Lay  Sermon.    Twelfth  thousand.     Price  6d. 
THE  ENTERKIN.     Seventh  Thousand.    Price  6d. 
PLAIN  WORDS  ON  HEALTH.    Twenty-seventh  thousand.    Price  6d. 
SOMETHING  ABOUT  A  WELL  :  WITH  MORE  OF  OUR  DOGS.    Price  6d. 

Prom  Schola  to  Cathedral.    A  Study  of  Early  Christian 

Architecture  in  its  relation  to  the  life  of  the  Church.  By  G.  BALDWIN-BROWN,  Pro- 
fessor of  Fine  Art  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Demy  8vo,  Illustrated,  7s.  6d. 
The  book  treats  of  the  beginnings  of  Christian  Architecture,  from  the  point  of 
view  of  recent  discoveries  and  theories,  with  a  special  reference  to  the  outward  re- 
semblance of  early  Christian  communities  to  other  religious  associations  of  the  time. 

The  Capercaillie  in  Scotland. 

By  J.  A.  HARVIE-BROWN.  Etchings  on  Copper,  and  Map  illustrating  the  extension 
of  its  range  since  its  Restoration  at  Taymouth  in  1837  and  1838.  Demy  8vo,  8s.  6d. 

A  Vertebrate    Fauna   of   Sutherland,   Caithness,    and 

West  Cromarty.  By  J.  A.  HARVIE-BROWN,  F.R.S.E.,  F.Z.S.,  Vice-President  Royal 
Physical  Society,  Edinburgh  ;  Member  of  the  British  Ornithologists'  Union,  etc., 
and  T.  E.  BUCKLEY,  B.A.,  F.Z.S.,  Member  of  the  British  Ornithologists'  Union,  etc. 
Small  4to,  with  Map  and  Illustrations  by  Messrs.  J.  G.  Millais,  T.  S.  Keulemans, 
Samuel  Read,  and  others.  30s. 

A  Vertebrate  Fauna  of  the  Outer  Hebrides. 

By  J.  A.  HARVIE-BROWN  and  T.  E.  BUCKLEY.     Small  4to.    Illustrated. 

[In  the  Press. 

The  History  of  Selkirkshire ;  Chronicles  of  Ettrick  Forest. 

By  T.  CRAIG-BROWN.    Two  vols.    Demy  4to,  Illustrated.    £4,  10s.  Net. 


6  LIST  OF  BOOKS 


Pugin  Studentship  Drawings.    Being  a  selection  from 

Sketches,  Measured  Drawings,  and  details  of  Domestic  and  Ecclesiastic  Buildings 
in  England  and  Scotland.  By  G.  WASHINGTON-BROWNE,  F.S.A.  Scot,  Architect. 
1  voL  Folio,  Illustrated,  45s. 

"  The  Bed  Book  of  Menteith  "  Reviewed. 

By  GEORGE  BURNETT,  Advocate,  Lyon  King  of  Arms.    Small  4to,  5s. 

Next  Door.     A  Novel.    By  GLARE  LOUISE  BURNHAM.    Crown  8vo, 
7s.  6d. 
"A  strangely  interesting  story."— St.  James's  Gazette. 

John  Burroughs's  Essays. 

Six  Books  of  Nature,  Animal  Life,  and  Literature.  Choice  Edition.  Revised  by 
the  Author.  6  vols.,  cloth,  12s. ;  or  in  smooth  ornamental  wrappers,  6s. ;  or 
separately  at  Is.  each  vol.,  or  2s.  in  cloth. 


WINTER  SUNSHINE. 
LOCUSTS  AND  WILD  HONEY. 
WAKE-ROBIN. 


FRESH  FIELDS. 
BIRDS  AND  POETS. 
PEPACTON. 


"  Whichever  essay  I  read,  I  am  glad  I  read  it,  for  pleasanter  reading,  to  those 
who  love  the  country,  with  all  its  enchanting  sights  and  sounds,  cannot  be  im- 
agined. "—Spectator. 

"Mr.  Burroughs  is  one  of  the  most  delightful  of  American  Essayists,  steeped  in 
culture  to  the  finger-ends."— Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

FRESH  FIELDS.    By  JOHN  BURROUGHS.    Library  Edition.    Crown  8vo,  6s. 
SIGNS  AND  SEASONS.    Library  Edition.    Crown  Svo,  6s. 

Dr.  Sevier :  A  Novel. 

By  GEO.  W.  CABLE,  Author  of  "Old  Creole  Days,"  etc.  In  2  vols.,  crown  Svo, 
price  12s. 

Old  Creole  Days.     By  GEO.  W.  CABLE.    Is. ;  and  in  Cloth,  2s. 

"We  cannot  recall  any  contemporary  American  writer  of  fiction  who  possesses 
some  of  the  best  gifts  of  the  novelist  in  a  higher  degree."— St.  James's  Gazette. 

Madame  Delphine. 

By  GEO.  W.  CABLE,  Author  of  "  Old  Creole  Days."    Is. ;  and  in  cloth,  2s. 
Contents. — Madame  Delphine — Carancro — Grande  Pointe. 

Memoir  of  John  Brown,  D.D. 

By  JOHN  CAIRNS,  D.D.,  Berwick-ou-Tweed.    Crown  Svo,  7s.  6d. 

My  Indian  Journal. 

Containing  Descriptions  of  the  principal  Field  Sports  of  India,  with  Notes  on  the 
Natural  History  and  Habits  of  the  Wild  Animals  of  the  Country.  By  Colonel 
WALTER  CAMPBELL,  Author  of  "  The  Old  Forest  Ranger."  Small  demy  Svo,  with 
Illustrations  by  Wolf,  16s. 

Life  and  "Works  of  Rev.  Thomas  Chalmers,  D.D.,  LL.D. 

MEMOIRS  OF  THE  REV.  THOMAS  CHALMERS.    By  Rev.  W.  HANNA,  D.D.,  LL.D.   New 

Edition.    2  vols.  crown  Svo,  cloth,  12s. 

DAILY  SCRIPTURE  READINGS.    Cheap  Edition.    2  vols.  crown  Svo,  10s. 
ASTRONOMICAL  DISCOURSES,  Is. 
COMMERCIAL  DISCOURSES,  Is. 
SELECT  WORKS,  in  12  vols.,  crown  Svo,  cloth,  per  vol.  6s. 

Lectures  on  the  Romans.    2  vols. 

Sermons.     2  vols. 

Natural  Theology,  Lectures  on  Butler's  Analogy,  etc.    1  vol. 

Christian  Evidences,  Lectures  on  Paley's  Evidences,  etc.    1  vol. 

Institutes  of  Theology.    2  vols. 

Political  Economy,  with  Cognate  Essays.    1  vol. 

Polity  of  a  Nation.    1vol. 

Church  and  College  Establishments.    1  vol. 

Moral  Philosophy,  Introductory  Essays,  Index,  etc.    1  vol. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS.  7 

Lectures  on  Surgical  Anatomy. 

By  JOHN  CHIENE,  M.D.,  Professor  of  Surgery  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh. 
In  demy  8vo.    With  numerous  Illustrations  drawn  on  Stone  by  BERJEAU.    12s.  6d. 
"The  book  will  be  a  great  help  to  both  teachers  and  taught,  and  students  can 
depend  upon  the  teaching  as  being  sound.."— Medical  Times  and  Gazette. 

Lectures  on  the  Elements  or  First  Principles  of  Surgery. 

By  JOHN  CHIENE,  M.D.,  Professor  of  Surgery  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh. 
Demy  Svo,  2s.  6d. 

The  Odes  of  Horace. 

Translated  by  T.  RUTHERFURD  CLARK,  Advocate.    16mo,  Gs. 

Scala  Naturae,  and  other  Poems. 

By  JOHN  CLELAND.    Fcap.  Svo,  5s. 

An  Examination  of  the  Trials  for  Sedition  which  have 

hitherto  occurred  in  Scotland.   By  the  late  LORD  COCKBURN.   2  vols.  demy  Svo.  28s. 

Circuit  Journeys  from  1837  to  1854. 

By  the  late  LORD  COCKBURN.    1  vol.  crown  Svo,  7s.  6d. 

Archibald  Constable  and  his  Literary  Correspondents : 

a  Memorial.  By  his  Son,  THOMAS  CONSTABLE.  3  vols.  demy  Svo,  36s.,  with 
Portrait. 

"  He  (Mr.  Constable)  was  a  genius  in  the  publishing  world.  .  .  .  The  creator  of 
the  Scottish  publishing  trade."— Times. 

The  Earldom  of  Mar,  in  Sunshine  and  in  Shade,  during 

Five  Hundred  Years.  With  incidental  Notices  of  the  leading  Cases  of  Scottish 
Dignities  from  the  reign  of  King  Charles  I.  till  now.  By  ALEXANDER,  EARL  OF 
CRAWFORD  AND  BALCARRES,  LORD  LINDSAY,  etc.  etc.  2  vols.  demy  Svo,  32s. 

The  Crime  of  Henry  Vane :  a  Study  with  a  Moral. 

By  J.  S.  of  Dale,  Author  of  "  Guerndale."    Crown  Svo,  6s. 

A  Clinical  and    Experimental    Study   of   the   Bladder 

during  Parturition.  By  J.  H.  CROOM,  M.B.,  F.R.C.P.E.  Small  4to,  with  Illus- 
trations, 6s. 

Wild  Men  and  Wild  Beasts. 

Adventures  in  Camp  and  Jungle.    By  Lieut.-Colonel  GORDON  GUMMING.    With 
Illustrations  by  Lieut. -Colonel  BAIORIE  and  others.    Small  4to,  24s. 
Also  a  cheaper  edition,  with  Lithographic  Illustrations.    Svo,  12s. 

Prue  and  I. 

By  GEORGE  WILLIAM  CURTIS.    Is.  paper ;  or  2s.  cloth  extra 

Contents. — Dinner  Time — My  Chateaux — Sea  from  Shore — Titbottom's  Spectacles 

— A  Cruise  in  the  Flying  Dutchman — Family  Portraits — Our  Cousin  the  Curate. 

"  This  is  a  dainty  piece  of  work,  and  well  deserved  reprinting." — Athenceum. 

"These  charming  sketches  will  be  enjoyed  by  all  cultured  readers."— Daily 
Chronicle. 

The  Story  of  Burnt  Njal ;  or,  Life  in  Iceland  at  the  end 

of  the  Tenth  Century.  From  the  Icelandic  of  the  Njals  Saga.  By  Sir  GEORGE 
WEBBE  DASENT,  D.C.L.  2  vols.  demy  Svo,  with  Maps  and  Plans,  28s. 

G-isli  the  Outlaw. 

From  the  Icelandic.  By  Sir  GEORGE  WEBBE  DASENT,  D.C.L.  Small  4to,  with 
Illustrations,  7s.  6d. 

Popular  Tales  from  the  Norse. 

By  Sir  GEORGE  WEBBE  DASENT,  D.C.L.  With  an  Introductory  Essay  on  the 
Origin  and  Diffusion  of  Popular  Tales.  Third  Edition.  Crown  Svo,  10s.  6d. 

A  Daughter  of  the  Philistines :  A  Novel. 

Crown  Svo,  6s.    Also  a  cheaper  edition  in  paper  binding,  2s. 

"  The  story  is  very  powerfully  told,  possesses  a  piquantly  satirical  flavour,  and 
possesses  the  very  real  attraction  of  freshness."— Scotsman. 

"It  is  cleverly  and  brightly  written."— Academy. 


8  LIST  OF  BOOKS 


A  Manual  of  Chemical  Analysis. 

By  Professor  WILLIAM  DITTMAR.     Ex.  fcap.  Svo,  5s. 
TABLES  FORMING  AN  APPENDIX  TO  DITTO.    Demy  Svo,  3s.  6d. 

A  Chat  in  the  Saddle  ;  or  Patroclus  and  Penelope. 

By  THEO.  A.  DODGE,  Lieut.  -Colonel,  United  States  Army.  Illustrated  by  14 
Instantaneous  Photographs.  Demy  Svo,  half-leather  binding,  21s. 

The  Fireside  Tragedy,  etc. 

By  Sir  GEORGE  DOUGLAS,  Bart.    Fcap.  Svo,  5s. 

Veterinary  Medicines  ;  their  Actions  and  Uses. 

By  FTNLAY  DUN.     Seventh  Edition,  revised  and  enlarged.     Demy  Svo. 

[In  the  Press. 

Social  Life  in  Former  Days  ; 

Chiefly  in  the  Province  of  Moray.  Illustrated  by  Letters  and  Family  Papers.  By 
E.  DUNBAR  DONBAR,  late  Captain  21st  Fusiliers.  2  vols.  Demy  Svo,  19s.  6d. 

The  Graysons  :  A  Story  of  Illinois. 

By  EDWARD  EGGLESTON.  [Nearly  Ready. 

Letters  of  Thomas  Erskine  of  Linlathen. 

Edited  by  WILLIAM  HANNA,  D.D.,  Author  of  the  "  Memoirs  of  Dr.  Chalmers,"  etc. 
Fourth  Edition.  Crown  Svo,  7s.  6d. 

The  Unconditional  Freeness  of  the  Gospel. 

By  THOMAS  ERSKINE  of  Linlathen.    New  Edition,  revised.    Crown  Svo,  3s.  6d. 
By  the  same  Author. 

The  Brazen  Serpent: 

Or,  Life  coming  through  Death.     Third  Edition.     Crown  Svo,  5s. 

The  Internal  Evidence  of  Revealed  Religion. 

Crown  Svo,  5s. 

The  Spiritual  Order, 

And  other  Papers  selected  from  the  MSS.  of  the  late  THOMAS  ERSKINE  of  Linlathen. 
Third  Edition.  Crown  Svo,  5s. 

The  Doctrine  of  Election, 

And  its  Connection  with  the  General  Tenor  of  Christianity,  illustrated  especially 
from  the  Epistle  to  the  Romans.  Second  Edition.  Crown  Svo,  6s. 

The  Fatherhood  of  God  Revealed  in  Christ,  the  Comfort 

and  Hope  of  Man.  A  Lesson  from  "The  Letters"  of  THOMAS  ERSKINE,  of  Lin- 
lathen. Fcap.  Svo,  Is. 

Three  Visits  to  Am  erica. 

By  EMILY  FAITHFULL.    Demy  Svo,  9s. 

Ogham  Inscriptions  in  Ireland,  "Wales,  and  Scotland. 

By  the  late  SIR  SAMUEL  FERGUSON,  President  of  the  Royal  Irish  Academy, 
Deputy  Keeper  of  the  Public  Records  of  Ireland,  LL.D.,  Queen's  Counsel,  etc. 
(Being  the  Rhind  Lectures  in  Archaeology  for  18S4.)  1  vol.  demy  Svo,  12s. 

Twelve   Sketches  of  Scenery  and  Antiquities  on  the 

Line  of  the  Great  North  of  Scotland  Railway.  By  GEORGE  REID,  R.S.A.  With 
Illustrative  Letterpress  by  W.  FERGUSON  of  Kinmundy.  4to,  15s. 

Guide  to  the  Great  North  of  Scotland  Railway. 

By  W.  FERGUSON  of  Kinmundy.    Crown  Svo  ;  in  paper  cover,  Is.  ;  cloth  cover, 


Is.  6d. 

Robert  Ferguson  "The  Plotter,"  or,  The  Secret  of  the 

Rye  House  Conspiracy  and  the  Story  of  a  Strange  Career.  By  JAMES  FERGUSON, 
Advocate.  A  Biography  of  one  of  the  strangest  figures  of  English  Politics  in  the 
period  between  the  Restoration  and  the  Accession  of  the  House  of  Hanover. 
Demy  Svo,  15s. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS. 


The  Laird  of  Lag- ;  A.  Life-Sketch  of  Sir  Robert  Grierson. 

By  ALEX.  FERGUSSON,  Lieut.-Colonel,  Author  of  "Mrs.  Calderwood's  Journey." 
Demy  Svo,  with  Illustrations,  12s. 

Autobiography  of  Mrs.  Fletcher 

(of  Edinburgh),  with  Letters  and  other  Family  Memorials.  Edited  by  her 
Daughter.  Third  Edition.  Crown  Svo,  7s.  6d. 

L'Histoire  de  France. 

Par  M.  LAME  FLEURY.     Xew  Edition,  corrected  to  1883.    18mo,  cloth,  2s.  fid. 

The  Deepening  of  the  Spiritual  Life. 

By  A.  P.  FORBES,  D.C.L.,  Bishop  of  Brechin.  Seventh  Edition.  Paper,  Is. ;  cloth, 
Is.  6d.  Calf,  red  edges,  3s.  6d. 

Kalendars  of  Scottish  Saints, 

With  Personal  Notices  of  those  of  Alba,  etc.  By  ALEXANDER  PENROSE  FORBES, 
D.C.L.,  Bishop  of  Brechin.  4to,  price  £3,  3s.  A  few  copies  for  sale  on  large 
paper,  £5,  15s.  6d. 

"  A  truly  valuable  contribution  to  the  archeology  of  Scotland."— Guardian. 

"  We  must  not  forget  to  thank  the  author  for  the  great  amount  of  information 
he  has  put  together,  and  for  the  labour  he  has  bestowed  on  a  work  which  can 
never  be  remunerative." — Saturday  Review. 

Missale  Drummondiense.    The  Ancient  Irish  Missal  in 

the  possession  of  the  Baroness  Willoughby  d'Eresby.  Edited  by  the  Rev.  G.  H. 
FORBES.  Half-Morocco,  Demy  Svo,  12s. 

Forestry  and  Forest  Products. 

Prize  Essays  of  the  Edinburgh  International  Forestry  Exhibition  1884.  Edited 
by  JOHN  RATTRAY  M.A.,  B.Sc.,  and  HUGH  ROBERT  MILL,  D.Sc.  Demy  Svo. 
Illustrated,  9s. 

Fragments  of  Truth : 

Being  the  Exposition  of  several  Passages  of  Scripture.  Third  Edition.  Ex.  fcap. 
Svo,  5s. 

Studies  in  English  History. 

By  JAMES  GAIRDNER  and  JAMES  SPEDDING.    Demy  Svo,  12s. 

Contents.— The  Lollards— Sir  John  Fal staff— Katherine  of  Arragon's  First  and 
Second  Marriages— Case  of  Sir  Thomas  Overbury— Divine  Right  of  Kings— Sunday, 
Ancient  and  Modern. 

Industrial  Exhibitions  and  Modern  Progress. 

By  PATRICK  GEDDES.     Fcap.  Svo,  Is. 

Gifts  for  Men. 

By  X.  H.     Crown  Svo,  6s. 

"  There  is  hardly  a  living  theologian  who  might  not  be  proud  to  claim  many 
of  her  thoughts  as  his  own."— Glasgow  Herald. 

Sketches,  Literary  and  Theological : 

Being  Selections  from  the  unpublished  MSS.  of  the  Rev.  GEORGE  GILFILLAN. 
Edited  by  FRANK  HENDERSON,  Esq.,  M.P.  Demy  Svo,  7s.  6d. 

The  Roof  of  the  World : 

Being  the  Narrative  of  a  Journey  over  the  High  Plateau  of  Tibet  to  the  Russian 
Frontier,  and  the  Oxus  Sources  on  Pamir.  By  Brigadier-General  T.  E.  GORDON, 
C.S.I.  With  numerous  Illustrations.  Royal  Svo,  31s.  6d. 

Ladies'  Old-Fashioned  Shoes. 

By  T.  WATSON  GREIG,  of  Glencarse.  Folio,  illustrated  by  11  Chromolithographs. 
31s.  6d. 

Mingo,  and  other  Sketches  in  Black  and  White. 

By  JOEL  CHANDLER  HARRIS  (Uncle  Remus).     Is.  ;  and  in  cloth,  2s. 


A2 


10  LIST  OF  BOOKS 


"Works  by  Margaret  Maria  Gordon  (nee  Brewster). 

THE  HOME  LIFE  OF  SIR  DAVID  BREWSTER.     By  his  Daughter.     iSecoiid  Edition. 

Crown  Svo,  6s.     Also  a  cheaper  Edition.     Crown  8vo,  2s.  6d. 
WORK  ;  Or,  Plenty  to  do  and  How  to  do  it.     Thirty-Sixth  Thousand.     Fcap.  8vo, 

cloth,  2s.  (id. 

WORKERS.    Fourth  Thousand.    Fcap.  Svo,  limp  cloth,  Is. 
LITTLE  MILLIE  AND  HER  FOUR  PLACES.     Cheap  Edition.     Fifty-ninth  Thousand. 

Limp  cloth,  Is. 
SUNBEAMS  IN  THE  COTTAGE;  Or,  What  Women  may  Do.     A  Narrative  chiefly 

addressed  to  the  Working  Classes.     Cheap  Edition.     Forty-fifth  Thousand. 

Limp  cloth,  Is. 

PREVENTION  ;  or,  An  Appeal  to  Economy  and  Common  Sense.    Svo,  6d. 
THE  WORD  AND  THE  WORLD.     Twelfth  Edition.    2d. 

LEAVES  OF  HEALING  FOR  THE  SICK  AND  SORROWFUL.  Cheap  Edition,  limp  cloth,  2s. 
THE  MOTHERLESS  BOY.  With  an  Illustration  by  Sir  NOEL  PATON,  R.S.A.  Cheap 

Edition,  limp  cloth,  Is. 
OUR  DAUGHTERS  ;  An  Account  of  the  Young  Women's  Christian  Association  and 

Institute  Union.     2d. 
HAY  MACDOWALL  GRANT  OF  ARNDILLY  ;  His  Life,  Labours,  and  Teaching.    New 

and  Cheaper  Edition.     1  vol.  crown  Svo,  limp  cloth,  2s.  6d. 

The  Life  of  our  Lord. 

By  the  Rev.  WILLIAM  HANNA,  D.D.,  LL.D.    C  vols.,  handsomely  bound  in  cloth 
extra,  gilt  edges,  30s. 
Separate  vols.,  cloth  extra,  gilt  edges,  5s.  each. 

1.  THE  EARLIER  YEARS  OF  OUR  LORD.    Fifth  Edition. 

2.  THE  MINISTRY  IN  GALILEE.    Fourth  Edition. 

3.  THE  CLOSE  OF  THE  MINISTRY.    Sixth  Thousand. 

4.  THE  PASSION  WEEK.    Sixth  Thousand. 

5.  THE  LAST  DAY  OF  OUR  LORD'S  PASSION.    Twenty-third  Edition. 

6.  THE  FORTY  DAYS  AFTER  THE  RESURRECTION.    Eighth  Edition. 

The  Resurrection  of  the  Dead. 

By  WILLIAM  HANNA,  D.D.,  LL.D.    Second  Edition.    Fcap.  Svo,  5s. 

Notes  of  Caithness  Family  History. 

By  the  late  JOHN  HENDERSON,  W.S.    4to,  in  cloth,  21s. 

The  High  Estate  of  Service. 

Fcap.  Svo,  Is. 

Errors  in  the  Use  of  English. 

Illustrated  from  the  Writings  of  English  Authors,  from  the  Fourteenth  Century  to 
pur  own  Time.  By  the  late  W.  B.  HODGSON,  LL.D.,  Professor  of  Political  Economy 
in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Fifth  Edition.  Crown  Svo,  3s.  6d. 

"  Those  who  most  need  such  a  book  as  Dr.  Hodgson's  will  probably  be  the  last 
to  look  into  it.  It  will  certainly  amuse  its  readers,  and  will  probably  teach  them 
a  good  deal  which  they  did  not  know,  or  at  least  never  thought  about,  before."— 
Saturday  Review. 

"His  conversation,  as  every  one  who  had  the  pleasure  of  his  acquaintance 
knows,  sparkled  with  anecdote  and  epigram,  and  not  a  little  of  the  lustre  and 
charm  of  his  talk  shines  out  of  those  pages." — The  Scotsman. 

Life  and  Letters  of  W.  B.  Hodgson,  LL.D.,  late  Pro- 
fessor of  Political  Economy  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Edited  by  Professor 
J.  M.  D.  MEIKLEJOHN,  M.A.  Crown  Svo,  7s.  6d. 

Sketches :  Personal  and  Pensive. 

By  WILLIAM  HODGSON.     Fcap.  Svo,  2s.  6d. 

"Quasi  Cursores."     Portraits  of  the  High  Officers  and 

Professors  of  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Drawn  and  Etched  by  WILLIAM 
HOLE,  A. R.S.A.  The  book  is  printed  on  beautiful  hand-made  paper  by  Messrs. 
T.  &  A.  Constable.  It  contains  45  Plates  (64  Portraits),  with  Biographical 
Notices  of  all  the  present  Incumbents.  The  impression  is  strictly  limited. 
Quarto  Edition  (750  Copies  only  for  sale),  £2,  10s.  Folio  Edition,  Japan  Proofs 
(100  Copies  only  for  sale),  £5,  10s. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS.  11 


Memorial  Catalogue  of  the   French  and  Dutch  Loan 

Collection,  Edinburgh  International  Exhibition.  Letterpress  by  W.  E.  HENLEY. 
Etchings  and  Sketches  by  WILLIAM  HOLE,  A.R.S.A.,  and  PHILIP  ZILCKEN.  The 
book  is  printed  by  CONSTABLE  on  wove  handmade  paper,  in  dark-green  ink.  It 
gives  an  account  of  the  rise  of  Romanticism,  a  biography  of  the  principal  Masters 
of  that  School,  and  a  description  of  each  of  the  Pictures.  It  is  illustrated  by 
fifteen  original  Etchings  and  fifty-four  outline  Sketches.  Pott  folio.  Edition 
.  limited  to  520  Copies.  £3,  3s. 

The  Breakfast  Table  Series. 

In  6  vols.     By  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES.     New  and  Revised  Editions,  contain- 
ing Prefaces  and  additional  Bibliographical  Notes  by  the  Author. 
THE  AUTOCRAT  OF  THE  BREAKFAST  TABLE.     2  vols.,  2s. 
THE  POET  AT  THE  BREAKFAST  TABLE.     2  vols.,  2s. 
THE  PROFESSOR  AT  THE  BREAKFAST  TABLE.     2  vols.,  2s. 

Also  bound  in  dark  blue  cloth,  at  2s.  a  vol.,  or  in  a  neat  cloth  box,  15s. 

"Small  enough  to  be  carried  in  any  sensibly  constructed  pocket,  clear  enough 
in  type  to  accommodate  any  fastidious  eyesight,  pleasant  and  instructive  enough 
for  its  perusal  to  be  undertaken  with  the  certainty  of  present  enjoyment  and  the 
prospect  of  future  profit." — Whitehall  Review. 

Also  a  LIBRARY  EDITION,  in  3  vols.  crown  8vo,  printed  at  the  Riverside  Press, 
Cambridge,  with  a  Steel  Portrait  of  the  Author,  10s.  6d.  each  volume. 

A  COMPLETE  EDITION  of  the  Poems  of  OLIVER  WENDELL  HOLMES,  revised 
by  the  Author,  in  3  vols.  [In  the  Press. 

Traces  in   Scotland  of  Ancient  "Water   Lines,  Marine, 

Lacustrine,  and  Pluviatile.    By  DAVID  MILNE-HOME,  LL.D.,  F.R.S.E.    Demy 
Svo,  3s.  6d. 

A  Sketch  of  the  Life  of  George  Hope  of  Fenton  Barns. 

Compiled  by  his  DAUGHTER.     Crown  Svo,  6s. 
One  Summer.    By  BLANCHE  WILLIS  HOWARD.   Paper,  Is.  ;  cloth,  Is.  6d.  and  2s. 

W.  D.  Howells's  Writings:— 

In  "  American  Author"  Series. 
INDIAN  SUMMER.    2  vols.,  2s. 
THE  RISE  OF  SILAS  LAPHAM.     2  vols.,  2s. 
A  FOREGONE  CONCLUSION.     1  vol.,  Is. 
A  CHANCE  ACQUAINTANCE.    1  vol.,  Is. 
THEIR  WEDDING  JOURNEY.    1  vol.,  Is. 

A  COUNTERFEIT  PRESENTMENT,  and  THE  PARLOUR  CAR.     1  vol.,  Is. 
THE  LADY  OF  THE  AROOSTOOK.     2  vols.,  2s. 

OUT  OF  THE  QUESTION,  and  AT  THE  SIGN  OF  THE  SAVAGE.    1  vol.  Is. 
THE  UNDISCOVERED  COUNTRY.    2  vols.,  2s. 

A  FEARFUL  RESPONSIBILITY,  and  TONELLI'S  MARRIAGE.    1vol.,  Is. 
VENETIAN  LIFE.    2  vols. ,  2s. 
ITALIAN  JOURNEYS.    2  vols.,  2s. 
All  the  above  may  be  had  in  cloth  at  2s.  each  vol. 
Copyright  Library  Edition. 
A  MODERN  INSTANCE.     2  vols.,  12s. 
A  WOMAN'S  REASON.     2  vols.,  12s. 
DR.  BREEN'S  PRACTICE.    1  vol.,  3s.  6d. 
INDIAN  SUMMER.     1  vol.,  6s. 
APRIL  HOPES.     1  vol.,  6s. 
THE    MINISTER'S    CHARGE  ;    OR,    THE   APPRENTICESHIP    OF    LEMUEL   BARKKR. 

1  voL,  6s. 

ANNIE  KILBURN.  [in  the  Press. 

TUSCAN  CITIES  :  WITH  ILLUSTRATIONS  FROM  DRAWINGS  AND  ETCHINGS  OF  JOSEPH 

PENNELL  and  others.    4to,  16s. 
MODERN  ITALIAN  POETS.     1  vol.     7s.  6d. 

How  to  Catch  Trout. 

By  Three  Anglers.    Third  Edition.    Fcap.  Svo,  Illustrated.     Price  Is. 

"The  advice  .given  by  the  'Three  Anglers,' whose  combined  wisdom  is  bound 
within  the  covers  of  this  book,  is  always  sound."— Field. 

"  The  work  is  sound  in  the  essential  doctrines  of  the  craft."— Scotsman. 


12  LIST  OF  BOOKS 


Ireland  under  Coercion.    The   Diary  of  an  American. 

By  WILLIAM  HENRY  HURLBERT.     2  vols.,  crown  8vo,  15s. 

"Mr.  Hurlbert's  conclusions  and  criticisms  are  worthy  of  all  attention;  but  we 
attach  still  greater  value  to  the  book  as  a  collection  of  evidence  on  the  present 
phase  of  the  Irish  difficulty,  the  genuineness  of  which  it  would  be  idle  to  im- 
peach. " — Times. 

"Mr.  Hurlbert  is  a  most  acute  observer  and  far-seeing  thinker,  and  his  style  is 
as  clear  and  lucid  as  his  thought.  His  pages  are  full  of  important  facts,  inter- 
spersed with  characteristic  and  humorous  anecdotes.  Mr.  Hurlbert  goes  to  the 
core  of  the  Irish  question  in  a  manner  which,  perhaps,  no  other  living  writer  could 
rival.  His  vast  acquaintance  with  men,  laws,  and  customs  iu  America  and  Europe 
entitles  him  to  speak  with  authority." — Scotsman. 

A.  Memorial  Sketch,  and  a  Selection  from  the  Letters 

of  the  late  Lieut.  JOHN  IRVING,  R.N.,  of  H. M.S.  "Terror,"  in  Sir  John  Franklin's 
Expedition  to  the  Arctic  Regions.  Edited  by  BENJAMIN  BELL,  F.R.C.S.E.  With 
Facsimiles  of  the  Record  and  Irving's  Medal  and  Map.  Post  Svo,  5s. 

Jack  and  Mrs.  Brown,  and  other  Stories. 

By  the  Author  of  "Blindpits."    Crown  Svo,  paper,  2s.  6d.  ;  cloth,  3s.  6d. 

Epitaphs  and    Inscriptions  from    Burial-Grounds   and 

Old  Buildings  in  the  North-East  of  Scotland.     By  the  late  ANDREW  JERVISE, 
F.S.A.  Scot.    With  a  Memoir  of  the  Author.     Vol.  II.     Cloth,  small  4to,  32s. 
Do.  do.  Roxburghe  Edition,  42s. 

The  History  and  Traditions  of  the  Land  of  the  Lindsays 

in  Angus  and  Mearns.    By  the  late  ANDREW  JERVISE,  F.S.A.  Scot.     New  Edition, 
Edited  and  Revised  by  the  Rev.  JAMES  GAMMACK,  M.  A.     Demy  Svo,  14s. 
Large  Paper,  demy  4to,  42s. 

Memorials   of  Angus  and  the    Mearns :    an   Account, 

Historical,  Antiquarian,  and  Traditionary,  of  the  Castles  and  Towns  visited  by 
Edward  I.,  and  of  the  Barons,  Clergy,  and  others  who  swore  Fealty  to  England 
in  1291-6.  By  the  late  ANDREW  JERVISE,  F.S.A.  Scot.  Rewritten  and  corrected 
by  the  Rev.  JAMES  GAMMACK,  M.A.  Illustrated  with  Etchings  by  W.  HOLE, 
A.R.S.A.  2  vols.  Demy  Svo,  28s. ;  Large  Paper,  2  vols.  Demy  4to,  63s. 

Sermons  by  the  Rev.  John  Ker,  D.D.,  Glasgow. 

Fourteenth  Edition.     Crown  Svo,  6s. 

Sermons:  Second  Series:  by  the  Rev.  John  Ker,  D.D. 

Fifth  Thousand.    Crown  Svo,  Cs. 

Thoughts  for  Heart  and  Life. 

By  the  Rev.  JOHN  KER,  D.D.  Edited  by  the  Rev.  A.  L.  SIMPSON,  D.D.,  Derby. 
With  Portrait  by  JAMES  FAED.  Ex.  fcap.  Svo,  4s.  6d. 

Memories  of  Coleprton :  Being  Letters  from  Coleridge, 

Wordsworth  and  his  Sister,  Southey  and  Sir  Walter  Scott,  to  Sir  George  and 
Lady  Beaumont  of  Coleorton,  Leicestershire.  1803  to  1S33.  Edited,  with  Notes 
and  Introduction,  by  WILLIAM  KNIGHT,  St.  Andrews.  2  vols.  crown  Svo,  15s. 

The  English  Lake  District  as  interpreted  in  the  Poems 

of  Wordsworth.  By  WILLIAM  KNIGHT,  Professor  of  Moral  Philosophy  in  the 
University  of  St.  Andrews.  Ex.  fcap.  Svo,  5s. 

Oolloquia  Peripatetica  (Deep  Sea  Soundings) : 

Being  Notes  of  Conversations  with  the  late  John  Duncan,  LL.D. ,  Professor  of 
Hebrew  in  the  New  College,  Edinburgh.  By  WILLIAM  KNIGHT,  Professor  of  Moral 
Philosophy  in  the  University  of  St.  Andrews.  Fifth  Edition,  enlarged,  5s. 

Lindores  Abbey,  and  the  Burgh  of  Newburgh  ; 

Their  History  and  Annals.  By  ALEXANDER  LAING,  LL.D.,  F.S.A.  Scot.  Small 
4to.  With  Index,  and  thirteen  Full-page  and  ten  Woodcut  Illustrations,  21s. 

"This  is  a  charming  volume  in  every  respect." — Notes  and  Queries. 

"  The  prominent  characteristics  of  the  work  are  its  exhaustiveness  and  the 
thoroughly  philosophic  spirit  in  which  it  is  written."— Scotsman. 

Recollections    of    Curious    Characters    and    Pleasant 

Places.  By  CHARLES  LANMAN,  Washington;  Author  of  "Adventures  in  the 
Wilds  of  America,"  "  A  Canoe  Voyage  up  the  Mississippi,"  "  A  Tour  to  the  River 
Saguenay,"  etc.  etc.  Small  Demy  Svo,  12s. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS.  13 

Essays  and  Reviews. 

By  the  late  HENRY  H.  LANCASTER,  Advocate ;  with  a  Prefatory  Notice  by  the 
Rev.  B.  JOWETT,  Master  of  Balliol  College,  Oxford.    Demy  8vo,  with  Portrait,  14s. 

An  Echo  of  Passion. 

By  GKO.  PARSONS  LATHROP.     Is. ;  and  in  cloth,  2s. 

On  the  Philosophy  of  Ethics.    An  Analytical  Essay. 

By  S.  S.  LAURIE,  A.M.,  F.R.S.B.,  Professor  of  the  Theory,  History,  and  Practice 
of  Education  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.    Demy  8vo,  6s. 

Notes  on  British  Theories  of  Morals. 

By  Prof.  S.  S.  LAURIE.    Demy  8vo,  6s. 

Sermons  by  the  Rev.  Adam  Lind,  M.A.,  Elgin. 

Ex.  fcap.  8vo,  5s. 

Only  an  Incident. 

A  Novel.    By  Miss  G.  D.  LITCHFIELD.    Crown  8vo,  6s. 

Leaves  from  the  Buik  of  the  West  Kirke. 

By  GEO.  LORIMER.    With  a  Preface  by  the  Rev.  JAS.  MACGREGOR,  D.D.    4to. 

A  Lost  Battle.    A  Novel.    2  vols.     Crown  8vo,  17s. 
"  This  in  every  way  remarkable  novel." — Morning  Post. 

"  We  are  all  the  more  ready  to  do  justice  to  the  excellence  of  the  author's  drawing 
of  characters." — Athenceum. 

John  Calvin,  a  Fragment  by  the  late  Thomas  M'Crie, 

Author  of  "  The  Life  of  John  Knox."    Demy  8vo,  6s. 

Among  the  Old  Scotch  Minstrels.  Studying  their  Ballads 

of  War,  Folk-lore,  and  Fairyland.    By  WILLIAM  MACDOWALL,  F.S.A.  Scot.   Fcap. 
8vo,  3s.  6d. 

The  Parish  of  Taxwood,  and  some  of  its  Older  Memories. 

By  Rev.  J.  R.  MACDUFF,  D.D.    Extra  fcap.  8vo,  illustrated,  3s.  6d, 

Principles  of  the  Algebra  of  Logic,  with  Examples. 

By  ALEX.  MACFARLANE,  M.A.,  D.Sc.  (Edin.),  F.R.S.E.    5s. 

The  Castellated  and  Domestic  Architecture  of  Scot- 
land, from  the  Twelfth  to  the  Eighteenth  Century.  By  DAVID  M'GIBBON  and 
THOMAS  Ross,  Architects.  2  vols.,  with  about  1000  Illustrations  of  Ground 
Plans,  Sections,  Views,  Elevations,  and  Details.  Royal  8vo.  42s.  each  vol.  Net. 

"  No  one  acquainted  with  the  history  of  Great  Britain  can  take  up  this  neatly- 
bound  volume  .  .  .  without  being  at  once  struck  by  its  careful  completeness  and 
extreme  archaeological  interest,  while  all  students  of  architectural  style  will  wel- 
come the  work  specially  for  its  technical  thoroughness."— Building  News. 

"A  learned,  painstaking,  and  highly  important  work."—  Scottish  Review. 

"  One  of  the  most  important  and  complete  books  on  Scottish  architecture  that 
has  ever  been  compiled."— Scotsman. 

"  The  authors  merit  the  thanks  of  all  architectural  readers." — Builder. 

Memoir  of  Sir  James  Dalrymple,  First  Viscount  Stair. 

A  Study  in  the  History  of  Scotland  and  Scotch  Law  during  the  Seventeenth 
Century.    By  M.  J.  G.  MACKAY,  Advocate.    8vo,  12s. 

Storms  and  Sunshine  of  a  Soldier's  Life. 

Lt.-General  COLIN  MACKENZIE,  C.B.,  1825-1881.    With  a  Portrait.    2  vols.    Crown 
8vo,  15s. 

"  A  very  readable  biography  .  .  .  of  one  of  the  bravest  and  ablest  officers  of  the 
East  India  Company's  army."— Saturday  Review. 

NugsB  CanorsB  Medicse. 

Lays  of  the  Poet  Laureate  of  the  New  Town  Dispensary.    Edited  by  Professor 
DOUGLAS  MACLAGAN.    4to,  with  Illustrations,  7s.  6d. 


14  LIST  OF  BOOKS 


The  Hill  Forts,  Stone  Circles,  and  other  Structural  Re- 
mains of  Ancient  Scotland.  By  C.  MACLAGAN,  Lady  Associate  of  the  Society  of 
Antiquaries  of  Scotland.  With  Plans  and  Illustrations.  Folio,  31s.  6d. 

"  We  need  not  enlarge  on  the  few  inconsequential  speculations  which  rigid 
archaeologists  may  find  in  the  present  volume.  We  desire  rather  to  commend  it  to 
their  careful  study,  fully  assured  that  not  only  they,  but  also  the  general  reader, 
will  be  edified  by  its  perusal." — Scotsman. 

The  Light  of  the  'World. 

By  DAVID  M'LAREN,  Minister  of  Humbie.    Crown  Svo,  6s. 

The  Book  of  Psalms  in  Metre. 

According  to  the  version  approved  of  by  the  Church  of  Scotland.  Revised  by  Rev. 
DAVID  M'LAREN.  Crown  Svo,  7s.  6d. 

Omnipotence  belongs  only  to  the  Beloved. 

By  Mrs.  BREWSTER  MACPHERSON.    Extra  fcap.,  3s.  6d. 

Humorous    Masterpieces    from    American    Literature, 

from  1810  to  1886.  Edited  by  EDWARD  T.  MASON.  Selections  are  made  from  the 
Works  of:  ALCOTT,  ALDEN,  ALDRICH,  BALDWIN,  BEECHER,  BELLAMY,  BROUNE, 
BUNNER,  BUTLER,  CABLE,  CAVAZZA,  CLEMENS,  CONE,  COZZENS,  CRANE,  CURTIS, 
DODGE,  DUNNING,  HALE,  HARTE,  HARRIS,  HAWTHORNE,  HOLMES,  HOWE,  HOWELLS, 
IRVING,  JOHNSON,  LANIGAN,  LELAND,  LOWELL,  LUDLOW,  M'DOWELL,  MATTHEWS, 
OGDEN,  PHELPS,  QUINCEY,  ROCHE,  SAXE,  SEBA,  SMITH,  STOFFORD,  STOCKTON, 
STOWE,THORPE,THROWBRIDGE,  WARNER,  Etc.  3  vols.  square  16mo,  3s.  6d.  each  vol. 

In  Partnership.    Studies  in  Story-Telling. 

By  BRANDER  MATTHEWS  and  H.  C.  BUNNER.     Is.  in  paper,  and  2s.  in  cloth. 

Antwerp  Delivered  in  MDLXXVII.  : 

A  Passage  from  the  History  of  the  Netherlands,  illustrated  with  Facsimiles  of  a 
rare  series  of  Designs  by  Martin  de  Vos,  and  of  Prints  by  Hogenberg,  the  Wiericxes, 
etc.  By  Sir  WILLIAM  STIRLING-MAXWELL,  Bart.,  K.T.  and  M.P.  In  1  vol.  Folio, 
5  guineas. 

"  A  splendid  folio  in  richly  ornamented  binding,  protected  by  an  almost  equally 
ornamental  slip-cover.  .  .  .  Remarkable  illustrations  of  the  manner  in  which  the 
artists  of  the  time  '  pursued  their  labours  in  a  country  ravaged  by  war,  and  in 
cities  ever  menaced  by  siege  and  sack.'"— Scotsman. 

Studies  in  the  Topography  of  Galloway,  being  a  List 

of  nearly  4000  Names  of  Places,  with  Remarks  on  their  Origin  and  Meaning.  By 
SIR  HERBERT  MAXWELL,  Bart.,  M.P.  1  vol.  demy  Svo,  14s. 

The  History  of  Old  Dundee,  narrated  out  of  the  Town 

Council  Register,  with  Additions  from  Contemporary  Annals.  By  ALEXANDER 
MAXWELL,  F.S.A.  Scot.  4to.  Cloth,  21s. ;  Roxburghe,  24s. 

Researches    and    Excavations    at    Oarnac    (Morbihan), 

The  Bossenno,  and  Mont  St.  Michel.  By  JAMES  MILN.  Royal  Svo,  with  Maps, 
Plans,  and  numerous  Illustrations  in  Wood-Engraving  and  Chromolithography. 

Excavations  at  Carnac  (Brittany),  a  Record  of  ArchsBO- 

logical  Researches  in  the  Alignments  of  Kermario.  By  JAMES  MILN.  Royal  Svo, 
with  Maps,  Plans,  and  numerous  Illustrations  in  Wood-Engraving.  15s. 

The  Past  in  the  Present— "What  is  Civilisation  ? 

Being  the  Rhind  Lectures  in  Archseology,  delivered  in  1876  and  1878.  By  Sir 
ARTHUR  MITCHELL,  K.C.B.,  M.D.,  LL.D.  In  1  vol.  demy  Svo,  with  14S  Wood- 
cuts, 15s. 

"  Whatever  differences  of  opinion,  however,  may  be  held  on  minor  points,  there 
can  be  no  question  that  Dr.  Mitchell's  work  is  one  of  the  ablest  and  most  original 
pieces  of  archaeological  literature  which  has  appeared  of  late  years."— St.  James's 
Gazette. 

In  War  Time.     A  Novel.     By  S.  WEIR  MITCHELL,  M.D.    Crown  Svo,  6s. 

Roland  Blake.     A  Novel.     By  S.  WEIR  MITCHELL,  M.D.    Crown  Svo,  6s. 

Our  Scotch  Banks : 

Their  Position  and  their  Policy.  By  WM.  MITCHELL,  S.S.C.  Third  Edition.  Svo,  5s. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS.  15 

On  Horse-Breaking. 

By  EGBERT  MOBETON.    Second  Edition.    Fcap.  Svo,  Is. 

Ecclesiological  Notes  on  some  of  the  Islands  of  Scot- 
land, with  other  Papers  relating  to  Ecclesiological  Remains  on  the  Scottish  Main- 
laud  and  Islands.  By  THOMAS  S.  MUIR,  Author  of  "Characteristics  of  Church 
Architecture,"  etc.  Demy  Svo,  with  numerous  Illustrations,  21s. 

The  Birds  of  Berwickshire. 

By  GEO.  MUIRHEAD.     2  vols.  demy  Svo,  Illustrated.    To  Subscribers  only. 

[In  the  Press. 

Ancient  Scottish  Lake-Dwellings  or  Crannogs,  with  a 

Supplementary  Chapter  on  Remains  of  Lake-Dwellings  in  England.  By  ROBERT 
MUNRO,  M.D.,  F.S.A.  Scot.  1  vol.  demy  Svo,  profusely  illustrated,  21s. 

"  A  standard  authority  on  the  subject  of  which  it  treats."—  Times. 

"...  Our  readers  may  be  assured  that  they  will  find  very  much  to  interest 
and  instruct  them  in  the  perusal  of  the  work." — Athenceum. 

"The  Lanox  of  Auld:"  An  Epistolary  Keview  of  "The 

Lennox,  by  William  Fraser."  By  MARK  NAPIER.  With  Woodcuts  and  Plates. 
4to,  15s. 

Tenants'   Gain   not   Landlords'   Loss,   and  some   other 

Economic  Aspects  of  the  Land  Question.  By  JOSEPH  SHIELD  NICHOLSON,  M.A., 
Professor  of  Political  Economy  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh.  Crown  Svo.  5s. 

Camps  in  the  Caribbees:  Adventures  of  a  Naturalist 

in  the  Lesser  Antilles.    By  FREDERICK  OBER.    Illustrations,  demy  Svo,  12s. 
•  •-'  Well-written  and  well-illustrated  narrative  of  camping  out  among  the  Carib- 
bees."— Westminster  Review. 

"  Varied  were  his  experiences,  hairbreadth  his  escapes,  and  wonderful  his  glean- 
ings in  the  way  of  securing  rare  birds."— The  Literary  World. 

Cookery  for  the  Sick  and  a  Guide  for  the  Sick-Boom. 

By  C.  H.  OGG,  an  Edinburgh  Nurse.    Fcap.  Is. 

The  Lord  Advocates  of  Scotland  from  the  close  of  the 

Fifteenth  Century  to  the  passing  of  the  Reform  Bill.  By  G.  W.  T.  OMOND, 
Advocate.  2  vols.  demy  Svo,  2Ss. 

The  Arniston  Memoirs— Three  Centuries  of  a  Scottish 

House,  1571-183S.  Edited  from  Family  Papers  by  GEO.  W.  T.  OMOND,  Advocate. 
1  vol.  Svo,  21s.,  with  Etchings,  Lithographs,  and  Woodcuts. 

An  Irish  Garland. 

By  Mrs.  S.  M.  B.  PIATT.    Crown  Svo,  3s.  6d. 

The  Children  Out  of  Doors.    A  Book  of  Verses, 

By  Two  IN  ONE  HOUSE.    Crown  Svo,  3s.  6d. 

Phoebe. 

By  the  Author  of  "Rutledge."     Reprinted  from  the  Fifth  Thousand  of  the 
American  Edition.    Crown  Svo,  6s. 
"  '  Phoebe'  is  a  woman's  novel." — Saturday  Review. 

Popular  Genealogists ; 

Or,  The  Art  of  Pedigree-making.    Crown  Svo,  4s. 

The  Gamekeeper's  Manual :  being  Epitome  of  the  Game 

Laws  for  the  use  of  Gamekeepers  and  others  interested  in  the  Preservation  of 
Game.  By  ALEXANDER  PORTER,  Deputy  Chief  Constable  of  Roxburghshire. 
Fcap.  Svo,  Is. 

Scotland  under  her  Early  Kings. 

A  History  of  the  Kingdom  to  the  close  of  the  13th  century.  By  E.  WILLIAM 
ROBERTSON.  In  2  vols.  Svo,  cloth,  36s. 

Historical  Essays, 

In  connection  with  the  Land  and  the  Church,  etc.  By  E.  WILLIAM  ROBERTSON, 
Author  of  "  Scotland  under  her  Early  Kings."  Svo,  10s.  6d. 


1 6  LIST  OF  BOOKS 


A  Rectorial  Address  delivered  before  the  Students  of 

Aberdeen  University,  in  the  Music  Hall  at  Aberdeen,  on  Nov.  5,  1880.  By  THE 
EARL  OF  ROSEBERY.  6d. 

A  Rectorial  Address  delivered  before  the  Students  of 

the  University  of  Edinburgh,  Nov.  4,  1882.    By  THE  EARL  OF  ROSEBERY.    6d. 

Aberdour  and  Inchcolme.    Being  Historical  Notices  of 

the  Parish  and  Monastery,  in  Twelve  Lectures.  By  the  Rev.  WILLIAM  Ross,  LL.D., 
Author  of  "Burgh  Life  in  Dunferraline  in  the  Olden  Time."  Crown  8vo,  6s. 

"  If  any  one  would  know  what  Aberdour  has  been,  or,  indeed,  what  to  some 
extent  has  been  the  history  of  many  another  parish  in  Scotland,  he  cannot  do 
better  than  read  these  Lectures.  He  will  find  the  task  a  pleasant  one.  "—Saturday 
Review. 

"  We  know  no  book  which  within  so  small  a  compass  contains  so  varied,  so 
accurate,  and  so  vivid  a  description  of  the  past  life  of  the  Scottish  people, 
whether  ecclesiastical  or  social,  as  Dr.  Ross's  '  Aberdour  and  Inchcolme.' " — 
Scottish  Review. 

"  It  seems  a  pity  that  so  good  a  thing  should  have  been  so  long  withheld  from 
a  wider  audience  ;  but  better  late  than  never."— Scotsman. 

Notes  and  Sketches  from  the  Wild  Coasts  of  Nipon. 

With  Chapters  on  Cruising  after  Pirates  in  Chinese  Waters.  By  HENRY  C.  ST. 
JOHN,  Captain  R.N.  Small  demy  8vo,  with  Maps  and  Illustrations,  12s. 

"One  of  the  most  charming  books  of  travel  that  has  been  published  for  some 
time." — Scotsman. 

"There  is  a  great  deal  more  in  the  book  than  Natural  History.  .  .  .  His 
pictures  of  life  and  manners  are  quaint  and  effective,  and  the  more  so  from  the 
writing  being  natural  and  free  from  effort." — Atfienceum. 

"He  writes  with  a  simplicity  and  directness,  and  not  seldom  with  a  degree  of 
graphic  power,  which,  even  apart  from  the  freshness  of  the  matter,  renders  his 
book  delightful  reading.  Nothing  could  be  better  of  its  kind  than  the  description 
of  the  Inland  Sea."— Daily  News. 

Notes  on  the  Natural  History  of  the  Province  of  Moray. 

By  the  late  CHARLES  ST.  JOHN,  Author  of  "Wild  Sports  in  the  Highlands." 
Second  Edition.  In  1  vol.  royal  8vo,  with  40  page  Illustrations  of  Scenery  and 
Animal  Life,  engraved  by  A.  DURAND  after  sketches  made  by  GEORGE  REID, 
R.S.A.,  and  J.  WYCLIFFE  TAYLOR  ;  also,  30  Pen-and-ink  Drawings  by  the  Author 
in  facsimile.  50s. 

"  This  is  a  new  edition  of  the  work  brought  out  by  the  friends  of  the  late  Mr.  St. 
John  in  1863  ;  but  it  is  so  handsomely  and  nobly  printed,  and  enriched  with  such 
charming  illustrations,  that  we  may  consider  it  a  new  book." — St.  James's  Gazette. 

"  Charles  St.  John  was  not  an  artist,  but  he  had  the  habit  of  roughly  sketching 
animals  in  positions  which  interested  him,  and  the  present  reprint  is  adorned  by 
a  great  number  of  these,  facsimiled  from  the  author's  original  pen  and  ink.  Some 
of  these,  as  for  instance  the  studies  of  the  golden  eagle  swooping  on  its  prey,  and 
that  of  the  otter  swimming  with  a  salmon  in  its  mouth,  are  very  interesting,  and 
full  of  that  charm  that  comes  from  the  exact  transcription  of  unusual  observa- 
tion."—Pall  Mall  Gazette. 

A  Tour  in   Sutherlandshire,   with  Extracts  from  the 

Field-Books  of  a  Sportsman  and  Naturalist.  By  the  late  CHARLES  ST.  JOHN, 
Author  of  "  Wild  Sports  and  Natural  History  in  the  Highlands."  Second  Edition, 
with  an  Appendix  on  the  Fauna  of  Sutherland,  by  J.  A.  HARVIE-BROWN  and 
T.  E.  BUCKLEY.  Illustrated  with  the  original  Wood  Engravings,  and  additional 
Vignettes  from  the  Author's  sketch-books.  In  2  vols.  small  demy  8vo,  21s. 

"  Every  page  is  full  of  interest.  "—The  Field. 

11  There  is  not  a  wild  creature  in  the  Highlands,  from  the  great  stag  to  the  tiny 
fire-crested  wren,  of  which  he  has  not  something  pleasant  to  say." — Pall  Mall 
Gazette. 

Life  of  James  Hepburn,  Earl  of  Bothwell. 

By  Professor  SCHIERN,  Copenhagen.  Translated  from  the  Danish  by  the  Rev. 
DAVID  BERRY,  F.S.A.  Scot.  Demy  8vo,  16s. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS.  1 7 

Scotch  Polk. 

Illustrated.    Fourth  Edition  enlarged.    Ex.  fcap.  8vo,  Is. 

"  They  are  stories  of  the  best  type,  quite  equal  in  the  main  to  the  average  of 
Dean  Kamsay's  well-known  collection."— Aberdeen  Free  Press. 

Studies  in  Poetry  and  Philosophy. 

By  the  late  J.  C.  SHAIRP,  LL.D.,  Principal  of  the  United  College  of  St.  Salvator 
and  St.  Leonard,  St.  Andrews.  Fourth  Edition,  with  Portraits  of  the  Author  and 
Thomas  Erskine,  by  WILLIAM  HOLE,  A.R.S.A.  Crown  8vo,  7s.  6d. 

"In  the  'Moral  Dynamic,'  Mr.  Shairp  seeks  for  something  which  shall  per- 
suade us  of  the  vital  and  close  bearing  on  each  other  of  moral  thought  and  spiritual 
energy.  It  is  this  conviction  which  has  animated  Mr.  Shairp  in  every  page  of  the 
volume  before  us.  It  is  because  he  appreciates  so  justly  and  forcibly  the  powers 
of  philosophic  doctrine  over  all  the  field  of  human  life,  that  he  leans  with  such 
strenuous  trust  upon  those  ideas  which  Wordsworth  unsystematically,  and  Cole- 
ridge more  systematically,  made  popular  and  fertile  among  us." — Saturday 
Review. 

"  The  finest  essay  in  the  volume,  partly  because  it  is  upon  the  greatest  and  most 
definite  subject,  is  the  first,  on  Wordsworth.  .  .  .  We  have  said  so  much  upon  this 
essay  that  we  can  only  say  of  the  other  three  that  they  are  fully  worthy  to  stand 
beside  it." — Spectator. 

Culture  and  Religion. 

By  the  late  PRINCIPAL  SHAIRP.    Seventh  Edition.    Fcap.  8vo,  3s.  6d. 

"A  wise  book,  and,  unlike  a  great  many  other  wise  books,  has  that  carefully 
shaded  thought  and  expression  which  fits  Professor  Shairp  to  speak  for  Culture 
no  less  than  for  Keligion." — Spectator. 

"Those  who  remember  a  former  work  of  Principal  Shairp's,  ' Studies  in  Poetry 
and  Philosophy,'  will  feel  secure  that  all  which  comes  from  his  pen  will  bear  the 
marks  of  thought,  at  once  careful,  liberal,  and  accurate.  Nor  will  they  be  dis- 
appointed in  the  present  work.  .  .  .  We  can  recommend  this  book  to  our  readers." 
— Athenceum. 

"We  cannot  close  without  earnestly  recommending  the  book  to  thoughtful 
young  men.  It  combines  the  loftiest  intellectual  power  with  a  simple  and  child- 
like faith  in  Christ,  and  exerts  an  influence  which  must  be  stimulating  and 
healthful." — Freeman. 

Sketches  in  History  and  Poetry. 

By  the  late  PRINCIPAL  SHAIRP.  Edited  by  JOHN  VEITCH,  Professor  of  Logic 
and  Rhetoric  in  the  University  of  Glasgow.  Crown  8vo.  7s.  6d. 

Kilmahoe,  a  Highland  Pastoral, 

And  other  Poems.    By  PRINCIPAL  SHAIRP.     Fcap.  8vo,  6s. 

Shakespeare  on  Golf.    "With  special  Reference  to  St. 

Andrews  Links.    3d. 

The  Divine  Comedy  of  Dante  Alighieri,  The  Inferno. 

A  Translation  in  Terza  Rima,  with  Notes  and  Introductory  Essay.  By  JAMES 
ROMANES  SIBBALD.  With  an  Engraving  after  Giotto's  Portrait.  Small  demy 
8vo,  12s. 

"  Mr.  Sibbald  is  certainly  to  be  congratulated  on  having  produced  a  translation 
which  would  probably  give  an  English  reader  a  better  conception  of  the  nature  of 
the  original  poem,  having  regard  both  to  its  matter  and  its  form  in  combination, 
than  any  other  English  translation  yet  published." — Academy. 

The  Use  of  what  is  called  Evil. 

A  Discourse  by  SIMPLICIUS.  Extracted  from  his  Commentary  on  the  Enchiridion 
of  Epictetus.  Crown  8vo,  Is. 

The  Near  and  the  Far  View, 

And  other  Sermons.     By  Rev.  A.  L.  SIMPSON,  D.D.,  Derby.    Ex.  fcap.  8vo,  5s. 

"Very  fresh  and  thoughtful  are  these  sermons."— Literary  World. 

' '  Dr.  Simpson's  sermons  may  fairly  claim  distinctive  power.  He  looks  at  things 
with  his  own  eyes,  and  often  shows  us  what  with  ordinary  vision  we  had  failed  to 
perceive.  .  .  .  The  sermons  are  distinctively  good."— British  Quarterly  Review. 


18  LIST  OF  BOOKS 


Archaeological  Essays. 

By  the  late  Sir  JAMES  SIMPSON,  Bart.    Edited  by  the  late  JOHN  STUART,  LL.D. 
2  vols.  4to,  21s. 


1.  Archaeology. 

2.  Inchcolm. 

3.  The  Cat  Stane. 

4.  Magical  Charm-Stones. 

5.  Pyramid  of  Gizeh. 


6.  Leprosy  and  Leper  Hospitals. 

7.  Greek  Medical  Vases. 

8.  Was   the   Roman   Army  provided 

with  Medical  Officers  ? 

9.  Eoman  Medicine  Stamps,  etc.  etc. 


The  Art  of  Golf. 

By  SIR  W.  G.  SIMPSON,  Bart. ,  Captain  of  the  Honourable  Company  of  Edinburgh 
Golfers.  With  Twenty  Plates  from  instantaneous  photographs  of  Professional 
Players,  chiefly  by  A.  F.  Macfle,  Esq.  Demy  Svo,  Morocco  back,  price  15s. 

Celtic  Scotland :  A  History  of  Ancient  Alban. 

By  WILLIAM  F.  SKENE,  D.C.L.,  Historiographer-Royal  for  Scotland.  In  3  vols. 
Demy  Svo,  45s.  Illustrated  with  Maps. 

I.— HISTORY  and  ETHNOLOGY.      II.— CHURCH  and  CULTURE. 

III.— LAND  and  PEOPLE. 

"  Forty  years  ago  Mr.  Skene  published  a  small  historical  work  on  the  Scottish 
Highlands  which  has  ever  since  been  appealed  to  as  an  authority,  but  which  has 
long  been  out  of  print.  The  promise  of  this  youthful  effort  is  amply  fulfilled  in 
the  three  weighty  volumes  of  his  maturer  years.  As  a  work  of  historical  research 
it  ought  in  our  opinion  to  take  a  very  high  rank."—  Times. 

The  Four  Ancient  Books  of  "Wales, 

Containing  the  Cymric  Poems  attributed  to  the  Bards  of  the  sixth  century.  By 
WILLIAM  F.  SKENE,  D.C.L.  With  Maps  and  Facsimiles.  2  vols.  Svo,  36s. 

The  Gospel  History  for  the  Young : 

Being  lessons  on  the  Life  of  Christ,  Adapted  for  use  in  Families  and  Sunday 
Schools.  By  WILLIAM  F.  SKENE,  D.C.L.  Small  crown  Svo,  3  vols.,  with  Maps, 
2s.  6d.  each  vol.,  or  in  cloth  box,  7s.  6d.  net. 

"  In  a  spirit  altogether  unsectarian  provides  for  the  young  a  simple,  interesting, 
and  thoroughly  charming  history  of  our  Lord."— Literary  World. 

"  This  '  Gospel  History  for  the  Young '  is  one  of  the  most  valuable  books  of 
the  kind." — The  Churchman. 

Tommie  Brown  and  the  Queen  of  the  Fairies;  a  new 

Child's  Book,  by  WILLIAM  F.  SKENE,  D.C.L.,in  fcap.Svo.  With  Illustrations,  4s.  6d. 
Let  pain  be  pleasure,  and  pleasure  be  pain. 
LETTER  from  the  late  Dr.  JOHN  BROWN. 

"DEAR  MR.  SKENE, — I  have  to  thank  you  for  making  me  a  child,  and  a  happy 
child,  for  an  hour  and  forty  minutes  to-night.  That  is  a  delightful  story,  at  once 
strange  and  yet  sort  of  believable,  and  I  was,  like  the  other  children,  at  the  end, 
and  like  Oliver  Twist,  'asking  for  more.'  It  is  something  to  have  written  'Little 
Tommie'  and  another  book  just  published.  With  much  regard  and  envy,  yours 
sincerely,  "J-  BROWN." 

"  There  is  no  wonder  that  children  liked  the  story.  It  is  told  neatly  and  well, 
and  is  full  of  great  cleverness,  while  it  has  that  peculiar  character  the  absence  of 
which  from  many  like  stories  deprives  them  of  any  real  interest  for  children."— 
Scotsman. 

Shelley :  a  Critical  Biography. 

By  GEORGE  BARNETT  SMITH.    Ex.  fcap.  Svo,  6s. 

The  Sermon  on  the  Mount. 

By  the  Rev.  WALTER  C.  SMITH,  D.D.     Crown  Svo,  6s. 

Life  and  "Work  at  the  Great  Pyramid. 

With  a  Discussion  of  the  Facts  ascertained.  By  C.  PIAZZI  SMYTH,  F.R.SS.L. 
and  E.,  Astronomer-Royal  for  Scotland.  3  vols.  Demy  Svo,  56s. 

Madeira  Meteorologic : 

Being  a  Paper  on  the  above  subject  read  before  the  Royal  Society,  Edinburgh,  on 
the  1st  of  May  1S82.  By  C.  PIAZZI  SMYTH,  Astronomer-Royal  for  Scotland. 
Small  4to,  6s. 


PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS.  <  19 

Saskatchewan  and  the  Rocky  Mountains. 

Diary  and  Narrative  of  Travel,  Sport,  and  Adventure,  during  a  Journey  through 
part  of  the  Hudson's  Bay  Company's  Territories  in  1859  and  1860.  By  the  EARL 
OF  SOUTHESK,  K.T.,  F.R.G.S.  1vol.  demy  8vo,  with  Illustrations  on  Wood  by 
WHYMPER,  18s. 

By  the  same  Author. 

HerminillS  :  A  Romance.    Fcap.  8vo,  6s. 

Jonas  Fisher  I  A  Poem  in  Brown  and  White.    Cheap  Edition.    Is. 

The  Burial  of  Isis  and  other  Poems. 

Fcap.  8vo,  6s.  ' 

Darroll,  and  other  Poems. 

By  WALTER  COOK  SPENS,  Advocate.    Crown  Svo,  5s. 

Rudder  Grange. 

By  FRANK  R.  STOCKTON.    Is. ;  and  cloth,  2s. 

"  'Rudder  Grange'  is  a  book  that  few  could  produce,  and  that  most  would  be 
proud  to  sign." — Saturday  Review. 

11  It  may  be  safely  recommended  as  a  very  amusing  little  book." — Athenceum. 

"  Altogether  '  Rudder  Grange '  is  as  cheery,  as  humorous,  and  as  wholesome 
a  little  story  as  we  have  read  for  many  a  day."— St.  James's  Gazette. 

"The  minutest  incidents  are  narrated  with  such  genuine  humour  and  gaiety, 
that  at  the  close  of  the  volume  the  reader  is  sorry  to  take  leave  of  the  merry 
innocent  party." — Westminster  Review. 

The  Lady  or  the  Tiger  ?  and  other  Stories. 

By  FRANK  R.  STOCKTON.     Is.  ;  and  cloth,  2s. 

Contents.— The  Lady  or  the  Tiger  ?— The  Transferred  Ghost— The  Spectral  Mort- 
gage—That came  old  'Coon— His  Wife's  Deceased  Sister— Mr.  Tolman— Plain 
Fisnmg— My  Bull  Calf— Every  Man  his  own  Letter  Writer— The  Remarkable 
Wreck  of  the  "  Thomas  Hyke." 

"  Stands  by  itself  both  for  originality  of  plot  and  freshness  of  humour." — Century 
Magazine. 

A  Borrowed  Month,  and  other  Stories. 

By  FRANK  R.  STOCKTON,  Author  of  "  Rudder  Grange."    Is. ;  and  cloth,  2s. 

Contents.— A  Borrowed  Month— A  Tale  of  Negative  Gravity— The  Christmas 
Wreck— Our  Archery  Club— A  Story  of  Assisted  Fate— The  Discourager  of 
Hesitancy— Our  Story. 

Christianity  Confirmed  by  Jewish  and  Heathen  Testi- 
mony, and  the  Deductions  from  Physical  Science,  etc.  By  THOMAS  STEVENSON, 
F.R.S.E.,  F.G.S.,  Member  of  the  Institution  of  Civil  Engineers.  Second 
Edition.  Fcap.  Svo,  3s.  6d. 

What  is  Play  ? 

A  Physiological  Inquiry.  Its  bearing  upon  Education  and  Training.  By  JOHN 
STRACHAN,  M.D.  Fcap.,  Is. 

Sketch  of  Thermodynamics. 

By  P.  G.  TAIT,  Professor  of  Natural  Philosophy  in  the  University  of  Edinburgh. 
Second  Edition,  revised  and  extended.  Crown  Svo,  5s. 

Talks  with  our  Farm-Servants. 

By  An  Old  Farm-Servant.    Crown  Svo  ;  paper,  6d.  ;  cloth,  Is. 

Walden;  or,  Life  in  the  Woods. 

By  H.  D.  THOREAU.    Crown  Svo,  6s. 

Our  Mission  to  the  Court  of  Marocco  in  188O,  under 

Sir  JOHN  DRUMMOND  HAY,  K.C.B.,  Minister  Plenipotentiary  at  Tangier,  and 
Envoy  Extraordinary  to  His  Majesty  the  Sultan  of  Marocco.  By  Captain  PHILIP 
DURHAM  TROTTER,  93d  Highlanders.  Illustrated  from  Photographs  by  the  Hon. 
D.  LAWLESS,  Rifle  Brigade.  Square  Demy  Svo,  24s. 

The  Upland  Tarn :  A  Village  Idyll. 

Small  Crown,  5s. 
A  Year  in  the  Fields.    By  JOHN  WATSON.    Fcap.  Svo,  Is. 


20  LIST  OF  BOOKS  PUBLISHED  BY  DAVID  DOUGLAS. 

Mr.  Washington  Adams  in  England. 

By  RICHARD  GRANT  WHITE.     Is. ;  or  in  cloth,  2s. 

"An  impudent  book."— Vanity  Fair. 

"This  short,  tiresome  book."— Saturday  Review. 

;' Brimful  of  genuine  humour." — Montrose  Standard. 

"Mr.  White  is  a  capital  caricaturist,  but  in  portraying  the  ludicrous  eccentri- 
cities of  the  patrician  Britisher  he  hardly  succeeds  so  well  as  in  delineating  the 
peculiar  charms  of  the  representative  Yankee." — Whitehall  Review. 

Bosetty  Ends,  or  the  Chronicles  of  a  Country  Cobbler. 

By  Job  Bradawl  (A.  DEWAR  WILLOCK),  Author  of  "  She  Noddit  to  me."  Fcap. 
8vo,  Illustrated.  2s.  and  Is. 

"The  sketches  are  amusing  productions,  narrating  comical  incidents,  con- 
nected by  a  thread  of  common  character  running  through  them  all— a  thread 
waxed  into  occasional  strength  by  the  'rosef  of  a  homely,  entertaining  wit."— 
Scotsman. 

The  Botany  of  Three  Historical  Records : 

Pharaoh's  Dream,  the  Sower,  and  the  King's  Measure.  By  A.  STEPHEN  WILSON. 
Crown  8vo,  with  5  Plates,  3s.  6d. 

"  A  Bushel  of  Corn." 

By  A.  STEPHEN  WILSON.  An  investigation  by  Experiments  into  all  the  more 
important  questions  which  range  themselves  round  a  Bushel  of  Wheat,  a  Bushel 
of  Barley,  and  a  Bushel  of  Oats.  Crown  8vo,  with  Illustrations,  9s. 

"  It  is  full  of  originality  and  force."— Nature. 

"A  monument  of  painstaking  research." —Liverpool  Mercury. 

"Mr.  Wilson's  book  is  interesting  not  only  for  agriculturists  and  millers,  but 
for  all  who  desire  information  on  the  subject  of  corn,  in  which  every  one  is  so 
intimately  concerned." — Morning  Post. 

Songs  and  Poems. 

By  A.  STEPHEN  WILSON.     Crown  8vo,  6s. 

Reminiscences  of  Old  Edinburgh. 

By  DANIEL  WILSON,  LL.D.,  F.R.S.E.,  Professor  of  History  and  English  Literature 
in  University  College,  Toronto,  Author  of  "  Prehistoric  Annals  of  Scotland,"  etc. 
etc.  2  vols.  post  8vo,  15s. 

The  India  Civil  Service  as  a  Career  for  Scotsmen. 

By  J.  WILSON,  M.A.     Is. 

Christianity  and  Reason : 

Their  necessary  connection.    By  R.  S.  WYLD,  LL.D.     Extra  fcap.  8vo,  3s.  6d. 

Shakespeare's  England. 

By  WILLIAM  WINTER.    Is.,  paper,  or  2s.,  cloth  extra. 

Contents.— The  Voyage— The  Beauty  of  England— Great  Historic  Places- 
Rambles  in  London— A  Visit  to  Windsor— The  Palace  of  Westminster— Warwick 
and  Kenilworth— First  View  of  Stratford-on- Avon— London  Nooks  and  Corners- 
Relics  of  Lord  Byron — Westminster  Abbey — The  Home  of  Shakespeare — Up  to 
London — Old  Churches  of  London — Literary  Shrines  of  London — A  Haunt  of 
Edmund  Eean — Stoke-Pogis  and  Thomas  Gray — At  the  Grave  of  Coleridge — On 
Barnet  Battlefield— A  Glimpse  of  Canterbury— The  Shrines  of  Warwickshire— A 
Borrower  of  the  Night. 

Wanderers :  being  a  Collection  of  the  Poems  of  "William 

WINTER.  [In  the  Press. 

The  East  Neuk  of  Fife :  its  History  and  Antiquities. 

Second  Edition,  Re-arranged  and  Enlarged.  By  the  Rev.  WALTER  WOOD,  M.A., 
Elie.  Edited,  with  Preface  and  Index,  by  the  Rev.  J.  WOOD  BROWN,  M.A., 
Gordon.  Crown  8vo.  6s. 


EDINBUKGH :  DAVID  DOUGLAS,  CASTLE  STEEET. 


BINDING  SECTc     JAN21«BO 


PLEASE  DO  NOT  REMOVE 
CARDS  OR  SLIPS  FROM  THIS  POCKET 

UNIVERSITY  OF  TORONTO  LIBRARY 


DA  Argyll,  George  Douglas 

760  Campbell,  8th  duke  of 
A73  Scotland  as  it  was  and 

1887  as  it  is.  2d  ed.