University of Virginia Library

What are the causes of the sad aspect of desolation which so many once densely peopled glens of our dear mountain land now present? The subject has been much discussed, for several years back, by the public prints, with a violence on the one hand, and a studied levity on the other, such as might naturally have been expected from the important social interests which it involves. So far as I have been able hitherto to see my way through the social mists and sophistical entanglements of this question, the following points seem clear:—

(1.) The laws of this country, which govern the tenure of land, having been made by the proprietors of the soil, with a view mainly to their own interest, press in many ways unequally upon the tillers of the soil, and prevent the growth of a free, manly, and independent peasantry.

(2.) In any case of collision of interests between the legal proprietors, and the actual occupants of the soil, the latter are certain to be overwhelmed; having, in fact, the whole weight, not only of hereditary law and custom, but of aristocratic influence and legal machinery against them.

(3.) For this unequal pressure of aristocratic predominance against peasant-rights in the rural districts, the political constitution of our Parliament provides no remedy; the men who represent the peasantry in the House of Commons being, in fact, the very persons against whose oppressive predominance an appeal is to be made.

(4.) This unequal pressure necessarily operates with more glaring iniquity in those remote Highland districts, where the conduct of selfish and unfeeling proprietors is at a safe distance from the notice of the public eye, and the comments of the public press.

(5.) In the towns many persons are so connected with the aristocracy, by a thousand ties of dependence, a habit of unmanly sycophancy, and a sort of reverential association, that they are only too willing to shut their eyes to any offences against the natural rights of the peasantry, which the privileged classes, under the sanction of law and custom, may commit.

(6.) With regard to the special point of depopulation, the antisocial and essentially selfish maxim, that a MAN MAY DO WHAT HE PLEASES WITH HIS OWN (a lamentable misapplication of an important evangelic text), bringing as it does the unchastened idea of individual liberty, the pet maxim of Englishmen, to a climax, supplies nourishment to the extravagant notions of proprietors with regard to their absolute right in the soil, in disregard of every consideration of social policy, public order, and human feeling.

(7.) The proprietors of land, in fact, have never been taught the important maxim, that the ownership of the soil has its DUTIES as well as its RIGHTS. They have a very clear conception of their patrimonial interest in the soil; but very dim notions of their moral position as fosterers of local prosperity, and protectors of the provincial population.

(8.) The accumulation of immense tracts of country in the hands of individual proprietors, artificially forced by unlimited primogeniture and entail laws, tends to remove the proprietor to a remote distance from all connection with the occupants of the soil. Absentee proprietors, between whom and their tenants no kindly human tie exists, are multiplied; small resident proprietors are absorbed by unwieldy non-residents; property is managed in large masses by lawyers and factors, who are apt to use the land principally with a view to their own convenience, and the more easy collection of rents; and generally the whole MORAL relation between landlord and tenant is destroyed, while cold, unfeeling, selfish LEGALITY alone remains.

(9.) The utter disregard of proprietors for the population of the districts over which they preside, is shown most glaringly in the practical operation of the Game-laws. These are Acts of Parliament, creating artificially, in favour of landowners, a right in wild beasts—a right contrary to nature, and to the Roman law; and they are now used by the aristocracy undisguisedly for the purpose of turning whole districts of country into solitudes, peopled only by the birds of the air, and the deer of the mountain, to the systematic disregard, and even, in some cases, the violent and inhuman ejection of the native population of the country.

(10.) Cumulatively with these aristocratic abuses, are found acting false notions of a meagre political economy, and false principles of conduct, generated by that inordinate love of money, and respect for merely material wealth, which naturally arises in a commercial country, and is, in fact, at the present moment, perhaps the most perilous and most besetting sin of the nation. The one-eyed contemplation of the mere material mass of “production,” without the slightest regard to the moral character of producers and consumers, and the moral relations that ought to exist between all classes of a well-constituted society, necessarily produces a mania for large farms, leaving out of view the moral character of the rustic population—sacrificing the peasantry, in fact, at the shrine of Mammon, and teaching landlords to consider their consciences as clear before man and God, when they have fixed their eye only on the one unsanctified consideration of raising their rents.

These are my present views of this most important social question. If any person can prove to me that I am labouring under a delusion as to these points, I shall feel much obliged to him. I have not the slightest desire to believe any one of these things, if they have no foundation in the actual condition of British Society. Meanwhile, as a man and as a Scotsman, I cannot refuse to drop a tear of sympathy for the weaker and the suffering party; and shall esteem it only an honour, if stony lawyers and economists shall, for the indulgence of this my humour, baptize me a “sentimentalist” and “a dreamer.” My heart is not made of granite; and I pray God that I may never be so far left to my own devices, as to be capable of intruding into the sanctuary of human suffering with the cold stare of loveless science, or the shallow frivolity of an unfeeling wit.

This, to my taste, almost perfect specimen of a small secluded Highland loch, is situated at the head of Glen Callater, about three miles above the spot whence the ascent is generally made to Loch-na-Gar.