LETTER II.—THE STATE OF SUTHERLAND IMPARTIALLY DISCLOSED.

To the Editor of the Inverness Advertiser.

SIR,-In my former letter on this subject, I judged it absolutely necessary to revive, by faithful, though brief recital, the dreadful details connected with the execution of those desolating and depopulating decrees which emanated from the then heads of the House of Sutherland. No feeling of hostile vindictiveness-no desire to inflict irritating chastisement, influenced my mind while occupied in painfully pourtraying the scenes of havoc and misery which, in past days, darkened the annals of Sutherland. I wrote with higher and more righteous aims than can ever be associated with angry or wrathful denunciations. I wished to prepare the way for demonstrating to the Duke of Sutherland, and to all other proprietors of the soil, great and small, that the path of selfish aggrandizement and pitiless oppression, leads, by sure and inevitable results, to the impoverishment, yea, ruin and destruction, of the blind and misguided oppressors themselves. There is a root of rottenness in all systematised injustice, which, after a lapse of time, causes the blossomed iniquity to go up as dust. And this is very specially the case where the civil rights of property are, in their implacable enforcement, ostensibly sanctioned by the laws of men. The true and stable right of property is God's free gift, protected and prospered by God's fructifying blessing; and that boundless blessing secures the righteous and bountiful administration of property, so as to diffuse distributive prosperity among the gladdened gradations of grateful dependants. Such was patriarchal proprietorship, when the Lord had blessed Abraham in all things-making him the honoured instrument of doing justice and judgment, and of conferring inestimable benefits on the generation that looked up to him for direction and liberal succour. I do not gainsay other rights of property though far inferior to the Abrahamic title I mean the civil rights springing from legal institutions established in this and other lands. I admit, as fully as proprietors can assert, that legal rights are enforceable by all the rigours of legal procedure, and that the whole machinery of the law can be put in sternest action to recover rent, or to dispossess the tillers and tenants of the soil. But when functionaries have

wreaked, and tribunals have sanctioned, all the severities of the law, is there no supreme seat of infallible judgment and equity before whose dread decision human oppressors are made to bow? I maintain that there is, and that the Judge of all the earth carries on a course of righteous retribution, which sooner or later overtakes the oppressors of the poor. It is emphatically declared concerning such in holy writ―They shall not be rich, neither shall their substance continue, neither shall they prolong the perfection of it upon the earth. The essential sinfulness of injustice, however cloaked or coloured by law, is a deadly gangrene, which slowly eats away the vital vigour of human power and prosperity. Let not him that is deceived trust in vanity: for vanity shall be his recompense. There is an eternal emptiness in all iniquity which can never be fully fathomed but by Omniscience; still the barrenness of tyranny and covetousness becomes, at certain seasons, so plain a certainty to the minds of men, as to make us wonder at the folly as well as guilty greediness of oppressors. They sow the wind, and reap the whirlwind.

Therefore, in pursuing my course of strictures on the state of Sutherland, I am desirous of keeping firmly and fearlessly in view the signal lesson which is taught by the prostrate condition of the pauperised population of that wretched country. I proclaim the project of coercive removal of the peasantry from the cultivable interior to the sterile sea-margin of Sutherland, to have resulted in a calamitous failure, as ruinous to the interests of the ducal possessor of the soil, as to the hunger-bitten households who were plucked from their long-enjoyed places of settlement, and penally fixed upon rocky allotments. The undisguised drift of the vast plan of compulsory removal, whereby thousands were to be driven from the cherished scenes of infancy and age, was to benefit, by these so-called IMPROVEMENTS, the noble proprietors of Sutherland. Now, after the experience of more than thirty years—the life of a generation-surely we are entitled to examine whether the expectations founded on an executed scheme of violence, extrusion, and spoliation, have been fulfilled to the immediate descendant of the late Marquis and Marchioness of Stafford. Is the Duke of Sutherland enriched by the fruits of the wholesale ejectments which stripped his princely possessions of their human occupants? Is Dunrobbin Castle, though splendidly swollen in the external signs of magnificence, the scene of as much conscious, self-approv

ing, prosperity, as in kindlier days ere the panic-stricken peasants were forced to flee from their conflagrated cottages ? "Huts," no doubt, Mr Loch would designate them, but, nevertheless, the honest abodes of peaceful industry, and as much endeared to their inmates as could be the lordly mansion of Clieveden to Mr Loch's master, which sumptuous structure has been recently consumed in flames as fierce as were kindled under the roof-trees of Kildonan ! In a word, is the Duke of Sutherland wealthier in consequence of all the calamities inflicted upon the indigent thousands who have been ground to powder by the fell hand of intolerable harshness and oppression? Why the plain answer is, that the Duke of Sutherland, by his own shewing, proves himself to be an enormous loser by his Sutherland possessions. Every man of ordinary intelligence can quickly comprehend the condition of an estate which not only ceases to yield to the proprietor "any part of nett income," but requires that "above three times the amount of it should be expended in the country." Why, my Lord Duke, this, so far as concerns Sutherland, apart from other resources, is a manifest case of insolvency. Any estate, like any trade, or business, or profession, which cannot, after sufficient trial, support itself, must be considered as falling under the category of bankruptcy. That the Duke has vast available means drawn from other sources, does not in the slightest degree alter the pitiableness of his posi tion with reference to Sutherland. There pauperism must bear universal sway, for, according to the Duke's voluntary admission, his nominal property renders him no returns.

It strikes me very powerfully that before I close this letter I shall be able to solve the secret of the Duke's deficient exchequer ; but this appears to be the fitting place for enquiring into the Duke's statement that he "receives no nett income" from Sutherland. Now I must be permitted to say that it is high time for the Duke to ascertain who the parties are that intercept his "nett income," for to my certain knowledge his Grace's Rents are paid throughout the length and breadth of Sutherland, with a completeness and punctuality not to be surpassed in any part of the British Empire. I cannot be mistaken on this point, for, in visiting innumerable hovels on his Grace's estate, I found the wretched inmates, however destitute of food, or fire, or clothing, possessed of one proof of probity, the last of a continued series of receipts for rent! Nay more, I saw clouds of printed notices, threatening these same needy

rent-payers with legal prosecution if they did not repay the Duke certain "arrears of grain" delivered from Dunrobin, during the appalling scarcity consequent on the failure of the potato; and the tendered payment of rent was refused, until these said "arrears" should be previously discharged! These menacing applications were almost incredible to me when I called to mind Captain Elliot's dashing declaration that the Highland Destitution Committee had no field for benevolent operations in Sutherland, inasmuch as the Duke had munificently undertaken to provide for the poor of his own people! But the information which I verified while in Sutherland, led me to the clear conclusion that Captain Elliott was flagrantly imposed upon, and I would, in common fairness, add my belief, that the Duke's name must have been unwarrantably used, and his intentions perverted; for who can suppose that a high-minded nobleman would so descend from the dignity of compassionate bounty, as to wring from needy recipients the price of grain proffered to them in their hour of extremest destitution? Be this matter as it may, two facts are fortified by this exposition. First, that although the Duke is so unfortunate as to pocket no "nett income," his Sutherland rents are austerely demanded, and regularly paid-and secondly, that be the amount of funds "expended in the country" ever so large, it most assuredly is not expended upon the struggling and starving natives of Sutherland. Perhaps the enormous outlay at Dunrobin, without and within that superb pile, may help to explain this mysterious expenditure; to which might be subjoined the lavishness that palpably prevails in providing costly buildings for opulent sheepfarmers, whereas the small holders of land have to house themselves at their own expense.

Leaving these considerations to work effectually on the minds. of my readers, I now proceed to that portion of my subject which offers an adequate explanation of the total failure that has attended the cruel clearance of Sutherland. We must keep steadily before our eyes what was really done. The whole of the peasant population was forcibly removed from the finest glens and straths of Sutherland, so that the vast cultivable interior of the country became transformed into sheep-walks, where all agricultural improvement was for ever penally precluded. Mr Loch has dwelt acrimoniously on the rude husbandry of the dispossessed Sutherlanders; but will he venture to tell us that thirty years of en

couragement would not have elevated the habits, quickened the industry, and improved the farming skill of the laborious peasants, who, instead of useful counsel and instruction being afforded them, were driven with ruthless severity from lands which they could have been easily taught to render more productive? This is the just and proper way of considering the subject-whereas a Highland proprietor compares the fruitfulness of the Lothians with his own barren territories, and without aiding or awaiting the progress of improvement, rushes rashly into a systematic extermination of his dependants, and couples with this inhuman process the total annihilation of agriculture itself. We cannot state too strongly the awful responsibility of proprietors who at "one fell swoop" throw land out of cultivation and banish the cultivators. And this was the twofold turpitude of the desolators of Sutherland, which has clenched the calamity of proprietor and people. All progressive prosperity was utterly barred. In the room of hundreds of happy families exercising their augmenting industry on land devoted to the production of food, came half-a-dozen leviathan capitalists, followed by flocks of sheep, destined to browse over solitary pastures which were no longer to echo with the voice of cheerful, hard-working men. Apparently high rents were of course obtained from these extensive sheep-farmers, but here lies the deep delusion-for the largest rent that can be expected or exacted from a sheep-owner is but paltry recompense when contrasted with the accumulation and aggregate of remunerative rents derivable from the different grades of cultivators of the soil. The sheep-owner can have no conceivable interest in promoting any improvements, nor in truth does his calling afford any scope for ameliorations. To see his sheep nibbling wholesomely on the wild wastes which have been made for his personal benefit, is the sole object of a sheep-master, ruling over a region capable of furnishing subsistence to a large population, and of contributing a vast and increasing amount of rents to a wise and liberal proprietor. No rational man denies the importance of sheep; but when sheep are deemed to be everything, and the welfare, nay the very existence of countless families considered as nothing, then are we justified in putting the interrogative of the Lord of Heaven and earth, How much then is a man better than a sheep? Yes, my Lord Duke of Sutherland, yes, my Lord Macdonald, yes, ye inferior proprietors, who are infatuated with the unjust desire of