question; for the proprietor employs no labourers, and sheepfarmers require only a few shepherds. As in despite of the most rigorous regulations, lawful marriage cannot be effectually checked, and families still follow the law of increase, the result is, that human beings are doubled down, if I may so express myself, into a state of constrained slothfulness, and consequent starvation, while they gaze with ghastly desperation on vast breadths of cultivable land, which they are forbidden to render fruitful! "Oh, but they have no capital," Mr Baillie, eyeing his banker's book, would, no doubt, complacently inform us. But I tell Mr Baillie, that where stalwart arms can be profitably exercised in increasing the productive power of the soil, a more useful capital is in course of organization than ever slept in the coffers of the sons of usury! If Mr Baillie could be prevailed on to let sufficient land at a moderate rate-(not two pounds per acre, as at present)-Glenelg would not importune him for capital, but, on the contrary, would, in the shape of augmenting, aggregate rent, soon minister very gratifyingly to his accumulations.

My letter has grown into such length, that I cannot claim additional space for commenting on the emigrations which have rid Glenelg of portions of her population, without, in the smallest degree, relieving the wretchedness of the sufferers who remain. And this will be found constantly the case wherever the consequences of compulsory emigration are truthfully tracked. The real drift of those proprietors who would force on emigration, is not to abridge the number of the peasantry, but to sweep all population from off their estates. They are enamoured of sheep-walks, and they dread the possible retribution of the poor-law-avenging upon proprietors the discouragement of industry, which is one of the chief causes of pauperisation. Therefore it is that ship-loads of exiled natives would not render the condition of the Glenelg remnant a whit more endurable. Not a single croft would be enlarged, although hundreds of expelled crofters should be carried across the Atlantic, and die of famine or fever in the wilds of Canada. But this subject is so fruitful in important themes, that I shall take care to revive it ere long.-I am, Sir, your obedient servant, THOMAS MULOCK.

Inverness, December 13. 1849.

THE EMIGRATIONS FROM LOCHALSH, GLENELG, and soUTH UIST.

To the Editor of the Inverness Advertiser.

SIR,-It was not my intention to return so speedily to this subject, but a sense of justice impels me to clear up many topics which I plainly perceive are clouded and confounded by the erring zeal of divers ill-informed writers in the Edinburgh journals. In these palmy days of the pen, there appears to me to be no small danger that the cause of truth may be overlaid and sacrificed by a surplusage of scribbling. We have large classes of practised penmen who seize upon topics which agitate the public mind-praise or pay being the legitimate stimulants, and yet whose lucubrations, however clever or influential, lack the essence of real usefulness, namely, that comprehensive impartiality which studies to embrace all sides of the subject. This may, at first sight, be deemed a high and hard requirement; but on juster consideration it will be found to consist in simply adhering to truth.

In the angry discussions to which the subject of Highland clearances and emigrations has given rise, a new element of contention has been introduced, in the shape of a grave charge against the Highland Destitution Committee; and it is boldly and confidently alleged by some persons of polemical and popular note, that the committee have abused their trust by concertedly co-operating with certain proprietors to promote compulsory emigration. Now I do not feel myself at all disposed to come forward as the champion of the Highland Destitution Committee, whose errors and shortcomings I have frequently exposed, and shall never shrink from publicly pointing out; but I must frankly avow my persuasion, founded on a personal knowledge of the subject of Highland emigrations, that the charge preferred by Dr Begg and others is not sustainable. It is one thing to write at an Edinburgh desk, or to declaim from an Edinburgh platform, upon the stirring theme of Highland oppression; but it is quite another thing to lay before the public well-considered details derived from honest, searching inquiries, made on the spot-gathered from all quarters-compared, and sifted, and modified, so as to justify clear, general conclusions. Whether my own communications come up to the mark on these points, it is not for me to presume; but I can conscientiously declare, that I have spared no pains to qualify myself for investigat

ing the true state of things in the Highlands; and my very strangership has been of service to me; for, if I have had more to learn, I have not had to divest myself of either the antipathies or the predilections which cleave closely, though, I admit, naturally, to the mind and affections of the Scottish people.

So far as my enquiries extended-and I travelled in the tracks of emigration operations-the nature of the aid afforded by the Highland Destitution Committee was as follows. In the districts which became the scene of emigration movements, great poverty palpably prevailed; and on reference to documents, it would be evidently seen that the bulk of the population were inscribed on the relief lists of the Highland Destitution Committee. When any special scheme of emigration was arranged between proprietors and the parties consenting to emigrate, then the question arose, how far the funds of the committee could be made available in contributing to the sustentation of the voyaging exiles? Now, admitting that the emigrants had been on the relief lists, and must inevitably have continued so if no departures took place from districts where destitution so fearfully existed; where, I would ask, was the guiltiness in advancing, as a viaticum for a voyage, such an amount as would have been infallibly expended on families if they remained in this country? I, for one, do not believe, because I am furnished with no proof, that a single plan of emigration originated in a compact made between a proprietor and the Highland Destitution Committee. No case ever came under my examination, which did not fully prove that emigration would have unavoidably taken place if the Highland Board had declined to supply any succour. It is true that certain stipulations accompanied the grants of the committee, which, in practice, turned out wholly inoperative, as I shall presently explain; but this only serves to show the scandalous bad faith of the delinquent proprietors, not surely the ill intentions of the committee, although the credulity of the latter may be open to censure.

The emigrations from the Highlands would, I am convinced, have taken place, if the Highland Destitution Committee had never commanded a single sixpence. It is to the gross mal-administration of property in the Highlands that we must look for the solution of that want, and wretchedness, and oppression which, when hideously matured, make way for the expatriation of despairing, mourning multitudes. Some adventurous individuals,

greedy of change, and full of the spirit of enterprise, may recklessly transfer themselves to other lands; but to suppose that numerous families would, as a matter of choice, sever themselves from their loved native soil, abolish all the associations of local and patriotic sentiment, fling to the winds every endearing recollection connected with the sojourning spot of vanished generations, and blot themselves, as it were, out of the book of "home-born happiness," is an hypothesis too unnatural to be encouraged by any sober, wellregulated mind. To satisfy myself upon this subject, I went practically to work. At Glenelg, I assembled some forty or fifty heads of families who had signed an agreement to emigrate, and who had sold off every little article of property, in order to prepare themselves for embarkation in a vessel which Mr Baillie's factor failed to provide for them, and who, in consequence of this breach of promise, are now suffering the pangs of starvation. I asked these poor, perfidiously-treated creatures, if, notwithstanding all their hardships, they were willing emigrants from their native land? With one voice, they assured me, that nothing short of the absolute impossibility of obtaining land or employment at home could drive them to seek the doubtful benefits of a foreign shore. I enquired if a sufficiency of land for the support of a family, held at a reasonably reduced rent, would not quench all thoughts of emigration; and the hearty response I received almost led me to wish that I were for half a day Mr Baillie's commissioner, authorised to do permanent good to proprietor and people. So far from emigration being at Glenelg, or Lochalsh, or South Uist, a spontaneous movement, springing out of the wishes of the peasantry, I aver it to be, on the contrary, the product of desperation-the calamitous light of hopeless oppression visiting their sad hearts. Let us look with compassionate eyes into the actual condition of our fellow-men, holding small patches of land on the estates of Mr Lillingston, Mr Baillie, and Colonel Gordon, and we shall quickly discern an aggregate of wretchedness clearly traceable to the amazing impolicy, yea, suicidal wrong-doing of these respective proprietors. I do not pretend to say that the miserable peasantry are without fault-they have, one and all of them, enough of sin to ensure suffering-but the sinnership of the poor does not extenuate the sinful oppression of the rich; and instead of bringing black indictments against their dependants, it would be well if landlords

examined their own ways, so as to exonerate themselves from the imputation of sordidness and tyranny.

It should be always borne in mind that power and property in land are synonymous terms. No monarch rigorously ruling on an absolutist throne has a tithe of the potency to persecute that is presently possessed by a Highland proprietor. The Russian or Austrian autocrat may visit political offences with an iron hand; ; but, apart from politics, or it may be superstition, the social relations of life are uninvaded by the diademed despot! But go to Lochalsh, cross over to Glenelg, penetrate into South Uist (known localities for transforming tenants into emigrants), and you will find a despotism at work which forces its way into every hovel where human beings are imperfectly sheltered. If a peasant has not land, he is void of all means of obtaining a livelihood suitable to his agricultural position. The territorial sovereign (tyrant some would call him) sternly refuses a sufficiency of land, and to this churlish edict the wretched serf must sorrowfully submit. The patch of land is probably to be reclaimed, at all events to be improved, a high rent is imposed, and as for certainty of occupation by means of a lease, the bare supposition is utterly scouted, aye, even by men who babble about improving the crofter-system. Then follow innumerable restrictions and regulations, such as Mr Lillingston has compiled into a code, or such as Mr Baillie or Colonel Gordon continue to inflict without the formality of print or publication. The poor peasants are relentlessly pursued into all the recesses of humble life. To displease a pompous, arrogant, ignorant factor, is to be a lost man. Some unjust pretext is seized, and a whole family is marked for destruction-the landlord knowing little, and caring less about the penal changes inflicted by his agents. An industrious man, by unceasing efforts, causes a piece of rocky, or mossy, or marshy land to wear the aspect of cultivation; some favourite of the factor is substituted for the hard-working tenant, who is driven to some distant hill or bog, to commence a fresh career of exertion, and to be again defrauded of its fruits! The oppressions connected with grazing land are almost beyond belief, and the rents exacted at Lochalsh and elsewhere, by noticing the need of milk for eking out family food, are quite unjustifiable. Wherever there is any facility for fishing, it is plain that landlords consider it as an element of the rent of land, instead