sacrificing hosts of tenants, and supplanting them with flocks of sheep, depend upon it ye will be smitten more and more with retributory judgments in the decay and ultimate ruin of your own property. The liberal deviseth liberal things, and by liberal things shall he stand, but he that oppresseth the poor despiseth his Maker; and unrighteousness and permanent prosperity are irreconcileable with the eternal equity of God.

Quitting the sheep owner's tracts of desolation, let us now glance at the condition of those who, by inexorable edict, have been driven down to the rocky ranges of hills that edge the oceanthat ocean which was from henceforth to be ploughed by peasants exiled from their own arable land! As you travel along the coasts of Sutherland, you notice petty patches of land reclaimed from utter barrenness by the incredible industry and untiring toil -of whom ?-why of poor, broken-spirited labourers, who have been expelled from soils worth tilling, and are now fastened upon sterile hills, where an acre or two is assigned them, whereon they dig, and pine, and starve! Nor have these oppressed creatures any certainty of being allowed to remain on the wretched holdings, which by torturing toil they have exasperated into something like cultivation. More than one instance fell within my knowledge, where the builder of his own house, and the reclaimer of his allotted piece of sterility, has been arbitrarily thrust out of his little possession, without compensation, to begin the world anew. As, since the failure of the potato, no family could possibly subsist on the miserable patches of land marked out by the Duke's agents— may be reasonably asked, how do these poor people contrive to pay rent? I reply, chiefly by means of the herring fishing, which generally lasts about six weeks in the year, though always a hazardous, and frequently a losing occupation. As for the ordinary fishing which furnished the pretext for violently removing the peasantry, under the atrocious circumstances formerly described, the wicked scheme has proved entirely abortive; for if the poor amphibious agriculturists possessed sufficient boats, or fishing gear-which they have not or if little harbours of refuge were provided for them-which indispensable requisites the coast is wholly void of—still the barbarous depopulation of the country forbids all expectation of a market for fish. Where, indeed, could sale or purchase be looked for, when a traveller may plod scores of miles along the noblest straths without discerning a vestige of

it

humankind, except the solitary smoke wreathing upwards from some lonely shepherd's dismal dwelling? The crafty counsellors of oppression were forgetful of the fact, that a trade must also be a livelihood, or the disappointed proficients must wither into indigence; and such is the case with the compulsory fishermen of Sutherland.

Another fatal result of the clearances is the destruction of a

most beneficial branch of domestic industry. In former days, the small holders of land possessed each of them a few sheep, whose fleeces supplied the raw material of homely manufactures, and chiefly a warm and durable clothing, more suitable to the habits of the peasantry, and to their northern climate, than the best wrought products of Yorkshire skill. All the domestic arts of useful manufacture have long since been silenced in the cottages of Sutherland; for the poor are not permitted to have pasturage for sheep, and wool cannot be purchased from the rich proprietors of flocks. And this is the state of things which is made use of to countenance the clamour against Celtic slothfulness and Highland folding of hands! A thoughtless, selfish proprietor, deprives his people of all incentives to industry, and all scope for profitable exertion. He denies them land-he renders the sea unprofitable to them-he virtually interdicts the spindle, the loom, and all the household employments which go to increase the sum of family comfort. He places over them stony-hearted and iron-handed Commissioners and factors, who inflict all the subtle ravage of delegated tyranny, and whose impunity is impregnable, for their position enables them to intercept all redress. One of the functions of such factors is to obstruct marriage. As the proprietor's miserable, short-sighted policy is sure to pauperise the people, the next step is to prohibit the poor from marrying. If a youth or maiden shall be joined in wedlock, he or she is commanded to depart from the parental roof, and the exiled pair are forced to become room-keepers in some village lodging-house! Can it be a matter of marvel, that under all these oppressions and discouragements, the Highlands-and very markedly Sutherland-should present an aggregate of abject wretchedness, where life loses its solace, and labour is at once restrained from activity, and robbed of its reward! Can it surprise the Duke of Sutherland, if he seriously considers the pernicious principles of the system which his agents are constantly employed in enforcing, that he has no

"nett income"-no thriving tenantry of the humbler classes-no prospects of prosperity before him-no gratifying reminiscences to cheer and support him? He has a palatial residence at Dunrobin -and he has half a dozen sheep-feeding satraps lording it over his once peopled, but now deserted inheritance-and positively this is all that can be said of the princely possessions of Sutherland.

I am aware that the Duke of Sutherland may, perhaps, count me his enemy for depicting with such plainness and sincerity the true condition of his vast estate in Scotland; but I firmly believe the great truth, that he that rebuketh a man, afterwards shall find more favour than he that flattereth with the tongue. I hold myself to be the Duke's best friend; for I have had the honest hardihood to press upon his attention facts and considerations which, I fear, have been studiously withheld from him. I have recalled to his reflective notice the evils committed by the erring advisers of his Grace's parents; and in the present letter I have sought to shew, beyond the power of contradiction, that the same unrighteous system which removed the ancient land-marks-set fire to the dwellings of the poor-and scattered the houseless wanderers into barren corners, where even thrift cannot thrive-now re-acts retributively on the proprietors for whose behoof these enormities were originally planned and perpetrated. There was no lack of law to enforce injustice, and to shield the instruments of oppression, but the gospel was set at nought by the instigators of wrong, and the God of the gospel now avenges the despisal of his grace and truth. He will no longer suffer the oppression to wear even the semblance of prosperity. The Duke of Sutherland, so far as relates to his Highland possessions, is a poor nobleman. Lord Macdonald is a still more indigent aristocratic proprietor, the veriest serf of a sordid banking establishment. Scores of other Highland proprietors are steeped to the lips in the most distressing and degrading embarrassments; and wherefore? I tell them the mournful secretthey are poor, because they oppress the poor-and oppression takes every day a sterner shape from the love of ostentatious expenditure, which menaces the higher classes with wide-spread, remediless ruin. My heart's desire is to see that ruin averted by timely retrenchment, which, among innumerable good results, would enable proprietors to seek the welfare of their dependents. How the Sutherland estate might be relieved and retrieved, and her people rendered comfortable and contented-conducing by their

fruitful industry to the real prosperity of their Ducal benefactor(should he be inclined to occupy that blessed position)-may probably, at no distant date, constitute the subject-matter of another communication.-I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

Inverness, Dec. 7. 1849.

THOMAS MULOCK.

P.S. As I have named Lord Macdonald in the foregoing letter, let me express a hope that his Lordship has not (as rumoured) given in his adhesion to a fresh persecution of the poor people of Sollas, to be executed by that singularly lawless lawyer, Mr Cooper. If the report turns out to be true, I trust to be favoured with the facility of communicating, through your columns, some particulars relating to Lord Macdonald as a proprietor, which, from motives of compassion towards his Lordship, I have hitherto withheld from the public. My advice to the Sollas sufferers is, to endure patiently the oppressions which may be additionally heaped upon them—to resist no legal process-but to reject, with one voice, the tender mercies of compulsory emigration, under the frightful auspices of Mr Commissioner Cooper.

T. M.

JUGGLING MAL-ADMINISTRATION OF THE POOR-LAW IN THE

HIGHLANDS.

[From the Inverness Advertiser of Nov. 6. 1849.]

To the Editor of the Inverness Advertiser.

SIR,-Pending the publication of my views on the state of Sutherland (enlarged by Caithness contemplations), I wish to avail myself of your widely-circulating columns to expose a most unjust system, which has grown out of the perversion of the Poor-Law Amendment Act. To render the subject fairly intelligible to all your readers, I would premise, that the true tenor of the act is to provide sufficient food, clothing, and lodging, for those among the poor who are proveably shewn to be destitute, and who cannot obtain support without public aid. For such destitute persons, and for such only, the law assigns adequate relief out of parochial rates, to be levied according to a just valuation of property within the parish. Nothing seems clearer than this simple statutory provision, and yet, in practice, the law is almost a nullity throughout

Scotland. The fact is, that in this country they have the English poor-law, without the English poor-law machinery, viz., the workhouse test, and the result is a blind confusion, blended with rank injustice, leaving nothing certain but the fearful increase of poors'rate. It is true, there is a Board of Supervision, of which two able men (Sir John M'Neil and Mr Smythe) are the most responsible members; but it becomes every day more hopelessly evident, that the Legislature failed to give the Board such a quantum of controlling power as would tend to secure the due working out of the Poor-Law Amendment Act. The Board, not possessing a clear initiative in promoting a sound system, they are chiefly employed in endeavouring (by means of unheeded correspondence) to undo the errors, and worse than errors, which parochial boards have unwarily or corruptly committed. No proof more striking could be furnished of the powerlessness of the Board of Supervision than what has occurred in your own 66 gude toun" of Inverness, the paupers famishing, while the parochial authorities were squabbling-(the latter a sort of hocus pocus, in which the Rev. Mr Clark appears to be chief conjurer)—and the Edinburgh Board contenting themselves with interpreting their own letters, instead of taking steps to enforce the law, by sending down a sub-commissioner to take the starving paupers before the Sheriff. Such being the feeble jurisdiction of the Board of Supervision, it is no marvel that abuses of the strangest character should everywhere meet the notice of even a cursory enquirer. In rambling through parts of Sutherland, I saw enough to assure me that the scope of the poorlaw system was totally misapprehended, and I supplied the Edinburgh Board with information which, it is probable, they have not power to act upon; but in Caithness I have fully ascertained a condition of things so reprehensible, as to make it desirable that the whole case should go at once before the public. I write in the parish of Dunbeath, forming part of the combination of Latheron. The poor-rate assessment is 1s. 6d. in the pound, collected with sufficient sternness-as attested by scores of summonses which I have seen to-day-some indigent rate-payers having to beg or borrow in order to discharge the rate and legal expenses. As the law is thus rigorously enforced towards needy defaulters, it would be but fair to expect that an equal measure of justice should be dealt out towards the opulent; but what was my astonishment, in the course of my enquiries, to find that a large number of paupers,