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 66 your own 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,

receiving more or less relief out of the parish rates, were actually paying rents (aye, and comparatively high rents too) to the proprietor, Mr Sinclair of Freswick! Nay, some of these queerly destitute rent-payers are also paying poor's-rates, while receiving quarterly allowances from the parish exchequer ! This is a compound system of illegal jobbery which calls for the most emphatic exposure. Here is a proprietor whose estate has been brought into pretty much the same condition as the Duke of Sutherland's, though, so far as I can learn, not by means of the terrific cottage conflagrations which marked the ducal territory. However, the identical system has been pursued of dispossessing small, industrious, thriving holders of land, and throwing arable straths into wastes for sheep-nibbling. Such of these poor expelled creatures as were not scattered to the four winds, are located upon strips of rocky land, which they reclaim with incredible labour, and on these sterile patches they erect a hovel-a high rent being wrung out of the necessities of the poor-who must have a roof to hide them from the weather. So inadequate are these patches of poor land to support a family, that were it not for herring-fishing, no sufficient maintenance could be obtained. This blind oppressive system has a constant tendency to reduce families to a state of pauperism, and the luckiest (sometimes not the most necessitous) are placed upon the poor's roll, to eke out a subsistence. Now, while I deplore the short-sightedness of the proprietor in pauperising his people, to enrich a sheep-farmer, I have no right to complain of his exacting rents from proper parties-i. e. from parties who can lawfully contract such an obligation with him; but I put it to the Parochial Board-I put it to the Board of Supervision— I put it to the public at large-whether it is to be endured that a proprietor shall swell his rent-roll with tenants who are helped to pay rent out of the parish rates? Let the door be either shut or open. If these people be really destitute, let the parish provide for them as the law enjoins; but it is monstrous that a proprietor should number parish paupers among his tenants. To cut short all cavil on this subject, suffice it to say that several of these paupers have handed me their receipts for rent, signed by the proprietor's factor, and I have transmitted one to the Board of Supervision as a sample of the Dunbeath system.

Improper practices are commonly contagious, so we must not wonder that the adjacent estate, rejoicing in the rotund appellation

of Latheron Wheel, rolls in the tracks of Dunbeath. Captain Dunbar, who, I understand, rents his brother's estate, has a goodly number of sub-tenants also on the parish roll, but who pay their rents with commendable punctuality. The only difference in this case is, the peculiar position of Captain Dunbar, who happens to be chairman of the parochial board—an office which seems to imply some knowledge of the poor-laws, but that knowledge has not, as yet, improved into practice.

Such are the present results of my inquiries in this remote region. I am told, I trust incorrectly, that the farther I proceed the less satisfactory will be my acquired information-Nous verrons. My monitor of the Courier (with whom I have no quarrel) will of course chide me for not knocking at the doors of factors and agents before I "sanction with my name" charges affecting proprietors and their officials. But as I am neither a Times' Commissioner, nor a deputed delegate of Government, nor an accredited missionary of any religious or political body, with what face could I presume to catechise a proprietor or his factor? Who are you? What credentials have you to shew? What part do you intend to take? would infallibly be the queries addressed to me, and I am not inclined to submit to such an examination. Nevertheless, if I could bring myself to believe-as the Courier obviously does -that the possessors of property have a monopoly of truth, I should waive all fastidiousness, and frankly resort to them for verifying information. But I am sorry to be obliged to say, that, where oppressions prevail, the statements of oppressors and their agents cannot be relied on, and that falsehood is too often the adjunct of tyranny. I must therefore pursue my own course, leaving to others such modes of inquiry as they may deem most expedient. I am, Sir, your obedient servant,

Dunbeath Inn, Nov. 1. 1849.

THOMAS MULOCK.

THE DUKE OF SUTHERLAND'S EDITORIAL PANEGYRISTS.

To the Editor of the Inverness Advertiser.

SIR,-I have just seen in the John O'Groat Journal and Inverness Courier, the Duke of Sutherland's explanations regarding the case of the Golspie fishermen, and, though I think with you, that it would have evinced more fairness on the part of those

journalists to place my statements in their columns, yet had they limited themselves to the bare insertion of the Duke's attempted vindication, I should have considered it pretty much in the light of an advertisement free of stamp duty; but, as these respective editors have thought proper to lecture me on my mode of conducting my own inquiries, I must take leave to set them right in one or two important particulars. In the month of March last I was honoured with a letter from the Duke of Sutherland, on the subject of the grant of £3500 voted to him by the Highland Destitution Board, which allocation of funds from a public charity I had, in a letter intended for the Scotsman, strongly deprecated. His Grace, inter alia, was pleased to remark-" If you could have visited this country, and made yourself personally acquainted with local circumstances, I should not apprehend even the sharp scrutiny' you mention." I thought this observation of the Duke so reasonable that I withheld the publication of my letter, until I should be in a condition to judge for myself on the soil of Sutherland. On my arrival (which I courteously noticed to his Grace, and received a polite, though somewhat tardy acknowledgement), I proceeded to effect my objects precisely in the way which any man of plain judgment and undoubted impartiality would, if I mistake not, have chosen to pursue. I had before me the latest information as to the state of Sutherland, furnished by Captain Eliott, who had been sent by the Highland Destitution Board, at the Duke's express desire, to investigate his vast possessions; and I enjoyed a still greater advantage, in the shape of a second letter from the Duke of Sutherland, in which condescending communication, his Grace disclosed to me the astounding fact, that "the amount of expenditure continued to exceed that of twice the proceeds of his estate, and that, instead of his receiving any part of net income, above three times the amount of it should always be, as lately has been the case, expended in the country." As no proprietor could be expected to maintain a useful position under such circumstances as these, I resolved to institute a course of inquiry which might prove eventually as beneficial to the Duke as to his people; and, following up my investigations, I was led to the clear conclusion, that the state of Sutherland-alike ruinous to the proprietor and his tenantry-was chiefly ascribable to the unjust and pernicious system adopted in the commencement of the present century, and of which the public in general have never thoroughly understood