presume to meddle; but I take the liberty of asking your Lordship whether the surrender of the bailed prisoners at Lochmaddy would not meet the requirements of the law? for I apprehend if the parties had not been bailed, they must have been sent to Inverness at the public expense. The parties in question are, I well know, to poor to provide their own viaticum-their stock, &c., having been seized by Lord Macdonald's commissioner, neither have they means to defray the cost of witnesses, which might amount to a denial of justice. When I see the formidable list of witnesses for the Crown (30 in number), the subject becomes still more important to the prisoners. -I have the honour to be, your Lordship's obedient servant, THOMAS MULOCK. LETTER I.-THE SOLLAS TRIALS. To the Right Hon. Lord Macdonald. MY LORD,-Now that the "majesty" of the law of landlord and tenant has been measurably vindicated by the conviction of the poor prisoners from Sollas, your Lordship must not be surprised to find the noble proprietor of North Uist himself subjected to a course of investigation, quite as rigorous as can take place in an ordinary court of justice. As your Lordship's so-styled commissioner has thought proper to impugn indirectly the Christian compassion with which the Jury humanely qualified the stern uprightness of their verdict, it appears to me but just that your Lordship should be held accountable for the statements, as well as the acts of a delegated despiser and oppressor of the poor. I, for one, disdain to descend to altercation with Mr Cooper: but I assume your Lordship to be responsible for all the errors, all the harshness, all the vulgar virulence which abound in a statement to which Mr Cooper subscribes his name. I respect your Lordship's rank-I unfeignedly pity your painful position, but I cannot suffer your Lordship to be screened by the interposition of an underling; as you have made the poor people of Sollas answerable for their acts, so your Lordship must now submit to a scrutiny of your own conduct. No privilege of your order can avail you here; and in your character of proprietor you are as amenable to the principles of truth and righteousness, as your captive tenants were to the common law of the land. years Apart from the studied misrepresentations and prolix mystifications of your Lordship's magniloquent commissioner, the whole case of the ill-treated people of Sollas, lies in a nut-shell; and if your Lordship shall be shewn to be the transgressing party, through sheer ignorance of your own affairs, you must blame your own supineness, instead of finding fault with my freedom. I assert, without fear of confutation, that your Lordships statements (made through your vice-gerent) are wholly incorrect when you allege that "Sollas was not suited for small tenants, from the scarcity of manure, and the nature of the soil." I maintain, on the contrary, from actual observation and inquiry, and from the written testimony of your Lordship's former factor, Dr Macleod, that the experience of more than seventy years justifies the belief that the district of Sollas is well-suited for small tenants, if proper and reasonable encouragement were afforded them. "Up to the 1846, 1847, and 1848, the rents of Sollas were as regularly paid," says Dr Macleod, as those of any other lands in North Uist, which can be proved from the factor's books." It is true that the potato failure threw the people of Sollas, like all other Highland tenants, necessarily in arrear,—and the absolute need of increased corn cultivation, at once demonstrated the inadequacy of existing crops to supply subsistence for the population. But the real remedy for this distressing state of things lay with your Lordship, who, by reducing rents and enlarging crofts, might have secured the continuance (after a period of difficulty), of a thriving and thankful tenantry. But other counsel prevailed, and Sollas was fore-doomed to depopulation, in order that the district should be partitioned among two or three prospective tacksmen, who had found favour with your Lordship's functionaries. And I boldly affirm that these monstrously unjust pre-arrangements lie at the root of all the systematic clearances which disgrace and desolate the Highlands. The old dispossession of Naboth's Vineyard, is renewed on a larger scale by the Celtic Ahabs—and when once a devoted district is fastened upon, or, in other words, bespoke, by some unscrupulous sheep-owner-pretexts are not wanting to colour the tyrannical eviction and forced expatriation of the unfortunate and unprotected peasantry. Thus, your Lordship (per commissioner), having resolved upon converting Sollas into a sheep 66 walk, it follows, as a matter of course, that the people must be idle, ungrateful, and insubordinate; and yet, upon investigation, their idleness turns out to be a reluctance to work in wintry weather, at least six miles from their own homes-their ingratitude consists in not bartering their Highland hearths for a few bolls of meal-and their insubordinacy is chiefly attributable to Commissioner Cooper's settled purpose to consider them as a mob." That a rash young man, flushed with sudden authority, and inflated with professional pedantry, should have been let loose upon the ancient retainers of the house of Macdonald, is not creditabl to your Lordship's judgment; and I take upon myself to aver that the whole scheme of violence to be perpetrated at Sollas, was forcibly, though respectfully, denounced two months previously by your Lordship's factor in Skye, Mr Mackinnon of Corry. And now, my Lord, I come, in order, to the imposition palpably practised upon your Lordship regarding the alleged application of the people of Sollas to be helped to emigrate. In a letter signed "Macdonald," now lying before me, your Lordship states that "the tenants of Sollas, sometime ago, petitioned to be sent to America. Their petition was taken into consideration, and everything having been done to forward their wishes, they now, at the eleventh hour (July 12.), after considerable expense has been gone into for the purpose of carrying out their wishes, draw back, and say they will not move." Confiding, as I do implicitly, in your Lordship's veracity, I must, nevertheless, plainly declare that your Lordship has been made the victim of some unworthy trick, for, on two occasions, the whole of the heads of families at Sollas emphatically assured me that they had never signed-never seen -never heard of any petition on the subject of emigration! I cannot yield to the supposition that fifty or sixty decent persons palmed a rank falsehood upon me, and I therefore conclude that a sham petition was obtruded upon your Lordship by interested parties, "whose wish was father to the thought" of compulsory emigration. As to the expenses contracted to carry out this pretended petition, your Lordship best knows to what extent your purse was drained to promote the ideal project; but one statement made by Mr Cooper, sounds to me very apocryphal, viz., that "the proprietor had arranged to get assistance from the Highland Destitution Committee to the extent of 20s. for each adult, and 10s. for each person under fourteen years of age." Now, my Lord, the contents of a letter which I have recently received from Mr C. R. Baird of Glasgow, entirely negative Mr Cooper's statement; for Mr Baird asserts, that all applicants were cautioned against supposing that the committee would give aid towards emigration unless carried on 66 on a system calculated to promote the permanent benefit of those who emigrate and of those who remain." It being clearly your Lordship's intention to effect a wholesale reoval of the tenants at Sollas, it was impossible that any bona le arrangement could have been made with the Highland Destition Committee. I must frankly avow that, looking calmly and impartially at these proceedings, I cannot avoid compassionating the false position of your Lordship. That a nobleman, hitherto distinguished for liberality and kindness towards his dependants, should shake off all ancient affinities-discard all friendly and patriarchal feelings, and become the extruder from their native land of families who, even in their calamity, do not breathe a reproach against their still revered chief, is matter for serious and saddening contemplation. Is there no hope for landlords but in the expatriation of their humble and attached tenants? Is it a crime that the poor Highland peasantry should still cherish that instinctive patriotism which binds them to their native mountain nooks? My Lord, I entreat you to lay to heart the awful responsibility which belongs to the possessors of the soil. If proprietors are so infatuated as to suppose that all the precepts of Christianity may be violated with impunity in order to subserve their imagined interests-that districts may be depopulated to gratify the greed of some childless grazier or Malthusian sheep-feeder-then be it proclaimed that the doom of ill-administered property is sealed! Neither laws nor soldiers can permanently protect property when the blessing of the Most High is withdrawn from the heritors of the soil: as they mete to others it shall be measured unto themselves. The pitiless promoters of forced emigration may, in the course of righteous retribution, become weeping wanderers from their own princely halls. I conjure you, my Lord, to be wise in time, and to secure safety at Armadale by clemency at Sollas.—I have the honour to be, your Lordship's obedient servant, Inverness, Sept. 21. 1849. THOMAS MULOCK. In the foregoing letter I have abstained from all specific mention of a subject formerly adverted to, viz., the improper interference of the Sheriffs in the matter of emigration, which, however, is an error in judgment not likely to occur again. Adhering immutably to my former views upon this point, justice impels me to add that, apart from his mistaken course at Sollas, the general conduct of Mr Sheriff Shaw is worthy of all commendation. From every quarter I heard testimony as to his impartial administration of the law, and very specially as to his attention to the poor. T. M. LETTER II. THE SOLLAS TRIALS. To the Right Honourable Lord Macdonald. "The wretch that works and weeps without relief Has one that notices his silent grief. He, from whose hands alone all pow'r proceeds, Considers all injustice with a frown; But marks the man that treads his fellow down. Cowper. MY LORD,-In the further prosecution of my inquiries into the miserable state and mischievous mismanagement of property in the Highlands, I see the propriety and feel the convenience of dealing with principals. Provisional commissioners and fugitive factors are not the men for me; and for this, among other reasons, that, although responsible to their own employers, these delegated despots owe no allegiance to the public. Mr Cooper may spoil a steel pen in vindicating the iron rule of Lord Macdonald; but if held accountable himself for the dark doings at Sollas, the wily Aberdeen advocate would soon shift his ground, and plead the lawful liability of his noble master. Therefore, my Lord, I beg you will bear with me while I again address you on the multifarious topics connected with compulsory emigration. Your Lordship will perhaps be inclined to ask, by what title I presume to invade the sanctity of your private interests and personal possessions? My answer is brief, and to the purpose. If your Lordship swayed your own estates without resorting to public bounty, or without increasing the public burdens, I should |