THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES. [To ma EDITOR 07 TIM ..SPECTATOR.1 SIR,—Your
reviewer of Mr. Mackenzie's book, The History of the Highland Clearances, in your last issue, has somehow let the following sentence slip in "He prints another narrative from a Reverend Donald Sage, who was a. tutor in MacKid's family, and therefore—it is a reasonable presumption—drew his facts from the same source." This is, indeed, curious on the part of anyone who essays a review of a book on the High- land clearances. "A Reverend Donald Sage" was the author of Memorabilia Domestica, or Parish Life in the North of Scotland—a valuable and authoritative book, known to most people. His authority in regard to the clearances does not rest on the fact that he was for about a year tutor in Sheriff- Substitute MacKid's family, but on this—that he was the Missionary-Minister of the Church of Scotland in the very district where the fateful clearance of 1819—the climax of the others—took place, and was summoned to quit his manse, and bad to give up his work, on account of it. Chap. xvi. of Mr. Sage's book deals with the matter in which he had so dis- tressing a part. From its detailed account of persons and places, the unadorned tale of ruthless tragedy will provide rather upsetting reading for your reviewer.—I am, Sir, ho.,
"The extract from Mr. Sage given in Mr. Mackenzie's book in not calculated to impress the reader with the trustworthiness of that 'eyewitness.' He repeats vaguely the charges against the factor in connexion with the 1814 clearances, charges which failed utterly in a Court of Law, and which Sage's own employer admitted to be 'absolute falsehoods.' In dealing with the 1819 clearances he credits them to two agents of the Sutherland estate, but one of these agents resigned in 1816 and the other in ISIS. He was no doubt an excellent minister, but I cannot think him a trust- worthy historian."
—En. Spectator.]
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