Dr. Cameron's amendment on the Address censuring the Government for
not promising remedial legislation for the Scottish crofters, particularly in the Island of Lewis, came on on Tuesday, and produced an animated debate. The advocates of the crofters, Dr. Cameron, Mr. Sutherland, Dr. Macdonald, and others, preached a modified Socialism, insisting that the islanders wanted more land, denouncing deer-forests and sheep- farms, extenuating the recent riots as either results of hunger or mere advertisements of suffering, rejecting emigration as un- popular with the people, and reprimanding the Queen's Judges for severity. The defence fell chiefly to the Lord-Advocate, Mr. Macdonald, who made a speech of exceptional ability, and Mr. A. Balfour, who boldly repudiated the notion that the State was bound to support its subjects on soil unfitted to maintain them. Both speakers contended that Lewis was immensely overpopu- lated, 28,000 persons living where 8,000 would be an excessive number, that the crofters could not exist even if they were free- holders and had 2300 each lent them, that there was and could be no extra work except fishing to do, and that emigration was the inevitable and only remedy. The Government would assist that, but would step into the breach only with that view. Sir G. Trevelyan supported the philanthropists, though declaring that his party were no Socialists, and attacked the Judges for severity, a reprehensible practice which Liberals have learned from their new Irish allies. The House, however, maintained the Government view by 194 to 133, a majority of 61, which, considering the vital importance of the questions incidentally involved, ought to have been twice as great. Members with sound heads are too careless of the duty of squelching anarchical ideas. How, among Christians, does distress give a right to rob ?
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