THE LEWIS AND OTHER ISLANDS.
[To THE EDITOR OF THE 'SPECTATOR."]
SIR,—I have often thought that it would be a very interesting and fruitful inquiry, were some good economist, or better, perhaps, a Royal Commission, to investigate and compare the past and present social and economical condition of the four following groups of islands,—viz., the Scilly Islands, the Western Hebrides, the Orkneys, and the Shetland Islands.
All of these groups of islands are remote and inaccessible ; all are exposed to wild and stormy seas.; and none of them have either the soil or climate which promotes abundance in more favoured lands. But yet how different their condition ! Scilly, which in my younger days used to be a mendicant for charity, is now uncomplaining and prosperous. The state of the Hebrides we know only too well; the Shetlands have been, in the last few years, raised into comparative prosperity, from a con- dition which, if I am rightly informed, was not unlike that of the Hebrides, by the uncertain advent of the capricious herring; whilst Orkney is, or was until the last fall in the price of cattle, one of the most flourishing and permanently progressive places in the Queen's dominions. What are the reasons for these differences ? We hear such differences attributed to race ; but if the Hebrides are Celtic and Orkney is Norse, Shetland is at least as Norse ELS Orkney. Soil and climate may have some- thing, but not much, to do with it. Scilly is not fertile ; and if the moors of Orkney have a rather better sub-soil, they are swept by Atlantic gales and have not sun to ripen wheat. Forms of land-tenure can scarcely:be a sufficient cause ; for Scilly, like most of the Hebrides, is owned by a great landlord, and Orkney has, I believe, every variety of tenure.
Is it, as you suggest, that there is over-population in the one place, and not in the other ? Very probably ; but this only shifts the question a step further back. Why is it that one island is over-peopled, and that another is not ? Is this due to wise and beneficent, if arbitrary management, in the one case ? is it due to easy or indulgent management in the other ? or to what other cause ?
Finally, is the difference due to the fact that in Scilly and in Orkney, the industries by which men live—the seamanship, the agriculture, the gardening, and the fishing—have become separated, specialised, and perfected, each practised and developed by separate classes as a separate pursuit ; whilst in the Hebrides and in the Shetlands, the crofter has eked out a miserable livelihood by adding to the precarious harvest of occasional fishing, the almost equally precarious harvest of an ill-cultivated patch of half-reclaimed moor,— " One foot in sea, and one on shore, To one thing constant never "?
These are mere suggestions arising out of repeated, though cursory, visits to these outlying spots. Much fuller and more careful information is needed concerning the facts, as well as the causes. But enough is patent to show that there exists here a problem, of not unmanageable dimensions, the solution of which might yield us some valuable lessons, and might give useful direction to the labours of philanthropy and statesman- ship in cases even more important than that of the unfortunate Western Hebrides.—I am, Sir, &c.,
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