FAIR RENTS IN THE SCOTTISH HIGHLANDS.
THE Commissioners appointed to decide judicially, upon applications from either landlord or tenant, what sum the Highland crofters ought to pay as fair rent, have concluded their first year's labours. They have transacted a large amount of business, although, notwithstanding they made rapid pro- gress after they had adjusted rules of procedure and had acquired familiarity with their functions, not a third of the work that lies before them has been overtaken. They have transacted it not only with diligence, but also with painstaking care, and, it cannot be doubted, with a supreme conscientious- ness. Moreover, they are excellently qualified for the duty,— the Chairman being a skilled lawyer and a County-Court Judge, whose fitness is enhanced, rather than impaired, by the fact that he is more conversant with every-day life than remarkable for an intimate acquaintance with the abstruser mysteries of his craft, and would prefer, as he deserves, a reputation for robust sense to that of an erudite pundit ; while his colleagues—the one an estate-agent, the other a tenant-farmer—both know the Highlands, their people, their language, their habits, and feelings, and both are competent judges of what the land is fit for, how it should be wrought, and what it will yield. The issue of their action so far, assuming that it cannot be reason-
ably impugned, completely vindicates the strong step of entrust- ing them with such an unusual authority as that which they wield. It shows that the simmering discontent which has long agitated the Highlands was not an abolition of mere turbulence or malignity, but the unrest of a helpless community, perturbed by exactions and by neglect which were alike grievous to be borne. It fastens upon many of the landlords whose conduct has been investigated, or upon the persons to whom they deputed the discharge of their obligations, a worse stigma than that of inconsiderate negligence. In some cases, at any rate, it would be hard to offer a successful defence against a charge of greed or of cruelty. In many, there can be no answer to the accusa- tion that they have forgotten and have violated Thomas Drum- mond's indisputable canon, " Property has its duties, as well as its rights."
The Commission have disposed of well-nigh eighteen hundred oases. These have been selected, on what principle is not very evident, by the Marquis of Lothian, as Secretary for Scotland, whose instructions are imperative, from four counties, leaving in each a great mass of suits untouched, though ready for hearing. They affect twenty-two estates. On all save one, reductions of rent, more or less sweeping, have been decreed. On all save three, large amounts of arrears have been cancelled, the sponge having been applied in sundry instances to the full sum of alleged debt. Overhead the average diminution of rents comes to 31 per cent, on the old figures, while the effacement of arrears reaches to 54 per cent. Some pro- prietors, chiefly, it is cheering to note, belonging to the upstart class of newly rich, have achieved the distinction of superior badness. The two worst instances are found in Sutherland and Caithness. The first is a small estate, the mortgage on which has been foreclosed by an Insurance Company, who are to lose one-half their crofter rental, and have had almost two- thirds of the arrears they conceived to be due to them wiped out. The other estate is also of trivial extent, the recent purchase of a land-speculator, a merchaut and bank-agent in the Eastern Lowlands, who has been subjected to a like reduction as respects annual hire, while the amount he reckoned as past due has been sliced down by 82 per cent. In this instance, the arrears were a very ticklish subject to deal with, for they included some liabilities other than rent, among them compound interest for the periods during which payment had been delayed, and they were vouched by bills some of which the acceptors had been got to sign in blank. In no case does the average reduc- tion in hire bring out the worst degree of rack-renting ; but this one leaves all others behind. Thus, an £18 rental was lowered to £6, one of £14 to £5, one of £11 to £3, and so on, in a style which outvies the emphasis of words as indicative of how rack-renting has been pressed. In Skye, on the property of Kilmuir, owned by Colonel Fraser, a leading Inverneashire Liberal, though not long connected with the island, where the Hebridean disturbances began, there has been a reduction of 42 per cent. on rents, and of 69 on arrears. His neighbour, Lord Macdonald, does not show to much more advantage. He has had 30 per cent. struck off his rents, and 63 off his arrears. Two other cases are remarkable. The one is that of Lady Gordon Cathcart, an English lady who derived possession of South Dist, along with valuable estates in Aberdeenshire and Banffshire, from a former husband ; who has exerted herself with great plenitude of benevolence and effort, though with some unwisdom, on behalf of the islanders ; and who was so con- vinced of standing above reproach or suspicion, that she became a suitor to the Commission, asking them to judge betwixt herself and her tenantry. She did it ignorantly, from a good motive, but through misapprehension. The upshot has been an abatement of 28 per cent. on her rental, and a deduction of 68 per cent, from the nominal sum of arrears. The other case is that of the Duke of Argyll, concerning his island of Tiree. Here, also, there have been petty disturbances, the deforcement of bum-bailiffs, a trial in the Criminal Courts, and some half-dozen men com- mitted to long imprisonments. The agent for the Duke stated, however, that he had been instructed to assist the tenantry as much as he could in placing their claims dearly before the Court. As it turned out, the fulfilment of this promise belied the hope it excited. The assistance rendered took the shape of a cross-examination, which descended to great minute- ness, of every witness adduced, and the starting of numerous objections many of which were ruled to be inadmis- sible. As a consequence, the hundred and thirty cases heard occupied a longer time than any similar number, except where a brace of landlords appeared as their own counsel, and in- dulged in all the whimsies of the amateur legist. The rental brought into question amounted to £1,251. The Commission
found that £922 was enough,—a reduction of 26 per cent. The arrears claimed were £2,717. Of this, £1,191 was struck off, three years being given, as was done in no other case we have noted to pay the balance. The solitary bright spot amid the chaos and darkness which the Commissioners have had to penetrate, is found on the estate belonging to the Duke of Sutherland. Proprio mitt, the adjudgers thought meet to raise the rents in the cases brought before them by about 20 per cent., as compensation for additions made some time ago to the hill- pasture of the crofters, and for improvements made on the crofts themselves by the landlord. Apart from these changes the rents were fair, while arrears were almost unknown.
It cannot be gainsaid that the condition of things which has been disclosed is deplorable. It cannot be palliated or relieved by invoking such considerations as will apply to the general state of agriculture. The two have little in common. Foreign competition, bad seasons, the prevalent feeling of uncertainty which has of late pressed upon the farmer, are not the things that have overmastered and crushed the Highland peasant. Neither are the facts that the cheap and exhausting tillage of new countries must, in the long-run, bring foreign competition to its level, that there is no reason to suppose the seasons permanently changed for the worse, and that the stout spirit which knows not when it is beaten—so that if an old method becomes outworn or fails, it betakes itself straightway to a new one—is as strong and active among the rural population of the low country
as among any other class, likely to help him much. His distress is chronic. Doubtless the agrarian system to which he is subject is outworn, defective, and erroneous ; but the best system would not at once emancipate and lift him up. That he has been oppressed in a style which, if not inten- tionally harsh, yet could not but gall and degrade, is true, for the reduction of rents does not more certainly prove that he has been overcharged than the rescinding of arrears that such exorbitance was habitual, its pinch being unconnected in any essential mode with bad times ; for his life was never much above that of an emancipated negro, or the inhabitant of an African kraal. Emigration would be beneficial ; but you• cannot deport a whole people whose deep-rooted attachment to their fatherland makes them superstitiously averse to exile. An enlargement of their holdings would be desirable : but the depths of their poverty would make the acquisition of sufficient stock almost impossible ; they need to be instructed in the first principles of their calling, so as to carry it profitably beyond the provision of mere household supplies ; and even were the cultivatable land divided among them, they would have to contend with the disadvantages that spring from a climate noted for its humidity, though often variable, and sometimes severe. To regenerate the Highlander, inspiring him with the breath of a new life such as he may live in a happier fashion than was known in his days of fabulous contentment and pro- sperity, must be a work of time, of patience and forbearance, of comprehensive, conciliatory, and seasonable education. Such an education might be given ; he is worthy of it; and the present juncture is inviting, for the order which has prevailed for two or three generations in the land of the Gael is becoming effete and ready to pass away. No more desirable and beneficent substi- tute could be imagined than one which would establish him in
comparative well-being and comfort, where there would be little temptation on the part of industrious folk to interfere with or displace him, and where he would have inducements to work, contrive, and look ahead, even as do his countrymen who have gone forth into the great world. It is a common- place to say that there is no steadier and more respectable population than those who have to wait till next season for the product of their own hard toil in this. The occupancy of such holdings gives the best of all schools for agriculture. The children of the homes make candidates for larger farms where they may get here the training and the aptitudes that fit for Colonial life. It were a great thing, one to be proud of, could the Scottish Highlands be transformed from a scene of penury, idleness, and desolation, into such a place of nurture and serenity.
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