THE SUTHERLAND CLEARANCES.
[To ono EDITOR or en .firocuaron."11 SIR,—It is astonishing to us Scottish people who know the story of our own land to see it practically made out that there were no such things as "clearances" on the Sutherland estates. You might as well deny Waterloo or Magersfontein as being unhistorical. Economic changes consequent upon the great wars undoubtedly set the movement ageing. Between 1607 and 1820 vast depopulation took place in Sutherlandshire, where the "clearances" were "carried out in a wholly bar. barons fashion." Contemporary evidence of reputable men proves this to have been so. A recent history says:— " The miserable peasantry, numbering several thousand fami- lies, were literally burned out of their homes and left to drag out a miserable existence on the seashore or the desolate moor; while their ancient holdings were converted into huge sheep farms, one of which, leased to two English farmers, contained a hundred thousand acres of good pasture land."
We have heard the living echoes of the horrid memories of cruelty and callousness then displayed. It may have been a form of improving one's property and income, but at the cost of pain and misery inflicted on a most worthy people, whose eonnexion with the territory was as long as that of the laird who allowed them to be treated as worthless dirt. Mr. Chaplin is not an advocate of truth in this matter, and even though I do not admire Mr. Lloyd George I admire truth itself rather than Mr. Chaplin. I do not care how much the Staffords
spent on roads or anything else. No man living can deny that they allowed to be perpetrated on their Sutherland estates a crime upon humanity not very much less worthy of continual execration than Glencoe itself. They and their partisans should "let sleeping dogs lie" so long as Scotsmen have a memory for their own history.—I am. Sir, &c.,
SIMPLE JUSTICE.
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