No doubt the clearances were often conducted with a want
of consideration and good feeling which we should now deplore, but that emigration, whether enforced or not, was the only thing to save the Highlanders from a famine such as that which overtook the population of Ireland in 1846 cannot be doubted for a moment. What depopulated the Highlands was not sheep or game or landlord brutality, but, in the last resort, the inability and unwillingness of the people to starve at home when they could live in Canada. Throughout the Welsh mountains nothing is commoner than to find deserted cottages and farms. No one professes that the men were driven from these to make way for game or sheep or for political reasons. They were left derelict just as so many small homesteads were abandoned and stand empty to this day in New England, because the people found something better to do elsewhere. No abolition of landlords or game will re-fill the Highland glens with people. If Mr. Lloyd George wants to do that, his only plan is to tax the people of the towns in order to pay the Highlanders El a week to live in their crofts.
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