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The Problem of Highland Discontent, 1880–1885

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  12 February 2009

H. J. Hanham
H. J. Hanham
Affiliation:
University of Edinburgh
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Extract

After the rising of 1745 the Highlands were rapidly tamed: within quite a short period the young men who in a past generation would have rallied to the support of their chiefs in domestic disputes, were gradually drawn off to fight in foreign wars, to settle in the colonies, or to help govern India. By the time of the great Sutherland clearances of 1807–20 the Highlands had been so far pacified that scarcely a hand was raised against the destruction of much-loved homes. Gradually the impression got abroad that the descendants of Rob Roy were gentle creatures, a bit rough perhaps in their habits, but easily domesticated and loyal to the powers that be in church and state. And this impression seemed to be confirmed by Queen Victoria's experiences at Balmoral, and by the friendly reception given to the wealthy tourists whom the works of Sir Walter Scott lured to the Highlands.

Type
Research Article
Information
Transactions of the Royal Historical Society , Volume 19 , December 1969 , pp. 21 - 65
Copyright
Copyright © Royal Historical Society 1969

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References

page 21 note 1 P.R.O. Cab. 37/18/42, f.2.

page 22 note 1 The Scotsman, 4, 5, 11 June and 24 July 1883. The Scotsman called this ‘the Sunday war in the Highlands’.

page 22 note 2 The following Highland constituencies were fought by crofter or land reform candidates in 1885 or 1886. Argyll (D. H. Macfarlane elected 1885 defeated 1886; J. S. MacClaig, defeated 1885), Caithness (G. B. Clark elected 1885, 1886), Inverness–shire (C. Fraser–Mackintosh elected 1885, 1886), Ross and Cromarty (R. McDonald elected 1885, 1886), Sutherland (Angus Sutherland defeated 1885, elected 1886). In addition W. S. McLaren (Inverness District) and J. M. Cameron (Wick District) were committed land reformers.

page 22 note 3 Cp. Celtic Magazine, vii, 396.

page 23 note 1 For the political character of the Irish no–rent campaign of 1881 see Palmer, N. B., The Irish Land League Crisis (New Haven, 1940), p. 297.Google Scholar

page 23 note 2 Cameron, James, The Old and the New Highlands & Hebrides, from the Days of the Great Clearances to the Pentland Act of 1912 (Kirkcaldy, 1912), p. 51; and Norman Maclean, The Former Days (1945), Ch. 5.Google Scholar

page 24 note 1 Celtic Magazine, x, 203.

page 24 note 2 The other essential account is contained in the memoirs of Norman Maclean, who was a boy living at the Braes in 1882, The Former Days (1945).

page 24 note 3 Ibid., pp. 93–6.

page 24 note 4 Lachlan Macdonald, a famous improving Skye landlord, gives the following account of the origins of the Braes expedition. ‘No doubt, the cry that“Mr. Gladstone has ruined Ireland; he will ruin Scotland next”, had a great deal to do with it. The landocracy generally believed this at heart; and the county officials, led by the rumours of demonstrative resistance on the part of certain crofters in the Island, concluded they were on the verge of an agrarian revolution, and evidently made up their minds to act promptly, and with decision, and stamp out quickly the first germs of anything like the Irish disease that might show itself on this side of the Channel.’Celtic Magazine, vii, 394.

page 30 note 1 The version of Gow's despatch printed here is taken from Mackenzie, Alexander, The History of the Highland Clearances (Inverness, 1883), pp. 427–33.Google Scholar

page 30 note 2 For a list of the correspondents see Celtic Magazine, vii, 344.

page 30 note 3 The history of this book is something of a bibliographical curiosity. Alexander Mackenzie was a well–known antiquary, genealogist, draper, journalist and publisher. The first version was published in the form of a 48–page pamphlet as The Highland Clearances: or, a strange return by the Highland chiefs for the fidelity of the clans: being an account of the Glengarry, Strathglass, Kintail, Glenelg, Skye, Uist, Barra, Coigeach, Sutherland, and other evictions in the Highlands since the Battle of Culloden: with an appendix on the Highland crofters: reprinted, revised, and extended from the Aberdeen ‘Daily Free Press’, 48 pp. (Inverness, A. & W. Mackenzie, 1881). To this pamphlet Mackenzie in January 1883 added a series of reports from the Celtic Magazine, of which he was editor, a reprint of Donald Macleod's Gloomy Memories of the Highlands, and some introductory matter, and published the result as The History of the Highland Clearances; containing a reprint of Donald Macleod's ‘Gloomy Memories of the Highlands’; Isle of Skye in 1882; and a verbatim report of the trial of the Braes crofters (Inverness, A. & W. Mackenzie, 1883), which ran to 528 pages. The sections of the History of the Highland Clearances relating to Skye, which occupy pages 407–514, were subsequently re–used (as pages 7–114), in a new book which carried the crofters’ story down to 1883. This is The Isle of Skye in 1882–1883; illustrated by a full report of the trials of the Braes and Glendale crofters, at Inverness and Edinburgh; and an introductory chapter; also a full report of the trial of Patrick Sellar (Inverness, A. & W. Mackenzie, 1883), which was completed in August 1883 and ran to pages liv + 203. The report of Sellar's trial, which was irrelevant to the main text of The Isle of Skye of which it forms pages 157–203, was simply a reprint of a pamphlet published by Mackenzie in April 1883. The final work in this series was Mackenzie's An Analysis of the Report of the Crofter Royal Commission (Inverness, A. & W. Mackenzie; Edinburgh, John Menzies & Co.; Glasgow, Porteous Brothers; and London, William Reeves), published as a 79–page pamphlet, undated, with a portrait of Charles Fraser–Mackintosh, M.P.Google Scholar

The work which subsequently claimed to be the second edition of Mackenzie's History of the Highland Clearances (first published at Stirling in 1914 by Eneas Mackay, and subsequently reprinted at Glasgow in 1946 and on three subsequent occasions by Alex. Maclaren & Sons) is substantially a new work brought out in connexion with the Liberal Government's land reform campaign. The text has been heavily revised; the order is changed; Donald Macleod's Gloomy Memories and Mackenzie's account of Skye in 1882 are omitted, and much of the text consists of supplementary material not in the original. The editor of this ‘second edition’ prudently refrained from putting his name to the book, which appeared with an introduction by Ian Mac– Pherson, M.P. (afterwards Lord Strathcarron).

page 31 note 1 Mackenzie, History of the Highland Clearances (1883), p. 407.

page 32 note 1 Memorandum to Gladstone, 19 September 1882, B.M. Add. MS. 44, 476, f. 244.

page 32 note 2 Add. MS. 44, 105, ff. 143–45.

page 33 note 1 For these divisions see Kellas, J. G., ‘The Liberal Party in Scotland, 1876–1895’, Scottish H. R., xliv, 1–16Google Scholar, Savage, D. C., ‘Scottish Politics, 1885–6’Google Scholar, ibid., xl, 118–35, and Kellas, J. G., ‘The Liberal Party and the Scottish Church Disestablishment Crisis’, E.H.R., lxxix (1964), 31–46.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

page 33 note 2 The Scottish Farmers’ Alliance was the most prominent of these farmers’ organizations. For the Highland economy generally see J. P. Day, Public Administration in the Highlands and Islands of Scotland (1918).

page 34 note 1 Argyll published a considerable number of speeches and articles as well as three books on the land, Essay on the Commercial Principles applicable to Contracts for the Use of Land (1877), Crofts and Farms in the Hebrides (Edinburgh, 1883), and Scotland As It Was and As It Is (1887). For an attack on his record as a landowner on Tiree by Charles Fraser–Mackintosh in 1884 see Celtic Magazine, x, 42–48.Google Scholar

page 35 note 1 The Highlander, October 1881, p. 152. For Fraser–Mackintosh's career see Celtic Magazine, ix, 265–74. He owed his election at Inverness in 1874 largely to the support of The Highlander and the local Radicals. Though originally a Conservative, his experiences as factor to the Mackintosh of Mackintosh and his antiquarian interests made him a champion of the crofters from a neo–Jacobite point of view. Cf. his Antiquarian Notes … (2nd edn., Stirling, 1913), pp. xiii–xxxi.Google Scholar

page 36 note 1 Dr Carroll also welcomed Alexander Mackenzie to Philadelphia because he wanted to encourage a ‘revival of [the] Celtic Association movement’. O'Brien, W. and Ryan, Desmond, eds., Devoy's Post Bag, 1871–1928 (2 vols., Dublin, 1948–1953), i, 425.Google Scholar

page 36 note 2 For details of the American tour see O'Brien and Ryan, Devoy's Post Bag, passim. The Irish in America found Murdoch's kilts and his insistence on speaking Irish gaelic rather trying. One of them is reported to have said, ‘Say, Dillon, what the devil does Parnell want by bringing that bare–legged Scotchman around with him for?’ Devoy's Post Bag, i, 332–33. For Murdoch's views on Scottish land, see [C.3980–IV] pp. 3069–96. H.C. (1884), xxxvi, 526–53.

page 36 note 3 Celtic Magazine, vii, 295. His connexion with the Irish revolutionaries was not, however, generally known until late in 1882. Cp. The Scotsman, 6 and 7 December 1882.

page 36 note 4 William Stewart, J. Keir Hardie, a Biography (1925), p. 43, and Lowe, David, Souvenirs of Scottish Labour (Glasgow, 1919), pp. 1–2.Google Scholar

page 37 note 1 There are useful short biographies of a number of Highland land reformers in The Crofter, March–September 1885, namely D. H. Macfarlane, John Mackay, Roderick Macdonald, J. S. Blackie, Charles Fraser–Mackintosh and G. B. Clark.

page 37 note 2 The Duke of Argyll was very caustic about him in December 1885. ‘We had a thorough Blackguard elected here by the“crofters”,–by sheer Bribery of Promises–one being to Fishermen that they should get all the salmon–as well as herring.’ Add. MS. 44,106, ff. 35–36. He was the first Catholic to become an M.P. in the Highlands since the Union.

page 38 note 1 Cp. Add. MS. 44,497, f. 359.

page 38 note 2 The original members of the federation were the Gaelic Society of London, the Gaelic Society of Inverness, the Birmingham Highland Society, the Hebburn Society, Aberdeen Gaelic Society, Edinburgh University Celtic Society, Edinburgh Sutherland Society, Greenock Highland Society, Greenock Ossianic Club, Tobermory Gaelic Society, and the following Glasgow societies: Comunn Gàidhealach, Skye, Islay, Sutherland, Cowal, Lewis A, Lewis B, Tir nam Beann, Mull, Ardnamurchan, Gael Lodge of Free Masons 609, Fardach Finn IOGT, Comunn Gàidhlige Eaglais Chaluim Chille (The Highlander, 30 November 1878). Societies admitted later included Liverpool Highland Association and Vale of Leven Highland Association (Ibid., II May 1881).

page 39 note 1 Celtic Magazine, vii, 195

page 39 note 2 Add. MS. 44, 107, ff. 428–29.

page 39 note 3 The Scotsman, 28 February 1883. Blackie's major works on the land question were Gaelic Societies, Highland Depopulation and Land Law Reform (Edinburgh, 1880), Lay Sermons (1881), and The Scottish Highlanders and the Land Laws (1885). For his life see Anna M. Stoddart, John Stuart Blackie: a Biography, (2 vols., 1895), and Donald Carswell, Brother Scots (1927), 121–154.

page 40 note 1 Celtic Magazine, viii, 181.

page 40 note 2 The Highlander, September 1881, p. 107.

page 40 note 3 Ibid., p. 106.

page 40 note 4 Ibid., 11 May 1881.

page 40 note 5 Some of the poems of this period are printed in Cameron, The Old and the New Highlands & Hebrides, pp. 144–55.

page 41 note 1 For the main outlines of George's British career see Lawrence, Elwood P., Henry George in the British Isles (East Lansing, 1957).Google Scholar

page 41 note 2 Ibid., p. 17.

page 42 note 1 This was not effective until after a meeting in Exeter Hall on 7 March 1883. See The Scotsman, 8 March 1883.

page 43 note 1 For details of this meeting and the discussion it provoked in the government, see Cab. 37/14/7 and Cab. 37/14/10, also Celtic Magazine, x, 320–25.

page 44 note 1 The first Gaelic census was conducted in 1881, but it was very inadequate. The 1891 census showed that 43,010 people in the four counties listed spoke Gaelic only.

page 44 note 2 [C. 3980–IV] p. 3,173. H.C. (1884–85), XXXVI, 630.

page 45 note 1 Among the local leaders were John Nicolson of Tote, a former sergeant in the 42nd regiment (Celtic Magazine, xi, 301), and John Macpherson, ‘the Glendale Martyr’, who was the nephew of a famous bard (ibid., 305).

page 45 note 2 Celtic Magazine, xi, 303, and Norman Maclean,Set Free(1949), pp. 52–67, 133. It is significant that MacCallum's fiery political speeches did nothing to build up his congregation. For his career see Hew Scott, Fasti Ecclesiae Scoticanae, vii, 204–05.

page 45 note 3 Memories of the disruption no doubt coloured Free Church views. It must have helped Radical propaganda at the time of the Battle of the Braes that at the time of the Disruption the then Lord Macdonald had been particularly hostile to the Free Church. See Brown, Thomas, Annals of the Disruption, Pt. Ill (Edinburgh, 1881), pp. 7–12.Google Scholar

page 46 note 1 Celtic Magazine, viii, 209, and The Scotsman, 8 February 1883.

page 46 note 2 Celtic Magazine, viii, 407–14.

page 46 note 3 [C. 3980] pp. 407–08, H.C. (1884), XXXII, 561–62.

page 47 note 1 [C. 3980] pp. 194–204. H.C. (1884), XXXII, 348–58. For Sir James Matheson's career see Celtic Magazine, vii, 489–503. For one crisis in which trouble on a large scale was threatened, see Report of the Trial of the so–called Bernera Rioters (Edinburgh, 1874).Google Scholar

page 47 note 2 No doubt this fear arose from the fact that evictions were common down to the end of the ’sixties elsewhere in the Highlands, notably in those districts easy of access to Glasgow. For one such district see the statistics in Gaskell, Morvern Transformed, p. 129.

page 49 note 1 [C. 3980] p. 219, H.C. (1884), XXXII, 473.

page 49 note 2 For the eviction rate in Skye see Celtic Magazine, viii, 564–65, and [C. 3980] pp. 78–9. H.C. (1884) XXXII, 232–33.

page 50 note 1 Speech of Hugh Matheson, Stenscholl, Celtic Magazine, ix, 337–38.

page 51 note 1 [C. 3980] p. 198. H.C. (1884) XXXII, 352.

page 51 note 2 [C. 3980–1] pp. 495–96. H.C. (1884) XXXIII, 495–96.

page 52 note 1 The proprietor's residence was wrecked during the flood, his manager drowned and the cemetery largely washed into the sea. Celtic Magazine, xi, 254.

page 52 note 2 The Highlander, 30 March 1881.

page 52 note 3 Ibid., 27 April and 11 May 1881.

page 52 note 4 Maclean, The Former Days, includes an attempt to reconstruct the effect of outside visitors on the Braes crofters at this time.

page 52 note 5 [C. 3980–IV] p. 3314. H.C. (1884) XXXVI, 771.

page 52 note 6 Curiously enough the Braes troubles occurred almost at the same time as a very nasty eviction case at Lochcarron, which would in normal times have received as much publicity as the Kilmuir case. Celtic Magazine, vii, 436–38.

page 53 note 1 The two most recent accounts of the troubles in the Western Highlands, J. G. Kellas, ‘The Crofters’ War, 1882–88’, History Today, xii, 281–88, and D. W. Crowley, ‘The“Crofters’ Party”, 1885–1892’, Scottish Historical Review, xxxv, 110–26, are both based on Cameron, The Old and the New Highlands & Hebrides, which is a journalist's attempt to remember the events of thirty years before and is naturally vague about details. The £1000 does not appear to be mentioned in any contemporary account.

page 53 note 2 The Scotsman, 22 April 1882.

page 54 note 1 Cp. Mackenzie, Highland Clearances (1883), pp. 408–13.

page 55 note 1 The notion that the land belonged to the people was not a new one. Cp. the eighteenth–century account of the matter in Burt's Letters from the North of Scotland, ed. Jamieson, R. (2 vols, Edinburgh, 1876), II, 174–77.Google Scholar

page 55 note 2 Mackenzie, Highland Clearances (1883), p. 407.

page 55 note 3 Maclean, Set Free, p. 46.

page 56 note 1 Add. MS. 44,476, ff. 245–46.

page 57 note 1 William Burns to James Patten, 10 May 1882. Rosebery Papers, National Library of Scotland, R.B. 33, quoted by permission of Lord Primrose and the trustees of the National Library of Scotland.

page 58 note 1 [C. 3980] p. 179. H.C. (1884) XXXII, 333.

page 58 note 2 Harcourt to Rosebery, 3 October 1882. Rosebery Papers R.B. 26.

page 59 note 1 [C 3980] p. 332. H.C. (1884) XXXII, 486.

page 60 note 1 Add. MS. 44,105, ff. 238–42 printed in Savage, ‘Scottish Politics, 1885–1886’, op. cit., pp. 125–26.

page 60 note 2 For Blackie's account of the expedition see Rosebery Papers R.B. 60.

page 60 note 3 For details see Cab. 37/14/7 and Cab. 37/14/10.

page 61 note 1 The Scotsman, 3 September 1885.

page 61 note 2 For its formation and views see Celtic Magaiine, vii, 461, 562–63.

page 61 note 3 Celtic Magazine, ix, 572.

page 61 note 4 The view that a Highland Land League existed before 1885 (put forward in Crowley, ‘The“Crofters’ Party” ’, and other articles based on it) is anachronistic. It is based on a misreading of Cameron, The Old and the New Highlands & Hebrides and other books of memoirs. There is no contemporary evidence for it, apart from the comments of Highland lairds and others anxious to denigrate the Highland Land Law Reform Associations, and some ambiguous remarks by Irishmen anxious to claim a share of the credit for the Highland movement after the collapse of the Irish Land League agitation. The title Highland Land League was adopted on 14 September 1887 at the Oban conference called by the Highland Land Law Reform Association. The Scotsman, 15 September 1887.

page 62 note 1 Celtic Monthly, i, 17, 145–46, and The Highlander, August 1881, 66–67.

page 62 note 2 Mackay also lectured to the Glasgow Branch of the Irish Land League on ‘The Irish and Scotch Celts; their Common History and Objects’, The Highlander, August 1881, p. 75.

page 62 note 3 The Scotsman, 17 December 1881.

page 63 note 1 For the Inverness reformers’ reaction to Henry George see Celtic Magazine, ix, 283–85.

page 63 note 2 N.L.S. MS. 2636, f. 315.

page 63 note 3 Ibid., ff. 150, 180–81.