25 



at that time the total earnings of one of those peasants, he 

 might say his whole property and everything belonging to 

 him would not come to more than ^^5. Certain interested 

 parties in Glasgow some years before, for no other purpose 

 that he could hear of but a desire to clear their own 

 markets, had got a law smuggled through the House of 

 Commons, where nobody cared anything about it, by which 

 it was made penal to catch a herring during the three 

 summer months of the year, a time at which herrings were 

 swarming in innumerable millions. The Act was of so 

 stringent a character that the mere fact of finding scales in 

 the boat was sufficient to insure a man's conviction, and he 

 was fineable £S '^^ more. That meant that he would be 

 totally ruined or might be put in prison for doing this ; or 

 even for the suspicion of having done it. Now there was 

 not the smallest imaginable reason why that enactment 

 should have been passed. It was a stupid, mischievous and 

 utterly useless thing. Yet because there was no one of 

 sufficient intelligence to understand the interests of these 

 unhappy people they were fined and imprisoned in this 

 way at a time when their children were starving, when their 

 potato crop had failed. There were thousands of herrings 

 within a mile of the shore, and a man might not take his 

 boat out and catch the herrings, simply because of this 

 preposterous law. It made such a strong impression on 

 his colleagues and himself that they took the very unusual 

 step of representing the facts to the Home Secretary, and 

 telling him that if there were a famine in the Isle of Skye 

 they washed their hands of all responsibility. He was 

 happy to say that that abomination was cleared away and 

 had never existed since, but it had made an indelible 

 impression on his mind, and so long as he had the power 

 to influence this matter in any way he would raise his 



