INTRODUCTION. xlvii 



Iain's principal Accountant while in Stornoway. It may 

 further be added, that this reporter concocted and sent 

 the most unfounded falsehoods to his journal, regarding my 

 own sayings and doings in the Isle of Skye, during my visit 

 to the Island, on a recent occasion, and that his journal 

 maintained its character for partiality and unfairness, by 

 refusing to insert a correction of the false statements so 

 meanly manufactured and sent to him by his own reporter. 



If any further evidence be necessary, to prove the inex- 

 plicably one-sided unscrupulousness of the Scotsman under 

 its present management, it will be found in the following: 

 On the 2oth of July last, it published a letter, from Macleod 

 of Macleod, on " Highland Land Rights," in which he 

 quotes a paragraph from a speech delivered by Dr. 

 Cameron, M.P., for Glasgow, at a meeting of the Federa- 

 tion of Celtic Societies, held in Liverpool, on the 2nd of 

 January, 1883, and charges me with using similar and even 

 stronger language in the Isle of Skye. The quotation from 

 Dr. Cameron is as follows : 



"Before the '45 rising the tenants in the Highlands had distinct 

 proprietary rights on the land they cultivated, and the chiefs were 

 looked upon as the trustees for the clans. But after "45 the feudal 

 system was introduced, the tenants lost their rights, and the landlords 

 were made the absolute proprietors of the land. In Scotland there 

 was provision made for the registration of titles to land ; but the very 

 existence of that registration had the effect of quickly getting rid of the 

 proprietary interests of the tenants. The landlords, of course, registered 

 their titles, but the crofters knew nothing about the system of registra- 

 tion, and took no trouble to register the rights they had in the land." 



What Macleod said regarding myself, and my comments 

 thereon, will be found in my reply addressed to the Scots- 

 man, but, consistently with that journal's characteristic 

 lack of fair-play towards the crofters and their friends, 

 it was refused insertion. The Scotsman has on repeated 



