8o THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES. 



relevancy of the charge of deforcement, and the minor 

 charge of obstructing an officer of the law in the performance 

 of his duty ; and he read what was left of the indictment, to 

 show that all that remained was a charge of simple assault 

 against the prisoners. He went on to say : When I first 

 addressed your Lordship to-day, I attempted to show that 

 the case as it then stood was too important for trial in this 

 court It has now been reduced to such slender propor- 

 tions that the wonder is it was ever brought into any court. 

 It has been attempted, by leading irrelevant evidence, to 

 give the case a fictitious importance, but the prosecutor has 

 been flogging a dead horse. A common assault such as is 

 now charged would never have justified the measures taken 

 to apprehend the men now in the dock. Would the public 

 have looked on in silent wonder if they had been told that 

 the army of policemen sent to Skye had been sent there to 

 apprehend a few men most of them old men whose only 

 crime was that they looked on while a few respectable women 

 threw dirt at a man who had slandered them. I rafher 

 think they would then do what those of them who have not 

 to pay for it will do now they would laugh outright. I 

 really feel some difficulty in discussing seriously the very 

 small mouse which this mountain in labour has brought 

 forth. The charge is assault. What is the evidence in 

 support of it ? It is certainly not the sort of evidence usu- 

 ally led in cases of assault. We heard of a sheriff-officer 

 being sent from Portree to serve writs at a place nine or ten 

 miles away, of his seeing boys with flags and afterwards 

 being met by a crowd of people, of his papers being burnt 

 by himself, and of his making a speech thanking the people 

 for their kindness to him, and encouraging them to perse- 

 vere in their demands ; but very little, and that unreliable, 

 of an assault by anybody, nothing of an assault by the men 



