TRIAL OF THE BRAES CROFTERS. 83 



the yth of the same month. Be that, however, as it may, 

 the evidence which, by the forbearance of the Court, I was 

 permitted to lead, showed that the present unhappy state of 

 matters among Lord Macdonald's tenants was entirely attri- 

 butable to mismanagement on the part of successive factors. 

 Before 1865 those people were comfortable and contented. 

 They had their patches of arable land near the sea and the 

 hill grazings beyond. The grazings were on Benlee, of 

 which so much has been heard. The rent for both lands 

 was paid in one sum, and was fixed on the basis of the 

 number of cattle, sheep, and horses each tenant was able to 

 keep. In 1865, however, a factor deprived them of the hill 

 while their rents remained the same. They were pushed 

 down towards the sea-shore, and there, under the shadow of 

 their mountain, and a few inches above highwater mark, on 

 what was at no very distant date a sea-beach, they eked out 

 a precarious living from their patches of mixed rock and 

 sand, dignified with the name of arable land. For years 

 these people went on uncomplainingly, while year by year 

 they became poorer. Their horses first went, in 1865 

 every man had a horse most of them several ; now there is 

 not a horse for every three tenants. Then the little stocks 

 of sheep and cattle gradually dwindled down, while all the 

 time their owners were paying rents for the grazing of three 

 or four times the number of sheep and cattle the grazings 

 left to them would feed. At last the inevitable came the 

 people saw starvation or pauperism staring them in the face, 

 and they made a humble appeal for redress. To whom ? 

 To Lord Macdonald ? No ! To his factor, and the 

 factor made fair promises at least so say the people. He 

 told them, they say, that the hill was let on lease, but the 

 lease would expire in 1882, when they would get it. How 

 does he keep his promise? Several years before 1882, he, 



