136 THE HIGHLAND CLEARANCES. 



ingly against the opinions entertained by myself and many members of 

 the Liberal party who have most practical acquaintance with the High- 

 lands, I crave the liberty to state our view of the Skye Crofters' case 

 with all succinctness. Our sympathies lie emphatically with the law- 

 breakers in this case, and we are strongly of opinion that the real guilt 

 lies with the law-makers that is, historically, the oligarchs of the soil 

 and the British public, who, after the abolition of the clan system in 

 1 746, made no recognition of the consuetudinary rights of the people in 

 the land, and who, from ignorance or apathy, have allowed laws to 

 remain on the statute-book the direct action of which, when not counter- 

 acted by kindly influences, is to over-ride, overwhelm, and at last ex- 

 terminate the best element of the local population. It is a matter of 

 the smallest consequence, in our view, whether the case for the crofters 

 in the present instance, be legally right or wrong. We know that this 

 Glendale outbreak is a mere symptom of a deeply-seated social disease, 

 for which the land oligarchy and the Land Laws are answerable at the 

 bar of eternal justice. We know, and thousands can rise to testify to 

 it, that there is no tyranny in Europe not even in Asiatic Turkey 

 practically more grinding than the tyranny which, under our present 

 Land Laws, the lord of the soil, with his commissioner, factor, and 

 ground officer, may, in remote Highland districts, exercise over the 

 Highland crofters. With these convictions, we have no hesitation in 

 saying that we regard the Glendale crofters as martyrs rather than 

 criminals not because they are legally in the right, or because it is in 

 any case right to break the law, but because the law is radically wrong, 

 and by its very nature instigates a healthy human conscience to the 

 violation which it condemns. When the law is just, and the devil, so 

 to speak, sits as God's vicegerent on a local throne, it is nothing won- 

 derful that rebellion should break out, and that the rebels should in such 

 cases be not seldom the very select and elect of the land. Such rebels 

 were the Milanese, who revolted against the Austrian rule in Lombardy, 

 and drew out their lives sorrowfully in the dark cells of Moravian 

 prisons. Such rebels were our gallant forefathers the men who fell at 

 Rullion Green, Aird's Moss, and Bothwell Brig, and shed their blood 

 to purchase for us liberty to breathe on our own Scottish soil, and to 

 read our own Bibles without Anglican dictation. Whatever deeds of 

 blood were perpetrated during the whole seven-and-twenty years of 

 Charles II. and his pig-headed successor were done with the sanction of 

 the law ; and on a smaller and less bloody field the extirpation of the 

 noble race of mountain peasantry that inhabited the once populous 

 Highland glens was done with the sanction of law. The law was 



