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except for insol- 

 vency or noii- 

 paynieiit of rent. 



Vacant crofts 

 added to others 

 adjacent. 



Farms held by 

 individual tenants 

 kept undivided. 



as a rule, not even to allow any individual evictions 

 or dispossession of the existing crofters, except for 

 tlie one cause of insolvency or non-paynient of rent. 

 During the thirty years which have elapseS beiwe^H 

 1853 and 1883, there has been only one solitary case 

 of the eviction of a crofter by Warrant of the Sheriff, 

 in the whole Island of Tyree ; and this was an eviction 

 made, not in the interest of the Proprietor, but in the 

 interest of the neighbouring tenants.* 



Further, I determined that in all cases when a croft 

 became vacant by any of the causes just mentioned, 

 it should, if possible, not be reoccupied by itself, even 

 when a higher rent could be got by doing so, but 

 should be added to some adjacent croft, if any one of 

 the neighbours was capable of managing and stocking 

 the consolidated possessions. 



On the other hand, I never contemplated, and 

 could never have approved of cutting up and divid- 

 ing amono; crofters the few farms on the island which 

 in 1846 were still held by individual tenants, and 

 all of which had been so held for a long period 

 of time. Most of them had never been possessed 

 by the class of crofters. None of the crofters had 

 capital or knowledge fitting them at that time for 

 the profitable occupation of farms of even a mode- 

 rate size. The farms held by single tenants were the 

 only farms wdiich afforded any immediate prospect of 

 a great increase of production — they were good cus- 



* Certain statements to the contrary on this subject recently 

 made in the press are as false as those made in the same quarter in 

 respect to the occupation of Widows. It is possible, however, that 

 these statements may be due to the ignorance which confounds 

 between forcible evictions and the ordinary "Summonses of Kemoval," ' 

 which are issued as a matter of course on all changes of tenancy. 



