( 70 ) 



who have emigrated to Canada. It is something in 

 this inquiry to have even the most palpable truths 

 admitted and not denied. Chancres which benefit 

 both those who go and those who remain cannot be 

 changes for the worse. But there is something more 

 to be said than this. It is literally true that if there is 

 now any comfort or substance among the crofters of 

 Tyree it is entirely due to the system I have pursued. 

 If, on the other hand, there is any poverty remaining 

 among them, it is due to the restraints upon the 

 execution of that system which sentiment and feeling 

 have imposed upon me. I have avoided to the utmost 

 all gratuitous evictions, or even removals, and yet 

 there is hardly a single crofter in Tyree who has not 

 had the size of his possession doubled or trebled dur- 

 ing the last thirty-five years. Every one of them 

 has profited more or less largely by the departure of 

 his neighbours, and generally by the system against 

 which a few of them have now been incited to 

 grumble or object. Hardly a single croft remains 

 of what may be called the old pauperising class, 

 although many are still much smaller than I should 

 wish them to be. A new proprietor, as all observa- 

 tion proves,''' would have applied the principle 



* On no part of the subject has greater nonsense been written 

 and spoken than on the connection of the old law of entail with 

 what is called the " Crofter question." The law of entail may be, 

 and was, open to many objections. But it was eminently favour- 

 able to crofters. It is almost invariably on the estates of the old 

 families that the crofters have been retained. It is almost as 

 universally from the estates of new purchasers that they have dis- 

 appeared. This fact could not be better illustrated than by 

 comparing the lands in Mull and Morvern which were sold by the 

 Argyll family at the beginning of the present century with the 

 lands which still belonoj to me. 



