EMIGRATION AND ITS CAUSES. 473 



among their dependents. In Lewis, where a number of 

 different clans owned allegiance to the Mackenzies, there 

 must necessarily have been an absence of that cohesion 

 which obtained when the dependents were all of the same 

 blood. A community of interests, differing in kind from 

 those which influenced the Seaforth tenantry on the 

 mainland, was required to supply the deficiency. This 

 fact must have been recognised by the proprietors of 

 Lewis, and must have influenced their policy in the 

 government of the island. The encouragement of trade 

 and agriculture formed the best means of knitting together 

 the different, and, in some respects, conflicting units, of 

 which the population of Lewis was composed. But unfor- 

 tunately for the island, it became soon after the suppression 

 of the rising of 1745, the haunt of publicans and sinners. 

 Lord Fortrose found it convenient to farm Lewis to his 

 factor, Colin Mackenzie, for a payment of ;i,ooo annually ; 

 and this unwise delegation of authority resulted in a lucra- 

 tive source of income for the factors, and a fruitful source 

 of misery for the people. Captain Barlow, an English 

 officer who, with a company of troops, arrived in the Long 

 Island in 1753, on a hunt for arms, priests, and the High- 

 land dress, describes how the factor ground the faces of 

 the people. Barlow quarrelled with the Chamberlain (who 

 was also Sheriff-Substitute) about three pieces of brass 

 cannon which were found in, and removed from, Storno- 

 way, and the value of his testimony may possibly be 

 impaired by personal animus. (See Appendix I. for par- 

 ticulars.) But that his statements are substantially cor- 

 rect, is proved by the fact that a later writer (see infra] 

 brings similar charges against the factor's immediate suc- 

 cessors. 



The Long Island was not exempt from the effects ot 

 the social upheaval which took place in the Highlands 

 generally, after Culloden. How to fill the void created by 

 the abolition of feudalism exercised the mind of the 

 Government. One of the schemes proposed to them was 

 to buy out those chiefs whose estates were not already 



