CONCLUSION. 555 



vailed in the Outer Hebrides. The reverend compilers of 

 the Statistical Accounts were fairly unanimous in recom- 

 mending fixity of tenure, and an enlargement of holdings, 

 as the chief elements of improvement. Insufficiency of 

 land and insecurity of tenure were largely responsible for 

 I the inertia of the people, and for the primitive conditions 

 ! under which they were content to live. Their spirits were 

 J broken by the oppressions of the past, and their energies 

 j were paralysed by the uncertainties of the future. The 

 I land problem in the Long Island is still in process of 

 i solution, and may yet, possibly, present difficulties which 

 | will tax the resources of wisdom and statesmanship. When 

 the history of the land question in the Highlands is written, 

 it will form an economic treatise of surpassing interest and 

 | value. It will trace to their real sources, such incidents as 

 ! the Bernera riots in Lewis in 1874, and the sporadic out- 

 breaks in other parts of the Outer Hebrides since that 

 date. It will describe the operations of the system which 

 ! preceded the passing of the Crofters Act in 1886, and the 

 intolerable conditions which made remedial legislation in- 

 evitable. It will give a faithful record of the splendid 

 work performed by the Crofters Commission, under many 

 difficulties, discouragements, and obloquy. It will criticise 

 the timorous mandate, and analyse the multifarious duties, 

 of the Congested Districts Board, whose work concerns 

 the Outer Hebrides more than any other locality. The 

 work of this Board is being watched with sympathetic 

 interest. Whether its tentative efforts to cope with the 

 demand for land, and to improve the agricultural and 

 ! general conditions in the congested areas, will achieve, with 

 the enlargement of its powers, and with the spread of 

 education, the ultimate settlement of the land question ; 

 or whether its experiments will merely pave the way for 

 the introduction of legislation which shall aim at finality ; 

 in either case, all who deplore the evils of congestion in 

 the Long Island, and who desire to see the people in 

 healthier homes, and leading happier and more prosperous 

 lives, will wish success to this, and to all other agencies 





