113 
of Edinburgh, Session 1882-83. 
paid the land tax.”* ISTor where Celtic customs prevailed can we 
discern any greater evidence of progress : we have few traces of how 
the Highlands were cultivated in very ancient times, hut when we 
first begin to acquire definite knowledge there is much to show that 
the effect of the ancient tenures had been to arrest rather than pro- 
mote active and beneficial cultivation of the soiLf Time will not 
permit of my adducing detailed evidence of this — let me call one 
witness, no unfriendly one, to the past he reverenced or to the 
Highlands he loved. Cosmo Innes says, speaking of the rental in 
1600 of the Gordon estates, which extended from Banff through the 
heart of the country to the western sea : — “ In all that vast estate 
reaching from sea to sea, and across ranges of mountains now every- 
where pastured by sheep and cattle, there is no payment of wool or 
woollen cloth, nor of hides or skins, nor any amount of sheep and 
cattle beyond the occasional mart or wedder for the lord’s table. 
In fact there were at that time no cattle or sheep reared in large 
flocks and herds in our Highlands. The space and pasture were the 
same as we know them now, but the thousands and millions of sheep 
which graze them now had not yet taken possession. The first 
introduction of large flocks of sheep into the Highlands was in the 
last quarter of last century. Gough the antiquary, writing in 1780, 
says that Mr Loch’s plans for introducing sheep had been ‘ attended 
with some success,’ and that the sheep promised to thrive very well 
in the Highlands. But at this time (1600) there were nothing but 
the petty flock of sheep or herd of a few milk cows grazed close 
round the farmhouse, and folded nightly for fear of the wolf or 
more cunning depredators.” J 
The third observation I would make is this, that the admiration 
and affection for these ancient tenures professed of late appears to 
be based on the idea that they were of a highly dem^ocratic and 
Universalist type ; there can be no greater mistake ; whether we take 
the Celtic sept and clan or tribe, or look at the Saxon community 
\vith its mark and its gemote, we find a system of rigid exclusiveness, 
an aristocracy in tenure, an oligarchy in government. There was 
* See Antiquary, vol. iv. p. 101. 
t See Letters, vol. ii. p. 34 et seq., for condition of agiiciilture even 
in the last century. 
+ Cosmo Innes, Scot. Legal Antiquities, p. 263, 
VOL. XII. 
H 
