HOW THEY LIVE IN SKYE.

Colonist, Volume XXVI, Issue 3700, 3 September 1883, Page 4

HOW THEY LIVE IN SKYE.

The following leading article appeared under the above heading in a recent issue of the ' Glasgow Mail' :-— "When, at the termination of the fourth day of their sittings, the Eoyal Commissioners rose from the enquiry at Stenchol, we thought that surelyithey had touched the lowest depth of ercfter misery. The Commissioners had been told how Donald at the age of seventy-five years, was evicted, and afterwards fined 10s and MS of «x----penses, forbye a-year's extra rent, for breach of interdict in seeking shelter in iv'etable when he had, no other roof toVcover him. They had learned of factor and taxman resorting to gross intimidation to carry put their scbemeg, forbidding, oo pain of unendurable penalties, the offices of common humanity and teighborlinesi. They were informed of honest and solvent men being forced to borrow money from Scotch bank agents iv Skye at 15 per ! cent to pay. the landlord his rent before they could . sell the produce of their crofts; and if- had been made manifest that crofters were systematic cally treated in a way in which it had not entered into the heart of man, outside the realm of Highland lairdß and Highland factors, to conceive. But it was only because last week's testimony was still to come that people imagined nothing worse could remain, for now thai it is before us it proves that in every deep there is a lower deptli; still. The ignorant crofters of i Skye fancied they were stating a real grievance when they complained that their crofts were eaten by rabbits; but " Are you not aware you have a right to kill rabbits ?" asked the chairman, still evidently not altogether disabused of the idea that the crofters might.be perrriitfed to take their law from the statue book. The crofter soon put him right. <sNo; the gamekeeper Mis us we have no right to kill t^em. We dare not kill them," and it ■do's not appear that the chairman had anything to answer to that. How could he? The gamekeeper is the representative of the laird, and at Broadford proved himself above the jurisdiction of Her Majesty's repre- ' eentative, the Fiscal. Old JN Teil Nicholson'had a dog to protect his crops, and the gamekeeper having come to '-his lot one day and shot the doeri-Neil 'complained to the Fiscal. "Did he prosecute the case?" asked Sheriff1 Nicholson, who ia a Skye m&n himself,'and ought to have known ter.' '.' The answer I got from tUlTiecal was that the factor was Baying we had no; right to keep a dog Nothing was done in the case." It must simplify the administration of the law very much when the Fiscal falls in with tie general arrangement 4*l "

oMhinga, and takes bis orders, like everybody else,- from tbe factor. But when Mr' Scott, »heep farmer, of Drynoeh/bad a complaint against one of the qrofters, be'dicl not employ tbe fiscal. : He employed Alick Macdonald, the factor, who to u§e his own words, acted in the caße as •« a man, a law agent,,a factor, and everything else," believing that Scott wanted " simply to,teach th 9 crofter what hi^ (obligations were." The obligation in !»his case was,that .the.crofter's Biatei Should work for the sheep farmer a*; a rate " which isnot sufficient to, beep ; sojl and body together;" and the 'crofter declares that he got a letter Ifrom the embodiment of the law enjoining him "to be humble under [oppression, as the laird did not care a straw though Scott put every living j 'sou! of us out. in the sea." The fac- J tor " stepped in " to the Commission on Friday to deny the alleged terms of the letter; but he admitted he acted as Scott's law agent in the case, that he might have written him, and he gave no specific denial to the charge that £1 a year was put on the crofter's rent as a punishment for his disputing the Bbeep-farmer's right to his Bister's services. All along the one consolatory reflection in hearing of these and similar cases of oppression has been that this mijjht only after all be the factor's and understrapper's work with which the lairds had nothing to do. Tliat pleasant idea must, we fear, now be discarded as only a generously-imagined fiction. This Crofter declares that he not only wrote to the laird, but that he called at Dunvegan and laid bis grievances before the proprietor, yet. he got no redress. But we have not only to rely merely on crofters' veracity in proof of the com: plicity: of landlords, for- Alexander Macdonald, of Tormore, who was. factor for Lord Macdonald, and declares him to be "one of the best men : in tbe world," puts the matter in a nutshell. Tbe question of a general rise in the rents having come up, here were the instructions of " one of the best men in the world " to his factor when asked if he would allow him to have the the value taken : —" Certainly ; do as you like; put £100 or £5000, or 5a on them if you please." It is just possible that when he sees it in print Lord Macdonald may not feel so proud of his factor's compliment as Tormore felt when his Lordship handed over his tenants so absolutely to the factor's sovereign will and pleasure. But matters being conducted in this way at the very fountain of authority, there could be no harm in factors following tbe example of " the best man in the world," and banding over the cottars, in turn, to the tacksmen ; so it is not surprising to find that one of the con^ ditions imposed on the crofters was that they should work " any day " for the tacksman. John M'Caskill, who is a shoemaker as well as a cottar, offered to pay the tacksman the wage he was given for the day's work to be allowed to follow hia more profitable occupation; but for such presumption on the part of a cottar he and bis mother, aged seventy-five, were warned to remove, and there was nothing for it but to apologise to the tacksman for his wickedness in making such a proposal. John's personality was sold to the tacksman beyond the power of ransom, even at the price fixed by that tacksman as the value of his services; and in that he waa no worse off than his neighbors so long as they and he desired to keep their homes above their heads. It was universally known that the land was not the people's own, and we have now had it brought out that their time ia not their own, and that their relatives (Alexander Cameron's sister for example) arenot possessed another people possess relatives; but to stop short here would be to tell only half of the story. The stock they breed and the crops which they cultivate are not their own, for they are not permitted to sell until they have given the factor the first offer. And if the factor is not prepared to buy ? Let the statements put in by the tenants of Edinbane tell what is done in such a case. " A man for selling a stack cf corn off the farm, although be had offered it to Mr Robertson several times, and was in sore need of money, was punished: by having his rent raided over 16 per cent." This man appeared as a witness. Then when their sheep are sold '• we never touch a pency of the money. The money from our sheep for the rent,, instead of beibg put in the bank for us till Martinmas, when it is due, is kept by Mr Robertson for his own use, and we get no interest from him for it." It will be remembered that crofters who could not foot up the fall amount ofrent on theexact day were forced to borrow money at 2s 6d or 3s per pound from the bank at Portree to pay the factor; and this ia the complement of Ihe history. But Mr Hobertson waonot thp only factor who " trafficked," to use Lord Napier's word, with the .people; and when we rea<J of hisamK Tdrmore's dealings with the people the word that leaps at once to the lips is "truck." But on Lord Macdonald's estate even these tbjngs were capped, when Tormore was factor, by saddling an incoming tenant /with his predecessor's arrears ofrent. Tormore, when it was put to him that a man had been charged £16 of debt not his own, was not clear about the individual case, but it was aj i pretty general practice, and was' eni forced od Lord'Macdonald's estate.