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Dr. John Kennedy, the
highly, deservedly respected, and eminent minister of Dingwall so long
resident among the scenes which he describes, and so intimately
acquainted with all classes of the people in his native county of Ross,
informs us that it was at a time when the Highlanders became most
distinguished as the most peaceable and virtuous peasantry in the
world—"`at the climax of their spiritual prosperity," in Ross-shire"
that the cruel work of eviction began to lay waste the hill-sides and
the plains of the North. Swayed by the example of the godly among them,
and away from the influences by which less sequestered localities were
corrupted, the body of the people in the Highlands became distinguished
as the most peaceable and virtuous peasantry in Britain. It was just
then that they began to be driven off by ungodly oppressors, to clear
their native soil for strangers, red deer, and sheep. With few
exceptions, the owners of the soil began to act as if they were also
owners of the people, and, disposed to regard them as the vilest part of
their estate, they treated them without respect to the requirements of
righteousness or to the dictates of mercy. Without the inducement of
gain, in the recklessness of cruelty, families by hundreds were driven
across the sea, or gathered, as the sweepings of the hill-sides, into
wretched hamlets on the shore. By wholesale evictions, wastes were
formed for the red deer, that the gentry of the nineteenth century might
indulge in the sports of the savages of three centuries before. Of many
happy households sheep walks were cleared for strangers, who, fattening
amidst the ruined homes of the banished, corrupted by their example the
few natives who remained. Meanwhile their rulers, while deaf to the
Highlanders' cry of oppression, were wasting their sinews and their
blood on battle-fields, that, but for their prowess and their bravery,
would have been the scene of their country's defeat." |
