72 PROPERTY IN LAND.
wishing to be informed on the subject may read with advantage, though not with pleasure. It is entitled " Highland Clearances," and is published in Inverness by A. McKenzie. There is nothing in savage life more cold- bloodedly atrocious than the warfare here recorded as carried on against the clansmen by those who were their hereditary protectors. The burning of houses ; the ejec- tion of old and young ; the tearing down of shelters put up to shield women with child and tender infants from the bitter night blast; the threats of similar treatment against all who should give them hospitality ; the forcing of poor helpless creatures into emigrant ships which car- ried them to strange lands and among a people of whose tongue they were utterly ignorant, to die in many cases like rotten sheep or to be reduced to utter degradation. An animating scene truly ! Great districts once peopled with a race, rude it may be and slavish to their chiefs, but still a race of manly virtues, brave, kind, and hospitable now tenanted only by sheep or cattle, by grouse or deer ! No one can read of the atrocities perpetrated upon the Scottish people, during what is called " the improvement of the Highlands," without feeling something like utter contempt for men who, lions abroad, were such sheep at home that they suffered these outrages without striking a blow, even if an ineffectual one. But the explanation of this reveals a lower depth in the " reduction to iniquity." The reason of the tame submission of the Highland people to outrages which should have nerved the most timid is to be found in the prostitution of their religion. The Highland people are a deeply religious people, and dur- ing these evictions their preachers preached to them that their trials were the visitations of the Almighty and must be submitted to under the penalty of eternal damnation !
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