in the rural districts. In this connection some very extraordinary
public utterances were recently made by two gentlemen closely connected
with the county of Argyll, questioning or attempting to explain away
statements, made in the House of Commons by Mr. D. H. Macfarlane, M.P.,
to the effect that the rural population was, from various causes, fast
disappearing from the Highlands. These utterances were--one by a no
less distinguished person that the Duke of Argyll, who published his
remarkable propositions in the _Times_; the other by Mr. John Ramsay,
M.P., the Islay distiller, who imposed his baseless statement on his
brother members in the House of Commons. These oracles should have
known better. They must clearly have taken no trouble whatever to
ascertain the facts for themselves, or, having ascertained them, kept
them back that the public might be misled on a question with which, it
is obvious to all, the personal interests of both are largely mixed up.
Let us see how the assertions of these authorities agreed with
the actual facts. In 1831 the population of the county of Argyll
was 100,973; in 1841 it was 97,371; in 1851 it was reduced to
88,567; and in 1881 it was down to 76,468. Of the latter number the
Registrar-General classifies 30,387 as urban, or the population of
“towns and villages,” leaving us only 46,081 as the total rural
population of the county of Argyll at the date of the last Census, in
1881. In 1911 the total population for the county had dropped to 70,902.
It will be necessary to keep in mind that in 1831 the county could not
be said to have had many “town and village” inhabitants--not more than
from 12,000 to 15,000 at most. These resided chiefly in Campbeltown,
Inveraray, and Oban; and if we deduct from the total population for
that year, numbering 100,973, even the larger estimate, 15,000 of an
urban or town population, we have still left, in 1831, an actual rural
population of 85,973, or within a fraction of double the whole rural
population of the county in 1881. In other words, the rural population
of Argyllshire was reduced in fifty years from 85,973 to 46,081, or
nearly by one-half.
The increase of the urban or town population is going on at a fairly
rapid rate; Campbeltown, Dunoon, Oban, Ballachulish, Blairmore, and
Strone, Innellan, Lochgilphead, Tarbet, and Tighnabruaich, combined,
having added no less than some 5500 to the population of the county in
the ten years from 1871 to 1881. These populous places will be found
respectively in the parishes of Campbeltown, Lismore, and Appin, Dunoon
and Kilmun, Glassary, Kilcalmonell and Kilbery, and in Kilfinan; and
this will at once account for the comparatively good figure which
these parishes make in the tabulated statement in the Appendix.
That table will show exactly in which parishes and at what rate
depopulation progressed during the last fifty years. In many instances
the population was larger prior to 1831 than at that date, but the
years given will generally give the best idea of how the matter stood
throughout that whole period. The state of the population given in 1831
was before the famine which occurred in 1836; while that in 1841 comes
in between that of 1836 and 1846-47, during which period large numbers
were sent away, or left for the Colonies. There was no famine between
1851 and 1881, a time during which the population was reduced from
88,567 to 76,468, notwithstanding the great increase which took place
simultaneously in the “town and village” section of the people in the
county, as well as throughout the country generally.
_BUTESHIRE._