We heard sermon in the open air with a poor Highland congregation in
Sutherlandshire only a few weeks ago; and the scene was one which we
shall not soon forget. The place of meeting was a green hill-side,
near the opening of a deep, long withdrawing strath, with a river
running through the midst. We stood on the slope where the last of a
line of bold eminences, that form the southern side of the valley,
sinks towards the sea. A tall precipitous mountain, reverend and
hoary, and well fitted to tranquillize the mind, from the sober
solemnity that rests on its massy features, rose fronting us on the
north; a quiet burial-ground lay at its feet; while, on the opposite
side, between us and the sea, there frowned an ancient stronghold of
time-eaten stone--an impressive memorial of an age of violence and
bloodshed. The last proprietor, says tradition, had to quit this
dwelling by night, with all his family, in consequence of some
unfortunate broil, and take refuge in a small coasting vessel; a
terrible storm arose--the vessel foundered at sea--and the hapless
proprietor and his children were nevermore heard of. And hence, it is
said, the extinction of the race.
The story speaks of an unsettled time; nor is it difficult to trace,
in the long deep valley on the opposite hand, the memorials of a story
not less sad, though much more modern. On both sides the river the eye
rests on a multitude of scattered patches of green, that seem inlaid
in the brown heath. We trace on these islands of sward the marks of
furrows, and mark here and there, through the loneliness, the remains
of a group of cottages, well-nigh levelled with the soil, and, haply
like those ruins which eastern conquerors leave in their track, still
scathed with fire. All is solitude within the valley, except where,
at wide intervals, the shieling of a shepherd may be seen; but at its
opening, where the hills range to the coast, the cottages for miles
together lie clustered as in a hamlet. From the north of Helmsdale to
the south of Port Gower, the lower slopes of the hills are covered by
a labyrinth of stone fences, minute patches of corn, and endless
cottages. It would seem as if for twenty miles the long withdrawing
valley had been swept of its inhabitants, and the accumulated
sweepings left at its mouth, just as we see the sweepings of a room
sometimes left at the door. And such generally is the present state of
Sutherland. The interior is a solitude occupied by a few sheep-farmers
and their hinds; while a more numerous population than fell to the
share of the entire county, ere the inhabitants were expelled from
their inland holdings, and left to squat upon the coast, occupy the
selvage of discontent and poverty that fringes its shores. The
congregation with which we worshipped on this occasion was drawn
mainly from these cottages, and the neighbouring village of Helmsdale.
It consisted of from six to eight hundred Highlanders, all devoted
adherents of the Free Church. We have rarely seen a more deeply
serious assemblage; never certainly one that bore an air of such deep
dejection. The people were wonderfully clean and decent; for it is ill
with Highlanders when they neglect their personal appearance,
especially on a Sabbath; but it was all too evident that the heavy
hand of poverty rested upon them, and that its evils were now deepened
by oppression. It might be a mere trick of association; but when their
plaintive Gaelic singing, so melancholy in its tones at all times,
arose from the bare hill-side, it sounded in our ears like a deep wail
of complaint and sorrow. Poor people! 'We were ruined and reduced to
beggary before,' they say, 'and now the gospel is taken from us.'
Nine-tenths of the poor people of Sutherland are adherents of the
Free Church--all of them in whose families the worship of God has been
set up--all who entertain a serious belief in the reality of
religion--all who are not the creatures of the proprietor, and have
not stifled their convictions for a piece of bread--are devotedly
attached to the disestablished ministers, and will endure none other.
The residuary clergy they do not recognise as clergy at all. The
Established churches have become as useless in the district, as if,
like its Druidical circles, they represented some idolatrous belief,
long exploded--the people will not enter them; and they respectfully
petition his Grace to be permitted to build other churches for
themselves. And fain would his Grace indulge them, he says. In
accordance with the suggestions of an innate desire, willingly would
he permit them to build their own churches and support their own
ministers. But then, has he not loyally engaged to support the
Establishment? To permit a religious and inoffensive people to build
their own places of worship, and support their own clergy, would be
sanctioning a sort of persecution against the Establishment; and as
his Grace dislikes religious persecution, and has determined always to
oppose whatever tends to it, he has resolved to make use of his
influence, as the most extensive of Scottish proprietors, in forcing
them back to their parish churches. If they persist in worshipping God
agreeably to the dictates of their conscience, it must be on the
unsheltered hill-side--in winter, amid the frosts and snows of a
severe northern climate--in the milder seasons, exposed to the
scorching sun and the drenching shower. They must not be permitted the
shelter of a roof, for that would be persecuting the Establishment;
and so to the Establishment must the people be forced back, literally
by stress of weather. His Grace owes a debt to the national
institution, and it seems to irk his conscience until some equivalent
be made. He is not himself a member--he exercises the same sort of
liberty which his people would so fain exercise; and to make amends
for daring to belong to another Church himself (that of England), he
has determined, if he can help it, that the people shall belong to no
other. He has resolved, it would seem, to compound for his own liberty
by depriving them of theirs.
How they are to stand out the winter on this exposed eastern coast, He
alone knows who never shuts His ear to the cry of the oppressed. One
thing is certain, they will never return to the Establishment. On this
Sabbath the congregation in the parish church did not, as we
afterwards learned, exceed a score; and the _quoad sacra_ chapel of
the district was locked up. Long before the Disruption the people had
well-nigh ceased attending the ministrations of the parish incumbent.
The Sutherland Highlanders are still a devout people; they like a bald
mediocre essay none the better for its being called a sermon, and read
on Sabbath. The noble Duke, their landlord, has said not a little in
his letters to them about the extreme slightness of the difference
which obtains between the Free and the Established Churches: it is a
difference so exceedingly slight, that his Grace fails to see it; and
he hopes that by and by, when winter shall have thickened the
atmosphere with its frost rime and its snows, his poor tenantry may
prove as unable to see it as himself. With them, however, the
difference is not mainly a doctrinal one. They believe with the old
Earls of Sutherland, who did much to foster the belief in this
northern county, that there is such a thing as personal piety,--that
of two clergymen holding nominally the same doctrines, and bound
ostensibly by the same standards, one may be a regenerate man,
earnestly bent on the conversion of others, and ready to lay down his
worldly possessions, and even life itself, for the cause of the
gospel; while the other may be an unregenerate man, so little desirous
of the conversion of others, that he would but decry and detest them
did he find them converted already, and so careless of the gospel,
that did not his living depend on professing to preach it, he would
neither be an advocate for it himself, nor yet come within earshot of
where it was advocated by others. The Highlanders of Sutherland hold
in deep seriousness a belief of this character. They believe, further,
that the ministers of their own mountain district belong to these two
classes--that the Disruption of the Scottish Church has thrown the
classes apart--that the residuaries are not men of personal
piety--they have seen no conversions attending their ministry--nor
have they lacked reason to deem them unconverted themselves. Unlike
his Grace the Duke, the people have been intelligent enough to see two
sets of principles ranged in decided antagonism in the Church
question; but still more clearly have they seen two sets of men. They
have identified the cause of the gospel with that of the-Free Church
in their district; and neither the Duke of Sutherland nor the
Establishment which he is 'engaged in endeavouring to maintain,' will
be able to reverse the opinion.
We have said that his Grace's ancestors, the old earls, did much to
foster this spirit. The history of Sutherland, as a county, differs
from all our other Highland districts. Its two great families were
those of Reay and Sutherland, both of which, from an early period of
the Reformation, were not only Protestant, but also thoroughly
evangelical. It was the venerable Earl of Sutherland who first
subscribed the National Covenant in the Greyfriars. It was a scion of
the Reay family--a man of great personal piety--who led the troops of
William against Dundee at Killiecrankie. Their influence was
all-powerful in Sutherland, and directed to the best ends; and we find
it stated by Captain Henderson, in his general view of the agriculture
of the country, as a well-established and surely not uninteresting
fact, that 'the crimes of rapine, murder, and plunder, though not
unusual in the county during the feuds and conflicts of the clans,
were put an end to about the year 1640'--a full century before our
other Highland districts had become even partially civilised. 'Pious
earls and barons of former times,' says a native of the county, in a
small work published in Edinburgh about sixteen years ago, 'encouraged
and patronized pious ministers, and a high tone of religious feeling
came thus to be diffused throughout the country.' Its piety was
strongly of the Presbyterian type; and in no district of the south
were the questions which received such prominence in our late
ecclesiastical controversy better understood by both the people and
the patrons, than in Sutherland a full century ago. We have before us
an interesting document, the invitation of the elders, parishioners,
and heritors of Lairg, to the Rev. Thomas M'Kay, 1748, to be their
minister, in which, 'hoping that' he would find their 'call, carried
on with great sincerity, unanimity, and order, to be a clear call from
the Lord,' they faithfully promise to 'yield him, in their several
stations and relations, all dutiful respect and encouragement.'
William Earl of Sutherland was patron of the parish, but we find him
on this occasion exercising no patronate powers: at the head of
parishioners and elders he merely adhibits his name. He merely
_invites_ with the others. The state of morals in the county was
remarkably exemplified at a later period by the regiment of Sutherland
Highlanders, embodied originally in 1793, under the name of the
Sutherlandshire Fencibles, and subsequently in 1800 as the 93d
Regiment. Most other troops are drawn from among the unsettled and
reckless part of the population; not so the Sutherland Highlanders. On
the breaking out of the revolutionary war, the mother of the present
Duke summoned them from their hills, and five hundred fighting men
marched down to Dunrobin Castle, to make a tender of their swords to
their country, at the command of their chieftainess. The regiment,
therefore, must be regarded as a fair specimen of the character of the
district; and from the description of General Stewart of Garth, and
one or two sources besides, we may learn what that character was.
'In the words of a general officer by whom they were once reviewed,'
says General Stewart, 'they exhibited a perfect pattern of military
discipline and moral rectitude.'
'When stationed at the Cape of Good Hope, anxious to enjoy the
advantages of religious instruction agreeably to the tenets of their
national Church, and there being no religious service in the garrison
except the customary one of reading prayers to the soldiers on parade,
the Sutherland men formed themselves into a congregation, appointed
elders of their own number, engaged and paid a stipend (collected
among themselves) to a clergyman of the Church of Scotland (who had
gone out with an intention of teaching and preaching to the Caffres),
and had divine service performed agreeably to the ritual of the
Established Church.... In addition to these expenses, the soldiers
regularly remitted money to their relatives in Sutherland. When they
disembarked at Plymouth in August 1814, the inhabitants were both
surprised and gratified. On such occasions it had been no uncommon
thing for soldiers to spend in taverns and gin-shops the money they
had saved. In the present case the soldiers of Sutherland were seen in
book-sellers' shops, supplying themselves with Bibles and such books
and tracts as they required. Yet, as at the Cape, where their
religious habits were so free of all fanatical gloom that they
occasionally indulged in social meetings and dancing, so here, while
expending their money on books, they did not neglect their personal
appearance; and the haberdashers' shops had also their share of trade,
from the purchase of additional feathers to their bonnets, and such
extra decorations as the correctness of military regulations allow to
be introduced into the uniform. Nor, while thus mindful of
themselves--improving their mind and their personal appearance--did
such of them as had relations in Sutherland forget their destitute
condition, _occasioned by the loss of their lands_, and the operation
of the _improved state of the country_. During the short period that
the regiment was quartered at Plymouth, upwards of L500 were lodged in
one banking house to be remitted to Sutherland, exclusive of many sums
sent through the Post Office and by officers. Some of the sums
exceeded L20 from an individual soldier.'
'In the case of such men,' continues the General, 'disgraceful
punishment was as unnecessary as it would have been pernicious.
Indeed, so remote was the idea of such a measure in regard to them,
that when punishments were to be inflicted on others, and the troops
in camp, garrison, or quarters assembled to witness the execution, the
presence of the Sutherland Highlanders--either of the fencibles or of
the line--was dispensed with; the effect of terror, as a check to
crime, being in their case uncalled for, "_as examples of that nature
were not necessary for such honourable soldiers_." Such were these men
in garrison. How thoroughly they were guided by honour and loyalty in
the field, was shown at New Orleans. Although many of their countrymen
who had emigrated to America were ready and anxious to receive them,
there was not an instance of desertion; nor did one of those who were
left behind, wounded or prisoners, forget their allegiance and remain
in that country, at the same time that desertions from the British
army were but too frequent.'
This is testimony which even men of the world will scarce suspect. We
can supplement it by that of the missionary whom the Sutherlandshire
soldiers made choice of at Cape Town as their minister. We quote from
a letter by the Rev. Mr. Thom, which appeared in the _Christian
Herald_ of October 1814:--
'When the 93d Sutherland Highlanders left Cape Town last month,'
writes the reverend gentleman, 'there were among them 156 members of
the church (including three elders and three deacons), all of whom, so
far as man can know the heart from the life, were pious persons. The
regiment was certainly a pattern for morality and good behaviour to
every other corps. They read their Bibles; they observed the Sabbath;
they saved their money in order to do good; 7000 rix-dollars (L1400
currency) the non-commissioned officers and privates gave for books,
societies, and the support of the gospel--a sum perhaps unparalleled
in any other corps in the world, given in the short space of seventeen
or eighteen months. Their example had a general good effect on both
the colonists and heathen. How they may act as to religion in other
parts is known to God; but if ever apostolic days were revived in
modern times on earth, I certainly believe some of these to have been
granted to us in Africa.'
One other extract of a similar kind: we quote from a letter to the
Committee of the Edinburgh Gaelic School Society, Fourth Annual
Report:--
'The regiment (93d) arrived in England, when they immediately received
orders to proceed to North America; but before they re-embarked, the
sum collected for your Society was made up, and has been remitted to
your treasurer, amounting to seventy-eight pounds sterling.'
We dwell with pleasure on this picture; and shall present the reader,
in our next chapter, with a picture of similar character, taken from
observation, of the homes in which these soldiers were reared. The
reverse is all too stern, but we must exhibit _it_ also, and show how
the influence which the old Earls of Sutherland employed so well, has
been exerted by their descendants to the ruin of their country. But we
must first give one other extract from General Stewart. It indicates
the track in which the ruin came.
'Men like these,' he says, referring to the Sutherland Highlanders,
'do credit to the peasantry of the country. If this conclusion is well
founded, the removal of so many of the people from their ancient
seats, where they acquired those habits and principles, must be
considered a public loss of no common magnitude. It must appear
strange, and somewhat inconsistent, when the same persons who are loud
in their professions of an eager desire to promote and preserve the
religious and moral virtues of the people, should so frequently take
the lead in approving of measures which, by removing them from where
they imbibed principles which have attracted the notice of Europe, and
placed them in situations where poverty, and the too frequent
attendants, vice and crime, will lay the foundation of a character
which will be a disgrace, as that already obtained has been an honour,
to this country. In the new stations where so many Highlanders are now
placed, and crowded in such numbers as to preserve the numerical
population, while whole districts are left without inhabitants, how
can they resume their ancient character and principles, which,
according to the reports of those employed by the proprietors, have
been so deplorably broken down and deteriorated--a deterioration which
was entirely unknown till the recent change in the condition of the
people, and the introduction of that system of placing families on
patches of potato ground, as in Ireland--a system pregnant with
degradation, poverty, and disaffection, and exhibiting daily a
prominent and deplorable example, which might have forewarned Highland
proprietors, and prevented them from reducing their people to a
similar state? It is only when parents and heads of families in the
Highlands are moral, happy, and contented, that they can instil sound
principles into their children, who, in their intercourse with the
world, may once more become what the men of Sutherland have already
been, "an honourable example, worthy the imitation of all.'"