We have exhibited to our readers, in the _clearing_ of Sutherland, a
process of ruin so thoroughly disastrous, that it might be deemed
scarce possible to render it more complete. And yet, with all its
apparent completeness, it admitted of a supplementary process. To
employ one of the striking figures of Scripture, it was possible to
grind into powder what had been previously broken into fragments,--to
degrade the poor inhabitants to a still lower level than that on which
they had been so cruelly precipitated,--though persons of a not very
original cast of mind might have found it difficult to say how; and
the Duke of Sutherland has been ingenious enough to fall on exactly
the one proper expedient for supplementing their ruin. All in mere
circumstance and situation that could lower and deteriorate, had been
present as ingredients in the first process; but there still remained
for the people, however reduced to poverty or broken in spirit, all in
religion that consoles and ennobles. Sabbath-days came round with
their humanizing influences; and, under the teachings of the gospel,
the poor and oppressed looked longingly forward to a future scene of
being, in which there is no poverty and no oppression. They still
possessed, amid their misery, something positively good, of which it
was possible to deprive them; and hence the ability derived to the
present lord of Sutherland, of deepening and rendering more signal the
ruin accomplished by his predecessor.
Napoleon, when on the eve of re-establishing Popery in France,
showed his conviction of the importance of national religions, by
remarking that, did there exist no ready-made religion to serve
his turn, he would be under the necessity of making one on purpose.
And his remark, though perhaps thrown into this form merely to give
it point, and render it striking, has been instanced as a proof that
he could not have considered the matter very profoundly. It has been
said, and said truly, that religions of stamina enough to be even
politically useful cannot be _made_: that it is comparatively easy
to gain great battles, and frame important laws; but that to create
belief lay beyond the power of even a Napoleon. France, instead of
crediting his manufactured religion, would have laughed at both him
and it. The Duke of Sutherland has, however, taken upon himself a
harder task than the one to which Napoleon could refer, probably in
joke. His aim seems to be, not the comparatively simple one of
making a new religion where no religion existed before, but of
making men already firm in their religious convictions believe that
to be a religion which they believe to be no such thing. His
undertaking involves a _discharging_ as certainly as an _injecting_
process,--the erasure of an existing belief, as certainly as the
infusion of an antagonistic belief that has no existence. We have
shown how evangelism took root and grew in Sutherland, as the only
form of Christianity which its people could recognise; how the
antagonist principle of Moderatism they failed to recognise as
Christianity at all; and how, when the latter was obtruded into
their pulpits, they withdrew from the churches in which their
fathers had worshipped, for they could regard them as churches no
longer, and held their prayer and fellowship meetings in their own
homes, or travelled far to attend the ministrations of clergymen
in whose mission they _could_ believe. We have shown that this state
of feeling and belief still pervades the county. It led to an actual
disruption between its evangelized people and its moderate clergy,
long ere the disruption of last May took place: that important event
has had but the effect of marshalling them into one compact body
under a new name. They are adherents of the Free Church now, just
because they have been adherents to its principles for the last two
centuries. And to shake them loose from this adherence is the object
of his Grace; to reverse the belief of ages; to render them
indifferent to that which they feel and believe to be religion; and to
make them regard as religion that which they know to be none. His
task is harder by a great deal than that to which Napoleon barely
ventured to advert; and how very coarse and repulsive his purposed
means of accomplishing it!
These harmonize but too well with the mode in which the interior of
Sutherland was cleared, and the improved cottages of its sea-coasts
erected. The plan has its two items. No sites are to be granted in the
district for Free churches, and no dwelling-houses for Free Church
ministers. The climate is severe; the winters prolonged and stormy;
the roads which connect the chief seats of population with the
neighbouring counties dreary and long. May not ministers and people be
eventually worn out in this way? Such is the portion of the plan which
his Grace and his Grace's creatures can afford to present to the
light. But there are supplementary items of a somewhat darker kind.
The poor cottars are, in the great majority of cases, tenants at will;
and there has been much pains taken to inform them, that to the crime
of entertaining and sheltering a protesting minister, the penalty of
ejection from their holdings must inevitably attach. The laws of
Charles have again returned in this unhappy district; and free and
tolerating Scotland has got, in the nineteenth century, as in the
seventeenth, its intercommuned ministers. We shall not say that the
intimation has emanated from the Duke. It is the misfortune of such
men that there creep around them creatures whose business it is to
anticipate their wishes; but who, at times, doubtless, instead of
anticipating, misinterpret them; and who, even when not very much
mistaken, impart to whatever they do the impress of their own low and
menial natures, and thus exaggerate in the act the intention of their
masters. We do not say, therefore, that the intimation has emanated
from the Duke; but this we say, that an exemplary Sutherlandshire
minister of the Protesting Church, who resigned his worldly all for
the sake of his principles, had lately to travel, that he might preach
to his attached people, a long journey of forty-five miles outwards,
and as much in return, and all this without taking shelter under the
cover of a roof, or without partaking of any other refreshment than
that furnished by the slender store of provisions which he had carried
with him from his new home. Willingly would the poor Highlanders have
received him at any risk; but knowing from experience what a
Sutherlandshire removal means, he preferred enduring any amount of
hardship, rather than that the hospitality of his people should be
made the occasion of their ruin. We have already adverted to the case
of a lady of Sutherland threatened with ejection from her home because
she had extended the shelter of her roof to one of the protesting
clergy--an aged and venerable man, who had quitted the neighbouring
manse, his home for many years, because he could no longer enjoy it in
consistency with his principles; and we have shown that that aged and
venerable man was the lady's own father. What amount of oppression of
a smaller and more petty character may not be expected in the
circumstances, when cases such as these are found to stand but a very
little over the ordinary level?
The meannesses to which ducal hostility can stoop in this hapless
district impress with a feeling of surprise. In the parish of Dornoch,
for instance, where his Grace is fortunately not the sole landowner,
there has been a site procured on the most generous terms from Sir
George Gun Munro of Poyntzfield; and this gentleman--believing
himself possessed of a hereditary right to a quarry, which, though on
the Duke's ground, had been long resorted to by the proprietors of the
district generally--instructed the builder to take from it the stones
which he needed. Here, however, his Grace interfered. Never had the
quarry been prohibited before; but on this occasion a stringent
interdict arrested its use. If his Grace could not prevent a hated
Free Church from arising in the district, he could at least add to the
_expense_ of its erection. We have even heard that the portion of the
building previously erected had to be pulled down, and the stones
returned.
How are we to account for a hostility so determined, and that can
stoop so low? In two different ways, we are of opinion, and in both
have the people of Scotland a direct interest. Did his Grace entertain
a very intense regard for Established Presbytery, it is probable that
he himself would be a Presbyterian of the Establishment. But such is
not the case. The Church into which he would so fain force the people
has been long since deserted by himself. The secret of the course
which he pursues can have no connection therefore with religious
motive or belief. It can be no proselytizing spirit that misleads his
Grace. Let us remark, in the first place,--rather, however, in the way
of embodying a fact than imputing a motive,--that with his present
views, and in his present circumstances, it may not seem particularly
his Grace's interest to make the county of Sutherland a happy or
desirable home to the people of Sutherland. It may not seem his
Grace's interest that the population of the district should increase.
The _clearing_ of the sea-coast may seem as little prejudicial to his
Grace's welfare now, as the _clearing_ of the interior seemed adverse
to the interests of his predecessor thirty years ago; nay, it is quite
possible that his Grace may be led to regard the _clearing_ of the
coast as the better and more important _clearing_ of the two. Let it
not be forgotten that a poor-law hangs over Scotland; that the shores
of Sutherland are covered with what seems one vast straggling village,
inhabited by an impoverished and ruined people; and that the coming
assessment may yet fall so weighty, that the extra profits derived to
his Grace from his large sheep-farms, may go but a small way in
supporting his extra paupers. It is not in the least improbable that
he may live to find the revolution effected by his predecessor taking
to itself the form, not of a crime--for that would be nothing--but of
a disastrous and very terrible blunder.
There is another remark which may prove not unworthy the consideration
of the reader. Ever since the completion of the fatal experiment
which ruined Sutherland, the noble family through which it was
originated and carried on have betrayed the utmost jealousy of
having its real results made public. Volumes of special pleading
have been written on the subject; pamphlets have been published;
laboured articles have been inserted in widely-spread reviews;
statistical accounts have been watched over with the most careful
surveillance. If the misrepresentations of the press could have
altered the matter of fact, famine would not have been gnawing the
vitals of Sutherland in every year just a little less abundant than
its fellows, nor would the dejected and oppressed people be
feeding their discontent, amid present misery, with the recollections
of a happier past. If a singularly well-conditioned and wholesome
district of country has been converted into one wide ulcer of
wretchedness and wo, it must be confessed that the sore has been
carefully bandaged up from the public eye; that if there has been
little done for its cure, there has at least been much done for its
concealment. Now, be it remembered that the Free Church threatens to
insert a _tent_ into this wound, and so keep it open. It has been
said that the Gaelic language removes a district more effectually
from the influence of English opinion than an ocean of three
thousand miles, and that the British public know better what is
doing in New York than what is doing in Lewis and Skye. And hence one
cause, at least, of the thick obscurity that has so long enveloped the
miseries which the poor Highlander has had to endure, and the
oppressions to which he has been subjected. The Free Church
threatens to _translate_ her wrongs into English, and to give them
currency in the general mart of opinion. She might possibly enough
be no silent spectator of conflagrations such as those which
characterized the first general improvement of Sutherland, nor yet
of such Egyptian schemes of house-building as that which formed part
of the improvements of a later plan. She might be somewhat apt to
betray the real state of the district, and thus render laborious
misrepresentation of little avail. She might effect a diversion in
the cause of the people, and shake the foundations of the hitherto
despotic power which has so long weighed them down. She might do
for Sutherland what Cobbett promised to do for it, but what Cobbett
had not character enough to accomplish, and what he did not live
even to attempt. A combination of circumstances have conspired to
vest in a Scottish proprietor, in this northern district, a more
despotic power than even the most absolute monarchs of the Continent
possess; and it is, perhaps, no great wonder that that proprietor
should be jealous of the introduction of an element which threatens,
it may seem, materially to lessen it. And so he struggles hard to
exclude the Free Church, and, though no member of the Establishment
himself, declaims warmly in its behalf. Certain it is, that from the
Establishment, as now constituted, he can have nothing to fear, and
the people nothing to hope.
After what manner may his Grace the Duke of Sutherland be most
effectually met in this matter, so that the cause of toleration and
freedom of conscience may be maintained in the extensive district
which God, in His providence, has consigned to his stewardship? We
shall in our next chapter attempt giving the question an answer.
Meanwhile, we trust the people of Sutherland will continue, as
hitherto, to stand firm. The strong repugnance which they feel against
being driven into churches which all their better ministers have left,
is not ill founded. No Church of God ever employs such means of
conversion as those employed by his Grace: they are means which have
been often resorted to for the purpose of making men worse, never yet
for the purpose of making them better. We know that, with their
long-formed church-going habits, the people must feel their now silent
Sabbaths pass heavily; but they would perhaps do well to remember,
amid the tedium and the gloom, that there were good men who not only
anticipated such a time of trial for this country, but who also made
provision for it. Thomas Scott, when engaged in writing his
Commentary, used to solace himself with the belief that it might be of
use at a period when the public worship of God would be no longer
tolerated in the land. To the great bulk of the people of Sutherland
that time seems to have already come. They know, however, the value of
the old divines, and have not a few of their more practical treatises
translated into their own expressive tongue: Alleine's _Alarm_,
Boston's _Fourfold State_, Doddridge's _Rise and Progress_, Baxter's
_Call_, Guthrie's _Saving Interest_. Let these, and such as these, be
their preachers, when they can procure no other. The more they learn
to relish them, the less will they relish the bald and miserable
services of the Residuary Church. Let them hold their fellowship and
prayer meetings; let them keep up the worship of God in their
families; the cause of religious freedom in the district is involved
in the stand which they make. Above all, let them possess their souls
in patience. We are not unacquainted with the Celtic character, as
developed in the Highlands of Scotland. Highlanders, up to a certain
point, are the most docile, patient, enduring of men; but that point
once passed, endurance ceases, and the all too gentle lamb starts up
an angry lion. The spirit is stirred that maddens at the sight of the
naked weapon, and that, in its headlong rush upon the enemy,
discipline can neither check nor control. Let our oppressed
Highlanders of Sutherland beware. They have suffered much; but, so far
as man is the agent, their battles can be fought on only the arena of
public opinion, and on that ground which the political field may be
soon found to furnish. Any explosion of violence on their part would
be ruin to both the Free Church and themselves.