How could a popular delusion of this kind come into existence if the Commissioners of Forfeited Estates were ‘the first evictors in the Highlands’? Demonstrably they were nothing of the kind. There were evictions in the good old times. On the other hand, evictions had probably not been much practised with a view to obtaining higher rents or making improvements, but for other reasons. Claymores, not money, had been in request from tenants before 1745. Once more, according to Burt, a Lowland authority, the Chief ‘must free the necessitous from their arrears of rent, and maintain such who, by accidents, are fallen to a total decay.’ Far from throwing a lot of small farms into a large one, or a sheep-walk, ‘if, by increase of the tribe, small farms are wanting for the support of such addition, he splits others into lesser portions, because all must somehow be provided for.’[185] This policy is the precise reverse of the Culloden lease, which terminates, _ipso facto_, when rent falls into arrears. A Chief, bound by consanguinity to treat all his tenants as gentlemen, might practise shooting at them, like Clanranald with his famous piece, ‘the Cuckoo,’ but certainly was not apt to evict often for arrears of rent. He lived at home, he built a great castle like Glengarry’s (probably by aid of ‘services’), he fed on the sheep, kine, butter, milk, of his tenants, but he shook them by the hand, perhaps forgave arrears, held clan feasts, and was a god on earth. When he raised rents, united farms in one hand, did not shake that of every clansman, but rather evicted them, discontent was natural, inevitable. Holders of land, proud free men, must emigrate, or become labourers or artisans in towns. Who does not sympathise with their emotions? On the other side, the Chief must subdivide and subdivide, in the good old times, ‘because all must somehow be provided for.’ But all could not be and were not ‘provided for.’ We have seen the pictures of cruel exquisite poverty from Franck in 1654, to the Gartmore MS. in 1747, and the Culloden Report in 1738, and the ‘Life of Barisdale’ in 1754, and Burt’s Letters of about 1735. It seems reasonable to suppose that all arable lands were eagerly cultivated as far as the implements and skill of the people availed to cultivate them. It was the interest of the chiefs to increase their bands of warriors and the sentiment, if not the interest, of the clansmen urged them to stay on the land.