Of all the Highland counties, perhaps Sutherland is better known than any other in connection with the commotions which agitated the Highlands during the early part of this century, and, according to all accounts, the depopulation is more marked there than anywhere else. The clearance of that county of the old tenants, their removal to the coast, and the conversion of the country into large sheep-farms commenced about 1810, under the Marquis of Stafford, who had married the heiress of the Sutherland estate. The clearing was, of course, carried out by Mr Sellar, the factor, who, on account of some of the proceedings to which he was a party, was tried before a Court of Justiciary, held at Inverness in 1816, for culpable homicide and oppression. Many witnesses were examined on both sides, and, after a long trial, the jury returned a verdict of “Not guilty,” in which the judge, Lord Pitmilly, completely concurred. This, we think, was the only verdict that could legally be given, not only in the case of the Sutherland clearings, but also in the case of most of the other estates where such measures were carried on. The tenants were all duly warned to remove a considerable number of weeks before the term, and as few of them had many chattels to take with them, this could easily have been done. Most of them generally obeyed the warning, although a few, generally the very poor and very old, refused to budge from the spot of their birth. The factor and his officers, acting quite according to law, compelled them, sometimes by force, to quit the houses, which were then either burnt or pulled to the ground. As a rule, these officers of the law seem to have done their duty as gently as law officers are accustomed to do; but however mildly such a duty had been performed, it could not but entail suffering to some extent, especially on such a people as many of the Highlanders were who knew not how to make a living beyond the bounds of their native glen. The pictures of suffering drawn, some of them we fear too true, are sometimes very harrowing, and any one who has been brought up among the hills, or has dwelt for a summer in a sweet Highland glen, can easily fancy with how sad a heart the Highlander must have taken his last long lingering look of the little cottage, however rude, where he passed his happiest years, nestled at the foot of a sunny brae, or guarded by some towering crag, and surrounded with the multitudinous beauties of wood and vale, heather and ferns, soft knoll and rugged mountain. The same result as has followed in the Highlands has likewise taken place in other parts of the country, without the same outcry about depopulation, suffering, emigration, &c., simply because it has been brought about gradually. The process commenced in the Highlands only about a hundred years since, was commenced in the lowlands and elsewhere centuries ago; the Highlanders have had improvements thrust upon them, while the