The Highland tacksman, originally co-proprietor of the land of the clan, became at first vassal, then hereditary tenant, then tenant at will, and thus the property in land passed from the many into the hands of the few, who have not hesitated to avail themselves of the power so obtained. The payment of money rents was claimed by them eighty years since, but the amount was very small, as is shown by the following passage from a work of that date:-- "The rent of these lands is very trifling compared to their extent, but compared to the number of mouths which a farm maintains, it will perhaps be found that a plot of land in the highlands of Scotland feeds ten times more people than a farm of the same extent in the richest provinces."--_Stewart's Political Economy_, vol. i. chap. xvi. Of some of the proceedings of the present century the following sketch is furnished by a recent English writer:-- "Even in the beginning of the 19th century the rental imposts were very small, as is shown by the work of Mr. Lock, (1820,) the steward of the Countess of Sutherland, who directed the improvements on her estates. He gives for instance the rental of the Kintradawell estate for 1811, from which it appears that up to then, every family was obliged to pay a yearly impost of a few shillings in money, a few fowls, and some days' work, at the highest. "It was only after 1811 that the ultimate and real usurpation was enacted, the forcible, transformation of _clan-property_ into the _private property_, in the modern sense, _of the chief_. The person who stood at the head of this economical revolution, was the Countess of Sutherland and Marchioness of Stafford.