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