Author Description

This historic book may have numerous typos and missing text. Purchasers can download a free scanned copy of the original book (without typos) from the publisher. Not indexed. Not illustrated. 1887 edition. Excerpt: ...with intelligence and fidelity. Although this Eeport was written thirteen years before "The Forty-Five," which is popularly supposed to represent an epoch of change in tenures, and although it goes back to a previous condition of things which implies an unbroken history of many centuries, there is not even a hint or an expression which implies that any doubt existed in the minds of any of the various classes concerned, that the Proprietor was exercising any other powers than those which were not only known to the law but were also familiar to the people. And as this power was the only engine which could be used to redeem the poorer classes from the oppression of others, so also was it the only engine which could be used to redeem them from the consequences of their own ignorant and barbarous customs. Just as the prohibition and abandonment of some usages, traditional among them, was imposed upon the Tacksmen under the penalty of removal, so the prohibition and abandonment of other usages, as old and as firmly established, was imposed upon the class of Subtenants--under the same penalty of having to leave the estate if they were unwilling to accept the new conditions. In both cases, equally, the first steps towards a civilised condition, and towards agricultural improvement, were taken, and could only be taken, on the strength of the fullest powers and rights of Ownership. Nothing short of those powers could have overcome the desperate tenacity of the people in resisting every change and clinging to habits which, originally bad, had gone from bad to worse through that great law which determines the development of corruption. It is proved by the whole tenor of Sheriff Campbell's Report that the domestic economy of the people in this part of...