NC 11:884 THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. PAGE I. A Corrected Picture of the Highlands. By His Grace the DUKE OF II. The People of England versus their Naval Officials. By H. O. ARNOLD- III. The Sisters of Thibet. By LAURENCE OLIPHANT. IV. What will the Peers do? By the Right Hon. LORD BRABOURNE V. Faust, "ein Fragment." By NINA KENNARD VI. State-directed Emigration: its Necessity. By LORD BRABAZON VII. Karlsbad. By W. FRASER RAE VIII. Over-Pressure. By SYDNEY BUXTON, M.P.. 681 702 715 731 746 764 788 806 IX. Last Words about Agnosticism and the Religion of Humanity. By 826 X. Lord Northbrook's Mission. By EDWARD DICEY. 846 851 Price Half-a-Crown. All rights reserved. FRY'S Try 'FRY'S COCOA EXTRACT' Guaranteed Pure. ROWLAND'S MACASSAR Is in high repute for its success during 84 years in promoting the growth, improving, and beautifying the hair. It prevents hair falling off or turning grey, cleanses it from scurf and dandriff, and makes it beautifully soft, pliable, and glossy. It contains no lead nor minen! ingredients, and can also be had in a Golden Colour, especially suited for fair-haired children or persons whose hair has become gre Sizes, 3s. 6d., 78., 10s. 6d. family bottles. Avoid imitations. Sold by Chemists. It can be sent by post for 3d. extra in stamps to A. ROWLAND & SONS, 20 Hatton Garden, London. THE NINETEENTH CENTURY. No. XCIII.-NOVEMBER 1884. A CORRECTED PICTURE OF THE: HIGHLANDS. ALL of us who are interested in the Highlands owe some very grateful acknowledgments to Lord Napier and Ettrick. As chairman of the Royal Commission, he maintained, amidst many difficulties, the tone of a gentleman and the temper of a judge. His dignified courtesy was unfailing, and his sincere desire to elicit truth was equally conspicuous. It is, therefore, with reluctance that I venture to criticise a Report which, by the internal evidence of great ability, and of great ingenuity, is sufficiently identified as mainly his. But this duty of criticism is imperative on all who have any special opportunity or means of knowledge on the subject. I never look into the Report of the Crofters Commission' without being reminded of the humorous description, by a great admirer, of that grand old national dish of Scotland, a sheep's head: 'There's a deal o' fine confeused feeding upon 't.' Of the dish this is a most graphic account. There is some gristle; but not much. There is some pure muscle; but not very much of that either. But there is a wonderful abundance of tissues, chiefly adipose and gelatinous. These are so delicately interwoven, and the qualities of each are so modified and tempered by the rest, that the whole is most smooth and pleasant feeding, suiting many tastes, and hardly enabling one to tell what it is that one has eaten. So it is with the Report. There are many facts, but they are widely scattered. There are many arguments, but VOL. XVI.-No. 93. 3 A 6 they are curiously mixed. For the rest, it is as fine confeused feeding' as the sheep's head; and when we have done with it, we feel quite at a loss what to make of it. First, one school of opinion is gently patted on the back, and then immediately after it is as gently snubbed. Again, another set of theorists are gratified by significant admissions, whilst very soon they are mortified to find that these admissions are silently set aside. But the whole is done with such literary skill, with such an evident desire to maintain a judicial attitude, and with such deft diplomacies of expression, that all adverse criticism is confounded, discouraged, and disarmed. The question What are we to think?' is a question which on many subjects may be indefinitely postponed. It is only when we ask the further question What are we to do?' in connection with this Report, that we fully realise the maze of intellectual confusions and of practical contradictions in which it leaves us. I am very far, however, from undervaluing the general result of the carefully balanced sentences which constitute a great part of the Report. Some of the intimations conveyed in this form are, indeed, of the highest importance. Such, for example, are the intimations which cut up by the roots the credibility of all the 'evidence' taken before the Commission which consists of accusations against persons or against classes. We are reminded that the stories upon which these accusations have been based have in many cases been told by illiterate persons speaking from early memory or from hearsay, or from popular tradition.' We are reminded that the witnesses were not on oath, that they were not in the face of a court of justice, where their testimony could be sifted by cross-examination. In short, we are led to understand very clearly that in this respect the Commission was little better than a great Shop for Scandal, in which every private spite could be indulged without immediate exposure, every unfounded conception of the past could be embodied in a narrative, and every myth could be represented as an historical truth. Of the extent to which advantage was taken of this licence I cannot give examples here. It is enough to signalise and be grateful for the candour of the Report. Not less valuable is the intimation that, whilst the Commission had no adequate power and no adequate opportunity of sifting this sort of testimony, another agency had both the power and the opportunity of preparing it beforehand. It was well known to many, but it was somewhat difficult to prove, that professional agitators preceded the Commission and instructed the poorer classes what they were to say. Lord Napier, however, has thought it his duty to record his official knowledge of this fact. He refers to it as a 'preparatory manipulation' of the evidence; and the impression left apparently on the mind of so experienced and so skilful an observer is conveyed to us rather intensified than modified by the concluding observation that 'even among the poorest and least educated class who came before us, there were many examples of candour, kindliness, and native intelligence.' This is the very least measure of praise which, under better conditions, the old natives of the Highlands deserve. There are few such natural gentlemen in the world. If we take them in the right way, that is to say apart from their manipulators,' although we shall find some dense and most curious prejudices, and many most erroneous conceptions both of the past and of the present, we shall never fail to find the most perfect courtesy, the most refined feeling, and an intelligence only too rapid because it is too impulsive and too imaginative. The very best of these qualities lend themselves to manipulation' in a measure and degree which men of more prosaic races can hardly understand. With a people living in remote districts, speaking a language which is still more remote from all the ideas and conceptions of modern life, clinging with affectionate remembrance to habits and usages which belong to primitive ages, recollecting only what was really beautiful, and forgetting or glorifying much that was miserable and even horrid, nothing is easier than to make them hate and to misrepresent every step which has brought them nearer to the conditions of modern society, and has led them along a path in which their country has only followed, later than others, the progress of all the civilised countries of the world. But the candid and destructive criticism which the Commission bestows on the oral testimony of the poorer classes in the Highlands, must not lull us into sleep as to the nature of the evidence which comes from the Commissioners themselves. The fallacies which honeycomb the evidence of cotters and crofters living in remote islands or in secluded glens are not the same fallacies which tell upon the representations of educated men when they are set to draw up a report upon matters having a long history and complex relations. There is no more delicate work than the true handling of facts. It is the great difficulty even in the physical sciences; whilst in the sciences which deal with man, it is the very rarest of all accomplish Of manipulation in the bad sense there is no question here. That against which we have to guard is the selection of a few facts and the suppression of many others--the suppression being not wilful, but the result of prepossession. It is wonderful what glaring and what stumbling facts men will overlook when their eyes are fixed upon a few selected circumstances which fit nicely into some vacant place in their own theories and foregone conclusions. Perhaps there has never been a better example of this kind of misrepresentation than the very first series of figures which we meet with in the Report. The subject-matter of those figures is a very important one-namely, the size of farms into which the agricultural area of the Highlands is divided. The object is to show that the country is mainly thrown into a few farms which are excessively large, with a |