islander. The statement excited great surprise at the time, but was lost sight of soon by most people, though never by myself, to whose share the thesis fell for examination. As soon as the Scottish register was established, I asked Dr. Stark, the Medical Registrar, to look into the matter; but an insufficient staff prevented him from doing so till the "Detailed Report" for 1855 was undertaken, and published so lately as 1861. Dr. Stark there takes up the question; speaks of a "tradition" prevailing in the Western Isles as to their exemption from pulmonary consumption; notices the fact that one medical gentleman had confirmed the tradition; but says that the register does not bear out the proposition; at the same time acknowledges that the returns are so incomplete, and the term consumption so vaguely used in the Isles, as to render the register an unsafe guide; and, after all, thinks he can make out, after proper allowance for errors, that consumption is very decidedly less frequent in the Isles than in Scotland at large. I find, however, that the register itself positively proves consumption to be less frequent in the rich agricultural lowlands of Scotland than Dr. Stark has made it out to be, with allowance for errors, in the Western Islands. But the truth is, the returns to the registrar from these islands are so very faulty that, after looking carefully into the subject, it appears to me they are wholly unfit for use in such a quesion.

I therefore referred the other day again to Dr. Macrae, begging to know his ulterior observation upon a much larger experience than in 1848. He replies, that he continues to obtain the same result; that consumption in Lewis is almost entirely confined to strangers temporarily resident there, and to natives who have resided and contracted the disease elsewhere, chiefly as domestic servants in the southern towns of the mainland; and that natives who stick to the island are exempt from the disease, except in a few rare instances, where it had been brought on under long privation of food and exposure to cold. Adverting to the defects in the register, and the jumbled mode of using the term consumption in the returns, he adds, that he investigated the reported cases for the last three years in the Stornoway district, which contains a population of 8,500 inhabitants; that the total deaths were 444, or 1 in 61; that 24 deaths from consumption were registered; that every case had been seen at one period or another of its course by a medical man, so that he could trace it out accurately; that 8 of the 24 proved to have been bronchitisa common mistake; 2 tabes, and 1 dropsy; that of the 13 true consumption, 5 were residents from the mainland, and 4 native servants who had returned ill of the disease from

service in Glasgow. Thus we have only 4 cases in three years among the true resident natives of the island, or 16 only in 100,000. I have similar testimony from a very able authority in another island, Dr. M'Coll, of Mull, who brings the experience of thirty-three years to the inquiry. He informs me that in his island, which contains 12,000 inhabitants, he has scarcely ever known consumption occur, except among emigrants bringing with them the constitution of the mainland, or natives who had gone thither early to contract it, but returned to die on the soil of their birth.

I do not know a more interesting fact in the whole statistics and pathology of this melancholy disease than the apparent exemption of our western islanders from it. Nor is there any limited statistical inquiry more worthy of being encouraged by our Association, and satisfactorily cleared up as to its amount and causes, than this wonderful immunity, which is now no mere tradition."

66

I feel that I must apologise to this meeting for having detained it so long with a somewhat excursive inquiry. More especially ought I to do so, because I do not claim to have brought before you anything positively new, at least of the nature of general principles. My purpose was to revive some old principles concerning public health, which have been latterly kept rather in the shade, to illustrate them and others by placing them before you in a new and stronger point of view, and to confirm prior observations by my own. I shall be content if I may be thought to have succeeded in some measure in these objects.

116

Address

BY

THE RIGHT HON. SIR JOHN M'NEILL, G.C.B.,

ON SOCIAL ECONOMY.

IT

T is my duty to address you, and in fulfilling that duty it is my intention to confine myself to a local subject in which I take much interest, and which I cannot suppose to be altogether uninteresting to the members of an Association, whose chief object must be the social advancement of their countrymen.

In most parts of this country the condition of the population has long been improving, more or less rapidly, and the advantages of that progress have been gradually extended to some of the more remote districts. But there is a portion of Scotland, embracing a considerable area, in which the general condition of the inhabitants has been nearly stationary, and in some parts, it may be feared, declining rather than improving. In the North-Western Highlands and Islands there are now not less than thirty thousand persons who are unable to obtain either from the soil they cultivate, or from such employment as can be found in their vicinity, the means of decent maintenance. On many occasions, during the last forty years, the local resources of those districts have been supplemented by extraneous aid, sometimes derived from the bounty of the public, but much more frequently and largely from the proprietors. The emergency has thus been tided over for a time, but only to recur again in a few years and the last two years have perhaps been seasons of as great privation and suffering as almost any that preceded them. There must, I think, be something essentially defective in a social system, the result of which is so unsatisfactory.

The part of the country to which I desire to direct your attention extends from the south coast of the Island of Mull, northward, to the Butt of Lewis. On the west, it includes the whole chain of the outer Hebrides, and, on the east, the parishes on the mainland, in the counties of Inverness and Ross, which touch the waters of the Atlantic. Within those limits are included twenty-eight parishes. Of all of these, excepting one (the parish of Small Isles), I carefully examined the condition in

1851. During the twelve years that have since elapsed, my attention has been frequently directed to the subject. I have had opportunities of further inquiry and observation, and, with the aid of these, have carefully weighed the conclusions at which I had previously arrived. The result has been to confirm, in all essential particulars, the former conclusions, and to furnish additional proofs, though such were not needed, that it is hopeless, and would be cruel, to seek to perpetuate a system which has so signally failed to promote the welfare of the population.

The system to which I have referred will most easily be explained by the analysis of a district, and I take the Island of Skye, which is probably as fair an example as could be selected, being in a more favourable condition than some, and in a worse condition than some other districts of that part of the country, the limits of which have been stated. The population of all of those districts consists principally of persons holding land directly from the proprietor. These tenants may be divided into two classes, tacksmen and crofters, of which the most numerous is that of "crofters; " including under that designation all persons holding land directly from the proprietor, at rents not exceeding £20 a-year. In every district the majority of the population consists of crofters. Next to them, the most numerous class consists of "cottars." The cottar either does not hold land at all, or holds a small patch as sub-tenant. He is altogether dependent on the wages of labour in some places, and the profits of fishing in others. The crofters and cottars everywhere constitute the great mass of the population. According to the census of 1851, the population of Skye and the smaller islands parochially connected with it was 22,532. The number of families was 4,335, which gives for each family about 5 1-5th. This district is divided into seven parishes, of which one, with a population of 1,597, contained no crofters. In the other six parishes, with a population of 20,935, there were, besides those at higher rents, about 1,900 crofters at rents not exceeding £10-the average for each being £4 4s. 1d. But the ordinary produce of such a croft as is held at that rent, including the annual sales from the produce of live stock, does not provide an average family with food for more than six months, reserving seed for the next crop. There thus remains to be provided from other sources, food for six months, rent, poor-rates and other dues, clothing and everything else for which money must be paid. These crofters, therefore, as a body, although there may be individual exceptions, are dependent, for more than half their means of living, on

employment unconnected with the cultivation of their crofts. It is a misapprehension to regard them as a class of small farmers, who are expected or supposed to get their living and to pay their rents from the produce of their crofts. They are truly labourers, living chiefly by the wages of labour, and holding lots, for which they pay rent, not from the produce of the land, but from wages. When employment is deficient they are in distress, and if they cannot obtain it at home, they must seek it elsewhere, or they will starve, as certainly as if they held no land. In the six parishes referred to, in which there were 1,900 families of crofters depending on employment, there were also 1,531 families of cottars holding no land and having no regular trade. There were thus 3,431 families, or 17,842 individuals, depending on employment for the whole or the greater part of their means of living. No manufacture of any kind is carried on in those parishes, and the only employment they afford is such as may be found in a purely agricultural and chiefly pastoral district, of which the gross annual value is under £20,000 a-year-little more than a pound per head of the persons depending on employment. The profits of fishing had for several years been nil, and many had been losers by engaging in it; but it had certainly contributed to the means of present subsistence. In the remaining parish, in which there were no crofters, the whole of the land was occupied by eleven tenants, at rents of not less, on the average, than £350 a-year, who were of course employers of labour. The remaining population consisted of 234 families of cottars, numbering 1,216 individuals, and 48 families of clergymen, professional men, innkeepers, shopkeepers, and tradesmen. The annual value was about £4,000, equal to £3 4s. 9d. per head of the persons depending on employment. Yet the cottar population had there been unable to find employment sufficient to maintain them. It is plain from these facts that the resources of Skye are totally inadequate to the maintenance of its population, and that they could not exist without extraneous resources, the nature of which I shall explain.

For at least half-a-century the working-classes in Skye have derived a part of their means from the wages of labour in other parts of the country. The cessation of the kelp manufacture about forty years ago, the failure of the herring fishing at a later period, and the failure of the potato in 1846, compelled larger and larger numbers of persons to seek elsewhere the means of living in Skye. Prior to 1846 only the younger members of the family left the district for that purpose. Since then many of the crofters have also themselves gone. But young and old, crofters and cottars, to