The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 1888. White Slaves

Feilding Star, Volume IX, Issue 90, 17 January 1888, Page 2

The Feilding Star. TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 1888. White Slaves

* There is a sort of rising among the inhabitants of the Island of Lewis, which is described as the largest and tho most northern of the Hebrides, or Western Islands of Scotland. Every part of tbe island exhibit? monuments of antiquity, as fortified castles, druidical edifices, cairns and upright stones. The county is wild, bleak, and little fitted for cultivation ; and the hills are covered with heath, which affords shelter for various sorts of game. The crops are oats, bigg (whatever that is), and potatoes, and there are many beeves and sheep. The lakes and streams abound with salmon and trout ; the numerous bays afford large quantities of shell fish, and the west coast is annually visited by millions of herrings. The crofters are spoken of as illiterate, only speaking Gaellic; but they are industrious and successful fisherman. The cause of the trouble appears to be the tenants have formed what is called the Crofters Land League, the object of which is to have their holdings (of which they had, we suppose, been previously deprived) restored to them at reduced rentals. The land owners, of which Lady Mathieson appears to be the chief, have refused this request, and expressed a wish the crofters and their families should emigrate. Although their present home does not present many attractive features to us who live in New Zealand, yet these poor islanders, the bones of whose ancestors for many generations lie under the heather of the wild looking hills, are loth to tear themselves away from the land of their birth, bleak and sterile though it be. Still less are they inclined to be driven, and further outbreaks are expected. With the view of encouraging them to keep the peace a gun boat with a force of marines was sent across from Glafjgow last Wednesday. Now, we think the de-population of certain parts of the Highlands of Scotland by enforced immigration, was one of the most disgraceful and contemptible acts ever perpetrated by a degraded nobility who had wilfully forgotten the sacred ties of clanship which united them to their followers, but at the same time it has proved of inestimable value to the latter who have created new homes for themselvea in other lands a thousand times better than those from which they were driven so unwillingly. What has happened before may happen again, and we seriously declare our opinion to be that the sooner the inhabitants of Lewis, who are now little better than wbite slaves, are deported to lands south of the line, where they may enjoy the blessings of true freedom, the better for both them and their masters. Whatever compensation, in money, they are entitled to from their present landlords, would go far to settle them independently in Australia, or New Zealand. In their present circumstances, any chaage must be for the better. There are ; two thousand men now landless, who : with tbeir families make an awful , total of six thousand starving people that have been driven off the land to make room for deer. They are called rioters because they want to transform dog kennels into churches, md deer forests into crofts of cultivated land.