The Highland Crofters.

Te Aroha News, Volume IV, Issue 199, 16 April 1887, Page 1

The Highland Crofters.

A highland correspondent writes :—": — " Rory Ban MacLeod, Free Church elder, the Pope Lewis, has been invited up to London by the Highland Land Law Eeform Association for the purpose of being interviewed upon the crofters' agitation, its cause, and remedy. Rory wants to call upon Messrs Gladstone, Morley, Parnell, Chamberlain, &c, and explain the whole history of their grievances. Rory Ban is a direct lineal doscendent of the chiefs of the once powerful Lewis branch of the Clan Macleod. He Advocates the cause of the disinherited children of Cian-na-Gaei, which causes him to undertake the journey to London. Rory has been unwell during the winter months, and waß visited repeatedly in his cabin by Lady Mathieeon, the Queen of the Hebrides He is all alive again, although bordering upon eighty years, and is as straight as a ramrod and as lively as a young man of fiveand twenty. Rory holds more influence throughout Lewis, with its population of 30,000 *3ule, than anyone else. He proposes that the Crofters' Act shall be amended in euch a manner as shall include the cotters And crofter leaseholders and farmers,* that £25 rental be the highest limit for deer forests, farms, or sheep runs throughout the Highlands ; that the cotters and crofters of congested districts may be permitted to settle upon the lands of Adjoining estators— in fact, the people of the highlands and Islands may be permitted upon equitable conditions to live upon the land. Kory is , well versed in the entire history of the mis* .fortunes which overtook Clan-na-Gael, and, Ilia present mission to the metropolis ia' undertaken in the fail hope that justice will ' be done before the present Jubilee year doees.

The New York "Dramatic News" says that Mrs Langtry has filed her answer to the enit of the late Mon-is Greenwail, in the United States Oiroait Court. Bhe admits aaki&g the con tract to go to Australia, bat claims that he violated Its terms by assign* ing it to Williamson, Garner, and Musgrove, of Sydney, under vrhoaa mangemoat 4be was Hawllltng to act.