DEER-FORESTS.
THE Crofters' agitation has scared the votaries of deer- shooting. It has moved them to essay a vindication of their sport with all its existing concomitants and conditions. A brace of apologists present their case in the pages of leading magazines for the present month. It cannot honestly be said that the defence they offer is entitled to count for much. That put forward in Blackwood is a characteristic performance— trivial in its substance, though slap-dash and rollicking in its style, while distinguished by something of that prejudice, incon- sistency, and rancour which are commonly reserved for those astonishing diatribes that do duty as discussions on the politics of the hour, and that create a sense of tedium and nausea in the mind of every one possessing ordinary intelligence or candour who tries to read them. The extinction of the red-deer is pro- claimed to be the object of the agitation, or rather of those mischievous persons who stimulate and use it—a motley crew, composed of Advanced Radicals, of men whose trade is factions activity, and of those Lowland farmers, deriving from the class who supplied Scott with his Dandie Dinmont, who invaded the Highlands in force more than half-a-centdry ago, and who have still too many large sheep-walks in their tenancy. In order to defeat the claims and machinations of these sordid allies, English help is implored with vehement and pathetic urgency, the assurance being given that to yield it will be to reinforce both the sympathies and the interests of the native Celt. By comparison with this wild shriek of denunciation the paper contributed to the Nineteenth Century by Mr. Donald Cameron of Lochiel, M.P., is a sober, searching and fairly reasoned disquisition. Mr. Cameron has an indis- putable claim to speak with authority. His opportunities for acquainting himself with the facts are unmatched. He knows the Highlands well; he has managed a large estate in the very heart of them, so managing it that, like his friend and rival for the representation of Inverness-shire, Sir Kenneth Mackenzie, he has escaped reproach throughout the present controversy ; he served upon the committee of inquiry as regards the Scottish Game•laws ; was a member of the Crofters' Commission ; and is generally recognised as an honest and enlightened gentleman, animated by a sincere attachment to the poor people largely de- pendent upon him, whom he would like to push forward in the path of a self-respecting, self-sustaining, and prosperous industry. Nevertheless, though his article has the aspect of a scrupulous and judicial examination, it seems to us that he has misappre-
hended some patent facts bearing upon the inquiry, has Leen unconsciously swayed by a sinister bias towards erroneous con- clusions, and, without knowing it, has played the part of a special pleader. He had a right to lay stress upon the verdict pronounced by the Game-law Committee that the evidence they had heard did not bear out the allegations that the progress of afforesting has depopulated the country, or tends, in any large measure, to diminish the supply of food. Substantially confirmed as that verdict was by a majority of the Com- missioners who conducted the late inquiry, it thus acquires an added weight and significance. Plainly, however, it is not exhaustive of the question at issue. Moreover, in expanding and illustrating the two points it embraces, Mr. Cameron runs himself into concessions and contradictions which are alike fatal He commits himself to the position that in present circumstances deer-forests are not only defensible, but distinctly advantageous. It is illegitimate, therefore, on his part to asperse the Yankee sportsman, Mr. Winans, for doing on a larger scale than any- body else what ninety-nine other persons are at the same time praised for doing on a scale so large that their aggregate per- formances dwarf the achievements even of that mighty Nimrod. The censure upon him which Mr. Cameron deals out so heartily returns upon himself and upsets his whole argument. That argument is in substance that sheep-farming cannot now be made to pay in the Highlands, and therefore that the Highland landowners are entitled to take for their barren acres a higher rent than the farmer could give, especially when it comes from a class who spend lavishly during their brief sojourn. A cor- rected reading would be that sheep-farming, though the price of mutton and wool are every whit as high to-day as at the period of its greatest prosperity, does not pay so well as it did, partly because the ground will not carry the same amount of stock as when this industry was introduced upon the large scale, and so, as the Duke of Argyll is fond of patting it, nine-tenths of the mountain area were reclaimed from absolute waste; partly because farm rents have been trebled or quadrupled within the half. century, while other outlays, especially that for winter feeding, have risen in a like proportion; and partly because capitalist flock- masters shrink from investing upon the chance of a poor return the large sums needed to stock and work a big farm. Many people, however, ardently desire permission to follow this pursuit under reasonable conditions, upon a smaller scale. It ought to be con- sidered whether it is wise or patriotic to baulk them, and to extinguish a substantial industry, in order to snatch a large profit from ministering to the gratification of a rage for an expensive pastime which may prove as short-lived as it is exclusive and useless. If the scope for its exercise is to be widened at the cost of banishing sheep altogether, then more than sheep will have to go. Mr. Cameron boasts that hitherto few evictions of human beings have taken place to make room for deer, they having come in as sheep were driven out ; but, if the process is to extend, greater thoroughness is to be antici- pated, till, over all the North, " keepers " are substituted for shepherds; neither native nor stranger, man nor beast, is per- mitted to set foot on the sacred territory save those who have a mission connected with the purpose for which it is reserved ; for three-parts of the year an absolute solitude will reign, to be disturbed in autumn by the arrival of the great people at "the lodge," bringing an army of riff-raff to act as " beaters " in their train—the one to enjoy the luxury of hill-craft and knock over a few stags at the cost of £100 a piece, the others to have their pockets filled with money which, being easily earned, is likely to be recklessly spent—nobody else being wanted, nobody else being tolerated, the large expenditure of which so much is said being all transmitted to a distance. Is this to be reckoned a triumph of an advancing and beneficent civilisation ? Must it not rather be deemed a retrograde movement P Yet this is the conclusion to which Mr. Cameron complacently argues up, for with his contention that deer are now-a-days preferable to sheep, he distinctly mates the proposition that if the deer were banished the men who remained would starve. This is going too far and too fast.
No one who has read Mr. Scrope, or is familiar with the exploits of famous sportsmen like Lord Henry Bentinck, can fail to regard the old method of deer-stalking as a trying mental discipline no less than a splendid physical exercise. We live, however, in degenerate days. On the moor and in the forest methods are in vogue which would have horrified the authorities named. Both grouse-shooting and deer-stalking have been overdone; and the evil is on the increase to a
degree that threatens to avenge itself by the extinction of the game. The modern grouse-shooter too often conducts him- self not as a gentleman in quest of healthy recreation, but as a sordid emissary of the poulterers, taking a moor that he may clear a little money, and balancing his game- book on the principles of double entry. For the sake of these people "driving" has been invented. The huge bags of which they boast have excited a general emulation. A good day's tramp with a return of fifteen brace to a pair of guns before lunch, and a like number after, is now sneered at as an unworthy performance. Hundreds are desired, and if got it simply means that the butcher has been helped by an army of markers, and has rushed from one pointing dog to another so soon as he has emptied his breach-loader and handed it to a man to be recharged. Deer-stalking, though, of course, by reason of its expense, vastly more select—non cuivis homini- has been vulgarised in a like fashion. As now practised, it is an arm-chair sport, making no call, once the ground has been reached, upon legs, patience, perseverance, or generalship. All the so-called sportsman has to do is to let fly as the herd is hounded past him. Even so, the tenant of a forest for which £3,000 or £4,000 a year is paid may think himself lucky if he slaughters a hundred stags and hinds in the season, the value of each, allowing a fancy price for the head, not exceeding £5. Verily, the game does not seem worth the candle, besides that the community have a right to be heard as to the propriety of carrying it on to the extent that is now done. Grouse-shooting may be carrried on compatibly with the pastoral use of the land, the owner getting the game rent in addition to his grazing rent. Deer will not brook the neighbourhood of any domestic animals or their attendants. They must be the sole occupants of the territory assigned them. Mr. Cameron admits that close upon two million acres—an area greatly larger than the great county of Perth—has been cleared for their use. This is palpably an under-estimate, as any one may discover by comparing the entries in the shooting-list of Mr. Watson Lyall, the Pall Mall agent, with a map of Scotland. The chances are that even at present the cleared area is nearly as large as York- shire. Mr. Cameron says that much of the land is too high, bleak, and rugged for the breeding or maintenance of sheep. It is undoubtedly true that when in prime condition deer ascend where sheep cannot follow, and where ptarmigan are their only companions; but it is also true that they require access to rich pastures, and that sheep will thrive where they would starve. There could be no objection to their preservation by complying to a reasonable extent with their habits in both respects ; but it is another thing to uphold the righteousness of devastating a whole country that they may overrun it. The admission is made that 400,000 sheep might be grazed upon the land already made over to deer ; but it is coupled with the remark that the fourth part of them, which alone could be sent to the market annually, would tell in an almost imperceptible degree upon the consumption of the kingdom. That is so; -but there are a mul- titude of other relevant considerations which tend to reinforce this effect and to redeem it from insignificance. Among these is the preposterous claim of a right to insulate this wide area as by a declaratory blockade, prohibiting the foot of man from being anywhere set upon it, by the application to unfenced, uncultivated solitudes, of the same rules or penalties as protect the garden, the park, or the farm. Bailie Nicol Jarvie was conscious that he could not find "the comforts of the Sautmarket " in Rob Roy's country ; but some rich Englishmen are so ignorant as to suppose that when they quit their own trim and well-shaven lawns for the moors and deserts of the North they carry the English law of trespass with them, counting it as much an offence to wander among the Bens and glens as to cross a wheatfield or to climb a park gate. No latent principle of Scottish law has yet been evoked to sanction such a novel idea ; and however hard it may be for the rich deer-shooter to have the sport for which he pays an annual fortune interfered with by some unmannerly intruder, any attempt to protect him- self by arbitrary measures will only provoke the inquiry whether his sport is of such value to the community as to compensate them for the abolition of a prescriptive privilege. Every jurist will allow that compensation is necessary. No rational man will aver that it has been given. It were wise, therefore, to avoid the infliction of injury under the guise of pressing an extreme right, lest the downfall be hastened of a system which cannot long stand. To interdict it altogether might be harsh and impracticable ; but probably the Chancellor of the Ex-
chequer, in a Parliament chosen by household suffrage, may see his way to impose a heavy assessment upon deer-forests held as such, either by the owner or a lessee.
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