HL Deb 23 June 1885 vol 298 cc1612-7
LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICK,

in rising to call attention to a statement reported to have been made in that House by the Duke of Argyll on the 7th of May, in moving for a copy of a letter addressed by him to the Chairman of the Royal Commission on the Highlands and Islands of Scotland, and to make an explanation, said, the noble Duke, on the occasion in question, expressed regret that his letter had not been given in the Report of the Royal Commission along with the evidence and the other documents contained in it, and said that, having asked the Chairman of the Commission whether there was any objection to its publication, and finding that there was not, he ventured to move that it be printed and circulated as a Parliamentary Paper. If the noble Duke had intended to imply, as might be inferred from the terms he had used, that his communication to the Royal Commission was in reality accidentally omitted from the Report by that Commission, then it became incumbent on him to state to their Lordships that the omission of the noble Duke's letter did not take place accidentally, but advisedly, and for the following reasons:—When the Commission came to consider what documentary communications submitted to them should be embodied in their Report, and what should not, the communication of the noble Duke was brought under discussion at a private meeting of the Commission. As no record existed of what passed at that private meeting, he could not undertake to state exactly what each Member of the Commission said or thought in relation to that subject; but the opinion of the majority—he might say the prevailing opinion of the Commissioners—was that the communication of the noble Duke should not be printed with the evidence in the Report. That opinion was based on reasons connected, first, with the form, and, secondly, with the substance of that communication. The form of the communication was very exceptional. It was, indeed, ostensibly addressed to the Royal Commission in the guise of a letter to the Chairman; but it was published and circulated in the form of a pamphlet before it reached his hands. The noble Duke, in making that communication, submitted his views at once to the public in the form most familiar in political controversy. That publication immediately obtained an immense circulation, at least in Scotland. It was widely disseminated; it was received by some with approval, by others with displeasure; but it was read by all with the greatest curiosity and interest, as was natural in regard to anything that emanated from the noble Duke. It had also been read by persons versed in these questions in England; and, in fact, the document had gained an amount of notoriety by its circulation throughout the country greater than even the Report of the Commission itself. There was much in the substance of that communication of an exceptional character. It embodied a great number of particulate illustrative of the economical condition of the Highlands and of the history of the noble Duke's property and of his own personal system of management—a system which, he had no doubt, deserved the attention and study of Parliament; but the noble Duke was pleased to mix up with these matters of general interest other matters of a controversial and personal character. During the sittings of the Commission, the noble Duke found fault with the conduct of different Members of the Commission, and commented on the opinions of several of the Commissioners and on expressions casually let fall by them with a vivacity and an irony which were familiar to the style of the noble Duke, and of which he was so great a master. In these circumstances, it became incumbent on him, as the Chairman of the Commission, to consider whether the letter was really a bonâ fide memorandum, submitted for his own in- struction and that of his fellow-Commissioners, or whether it was not a critique of a controversial character; and, having given his careful and, he trusted, his impartial consideration to the question, he was constrained to admit that the letter was at least so controversial in its nature that he could not press its adoption on the Commission with the courtesy which he owed equally to all the Commissioners. He did not think it was a communication which his Colleagues could have accepted and adopted with the courtesy which they owed to one another; and, therefore, he had been obliged to exclude the document from the Blue Book. He asked the noble Duke and the House not to imagine that he and his fellow-Commissioners desired any immunity from criticism; on the contrary, he was deeply sensible that he himself had committed errors, both of omission and commission, and he did not suppose that any of his Colleagues would hesitate to acknowledge the same. He could assure the noble Duke that the omission of the communication was owing to no want of respect or consideration for him personally, but simply for the reasons he had already mentioned.

THE DUKE OF ARGYLL

said, he was rather ashamed to occupy the attention of the House upon a matter of such small importance in the midst of this great political crisis. He had been much puzzled when he saw the Notice of the noble Lord to know what reason there could be for bringing this matter before the House at this time; but there were some elements of amusement connected with the matter which he would communicate to their Lordships. The method of proceeding followed by the Crofters' Commission was a curious one. He would take the case of his own estate in the Island of Tiree, which his noble Friend had admitted was a representative estate having a curious and an interesting history. The Commissioners went to this island in a steamer, landing at the only little harbour in the island. They got two or three gigs together and scampered off to a church where the meeting was held. So far as he knew, they did not visit a single croft or cottage in the island. No notice had been sent to him, except at a time so late that he was unable to be present. The meeting was held in the parish church, and all the tenants and Crofters were invited to attend there. A great deal of the evidence adduced before the Commission at these inquiries was good; but a great deal of it also was utter nonsense. His noble Friend knew that a great number of agitators went before the Commission throughout the Highlands instructing the greater number of the poor Crofters what sort of things they were to say at the official inquiry. A number of the Crofters on his estate complained of land being taken from them; but, as a matter of fact, not a single acre had been taken from them. He must say that his noble Friend who presided at the inquiry cross-examined the witnesses most inefficiently; that was not his noble Friend's fault, because he had not the knowledge of all the circumstances of the island to enable him to cross-examine the witnesses as they ought to have been examined. In these circumstances, he found all the evidence thus adduced, much of which was erroneous, published by the Press and circulated all over Scotland. All the accusations brought forward by the Crofters against the landlords were published and circulated throughout the country; and it seemed to him that it was most important that those reports should be contradicted, and the real state of the facts placed before the public. He adopted the course of sending a letter to the noble Lord the Chairman of the Commission giving all the facts. He thought it important to address to his 'noble Friend a statement of the facts connected with the history of crofting in this island. He spent a great deal of time and trouble in collecting the documents for that purpose, and the letter which he wrote gave a history of crofting in that island for 150 years. What, however, was his astonishment to find that when the Report of the Commission was issued this letter had been suppressed. Although his letter had been published, and had obtained a large local circulation in Scotland, it could not have reached the Members of this and the other House of Parliament in the same way as if it had been included either in the Report of the Commissioners, or published as a separate Paper? What justification had the noble Lord given for not publishing the letter? One reason was that it had already been published; but his answer to that was that all the evidence had been published in the Press, certain journals taking especial pains to publish all the falsehoods against the landlords, refraining very often from publishing the defence. Another reason given was that the letter was contentious in its character; but nine-tenths of the evidence given before the Commission was in the highest degree contentious. The evidence of most of the witnesses was contentious against the landlords; and he considered that he had a perfect right to publish evidence on the other side. But the noble Lord had not stated the real reason for the suppression of this letter. The noble Lord had a Colleague who seemed to have been exceedingly troublesome to him, because he observed that on one occasion his noble Friend interposed his authority as Chairman of the Commission, and, he thought, stretched it to such an extent that he ordered this Colleague to put no more questions of this particular character. This took place in reference to his own estate; and most offensive and injurious questions were put to a tenant of his bearing on the character of a dead man, an agent of his who had been dead for 10 years. This Gentleman, sitting with the authority of a Royal Commissioner, had the gross bad taste to suggest that this dead, factor might possibly have falsified the books of his estate. A more monstrous proceeding he did not know; and he had thought it his duty to call the attention of the public in Scotland to the gross character of the conduct of this Gentleman. His noble Friend said it was due to the courtesy he owed his Colleagues that he should suppress the communication in question. He (the Duke of Argyll) thought the suppression of that document was a mistake. It was, he considered, a perfectly fair proceeding on his part to direct public attention to so gross a departure from the judicial character of this Gentleman's office as Commissioner. When he found that this document, which was held in many quarters to be an important contribution to the question, had been suppressed, he had moved for it; and he felt certain that if the circumstances had been laid before their Lordships a majority of the House would have supported his Motion for its production. He believed Mr. Fraser-Mackintosh, the Gentleman to whom he had referred, objected to his having described the suppression of the letter as an accidental circumstance, and he supposed had insisted upon his noble Friend making the explanation he had just given. But he submitted that he had been perfectly right in directing the attention of the public to the circumstances of the case, and that there was no justifiable reason for the exclusion of the pamphlet in question.

LORD NAPIER AND ETTRICK

was understood to say that he did not wish to raise the question whether the noble Duke was right or wrong in what he had done. He had only wished, in fairness to his Colleagues, to state the reasons which had guided him in excluding the noble Duke's communication. He (Lord Napier and Ettrick) was still of opinion that he had only done his duty in taking the course he had upon this matter.

House adjourned at half past Five o'clock, till To-morrow, Eleven o'clock.