Adventurers And Exiles_The Great Scottish Exodus

by Marjory Harper

  Kirk session records also document the disappearance overseas of men arraigned for fornication, while some of the illegitimate children admitted to Quarrier’s Homes had been left destitute by a disgraced parent who had fled abroad, and of seventeen boys admitted to the Aberdeen Industrial School between 1867 and 1877 because a parent had emigrated, six had come into care because their father or mother had abandoned the family when they went abroad. 10

  Post-war dislocation and assisted artisan emigration

  Throughout the nineteenth century most of those who left Scotland reluctantly were driven out by the threat or reality of economic hardship rather than crime or scandal. But economic coercion was not a characteristic just of nineteenth-century emigrants. Among the negative reasons for the notable haemorrhage in the early 1770s were a crisis in the Lowland textile industry and, in the Highlands, the combined effects of cattle disease, low stock prices, successive poor harvests and rising rents. Many of these problems were documented explicitly for the first time in the Register of Emigrants, which contains almost twice as many negative as positive statements by departing emigrants. ‘For poverty and to get bread’ was the collective reason for emigration given by the 212 passengers aboard the Commerce, which in February 1774 left Greenock for New York. Of these, 178 were from Paisley, where large numbers of weavers had been thrown out of work as a result of the collapse of the four-year-old Ayr Bank in 1773. ‘Want of employment’ was the complaint of all sixty-two Borders emigrants aboard the Gale of Whitehaven and some of the thirty-one passengers from the same region aboard the Adventure of Liverpool, both of which sailed for New York in May 1774. A handful of the 147 emigrants who left Stranraer on the Gale in June 1774 were also unemployed or hoped to do better, while the Lowland farmers and tradesmen aboard the Glasgow Packet and the Christy, both of which left Greenock in April 1775, complained of ‘racking rents’ and unemployment. 11

  Economic dislocation in the aftermath of the Napoleonic Wars stimulated a much more significant outpouring of the unemployed and destitute. Demobilized soldiers returned to an already overstocked labour market, compounding the effects of agricultural and industrial depression, at the same time as a rapid growth in population and rising Irish immigration combined to put unprecedented pressure on the inadequate poor laws of both Scotland and England. In Ireland, landlords, unable to collect their rents, were consolidating their minutely subdivided farms and dispossessing redundant tenants, many of whom flocked to central Scotland, where they generated huge discontent among the native population. Their persistent determination to swell the ranks of handloom weavers simply exacerbated existing, deep-seated problems in that industry. Although the market was chronically oversupplied and the development of power looms had clearly sounded the deathknell of handloom weaving, aspiring weavers continued to be drawn into a dying trade until the 1840s, attracted by its cottage-based working conditions and the ease with which it could be learned. ‘The situation of the country becomes more and more deplorable,’ lamented the Scots Magazine in 1816, and by 1819 unemployed weavers had divided into two camps, espousing either radical reform or assisted emigration. 12

  There was already some precedent for assisted emigration. Soldier-settlers had been eligible for land grants since the 1760s, but in 1815 the British government — concerned at the vulnerability of the Canadian frontier after the attempted American invasion of 1812 — extended the offer to civilians who could provide certificates of character along with a returnable deposit of £16 per male emigrant and £2 for his wife. Under this venture approximately 700 Scots were enticed to the new Ottawa Valley townships of Bathurst, Drum-mond and Beckwith by free transport, 100-acre grants, free rations and cheap implements. By autumn 1816 the early settlements in Lanark County had grown to approximately 1,500 civilians and ex-soldiers, but the policy was abandoned on grounds of cost and lingering disquiet about the merits of assisted emigration. Two years later it was replaced by a scaled-down scheme to grant land in Upper Canada and the Cape of Good Hope to individuals who promised to recruit settlers and deposit £10 for each person so recruited. Over 300 Scots from the Breadalbane district, as well as 172 from Ireland and fifty from England, took advantage of the Canadian offer, although it is unlikely that the Breadalbane farmers who settled in Beckwith Township funded themselves. Allegedly ‘reduced to such a state of extreme poverty as to be able to procure but one scanty meal per day’, these families, who had been pushed out by consolidation of their farms, were also unable to supply the shipboard provisions required by the new Passenger Act of 1817. 13

  Until 1819 the government’s primary concern in subsidizing emigration had been one of imperial defence, and it argued that it was simply redirecting emigrants who would otherwise have settled in the United States. But as economic conditions worsened it began to see emigration as a form of poor relief, a change of perspective brought about by lobbying from both the ruling élite and the unemployed in the affected areas, where by the winter of 1819—20 up to 15,000 individuals were dependent on charity. Emigration societies sprouted across the west of Scotland, particularly in Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, where there were soon thirty-five associations, representing over 13,000 handloom weavers. From April 1820 their activities were supervised and coordinated by the Glasgow Committee on Emigration, led by Lord Archibald Hamilton, Whig MP for Lanarkshire, and the Tory MP, cotton manufacturer and former Lord Provost of Glasgow, Kirkman Finlay. These opposing politicians had been brought together by a shared fear of radical insurrection after the failure of public works programmes to relieve distress, and in May 1820 they successfully brought the case for assisted emigration before the House of Commons.

  Many persons in that country [Glasgow] were in such an absolute state of destitution, that they looked on their existence as a burthen which they could scarcely support. They could neither maintain themselves nor their families; and the period was fast approaching, when without food and without raiment, they must either perish, or prolong their existence by the plunder of their neighbours … He [Lord Hamilton] must say, that, from the spirit and temper of ministers, they seemed to have greatly under-rated the distress which at present existed in the northern part of the kingdom. They had ascribed a larger proportion of the disturbance to disaffection than to distress, and had applied force to quell disturbances which would have been more effectually suppressed by furnishing the means of subsistence. The right hon. Gentlemen opposite were more willing to facilitate emigration to the Cape of Good Hope than to any other quarter of the world; and the reasons for this preference he could not perceive, especially as most of those who were inclined to emigrate from Scotland had powerful reasons to induce them to go to our settlements in America, rather than to Africa … He concluded by observing, that any delay in the application of a remedy to the evils which he had pointed out would not only be disastrous in itself, but would render more difficult the attainment of that intimate object which ought to be kept in view — the suppression of the present disturbances in Scotland. 14

  In responding positively to these pleas, the government was also influenced by a barrage of petitions from the weavers themselves. Drawing on the example of the Breadalbane emigrants and adapting the long-standing support structure of the trade guilds, in 1819 distressed weavers began to bombard both the Lanarkshire County Meeting and the Colonial Department with petitions for assisted emigration. Unable to save themselves from ‘starvation or becoming a burden on the parish’, the people of Lesmahagow in January 1819 asked the County Meeting to respond to the ‘stagnation of trade’ by devising ‘some means (either by applications to government or otherwise) of conveying us out to the Colony of Upper Canada and supporting us ther[e] until such time as we could provide ourselves with the necessary means of subsistence ’. Three months later Charles Baillie wrote to Lord Archibald Hamilton on behalf of ‘a few of the inhabitants of Hamilton’, asking him to relieve their ‘wretchedness and misery’ by using his influence to have them transported, free of ch
arge, to a British settlement overseas. 15

  On the basis of these petitions, the Lanarkshire heritors appealed to the Treasury to subsidize emigration, appeals which were ignored until the emigration societies began to bombard the Colonial Department directly and systematically, coordinating their efforts in response to the political debate and playing on the government’s terror of insurrection in the way they framed their petitions. ‘If Upper Canada be overstocked at all it is with trees,’ retorted the chairman of the Anderston and Rutherglen Society to the Chancellor of the Exchequer’s statement that weavers should not go to Canada, since it was also experiencing economic depression. 16 ‘We have used every lawful means in order to obtain our Desired object but without effect,’ complained Robert Beath, secretary of the Kirkfieldbank Emigration Society in 1821, in response to the very limited government subsidy given to the first batch of weaver-emigrants the previous year. 17 The implicit threat of resort to unlawful means was heightened by Beath’s earlier arrest for radical activity in 1812, although most radicals deplored emigration as a response to poverty, and the bulk of the many thousand petitions submitted by up to thirty-six emigration societies by 1821 simply emphasized the sufferings of the unemployed weavers and their longing for independence through the possession of colonial land. Many, including the following plea from Rutherglen, made directly to the Colonial Secretary, also stressed the petitioners’ loyalty to the government:

  That Your Lordship’s petitioners, being heads of families, have for a considerable time been desirous of emegrating to His Majesty’s province of Canada to avail themselves of the encouragement granted to settlers by His Majesty’s Government; but by reason of their poverty they are unable to procure a passage thence and do therefore pray your Lordship to transport them with thier families to that setlement and Your Lordship’s petitioners will oblige themselves in any manner Your Lordship may think fit in order to the re-embursement of the expences incurred as soon as thier cercomstances will admit. The Muslin weaving being the occupation Your Lordship’s petitioners usually follow, is at present so bad and wages so low and the prices of provisions so high that it is with the greatest difficulty they can procure a subsistance for themselves and famelies, and are intirely incapable of providing for sickness or other emergencies and there being no poor rates in this part of the kingdom renders them liable to the greatest hardships and deprivations.

  Your Lordship’s petitioners have all born arms in defence of thier King and country. If therefor thier loyalty to thier King and service to thier country can have any influence with His Majesty’s Ministers they would fondly cherish the hope of your Lordship assistance which should they obtain will forever bind them under the strongest ties of gratitude to Your Lordship and to His Majestys Government in whose defence they are bound and determined in whatever place or in whatever circumstances they may be to render all the services that may be in their power. 18

  In July 1819 the weavers of the newly formed Bridgeton Transatlantic Society also implored the Colonial Secretary directly to fund their relocation in Canada — but not the Cape of Good Hope — ‘as the only place where their labours shall meet with due reward and where they and their families shall be put out of the fear of want’. In the current distress the stark alternatives, they claimed, were starvation or parish relief, ‘and the last alternative is nearly as galling to the feelings of your memorialists as the first would be, because they have always supported themselves by honest industry and have been taught by the precept and examples of their fathers to look upon independence as their chief pride ’. 19

  How did the government respond to all this lobbying? In May 1820 it authorized a loan of £11,000 to assist 1,100 members of the emigration societies to go to Upper Canada, offering free transport from Quebec to their destination, a 100-acre grant to each family, seed corn and implements, and staggered loans of £10 per head, to be repaid within ten years. Since the emigrants had to fund their transatlantic passage, supplementary funds were sought from private charity on the basis that ‘by assisting a few hundred persons in this way, the condition of those who remain will be rendered more comfortable ’. Robert Lamond, secretary of the Glasgow committee established to organize the venture, not only assured donors of the integrity and political conservatism of the emigrants but also repudiated concerns that they might ‘carry away with them the science and intelligence of old Scotia’. Appealing for donations of Bibles and other books, so that they might ‘cultivate the best of fields, the human mind’, he predicted that before long, ‘by the aid of a generous public’, a ‘little Glasgow may be built in that quarter of the world’. 20 By June and July 1820 enough money had been raised in Glasgow, Edinburgh and London to embark 1,200 emigrants on the Clyde in three ships, but the flood of petitions continued, and in 1821 a further 1,883 people from the counties of Lanark, Renfrew, Dunbarton, Stirling, Clack-mannan and Linlithgow sailed on four ships, to seek, in the words of the Scots Magazine, ‘subsistence on the other side of the Atlantic’. 21 Since there were many more applicants than places, lots were drawn in both years, although in 1821 preference was given to relatives of those who had come out in the first contingent.

  Although these emigrants represented only a fraction of the members of the societies, by 1821 conditions had begun to improve, leading the Glasgow Emigration Committee to observe that ‘many of the persons who have lately embarked, have been induced to do so, from other considerations, rather than the want of employment at home’. 22 The focus therefore shifted from Scotland to Ireland, and in 1821, 1823 and 1825 the government allocated a total of £113,000 to assist emigration from the south of Ireland to Canada and the Cape. In 1826, however, renewed unemployment not only spawned a further flood of petitions from all parts of the British Isles; it also led to the appointment of a parliamentary select committee to investigate the pros and cons of systematic state-aided emigration. A familiar refrain echoed through the Scottish weavers’ petitions and evidence, namely, a request for assistance to join friends and relatives who had been helped to emigrate earlier in the decade and who were allegedly doing well in Canada. Joseph Foster and James Little, members of the Glasgow Emigration Committee who appeared before the select committee on behalf of 140 families, testified both to a revitalization of the emigration societies and to ‘all the horrors of despair’ that would seize their members if they were unable to emigrate. William Spencer Northhouse, of the London Free Press, speaking on behalf of an estimated 11,864 people in thirty-two emigration societies in Lanarkshire and Renfrewshire, alleged that a threefold increase in the cost of emigration — a result of recent shipping legislation — had prevented many would-be emigrants from responding to the encouraging correspondence of their countrymen already in Canada. And two MPs, Thomas Kennedy and Henry Home Drummond, representing Ayrshire and Stirlingshire respectively, spoke of deep distress among handloom weavers, the inability of local gentry to ameliorate conditions and the problem of Irish labourers displacing native Scots. 23

  The select committee, having identified widespread distress and unemployment, particularly in Ireland, recommended the assisted colonization of vacant colonial lands, provided that the colonists left voluntarily and the assistance was ultimately repaid. At least one witness, Henry Bliss of New Brunswick, was particularly keen to receive Scottish settlers, who, he claimed, ‘never fail; they are industrious, thrifty, sober, and obedient to the laws’. 24 The select committee was concerned, however, to prevent central Scotland and northern England from being overrun by Irish labourers, whom it blamed for many of the problems in these manufacturing districts, and it suggested that £50,000 should be allocated to assist emigration from all parts of the British Isles. But the government, concerned at the cost of its earlier experiments, and anticipating an economic upturn, refused to dip into the public purse again, so it was left to the emigration societies to make renewed appeals to private charity. By 1828 the Paisley Emigration Society had raised enough funds locally to send a shipload of 117 we
avers and their families to Quebec. Further contingents followed over the next two years, after the government offered fifty-acre land grants to members of some emigration societies, provided the societies covered the cost of transportation and provisions from renewed appeals to private charity. 25

  For a decade the government had flirted intermittently with state-aided emigration, partially sponsoring almost 7,000 people to go to Canada, and a further 3,569 — the latter primarily English emigrants — to the Cape. Although only a minority of the emigrants were impecunious handloom weavers and only a fraction of the artisans who wished to leave were able to do so, the Scottish exodus of the early 1820s was identified largely with that occupational group and emigration societies became part of the fabric of the western Lowland exodus to a much greater extent than elsewhere in the British Isles, retaining their influence long after government interest had waned. Petitions continued to be sent — unsuccessfully — to the Colonial Office year after year, and the societies reemerged strongly during subsequent recessions. In 1841 600 emigration society members went to Canada, mainly with the aid of private donations. They were followed by 1,000 in 1842 and 900 in 1843, but, as before, those enabled to emigrate represented only a fraction of the societies’ membership of approximately 4,500. Paisley, the textile centre that had shown symptoms of distress among weavers as early as 1773, continued to experience the greatest hardship as handloom weaving collapsed completely. By the early 1840s it had become the most depressed town in Britain, the subject of special investigations and a key catalyst in the decision to reform the Scottish poor law. Paisley’s weavers, it was agreed, were now too destitute and numerous for emigration to have a beneficial effect, individually or communally. Although the Royal Commission into the Condition of Unemployed Handloom Weavers in the United Kingdom (1841) endorsed emigration as ‘the most immediate cure or palliative of a redundant population’, both the assistant commissioners who visited Scotland agreed that it was ‘not one of the means by which the condition of the hand-loom weavers as a body is likely to be materially improved’. Not only did they allegedly lack the skills, stamina and ‘capacity for active muscular exertion’ required of pioneer farmers; the weavers themselves did not believe that they could emigrate in sufficient numbers to benefit those who remained. 26 Two years later an investigation into the plight of Paisley’s population found that although numerous applications had been made to two relief funds set up specifically to aid emigration, only sixteen people had been able to go to Port Phillip and a few more to New Zealand and Canada, the majority of applicants having insufficient funds to assemble the necessary outfit. 27 And in 1844 Archibald Alison, Sheriff Depute of Lanarkshire, contrasted the optimism of weavers in Glasgow, where between thirty and forty societies continued to apply to him annually for assistance to emigrate, with the pessimism of their counterparts in Paisley: