Still more wretched is the condition of the cottars and squatters.  The latter are in some places numerous and have taken up considerable portions of land formerly used as common, thus interfering with the rights of the crofters.  They appropriate land and possess and pasture stock, but pay no rent, obey no control, and scarcely recognize any authority.  The dwellings of this class and of some of the poorer crofters are wretched in the extreme.  A single apartment, with walls of stone and mud, a floor of clay, a thatched roof, no windows, no chimney, one low door furnishing an entrance for the occupants and a means of ventilation and of escape for the smoke which rolls up black and thick from the peat fire, furniture of the rudest imaginable sort, the inhabitants—­the human beings, the cows, the pigs, the sheep, and the poultry—­all crowded together in the miserable and filthy hut, make up a picture which the most romantic and poetic associations can hardly render pleasing to one accustomed to the comforts and refinements of modern civilization.  Of course many of the crofters live in greater comfort, and some of the cottages are by no means unattractive.  But the Royal Commissioners say that the crofter’s habitation is usually “of a character that would imply physical and moral degradation in the eyes of those who do not know how much decency, courtesy, virtue, and even refinement survive amidst the sordid surroundings of a Highland hovel.”  An Englishman who, on seeing these “sordid surroundings,” was disposed to compare the social and moral condition of the people to “the barbarism of Egypt,” was told that if he would ask one of the crofters, in Gaelic or English, “What is the chief end of man?” he would soon see the difference.

With such a history, such traditions, grievances, conditions, and hardships, it is not strange that the crofter should be ready to join an agitation that promised a remedy.  Some of his grievances and claims have been so similar to those of the Irish tenant that the legislation which followed the violent agitation in Ireland has led him to hope for relief-measures similar to those enacted for the Irish tenantry.  The Irish Land Act of 1870 recognized the tenant’s right to the permanent possession of his holding and to his improvements, by providing that on being turned out by his landlord he should have compensation for disturbance and for his improvements.  It did not, however, secure him against the landlord’s so increasing his rent as practically to appropriate his improvements and even force him to leave his holding without any compensation.  The Land Act of 1881 secured his interests by establishing a court which should fix a fair rent, by giving him a right to compensation for disturbance and for his improvements, and by allowing him to sell his interests for the best price he can get for them.  It also enabled him to borrow from the government, at a low rate of interest, three-fourths of the money necessary to purchase his landlord’s interest in the holding.  This legal recognition and guarantee of the Irish tenant’s interests have led the crofter to hope that his claims, based on better grounds, may also be conceded.