Note 32 — Chapter XLII

The following remarks, taken from the Gartmore MS. at the end of Burt’s Letters, gives one by no means a favourable idea of these drovers, but it must be borne in mind that the writer lived on the border of the most notorious and ill-behaved part of the Highlands, Rob Roy’s country, and that he himself was properly a Lowlander. The extract will serve to show how business transactions were conducted in the Highlands. “It is alledged, that much of the Highlands lye at a great distance from publick fairs, mercates, and places of commerce, and that the access to these places is both difficult and dangerous; by reason of all which, trading people decline to go into the country in order to traffick and deal with the people. It is on this account that the farmers, having no way to turn the produce of their farms, which is mostly cattle, into money, are obliged to pay their rents in cattle, which the landlord takes at his own price, in regaird that he must either grase them himself, send them to distant markets, or credite some person with them, to be againe at a certain profite disposed of by him. This introduced the busieness of that sort of people commonly known by the name of Drovers. These men have little or no substance, they must know the language, the different places, and consequently be of that country. The farmers, then, do either sell their cattle to these drovers upon credite, at the drovers price (for ready money they seldom have), or to the landlord at his price, for payment of his rent. If this last is the case, the landlord does again dispose of them to the drover upon credite, and these drovers make what profites they can by selling them to grasiers, or at markets. These drovers make payments, and keep credite for a few years, and then they either in reality become bankrupts, or pretend to be so. The last is most frequently the case, and then the subject of which they have cheated is privately transferred to a confident person in whose name, upon that reall stock, a trade is sometimes carried on, for their behoof, till this trustee gett into credite, and prepaire his affairs for a bankruptcy. Thus the farmers are still keept poor; they first sell at an under rate, and then they often lose alltogether. The landlords, too, must either turn traders, and take their cattle to markets, or give these people credite, and by the same means suffer.”—Burt’s Letters, vol. ii. pp. 364, 365.