58691: Statement of Reverend MacCallum to the Napier Commission

Extract from Reverend MacCallum’s statement to the Napier Royal Commission of Inquiry on 9th July 1894

Since I became a preacher of the truth, I have endeavoured to find out how my countryment were situated, what are their rights, in how far they have been deprived of them, the best means of preserving them the rights still left them and of resotring them to those they have lost.

Every man has a right, natural and God-given, to the earth and its fullness – its fullness of light, air and water, of vegetables and fruit, of beast, birds and fishes, of metals and minerals. A nation which by its laws and armed forces deprives its people of their right to a share of the earth and its fullness, is using its acumen and its power to hasten its own utter extinction. Certainly there should be land laws, not laws such as ours whose chief end is to deprive the nation of its land with all its benefits and to assist those to whom it is given to retain absolute and undisturbed possession of it but laws such as reason teaches and the word of God approves, whose chief end would be to give every man his share of the earth and its benefits and to compel each to make a proper use of his share.

I believe the lords of the Highlands think that I condemn none but the rulers of the land for grabbing of the land and its benefits by them and for reducing the people to the condition of a conquered nation. The fact is that I consider the people who allowed the land to be grabbed by so-called lords even more guilty than those who grabbed it.

We do not expect to see lordism abolished but we hope to see it greatly modified and weakened. I do not know of a more humiliating spectacle than to see a lord, after pocketing and spending the profits of an estate for years, asking the people of the nation to provide his tenants with food when the strict exacting of his rent causes them to be starving.