than the hurt". On Lewis, Sir James Matheson had spent £33,000 in three years to support his tenants; in six of the next thirty years he had to provide similar help, but on a much smaller scale and with a greater likelihood of being repaid: Consequent depopulation Most landlords worked to lessen the effects of the famine on their crofting tenants: forgoing rent, donating to the relief committees, running their own parallel relief operations, funding the introduction of new crops and industries or reviving old ones. However, as it became apparent that crofting at current population levels had long-term problems, they feared that the government would impose some system of permanent relief charged against their estates (either directly or through Poor Law reform). They instead sought to solve or remove the problems by inducing their poorer tenants to migrate to the Lowlands, or emigrate overseas. There was theoretical support on the problem of excess population from the work of Malthus, and this certainly had an influence on the management of the Duke of Sutherland's estate. His factor in the Scourie district (Evander McIver) worked both to persuade the landlord to subsidise emigration and to encourage the tenantry to accept the assistance offered. Whilst the second Duke of Sutherland effectively forbade eviction to achieve this, the influence of favourable reports from previous emigrants, coupled with the level of destitution in the community acted as a stimulus for people to leave. Extreme poverty acted as a barrier to emigration – emphasising the importance of financial assistance from the landlord. The crofting areas lost about a third of their population between the early 1840s and the late 1850s; losses were higher in the Hebrides and remoter areas of the mainland such as Ardnamurchan, with over 40% of inhabitants being evicted by 1856. Some landlords contributed towards "assisted" emigration (under which over 16,000 crofters were shipped overseas to Canada and Australia), others encouraged their tenants to move by taking a harder line on rent arrears, turf-cutting rights, and other practices on which tenants had traditionally been allowed some leeway. But – since crofters had no security of tenure – landlords could simply evict their superfluous tenants. Pine Coffin became alarmed by the extent of evictions in 1848-9, warning of "the unsettling of the very foundations of the social system". On Lewis, the large-scale "voluntary" emigration to Canada from the Matheson estates was encouraged by