The function of the Emigration Commission is largely presented by the three characters. Essentially, the majority of landowners welcomed their inspections as the commissioners could award funds from the public purse for improvements to land and industries, such as fishing, while justifying, in the landlord’s opinion, the clearance of land for sheep. A landowner in the good books of an Emigration Commission could believe he ran a well-ordered estate even as he sent his tenants overseas. Naturally, the tenants took the opposite view of Commission Men, and it was not unknown for their progress to be sabotaged. The most notorious incident came in 1850 when a mob of evicted Campbells ambushed three Emigration Commissioners in Glencoe, overturning their carriage and bludgeoning two of them to death. The third commissioner escaped on horseback, along with the coachmen, and was later able to identify five of the ringleaders who were tried and hanged at Inveraray Castle, alongside a coachman who had colluded with the attackers. Another two-dozen Campbells were found guilty of obstructing the king’s highway and deported to Van Diemen’s Land.
The rule of three refers to MacGregor’s fondness for using a trio of characters to create a strong dynamic. An example in the First Prologue is the scene between Captain Wolfe and Warders Pengallow and Thomas which quickly established Wolfe’s character and his relationship with the men under him and the same can be said of the scene in chapter one between Bheathain Somhairle, his grandfather and Tòrmod M’Neis at the Staffin Inn. In those examples the three characters take centre stage, whereas the Commission Men act within a larger group. Their function in this scene is to bring the wider world, as seen by the privileged, into the domesticity of Sir David’s dining room and thereby prefigure the later scene between Sir David and Adam Shaw which shows the world through the eyes of the dispossessed.
Some critics have argued these repeated groups of three (we shall find many other examples) are a veiled reference to the three branches of magick, while others maintain it is based on the concept of soul, spirit and body. A few have even suggested it draws on a proto-Freudian triumvirate of ego, superego, and id, and it is true these trios often contain a mediator, or ego figure, such as Tòrmod in chapter one who intervenes between Bheathain and his grandfather, and in this chapter Lord Dundee censures the intemperate bishop.
In my opinion, this over-complicates matters. There is no need to see some allegorical purpose for three characters, rather than two or four, when narrative purpose answer perfectly well. Two characters in a scene, as in life, are more likely to adopt polarised positions without either expecting the other to alter their view, leading to stasis. Three characters allow more possibilities where one can act as mediator between opposing views, two may take a common position against a third, or two opposing arguments can sway a neutral party. Thus, three characters offer greater complexity and the possibility of change or development in character and therefore narrative.
A negative effect of the ‘rule of three’ in literature is individual characters can appear too stylised, resulting in a loss of nuance and humanity, as is the case with MacGregor’s Bishop of Stirling. As stated previously, MacGregor substantially rewrote the bishop’s dialogue to make him less of a mouthpiece for the clearances and more of a human being, but he is still too obviously the villain of the piece. A further criticism is the focus on the bishop largely exculpates Lord Dundee and Sir Gordon when both are equally culpable while expressing their opinions less harshly. Arguably, greater subtlety could be had in the discussion but only, in my view, by increasing the number of characters so a range of views might be expressed. This would raise two problems: firstly, Commission Men only ever surveyed in parties of two or three; secondly, a large number of characters risks too many discordant voices and the loss of the central idea.
In this instance, as the focus is on Sir David and, to a lesser extent on Lord MacDonald, the lack of depth in the bishop’s portrayal is tolerable because he functions primarily as a prompt for Sir David’s thoughts and conscience rather than as a character in his own right.
MacGregor would revisit the theme of the Clearances later in This Iron Race and this image serves as a timely reminder of the human cost of the Commission Men’s deliberations.
