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In 1884, James Matheson purchased the Isle of Lewis for the grand sum of 190,000 pounds. Matheson had amassed a fortune in the Chinese tea and opium business; trading, as they say, with opium in one hand and the bible in the other. He is referred as "one Macdrug, fresh from Canton with a million of opium in his pocket" in Disraeli's Sybil.

Initially, the Lewis Crofters appeared fortunate in acquiring Matheson as the estate's new owner. In response to the potato famine, the landlord initiated a number of agricultural improvements and provided meal to his starving tenants. These, however, were not the gestures of a grand and philanthropic man. The crofters were expected to pay back the new estate owner for his acts of kindness. The cost of improvements was recovered through the labour of his tenants and the meal was charged onto the crofters' rents. Matheson's efforts, however, had limited success in fighting the effects of the famine; there was still much suffering and the additional meal charges helped to swell the crofters' debts to unmanageable proportions.

In 1850, Matheson and his chamberlain, John Munro Mackenzie, devised a plan for alleviating Lewis' economic problems. The two proposed assisted emigration as the only solution to the island's financial crisis; arguing that the problem lay not in the continuing potato blight and several consecutive years of bad harvest but in chronic overpopulation and the "character and habits" of its people.

Early in 1851, Munro Mackenzie toured the island identifying those who were to emigrate. Five hundred and eighteen families were chosen based on a carefully thought out selection process. The emigration strategy targeted the most destitute; those families who were more than two years in arrears of rent. Matheson also had his eye on a number of townships, mainly in the Uig, which could easily be converted to sheep grazings. Crofters situated in these areas were selected for emigration as well.

To the surprise of the estate officials, few tenants accepted the landlord's emigration offer. The estate blamed this almost outright refusal on the unworldliness of its impoverished tenantry, claiming "the most destitute are generally the most ignorant." The crofters' reluctance to leave, however, had more to do with a basic mistrust of Matheson and his factors. Many tenants were outraged at the estate's plans, believing that the rent arrears used to legitimize the emigration policy were completely artificial. They insisted that most of the arrears were for ground meal issued and not rent and that these accounts were settled upon receiving the above mentioned meal. The two ground officers responsible for administering the famine relief could neither read or write. It was, therefore, impossible to ascertain what payments were actually made. Mackenzie himself admitted he had "grave doubts as to all being well in that quarter."

The stubborn opposition of the crofters only served to harden the resolve of the estate. Crofters selected for emigration were served with formal notices of removal, refused work on the estate, prohibited from cutting peat, threatened with confiscation of their cattle and told they could expect no assistance in seed or food. In essence, they were left with only one real choice - to leave. In two short years estate policy had shifted from one that showed at least some compassion for its impoverished tenants to a strategy in which the inhabitants were viewed as nothing more than a hindrance to efficient economic development. The estate management's solution to this problem has been described as Eichmann-like in its thoroughness by at least one contemporary historian.

Ultimately Matheson's emmigration policy failed. In fact, the heavy handed approach of the estate's plan achieved the exact opposite of what its creators had intended. The people of Lewis had caught on to Matheson. Future generations realized that volunteer emmigration really meant a forced exodus and it became virtually impossible to initiate such schemes. The Lewis peoples' distrust of Matheson followed him to his grave and on the backroads of HuronTownship, there still remains a bitterness toward this long dead Hebridean landlord.